Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

Stettin the next day, and so violently that the police called for intensifiedsurveillance of such assemblies in future. On the last day of the month his topic inHalle was ‘Germany has Awakened.’ The next day he addressed a public rally at theSport Palace.73Still ruling by emergency decree, on October 6 Chancellor Brüning empoweredthe police to shut down ‘dens of activities hostile to the state.’ Grzesinski and Weissimmediately sent in their police to evict the S.A. and S.S. from the hostels thatGoebbels had set up for them in Berlin, tossing the beds and furniture into the street.Hundreds of Nazis, already unemployed, now became homeless too. The steamheadof hatred slowly built up pressure.To the authorities’ distress Adolf Hitler now moved his political headquarters awayfrom Munich—where a personal tragedy, the suicide of his niece Geli in his apartmenthad deeply shocked him—to Berlin. Burying for ever the womanizing, indolent,procrastinating Hitler of old, he retained a suite of rooms in the Kaiserhofhotel,within leering distance of the Reich Chancellery. Here he held court with hishenchmen like Röhm, Hess, and Julius Schaub. Grzesinski and Weiss were shockedGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 245at their government’s lack of dignity in tolerating this; their agents learned that Hitlerwas meeting top businessmen including even Günther Quandt at the Kaiserhof,and that they were pouring money into the Nazi coffers having accepted that Brüningwas not going to rescue Germany.74THE locals jostle and vie with each other for Hitler’s ear. Göring, his political attachéin Berlin, is also overshadowed by tragedy, as his wife Carin has now contracted herfinal illness and returned to Stockholm with no hope of recovering. Goebbels tries tobuy from the prosecutor’s office the documents incriminating Röhm. Röhm, stungby Goebbels’ campaign against him, tells Hitler that all Berlin is gossipping aboutGoebbels’s affair with the former Mrs Quandt.75 But this backfires on Röhm, asGoebbels now often hangs around the lobby of the Kaiserhof with Magda taking tea.Once they send young Harald Quandt, now nearly ten, upstairs to see the Führerwearing the little blue uniform she has sewn for him. Harald gives Hitler the appropriatesalute and says that he feels twice as strong when wearing a uniform. Goebbelsinvites Hitler downstairs to meet Magda—‘the divorced wife of the industrialist yousaw earlier,’ he adds. A stickler for etiquette Hitler asks Göring whether there is anyreason why he should not be seen with Magda. ‘No,’ admits Göring, ‘but you can’tbeen too careful with a “Madame Pompadour”.’ The name means nothing to Hitler,and he does not grasp that Magda is in a relationship with his propaganda chief.76Thus the three points of an extraordinary triangle converge—Hitler, Magda, andGoebbels. Over tea Magda, not quite thirty, and the freshly bereaved Hitler, twelveyears her senior, feast their eyes on each other. To Hitler she looks uncannily likeGeli77; while Magda, imbued by this time with Nazi lore, feels she is in the presenceof a demi-god. Hours later, in his upstairs suite, Hitler remarks to his henchmen thatin Geli he believed he had found something almost Divine: ‘I thought these feelingswere dead and buried,’ he adds. ‘But today these same feelings have suddenly overwhelmedme again.’For an instant he seems to have fantasized about Magda; she told her mother thathe had made cautious and discreet advances to her.78 His reverie last however only a246 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHfew hours. After midnight he learned that Magda had casually invited Schaub, SeppDietrich, and his chauffeur back to her apartment for drinks; Dr Goebbels had thenshown up there, letting himself in with a key, and declared stiffly that he was somewhatsurprised to find them there at such a late hour. Hitler was clearly astonished tohear this from them: Goebbels, that limping little runt, had pulled this Germanicbeauty? He pulled a wry face and tried to laugh off his disappointment. ‘It was just abrief relapse,’ he confessed to an aide.79Carin Göring died early on October 17. Hitler took this fresh personal loss hardand again spoke wistfully to Otto Wagener about Magda Quandt. ‘This woman,’ hemused, ‘might yet play a role in my life… She could become a second Geli for me.It’s a pity,’ he continued, thinking out loud, ‘that she is not married.’ Wagener tookthe hint, and we have his account of what followed. That day, October 17, and thenext Hitler and Goebbels were both due to attend a rally by the S.A. at Brunswick.Wagener invited Magda to go in his large 100-horsepower Horch.80 On the driveover, Wagener stopped for a picnic and put an unusual proposition to her: Hitler, hesaid, was a rare genius who needed a woman’s gentle influence; she must be able tohelp the Führer to find himself as a human being—somebody to accompany him tothe opera, and to entertain him to tea with the finest porcelain. ‘This woman couldbe you.’‘But I would have to be married to somebody,’ she pointed out.‘Correct,’ he said, and mentioned Goebbels. Magda was hesitant. ‘But for AdolfHitler,’ she bravely announced, ‘I am willing to do anything.’ She promised to keepWagener informed.It seems to have been an unusual bargain all round. Magda later told her sister inlaw Ello Quandt that Goebbels attached one condition to their marriage, if he wasquasi to share her with Hitler, namely that he be allowed extra-marital adventures; aman of his vitality needed this emotional leeway, he argued.81 She concurred. Earlyin November she phoned Wagener to say that they would both be coming to Municha few days later: ‘I have come to keep my promise.’ Over lunch with Hitler theyannounced their engagement and he attended their little hotel celebration after-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 247wards. ‘The mood was so carefree,’ recalled Wagener, ‘that I had the feeling thatthree people had at last found happiness.’THE Reichstag was due to reconvene after its seven-month recess on October 13,1931. On the tenth President Hindenburg sent for Hitler to size him up. He was notimpressed. On the following day, in an attempt to concert their opposition, Hitlerchaired a meeting with the bourgeois opposition leaders at Bad Harzburg. The upshotwas the formation of a ‘Harzburg Front’ against Brüning.