Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

Republic lands you in jail, but slandering and belittlingthe entire German people is rewarded by the highest distinctions!’ He cried, ‘That iswhy in the three weeks now beginning, one battle-cry will sound throughout Germany:Time’s up, Away with the System … the system that Brüning and his Cabinetrepresent!’ As screams of abuse erupted from the left, Goebbels taunted them: ‘Wellmay you laugh and scoff. Events will prove us right. We shall meet again, on Marchthe Thirteenth, at Philippi.’43260 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHGoebbels opened the presidential election campaign with a Hitler meeting at theSport Palace on February 27. Not unimpressed, an opposition newspaper reportedthat he ‘turned on the entire thundering apparatus of refined mass persuasion’—thedrum-beating Brownshirt S.A., the marching men, the entry of the banners: ‘FirstGoebbels entered, to pave the way for the Führer’s appearance … then a commandto the S.A.: Attention! In the sudden silence that descends on the huge hall a crescendoof Heils is heard from outside, and carving a path through the people comesthe Führer.’44 Waging an election campaign of dubious probity Brüning’s officialsconfiscated the Völkischer Beobachter and banned Angriff yet again, for inciting contemptof the Republic. But the Nazis had poster power. Kampmann, now Goebbels’gau propaganda chief, plastered the circular Litfass pillars on street corners withhuge text placards: S.A. men stood guard on each site, and Nazi speakers haranguedthe crowds that gathered around them.45 Outsized pictorial posters like Schweitzer’s‘A Man Breaks his Chains’ adorned the facades of prominent buildings like the CafeJosty on Potsdamer Platz. Goebbels recorded a short speech, cleverly structured sothat its real propaganda message was not at first evident, and manufactured fiftythousand cardboard copies of this little recording costing only three pfennigs eachfor Nazis to mail to their marxist opponents.46 In 1930 he had seen an inspiring filmof Mussolini speaking; the Herold film company now produced a ten minute film ofGoebbels speaking, to be shown each night in town squares throughout Germany.47Somebody—in the Reichstag the taunt was always ‘Thyssen!’—must have toppedup Goebbels’ funds because he would spend two hundred thousand marks on propagandafor this presidential campaign.48With Angriff already banned, the government now banned the rest of his postersand leaflets.49 Goebbels’ demands that Hitler be allowed broadcasting time likeHindenburg were refused.50 On March 9, with four days to go, he addressed eightythousand people in Berlin’s Lustgarten park. The press published doctored photographsto suggest only a sparse attendance.51 Two days later Grzesinski sent police toraid his HQ again. The next day Goebbels addressed an election eve rally at the SportPalace.52 After that he gathered his officials at his apartment to await the first results.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 261By ten P.M. it was clear that while eleven million votes had been cast for Hitler,Hindenburg was far ahead—indeed, only one hundred thousand votes short of anabsolute majority.53 Goebbels, overcoming his dejection, issued these guidelines toall gauleiters that same Sunday: ‘The N.S.D.A.P. has won an unparalleled victory inthe first election round. In one and a half years the Party has succeeded in almostdoubling its vote.’Their task now would be to win 2·5 million more voters for the run off. Goebbelsordered the Nazi gauleiters to concentrate their scarce resources on the most promisingsections of those who had not voted for them. Thus they must tell the bourgeoisvoters what to expect if Hindenburg was re-elected: the stopping of pensions, hugetax burdens, and renewed inflation, as well as further territorial encroachments byPoland and Lithuania, and civil war with the communists.54Refusing even to look at the gloating headlines of the ‘Judenpresse’ that Mondaymorning, he flew down to Munich with Kampmann for a campaign conference withHitler. The second round would be held on April 10. Tossing more dirty-trick spannersinto the Nazi works, Brüning ordered virtually simultaneous provincial electionsfor Prussia, Anhalt, Württemberg, and Bavaria. He also ordered an electioneeringmoratorium until after Easter. ‘We’re fighting a war,’ snarled Goebbels, ‘butthere’s to be no shooting for three weeks!’ Carl Severing joined in the spanner tossing,arresting scores of Goebbels’ Berlin officials on mostly trumped up charges,while Grzesinski and Weiss had their police search for evidence that justify an outrightban on the S.A.55Goebbels responded with innovative electioneering techniques as soon as the briefbut unequal battle was rejoined. He had originally planned to issue four pictorial andsixteen text posters to be released day by day from March 22 onwards.56 The moratoriumknocked that plan on the head. Hitler again appealed to the radio stations toallow him air time; but again Brüning permitted only Hindenburg to get near themicrophone.57 The campaign got dirty on both sides. Hitler’s opponents distributedleaflets in old people’s homes warning that he would take away their pensions andinsist on compulsory euthanasia at sixty; other election ‘lies’ against which Goebbels262 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHwarned the other gauleiters in a circular were that the Nazis would bring war, inflation,expropriation, destruction of the unions, dissolution of the civil service,disemancipation of women, forced labour, civil war, and the renunciation of all claimsto the South Tyrol, East Prussia, and Alsace-Lorraine.58 (With the passage of time,about three quarters of these ‘lies’ would come true.)In the same circular Goebbels suggested that Hindenburg was benefitting from theemotional female vote (‘fear of war’) and from civil servants’ anxieties about theirfuture. The gauleiters had to concentrate on this ‘Hindenburg front’—they must askthe butchers, bakers, and innkeepers why they had voted for the field marshal, andthen tailor their own propaganda accordingly. (This field operational analysis wouldbecome a hallmark of Goebbels’ propaganda strategy.) He suggested they send groupsof girl members into the old folks’ homes to read to them, and the bands of the S.A.and S.S. to serenade them. He hatched a secret plan to triple the print of all Nazinewspapers for election week, the additional copies being sent free to all Hindenburgvoters. The Völkischer Beobachter alone should send out 800,000 free copies each day.As for Hitler, Goebbels brought in air power: flying from city to city in his ownplane D-1720 Hitler would address three or four huge meetings a day in twenty-onecities beginning on April 3, tackling a new enemy ‘lie’ each day. Goebbels