Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

3. As he arrived in Hagen on the twelfth the272 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHcommunists ambushed his car. Clutching a pistol, he signalled his chauffeur to puthis foot down and plough through the mob. After that the left signalled his car’snumber ahead to every town. In Mönchengladbach the communists passed out leafletsstating that he was not to escape alive; no idle threat, because the tide of violence wasin full flood.22 Only a few days earlier he had buried S.A. Scharführer Helmut Kösterof No.24 Sturm; ten thousand people had packed the graveyard. In Wedding thecommunists gunned down S.A. man Hans Steinberg. In the fifty days up to July 20Prussia saw 461 political clashes, resulting in eighty-two deaths on all sides; in thelast two weeks of the campaign alone, thirty-two Nazis were killed. On July 17communist gunmen opened fire on a marching S.A. column in Altona, near Hamburg,leaving nineteen dead and sixty injured.23SUDDENLY everything tilted in the Nazis’ favour. General von Schleicher agreed toback a putsch against Prussia. Meeting with Göring, Röhm, and Goebbels in Cottbustwo days after the Altona bloodbath Hitler announced to them that they were goingto appoint a ‘Commissar for the Interior’ in Prussia; Carl Severing, the incumbentminister of the interior, huffed that he would yield only to force majeure. ‘A touchon the wrist sufficed,’ mocked Goebbels in ‘Kaiserhof’.24 Severing’s humiliation wasfollowing by President Hindenburg signing a decree appointing Papen himself asReich Commissar in Prussia, displacing the leftist prime minister Otto Braun. WhenBraun squealed Hindenburg—on Schleicher’s advice—called in the army. At 11:20A.M. on July 20 General Gerd von Rundstedt, the garrison commander, phoned policechief Grzesinski with word that he was imposing a state of emergency: his orderswere to replace Grzesinski with the police chief of Essen. Dr Bernhard Weiss was tobe summarily dismissed as well. The army sent in its officers at five-thirty P.M. toarrest Grzesinski and Weiss.25 As they were driven away from their police HQ atAlexander Platz in an army Mercedes, Weiss had no time even to gather up his bowlerhat and pince-nez eye-glasses.26The sheer suddenness of it all took Goebbels’ breath away. It was the end of an era.The Nazis had Papen eating out of their hand. He appointed ‘reliable’ police chiefsGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 273and civil governors (Regierungspräsidenten) throughout Prussia. He banned the newspapersthat had been the bane of Goebbels’ life such as the Acht-Uhr Abendblatt.All the fetters thus came off in the last eleven days of Nazi campaigning. In thecity’s Grunewald stadium Karl Hanke organised the biggest open-air rally yet forHitler a week later. It was a boiling hot day until evening when the heavens openedand the rains drenched the 120,000 people gathered to hear him. But nobody left—‘A sign,’ in Kampmann’s view, ‘of how the once Red Berlin had come around, thanksto Dr Goebbels’ propaganda.’ A mighty cheer went up as Goebbels remarked thateven these rains had deterred nobody.27He was in Munich when the election results were announced. The Nazis had attractednearly fourteen million votes, entitled them to 230 seats in the Reichstag.They were now far the largest single party, but once again the Centre party, withseventy-six seats, held the balance. Again Goebbels advised Hitler to hold out forabsolute power, and shun any compromise. ‘Tolerance will be the death of us,’ heargued. Vacationing briefly with him at Tegernsee, Hitler agonized over his next step—‘balking,’ jotted Goebbels in his diary, ‘at the really big decisions.’ In ‘Kaiserhof’ hesoftened this criticism by applying it to the party as a whole, rather than its Führer.Leaving Goebbels in Bavaria, Hitler set off for Berlin on August 4, 1932 to state hisdemands to Hindenburg: he wanted to be chancellor, with Frick as minister of theinterior, Strasser as minister of labour, Goebbels as minister of ‘Public Education’(meaning propaganda). and Göring as aviation minister.28 He returned south on thesixth. Up at his Obersalzberg mountain home he predicted to Goebbels that theywould be taking over office in a week’s time, with Hitler as both chancellor andprime minister of Prussia, Strasser as minister of the interior, and Goebbels acting asminister of culture in Prussia and minister of education in the Reich. ‘A Cabinet ofreal men,’ approved Goebbels. ‘We shall never give up power. They’ll have to carryus out feet first. This is going to be a Total Solution.’He stayed for the next five days at Hitler’s side, nervous in case somebody talkedHitler into making other dispositions. In Berlin the S.A. under their bullying commanderHelldorff had already begun jostling for power. While Göring conducted the274 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHpolitical negotiations, Ernst Röhm drew his S.A. army up around the capital to exerta visible and unsubtle pressure on the chancellor von Papen. Goebbels was bullishabout the outcome of the talks, and stayed up until four A.M. one night discussingwith Hitler the structure of his new ministry. Hitler promised him he would berunning education, films, radio, theatre and propaganda; as if these were not portfoliosenough, Goebbels decided to retain his position as the party’s gauleiter of Berlinand as Reichsleiter in charge of its national propaganda. (They remained pipedreams,and nothing about them appeared in ‘Kaiserhof’.)29 Daimler-Benz’s general manager30came to talk automobiles, and for a day visions of newer and even bigger carsdanced in the Nazi leaders’ heads. But then Schleicher’s man Alvensleben phonedwith news that the regime was still holding out for a horse-trade. Hitler told himthat he was not interested in compromises—‘A total solution,’ as Goebbels put it,‘or no dice.’31 Not all the Nazis agreed with Hitler’s tough stand. The regime spreadrumours that a split was beginning to show in their ranks, and even that Goebbelsand Strasser were in favour of half-measures. Hitler published a communiqué denyingit.32 He left for Berlin with Goebbels. In the capital unsatisfactory news waitedfor them: Papen was still flatly against Hitler becoming chancellor; Röhm andSchleicher were trying to talk him round, without much success. Pacing the verandahof the Goebbels’ summer house at Caputh, Hitler discussed this turn of events.They agreed that if Hitler accepted the vice-chancellorship that was on offer, thiswould saddle the Nazi party