Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

strongly. Reporting to Munich, Leopold Gutterer of the Hanovergau suggested that the recent membership drives had resulted in poorer calibreofficials; when Goebbels asked him why the communist vote had suffered less thanthe bouregois parties, Gutterer hypothesized that with their marxist ideology theywere made of sterner stuff. 46 In Berlin, the Nazi vote slumped from 757,000 (or28·6 percent) in July to 720,000 (or twenty-six percent) now. The bourgeois pressgloated at this setback. At his Voss Strasse headquarters the next day he found hisparty and S.A. officers in ugly mood—‘all ready to strike out again,’ he wrote, aclear indication that a coup was still on their mind.47 Hitler however ordained, ‘Therewill be no negotiating until this regime and the parties backing it have been totallydefeated.’48In Munich on the eighth Goebbels found him raring for a final showdown withPapen.‘A fabulous man,’ he assessed privately after listening to Hitler in his Munich apartment.‘I would allow myself to be drawn and quartered for him.’278 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHAlthough the German electorate had confirmed the Nazis as the largest single party,their opponents still clung on to the chancellorship. Count von Alvensleben reportedthat Papen hoped Hitler would come to terms; Gregor Strasser, it seemed, suddenlyagreed and for the first time on November 9 Goebbels recorded real venom abouthim. ‘Let’s hope that Fatso Gregor doesn’t put his foot in it. He’s so disloyal… I warn[Hitler] against Strasser.’49 Hitler wrote to Papen however refusing to do a deal.50Papen resigned on the sixteenth.51Now Hindenburg again summoned Hitler to Berlin. Parting the cheering crowdsoutside the Kaiserhof, Hitler drove over to the presidential palace in a limousine onthe nineteenth. After a ninety-minute talk, in which he explained his party’s programmeonce more to Hindenburg, Hitler assured his henchmen that he still wouldnot accept any compromise. Hindenburg however wanted to revert to parliamentaryrule. Hitler wrote him on the twenty-first, then took Goebbels to the opera—Wagner’s ‘Meistersinger’ for the nth time.52 When Hindenburg’s reply came, it statedconditions that Hitler would not accept.53 The press, no longer privy to thesemanœuverings, printed fevered descriptions of fistfights between the Nazi factionsin the Kaiserhof. On November 25 the party newspaper issued a statement signed byFrick, Goebbels, Göring, Röhm and—allegedly—Strasser, odd bedfellows indeed,denying all these rumours and stating once and for all time that ‘united in unshakeablefealty to the Führer’ they considered it beneath their dignity to respond to suchlies.54Hindenburg turned Hitler’s proposals down. Some of Goebbels’ faction urged thatthe time had come to seize power, at least in Prussia. For a few days Hitler remainedat the Kaiserhof while Papen and Schleicher vied with each other for the covetedchancellorship prize. In Weimar on November 30 for the Thuringian election campaign,Goebbels heard from Hitler that Schleicher had made fresh overtures to him.Goebbels attended a three hour council of war with Hitler, Frick, Göring and Strasser.Again Strasser was the only one in favour of a compromise—joining a Cabinet underSchleicher, failing which the party seemed to be doomed to the political wildernessGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 279in perpetuity.55 Adamantly seconded by Goebbels, Hitler again refused to consideraccepting the vice-chancellorship.56That night in Weimar, socialising with the Goebbels’, Hitler also spoke with distasteabout Strasser according to the diary (which may well mean, when the diary isproperly interpreted, that Goebbels expressed the distaste and Hitler nodded.)General von Schleicher sent a new intermediary, Lieutenant-Colonel Eugen Ott.The press ached and heaved with curiosity. Hitler stood firm. ‘Follow that man!’marvelled Goebbels. ‘Then we shall triumph.’ Unable to sway Hitler, on December2 Hindenburg appointed Schleicher as chancellor.57 Needing to neutralize the Nazithreat, Schleicher began to cultivate Gregor Strasser instead of Hitler. Goebbelslearned that they had met on Sunday the fourth, and that Schleicher had offered toStrasser the vice-chancellorship which Hitler had spurned, and had hinted at ministerialpositions for any other renegade Nazis as well.The new Reichstag would shortly meet. As Hitler warned the Nazi bloc in harshterms about any tendency toward compromise, Goebbels saw Strasser’s featuresharden. Two days later, hearing more specific rumours about Strasser’s treachery,Hitler took him to task. Strasser took his hat and left: left the room, left politics, andultimately (nineteen months later) his life. Streicher called out, ‘Exit the traitor!’Goebbels limped from group to group of the Nazi deputies, dispensing further detailsof Strasser’s treachery.At midday on the eighth Hitler received at the Kaiserhof a letter from Strasserresigning all his high party offices on account of the refusal to cut a deal with the newchancellor.58 Simultaneously Strasser invited all the senior gauleiters—whom Hitlerhad just appointed as Landesinspekteuren—to meet him (except Goebbels). Since August,he told them, Hitler had displayed no clear line except for his monotonousdemand to be chancellor. ‘He has got to realize that in the long run he has no prospectof attaining this target.’ He refused to see the party ruined. Nor would he putup any longer with the intriguing by Hitler’s entourage. ‘I have no desire to fall inbehind Göring, Goebbels, Röhm, and the rest.’ (According to Hans Frank he describedGöring as a brutal egoist who cared nothing for Germany, Goebbels as ‘a280 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHhobbling devil,’ and Röhm as a ‘swine.’59) One gauleiter later described: ‘After theindividual participants had overcome their dismay, they went off bewildered—likechildren who have lost their father.’ Gauleiter Rust took word of Strasser’s mutinousremarks to Hitler at the Kaiserhof.60At two A.M. Goebbels found Hitler there studying the first edition of the TäglicherRundschau. It headlined Strasser’s bid for power. ‘If the party falls apart now,’ he toldGoebbels, ‘I’ll finish myself off in three minutes!’61The morning’s ‘Judenpresse’ fawned on Strasser, which probably sobered downsome of his supporters.62 Only Gottfried Feder had foolishly echoed his complaints.63After that day’s Reichstag session—it adjourned until mid-January 1933—Hitlerspoke to all the gauleiters in his suite at the Kaiserhof. His speech was a masterpieceof tragic oratory, and probably saved the party from oblivion.64 If they deserted himnow, said Hitler, his life’s work no longer had any purpose. ‘Apart from this movementand my appointed mission,’ he appealed, glancing at the portable bust of Gelion the mantlepiece, ‘I have nothing now that could detain me