Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death
Page 18
Goebbels took this as a wounding reference to his physical disability. The anonymous
author adduced various examples from history, like the Emperor Charlemagne
with his protruding eyes and castrato voice and the murderous Richard III who was
also ‘a dwarf who limped!’ There were references to the ‘cretinous behaviour’ and
impotence of Louis XIII, the ‘Jewish-Mediterranean stereotype’ Marat and the ‘green
vein’d’ Robespierre72 and the ‘revoltingly ugly’ Voltaire, ‘past master of spitefulness
106 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
and calumny.’ Talleyrand too, this fearless author triumphed, ‘possessed a club foot…
The word “character” could not be applied to him.’73
Goebbels complained to Hitler that same afternoon. Hitler agreed that coupled
with the Kampf Verlag’s other recent irruptions against Goebbels this article was
clearly actionable; he warned against litigating, but promised to tackle the Strassers
himself. Erich Koch wrote to Goebbels admitting (or claiming) authorship, but could
not resist rubbing salt in the wounds by stating that his article was no more than an
exposition of ‘the racial theories our Party stands for.’74
THE article brought the Goebbels-Strasser feud to boiling point. The Strassers had by
now learned that he was raising finance to launch a rival Nazi tabloid in Berlin called
Angriff, attack.75 Although the Strassers had earlier provided his gau with every facility
in their Arbeiterzeitung and the N.S. Letters of which he was still editor, Goebbels
had determined to smash their monopoly. The Arbeiterzeitung was still the official
organ of the Berlin gau and by September 1926 it was already printing a national
weekly, the Nationalsozialist, for northern Germany (which had also printed the libellous
article). Expanding in 1927, the Strassers had persuaded the tall, flabby twentysix
year old Hans Hinkel, editor of a local southern newspaper, to invest heavily in
their concern; the brothers George, Otto, and Franz Strasser still controlled fiftyone
percent. The firm was thus comparable with the Party’s Franz Eher Verlag in the
south.76 But the Strasser publications were less heathen and antisemitic than the Hitler-
Rosenberg newspapers like the Völkischer Beobachter .
Goebbels undoubtedly nursed an unhealthy complex about the wealthy Strasser
family although his diaries show that he privately respected Gregor at least more
than his later public remarks would allow. Gregor was a member of the Reichstag,
which provided him with free first-class travel and immunity from arrest. From this
lofty, wealthy, and immune position they disdained their puny, crippled rival. But
Goebbels could call upon the talents of his gifted caricaturist Hans Schweitzer
(‘Mjölnir’), and through him he spread the corrosive rumour that Otto had Jewish
blood. Gregor riposted that both he and Otto had at least served in the Great War
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 107
and in the Free Corps after that, ‘unlike Dr Goebbels or Mr Schweitzer,’ and there
the matter, for the time being, rested.
MAY 1927 brought first triumph, then disaster. On May Day Hitler himself spoke in
Berlin for the first time—before a private audience because the Prussian minister of
the interior Albert Grzesinski had banned him from speaking in public. The five
thousand listeners packing into the Clou, a well known dance hall in Mauer Strasse,
still made an impressive audience. Unaware that the police were now just waiting for
a pretext to clamp down on him, Goebbels arranged a further mass meeting at the
Veterans Building for May 4.77 Garish placards announced the theme: ‘A People in
Crisis! Who will save us? Jakob Goldschmidt?’—a reference to the alleged sell-out
of the Post Office to the multi-millionaire Dr Goldschmidt, owner of the Darmstadt
& National Bank.78 Goebbels delivered a poisonous ninety-minute tirade against the
press, furious at spiteful coverage of Hitler’s speech at the Clou.79 Singling out one
journalist, he told his two thousand listeners to note down the home address of Dr.
Otto Kriegk of the Lokal-Anzeiger (who was present)—a typically Nazi trick—and
suggested they find out where others lived and administer ‘a national socialist head
massage’ to them too.80 The olive-complexioned Goebbels had just recommended
his audience to display their ‘forceful gratitude’ to a journalist on Germania who
boasted the suspiciously Germanic name of Karl-Otto Graetz but was really, he said,
a ‘swine of a Jew’ (Judensau)81 when Fritz Stucke, an elderly but politically active
parson, called out sarcastically, ‘A fine image of Germanic youth you look!’82 ‘I take
it,’ shouted Goebbels, breaking the pained silence that followed and pointing to the
doors, ‘that you’re keen to get flung out on your ear?’83 When Stucke opened his
mouth again, taunting Goebbels: ‘You mean you?’, burly young men bundled him
downstairs, dragging him the last few yards by his feet.
This time Goebbels had gone too far. By the time his guest, leader of Sweden’s
Nazis, had also spoken hundreds of police were cordoning the building. A police
major stormed in and closed the meeting down. He ordered the audience to file out
singly and be searched for weapons. The police haul was a veritable arsenal of black-
108 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
jacks, knuckledusters, knives, and revolvers84; eighteen Nazis were arrested for resisting.
The press smelt blood and tasted revenge. Their lurid reports had S.A. thugs
battering the parson with beermugs and kicking him; doctors, they said, marvelled
that his skull was not fractured.85
Twenty four hours later the police served a restraining order on Dr Goebbels,
banning him from speaking in Berlin, and dissolving his gau.86 They also charged him
with incitement to violence.87 After just six months in Berlin the unstoppable gauleiter
seemed to have run into an immovable object: the police president of Berlin.
1 Julek Karl von Engelbrechten, Eine braune Armee entsteht. Die Geschichte der Berlin-
Brandenburger SA (Munich, 1937); Martin Broszat, ‘Die Anfänge der Berliner NSDAP 1926/
27,’ in VfZ, 1960, 85ff; for JG’s battle with the Strassers and Kampf Verlag see IfZ file Fa.114.
2 Albert Grzesinski, Berlin’s police chief (May 16, 1925–Oct 6, 1926) boasted in his unpublished
memoirs, Im Kampf um die deutsche Republik. Lebensweg eines heute Statenlosen (Paris,
1933; BA: Kl.Erw.144) that he had installed informers in both the KPD and NSDAP HQs in
Berlin, sometimes ‘big shots’ (Prominente): ‘Often only a few hours after decisions were taken
in secret conferences, a written report on them lay on my desk.’ JG was later warned of this
(diary May 16, 1928).
3 Diary, Aug 21, 26.
4 Ibid., Sep 3, 10, 1926.
5 Ibid., Oct 20, 1926; VB, Oct 26, 1926.
6 Muchow report No.3, Aug; (see note 14 below); in introducing these reports Martin
Broszat (Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 1960, 85ff,) was wrong in stating they ‘are only
recently available for research’—they were available in the Hoover Institution’s Guide to the
NSDAP Hauptarchiv as early as 1964. See too police file, Aug 26, 1926; and Engelbrechten,
45f
.
7 Diary, Aug 28, 1926; JG confirmed in his later notes on diary 1925/26: ‘Aug 28: refusal
to Hitler re Berlin’ (BA file NL.118/108)
8 Diary, Sep 8, 1926.
9 Ibid., Sep 11; and see warm his references to her on Oct 17, 1926.
10 Ibid., Sep 17, 1926.
11 JG, Kampf um Berlin (Munich, 1932), 24; and see the 2pp. history of Berlin gau, Jan 27,
1937 in NSDAP Hauptarchiv (NA film T581, roll 1, BA file NS.26/133; and T581, roll 5,
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 109
BA file NS.26/5), and Angriff’s tenth gau anniversary edition Oct 30, 1936 (BA file NS.26/
968; ZStA, Rep.50.01, vol.1189).
12 Diary, Sep 17, 1926.
13 Ibid., Sep 23, 25, 28, 1928.
14 Reinhold Muchow, Propagandazelle NSDAP, Ortsgruppe Neukölln: situation report
No.1, Jun 1926 (NSDAP Hauptarchiv. NA film T581, ROLL 5, BA: NS.26/133. Cit. hereafter
as Muchow report.). Muchow would die in a foolish shooting accident in 1933.
15 Dokumente der Zeitgeschichte. Dokumente der Sammlung Rehse (Munich, 1938); cit. hereafter
as Dokumente.
16 Diary, Oct 16; Muchow report No.5, Oct 1926.
17 Schmiedicke to JG, Oct 16, 1926 (BA: Schumacher collection, 199a); see Heiber, Das
Tagebuch von Joseph Goebbels 1925/26 , 112f..
18 In his notes 1927/28 he summarised: ‘Oct, Potsdam. Mark [Brandenburg] rally. ... Pigsty
Berlin. ... Decision: I’ll come.’ (BA file NL.118/108).
19 Schmiedicke to JG, Oct 28 (BA: Schumacher collection, 199a.)
20 Diary, Oct 18, 1926.
21 Notes on diary (BA file NL.118/108). The hitherto largely missing diary for Nov 8,
1926—Jul 21, 1928 is on microfiches in the Moscow archives, Goebbels papers, Fond 1477,
box 2.
22 Muchow report No.1, Jun 1926.
23 Data supplied to the author by the German Federal Office of Statistics.
24 Brüning MS (Syracuse Univ. Libr.)— A typical government loan was one raised by the
merchant banks Lazard Speyer-Ellissen; E Heimann; Lincoln, Menny, Oppenheimer; L
Behrens & Sons; M M Warburg & Co; Veit L Homburger; Salomon Oppenheimer Jr & Co; J
Dreyfus & Co; Mendelssohn & Co; Simon Hirschland; Jacob S H Stern, and A Levy (Hoover
Institution files).
25 Files on the Kutisker’s fraud on the Prussian state bank: records of Generalstaatsanwalt
bei dem Landgericht Berlin, now in the Landesarchiv Berlin, Rep.58, item 62; Sklarek’s
fraud on the Berlin state bank, item 61. I am indebted to Dr R G Reuth for drawing my
attention to this source on historic court cases; according to Bering, 283, a Nazi state prosecutor
in 1933 decided that these case files, some three thousand of them which would
normally have been shredded, should be preserved.
26 Dr Bernhard Weiss, born Berlin Jul 30, 1880, died London Jul 29, 1951; member of the
Berlin political police since May 1918; their chief from1920 to 1924, when he was suspended
for raiding the Soviet trade mission; Social Democrat. Subsequently chief of criminal
police, then vice police chief after 1927. See his own 160pp book, Polizei und Politik
(Berlin, 1928; a copy is in the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Bonn).—This prominent and badly
wronged citizen of Berlin emigrated in 1933 via Czechoslovakia to London where his daughter
Hilde Baban still lives; stripped of German citizenship in 1937 for having allegedly promoted
the immigration of eastern Jews into Germany.—On this important figure see Berlin
in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Jahrbuch des Landesarchives Berlin 1983 (Berlin, 1983); Hsi-Huey
Liang, Die Berliner Polizei in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, New York, 1977), 61, 75, 177; and
Bernhard J. Weiss, American Education and the European Immigrant 1840–1940 (London/Univ.
of Illinois, 1982), and now the scholarly study by Dietz Bering, Kampf um Namen. Bernhard
110 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Weiss gegen Joseph Goebbels (Stuttgart, 1992), drawing on Weiss’ family and official papers.
Weiss’ own CV is in his files in the Zentrales Staatsarchiv (ZStA) Potsdam, file 21,344; see
too the article, ‘He Rules Berlin’s Finest,’ in The American Hebrew, Jul 17, 1931, and obituaries
in e.g., Tagesspiegel, Jul 31, 1951; Cronica Israelitica Aug 1951.
27 Qualification report 1912 in personnel file on Hptm. Weiss (Bayerisches
Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich, OP 51Ê 391; cit. Bering, 41f.)
28 See the remarks of his predecessor Ferdinand Friedensburg, Lebenserinnerungen (Frankfurt,
1969) 175 (his papers are in BA: NL.114); Bering, 84f.
29 ‘Der mächtigste Mann in Gross-Berlin /Das ist der Isidor Weiss. /Doch Joseph Goebbels,
der “Oberbandit”, /der macht ihm die Hölle schon heiss,’ etc. Bering, 20; Bering shows that
the Berlin communist Otto Steinicke (later a Nazi and editor on Goebbels’ Angriff) had first
dubbed Weiss ‘Isidor’ in Rote Fahne No.152, as early as Jul 5, 1923; and see May 16, 1924.
30 Interpol figures, in Deutsche Nachrichten-Büro (DNB), Jul 20, 1935; and see K Daluege,
‘Judenfrage als Grundsatz,’ in Angriff, Aug 3, 1935 (Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei files, BA:
R.19/406); on the criminal demimonde of 1920s Berlin see Paul Weiglin, Unverwüstliches
Berlin. Bilderbuch der Reichshauptstadt sekt 1919 (Zürich, 1955) and Walther Kiaulehn, Berlin:
Schicksal einer Weltstadt (Munich, 1958).
31 Muchow report, No.1.
32 Case against the vendor Zawitalsky, Landesarchiv Berlin, Rep.58, item 367.
33 Zöhrgiebel to Landgericht Munich I, Jun 1, 1927 (ibid.) The editor was acquitted by the
Munich courts.
34 Item 24, vol.v, 4; similarly in vol.i, 21, and vol.i, 44.
35 Angriff, No.18, Oct 28, 1927.
36 Ibid., No.15, Oct 10, 1927; Landesarchiv Berlin, rep.58, item 24.
37 His de-registration (Abmeldung) with police in Elberfeld was dated Nov 22, 1926: Angriff,
Oct 30, 1936.
38 Police file.
39 Daluege was born Sep 15, 1897, and hanged by the Czechs in 1945. See his handwritten
memoirs on NA film M.1270, roll 3.
40 Gau circular No.1, Berlin, Nov 9, 1926 (NA film T581, roll 5; BA file NS.26/133, and
Schumacher collection, 199a).
41 Spandauer Volkszeitung, Nov 15, 1926; cit. Reuth, 113.
42 Police file, Dec 26, 1926; Muchow report, Dec 1926; and see JG’s references to the
League in NS Briefe No.31, and Diary, Nov 21, 1928.
43 Horst Wessel (Oct 9, 1907–Feb 23, 1930), manuscript MS, 1929, originally in
Staatsbibliothek Berlin, now in Uniwersitet Jagiellonska archives, Kraków, Ms.Germ.
Oct.761, microfilm No. 5668, 1988. Son of a priest. See NSDAP Hauptarchiv file on him,
BA: NS.26/1370a, and Thomas Oertel, Horst Wessel. Untersuchung einer Legende (Cologne,
1988).—Wessel’s mother had handed the MS to JG (diary, Mar 24, 1930) and it was evidently
published as his bequest (diary, Apr 26, 1930).
44 Muchow report.
45 Police report, Feb 12, 1927 (NA film T581, roll 52, BA file NS.26/1224).
46 Wessel MS, 1929.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 111
47 Muchow report No.8, Jan 1927; and an anonymous history of the gau by an S.A. man
born 1906 (NA film T581, roll 5; BA file NS.26/133), cit. hereafter as Gau history.