after Gauleiter Helmuth Brückner, founder of the Nazi party in Silesia, was arrested for
homosexual offences (unpubl. diary, Dec 6, 10, 11, 1934).
48 Diary, Mar 1, 31, 1934.
49 Text of JG’s speech in SA Standarte No.8’s files, NSDAP archives (BA file NS.26/322).
50 Unpubl. diary, Mar 17, 1934.
51 Ibid., Apr 20, 22, 1934.
52 Ibid., May 7, 9, 1934.
53 Ibid., May 17, 1934. For an article on JG’s interest in American films, see NYT, Sep 30,
1945.
54 Ibid., May 28. Karl von Eberstein, in charge of Hitler’s security, reported: ‘During the
supper Hitler treated the baroness with great distinction, and talked to her almost exclusively.’
USFET OI SR/36, May 12, 1947: ‘Adolf Hitler. A Composite Picture.’ (NA file RG.407,
entry 427, box 1954f).
55 Unpubl. diary, Apr 13, 1934.
56 Ibid., Apr 18 and 20, 1934: ‘Midday at Führer’s re Harald, with Röhm and Göring.
Both back me to the hilt. Göring very decent. Talk with Dr Quandt. I stand firm in face of his
sentimentalism. He yields. Magda gets her Harald back. She is delighted.’.
57 NYT, Apr 27; unpubl. diary, Apr 26, 1934.
58 Ibid., Apr 28, 1934.
59 Ibid., Apr 30, 1934.
60 Ibid., May 5, 1934.
61 Ibid., May 23, 1934.
62 Ibid., May 9, 1934.
63 Diary, May 28, 30, 1934.
64 Unpubl. diary, Jun 3, 1934.
65 Fischer (Potsdam) to Hitler, Nov 1, 1932 (BDC file, Helldorff).
66 Darré diary, Oct 15, Dec 18, 1933, Jan 17, 27, 1934.
67 Rosenberg to Hess, Mar 15 (BA file NS8/171 and Rosenberg papers, NA film T454,
roll 63, pp.0584ff); JG publ. and unpubl. diaries, Apr 14, 18, 24, 26, Jul 22 (‘I can’t put up
[with Rosenberg] much longer’), Jul 28, Aug 24, 26, 29, 31, Dec 13, 15,1934.
68 Diary, Jan 2–3 (‘feelings running hard against Göring’ in the Brown House); VB, Jan 2,
1934. In his unpubl. diary of Mar 29, JG noted: ‘With the Führer. Things just as they were.
He’s so nice to me… Long time with Führer in the evening. He sets out his foreign policy
plans. Great stuff. Our Hitler!’
69 Unpubl. diary, May 26, 1934.
70 Ibid., Apr 11; and see May 7 and 17 (‘I’m on good terms with Göring now’) 1934.
71 DNB release, May 3, 1934.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 341
72 DNB night release, Jun 6–7; JG unpubl. diary, Jun 7, puts the audience at 80,000.—
The NYT reported on May 19, 1934 that SA men had invaded Berlin cafes and restaurants
and delivered scorching speeches while comrades prevented customers from leaving.
73 NYT, May 13, 1934.
74 Ernst ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengel, report on JG for FDR, Jul 16, 1943 (FDR Libr. PSF box
126)
75 NA negatives 242-HLM 1013; unpubl. diary, Jun 5, 1934.
76 Fromm diary, Jun 21; and ibid., Jun 22: ‘The Schleichers came to dinner with me, and
[Major-General Ferdinand von] Bredow [all were victims of the purge eight days later]. …
Of course Papen’s Marburg speech was the main topic. We were glad he’d taken a swipe at
Goebbels and his endeavours to muzzle public opinion.’ (Boston Univ. Libr., Fromm papers,
box 2).
77 Orme Sargent to F.O., Jun 27 (i.e., written before the purge), quoting Glass of the
Austrian News Agency (PRO file FO.371/17707); it is worth commenting that, speaking to
Gestapo officials on Oct 11 about these events, Himmler referred to rumours in the foreign
emigré press, prior to Jun 30, 1934, ‘that I was hoping to overthrow Minister Goebbels …
and that Goebbels no longer had the Führer’s confidence.’ (NA film T175. roll 89, pp.1536ff).
78 Unpubl. diary, Jun 7, 1934.
79 Czas (Warsaw), Jun 11, 1934, emphasized this point. Speaking to Polish journalists on
May 8 (diary, May 9, and DNB release), JG had talked about the desire for peaceful rapprochement;
Pilsudski, the Polish president, and Hitler, he said, both knew what war meant;
National Socialism was ‘not for export.’
80 Diary, May 11, 13 (‘Midday with the Führer. He’s weighed down with worries. And
nobody helps share the load’) and 17; Jun 7, 1934.
81 JG, Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland als Faktor des europäischen Friedens. Rede vor der
Intellektuellen-Union in Warschau, 13. Juni 1934 (Berlin, 1934); DNB special release, Jun 12,
1934; Westdeutscher Beobachter (‘Our hand is extended’) and Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Jun
14, 1934.—And Sir W Erskine, Warsaw, to Simon, FO, Jun 19, 1934 (PRO file FO.371/
17745).
82 Unpubl. diary, Jun 11, 16, 1934.
83 Ibid., Jun 18; according to newspaper reports JG attacked Papen indirectly, referring
to Centre politicians who made much of their personal friendship with God; but it was the
Nazis, he said, who were meanwhile restoring full employment. See e.g. Gladbach-Rheydter
Tageblatt, Jun 18, 1934.
84 Unpubl. diary, Jun 18; and cf. Jun 20, 1934.
85 Papen, Der Wahrheit einer Gasse (Munich, 1952), 349; Borresholm, 125ff.
86 Phipps to Simon, Jun 22, explaining JG’s attack on Papen in his speech that night (PRO
file FO.371/17707); Lochner to Betty, Jul 27, 1934 (Lochner papers, loc. cit.)—JG’s diary
does not mention the painful episode.
87 Der Tag, and DNB night release Jun 22, 1934.
88 Papen, memoirs, 310ff; information from the Forschungsstelle für die Geschichte des
Nationalsozialismus in Hamburg, May 1991.
89 Unpubl. diary, Jun 25, 1934.
90 Ibid.
342 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
91 The Hallischer Nachrichten put the figure at 225,000; and see 12 Uhr Blatt, Jun 23, 1934.
92 12 Uhr Blatt, Jun 25 (‘Outright fight against the Reaktion. Dr Goebbels against the
hidden enemies of state’); National Zeitung, Jun 25 (PRO file FO.371/17707). JG wrote
(unpubl. diary, Jun 25, 1934) with satisfaction that everybody took his words as directed
against Papen.
93 DNB press release, e.g. in Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Jul 8, 1934.
94 ‘Diary of Viktor Lutze beginning with the ill-starred Jun 30, 1934,’ handwritten volume
in Friedrich Ebert Foundation archives, partially transcribed by Dr Ulrich Cartarius.—
Publ. in part by Frankfurter Rundschau, May 14–16, 1957, and Hannoversche Presse, May 17,
1957. It was probably retrospectively written up from early 1936. Cited hereafter as Lutze
diary.
95 His London press attaché Fitz Randolph reported to JG (unpubl. diary, Jun 27) on the
damage Papen’s speech had done there. ‘The Herren-clique cynically make use of foreigners,
and hate me most of all.’
96 Unpubl. diary, Jun 27, 1934.
97 Ibid.
98 Diary, Jun 29, 1934.
99 Flensburger Nachrichten, Jun 28; Hamburger Nachrichten, Jun 28, 1934 (‘Dr Goebbels
settles accounts with the critics and grousers.’)
100 On Jun 25. See the 1966 Heidelberg dissertation by Karl Martin Grass, Edgar Jung.
Papenkreis und Röhmkrise 1933/4, p.242; cited by Heinz Höhne, Mordsache Röhm (Hamburg,
1984), 247. Jung’s arrest was reported in Basler Nachrichten, Jun 30, 1934. See too Sefton
Delmer’s well-informed account of JG’s clash with Papen and Jung in Daily Express, Jun 29,
1934.
101 Diary, Jun 29, 1934.
102 Ibid.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND
OF THE THIRD REICH 343
23: Inkpot Hero
TO consolidate his absolute authority, Hitler was about to become a murderer,
and Goebbels would finally cast his lot in with him. They suddenly needed
each other urgently: Hitler feared that Goebbels might yet rally the S.A. against
him—for they were indeed plotting an uprising, though not yet; Goebbels for his
part had so many enemies that he felt safe only at his Führer’s side.1
In Essen strange things were happening that Thursday June 28, 1934. Lutze saw
Hitler called away from the wedding feast to the telephone. A clammy atmosphere,
an atmosphere of mistrust, descended on the festivities. Lutze felt that people were
setting Hitler up.2 More phone calls came, from Himmler, from the Gestapo, and
from Paul Körner in Berlin (Körner presided over Göring’s nationwide telephone
tapping monopoly.)3 Hours later, dapper and businesslike, Körner arrived in person,
bringing more reports. These indicated that Röhm and the S.A. were planning to
putsch at fourÊ P.M. on Saturday.4 Hitler snapped: ‘I’m going to make an example of
them!5 He phoned Röhm’s adjutant at Bad Wiessee, and ordered a meeting there at
eleven A.M.
With Hitler in the Ruhr, Dr Goebbels felt very vulnerable, but Hitler had not
forgotten him. On Friday morning June 29, 1934 he phoned Dr Goebbels from
Essen and summoned him to the Hotel Dreesen at Bad Godesberg that evening.
(‘Thus,’ sneered Alfred Rosenberg a few days later, ‘he was allowed to join the big
boys.’)6
344 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
‘So—it’s on,’ Goebbels wrote, probably quoting Hitler’s words, though still in the
dark about precisely what it was.7 ‘In God’s name!’ he added. ‘But anything is better
than this awful waiting.’8 Hitler also ordered his new private secretary, Christa
Schroeder, twenty-five, to fly west to Godesberg in Goebbels’ plane.
Goebbels, wearing a lightweight white summer coat, was met by the local Nazi
gauleiter Grohé at the airfield. ‘We’ve got to act,’ agreed Goebbels—whose unpublished
diary of these days’ grim events has now been obtained by this author from the
secret Moscow archives: it shows him taking a detached interest in the massacre,
thrilled to be so close to the killing though relieved not to have wielded the murder
instruments himself. Goebbels drove to the Hotel Dreesen, followed by Hitler (‘he
is very grim’) at four P.M. Shortly, Viktor Lutze also arrived. Lutze and Goebbels had
been friends since the early days in the Ruhr. Other veteran Nazis gradually crowded
onto the hotel terraces. Hitler, noted Goebbels, told him in detail what was going
on. To his astonishment he learned that Hitler was about to act the next day, Saturday,
not against the conservative Reaktion, but against Röhm and his Brownshirt rebels.
Not for a moment did he betray his dismay that Hitler was proving more reactionary
than the Reaktion itself. ‘Drawing blood,’ recorded Goebbels approvingly: ‘Gotta realize
that mutiny costs them their neck. I agree with this. If do it you must, then
ruthlessly. Proofs that Röhm was conspiring with [the French ambassador] François-
Poncet, Schleicher, and Strasser. So, action!’9 Goebbels recalled: ‘After reaching his
decision the Führer is very calm. We pass the hours in discussions. Nobody must
notice a thing. Talk with Lutze, the new [S.A.] chief of staff. He’s very good.’ For a
while they watched a tattoo by the Labour Service. As six hundred torchbearers
marked out a fiery swastika on the far bank of the Rhine, they watched the sun set,
and waited in Hitler’s suite. ‘The Führer,’ noted Goebbels, ‘is tense but very firm. We
all keep silent.’ Toward midnight there was a phone call from Berlin—both Lutze
and Goebbels recorded it: ‘The rebels are arming themselves,’ wrote Goebbels. ‘Not
a moment to be lost.’Hitler went pale, and announced: ‘We’re on our way.’10 Goebbels
sent a message to Magda to take the children from the Cladow cottage to the safety
of their ministerial villa in Berlin; he ordered police protection for them.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 345
It was now June 30, 1934. Shortly before two A.M. their plane took off for Munich.
The broad outline of subsequent events that Saturday is well known. Hitler informed
Goebbels of his intention to arrest Ernst Röhm and the mutinous S.A. commanders;
Goebbels, prudently, decided to say nothing on their behalf. After touching down at
Oberwiesenfeld airfield at four A.M., Hitler received further alarming reports from
the army and S.S.—Röhm’s rivals for power—that in Munich and Berlin S.A. units
had been alerted hours before and had ordered a full mobilization for that afternoon.
Panicked by these (probably exaggerated) reports Hitler took his party to the Bavarian
ministry of the interior building. Here he stripped two sleepy-eyed S.A. generals
of their badges and sent out S.S. squads to pick up other S.A. commanders from
their hotels and trains on their arrival. Gripped by paranoia he announced that he
proposed to set off at once to arrest Röhm. In three open Mercedes limousines the
size of small trucks, provided by Gauleiter Wagner, he and his posse sallied forth at
five-thirty A.M.—Hitler, Lutze, and Hess riding in the first car, a bunch of detectives
in the second, and Goebbels and one of Wagner’s men in the third.
Out at Wiessee Röhm was vacationing in the lakefront Hotel Hanslbauer. He was
wakened in his Room 21 by Hitler himself, a loaded pistol gripped in his hand, screaming:
‘You are a traitor!’ Goebbels and Lutze said nothing as Röhm, ashen faced, was
led away. They found Edmund Heines, aged thirty-six, sharing Room 31 with a youth,
which made it easy for Goebbels to draw odious conclusions. (‘May I be excused,’ he
would say in his broadcast the next day, ‘from rendering a description of the loathsome
and almost nauseating sights that met our eyes.’) He wrote in his diary: ‘The
chief was brilliant. Heines pitiful. With a rent boy. Röhm remained calm. Everything
went off very smoothly.’ As Heines too was dragged away, he appealed: ‘Lutze, I’ve
done nothing! Help me!’
A chartered omnibus took away the arrested S.A. officers. Hitler’s limousine convoy
followed, making a prudent detour to the south in case the S.A. had summoned
help. Safely back at party HQ in Munich, Hitler ordered the codeword phoned through
to Göring in Berlin to trigger the purge in Prussia. Later that morning, addressing a
bewildered audience of middle-ranking S.A. officers, he laid it on thick about Röhm’s
346 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
murky financial dealings, his opulent HQ in Berlin, and his treachering dealings with
an unnamed ‘foreign power.’ To those around him he revealed that some of the arrested
men were to be shot. The Gestapo showed Lutze a list of names; Lutze thoughtfully
noticed that several were already marked @ . Hitler proposed however to spare
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 56