victory in as rising crescendo of fourteen bulletins issued during the day, while the
German High Command was still ponderously releasing one.17 Goebbels reminded
the world that Churchill had frankly confessed to lying his way out of awkward situations
in the earlier war.18
Hitler still hesitated to bomb London. Goebbels resorted in his diary to his now
threadbare palliative: ‘The Führer will surely seek out the right moment and then
strike accordingly.’19 Göring decided to launch Eagle Day, the mass attack on southern
England, on the thirteenth; but only half the two thousand planes got airborne in
bad weather, and London itself was still off limits.20 Goebbels anticipated that Churchill
would soon get to work on the world’s tear glands, as he put it, with harrowing
photographs of pregnant air raid victims. He told his ministry to dig out file photographs
of, ironically, the Freiburg raid and comparable British atrocities in India.
For several more days bad weather continued to thwart Göring. The Gestapo reported
that the German public was getting jittery.21 On the twentieth Churchill famously
extolled Britain’s young fighter pilots, speaking of how so much had never
been owed by so many to so few. Goebbels mechanically dismissed the speech as
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 609
‘insolent, arrogant, and mendacious,’ but he had to admit, as one orator invigilating
over another, that it was good stuff. ‘He has a seductive style,’ he wrote.22
Autumn was drawing in. The nights were getting long enough for Churchill to
push his bombers as far as Berlin. On the night of August 19–20 a Blenheim bomber
was actually shot down over the city. Goebbels announced the incident only in his
overseas services. He was confronted by something of a dilemma—how to profit
from the raids on Berlin without affording comfort to the enemy.23 Late on the twentyfourth
a Luftwaffe plane sent to attack a Thames-side oil refinery strayed over the
east end of London; there were no casualties, but Churchill ordered a hundred heavy
bombers to Berlin the next night.24 Alone out at Lanke—Magda and the children had
left for Schwanenwerder as the new school term began—Goebbels watched Berlin’s
flak batteries opening up in the distance. Damage was again minimal, but the fourhour
alert robbed him of precious sleep and he spent the next night out at Lanke too.
Expecting the worst to be over in three weeks, he agreed with Göring that they
should close all theatres until then.25
The British raids continued. On August 28–29 their bombs killed ten Berliners. At
six A.M. the radio revealed to Germany that their capital had been bombed. Goebbels
decided on balance that since he had little to work on, he might as well stay out at
Lanke for another night.26 Hitler, made of sterner stuff, hurried back from Bavaria to
the capital and assured Goebbels over lunch on the thirtieth that if only the weather
would improve Göring would begin his unrestricted air warfare against Britain.
Goebbels reflected that Berlin would then be in for a ‘pretty hot time’ too.27
CHURCHILL, Hitler, and Goebbels were alike in tragically over-estimating the strategic
capabilities of saturation bombing. Each side believed that its opponents were less
brave. At his confidential morning conference on September 3, 1940 Goebbels admitted
that opinion on this differed. ‘There is no doubt,’ he defined, ‘that a nation
really determined to defend its freedom can only be wrestled to the ground in manto-
man combat.’ He doubted however that Britain had that determination. Common
sense might yet prevail there. ‘We’ll have to see how things turn out.’
610 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
In fact he cynically hoped that Churchill’s raids would get heavier. He needed what
he called an alibi, to justify in advance the Schrecklichkeit which the Luftwaffe was
about to inflict on London. Hitler had ruled out an unopposed invasion of Britain as
unnecessary. Both men expected a walk-over once the Luftwaffe really got at London.
Goebbels began planning ahead with Gutterer for the occupation of London,
nominating first his police major Walter Titel, of his war operations staff, and then
Dr Friedrich Mahlo, head of his tourism section, as chief of the England task force,
and determining which buildings, like the British Broadcasting Corporation, it would
need to seize.28
While Berlin now prepared for the worst, removing priceless paintings to safety
and digging in flak batteries around the city, Hitler and his propaganda minister debated
endlessly the central question: whether bombing alone would force the British
to their knees. Goebbels eschewed any opinion, but wondered privately how much
longer London had before the onslaught began. Hitler however was awaiting a response
to his further peace feelers, extended through Washington, Stockholm and—
via Rudolf Hess’ aristocratic contacts—to Scotland.
As frustrated as Goebbels at Hitler’s forbearance, Mr Churchill intensified his raids
on Berlin. Finally his methods worked. Inaugurating the second war winter relief
fund Hitler and Goebbels spoke on September 4 in the Sport Palace; and here Hitler
threatened that if the attacks continued, then his Luftwaffe would respond. ‘I shall
rub out their cities!’ he rasped into the microphone. To Goebbels’ astonishment, the
speech had no apparent impact on Whitehall. In retrospect this was not surprising:
like Goebbels at Lanke, Churchill had a country funk-hole at Dytchley in Oxfordshire
where he repaired whenever his Intelligence services alerted him that London
was to be the Luftwaffe’s target. Churchill wanted London bombed to bring in the
Americans, to take the weight off his fighter and radar defences, and to spite the
peace movement seriously threatening his own war leadership. He cheered silently
each time his capital was bombed, as indeed did Goebbels each time Berlin was
visited by the Royal Air Force.29
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 611
Meanwhile Reichsmarschall Göring had set off to the Channel coast to command
his pompous air armadas against London. He had prepared a three-day saturation
bombing of London. September 5 brought ideal bombing weather but Hitler, clutching
at hopes of peace, still prevaricated. That night the British bombed Berlin again,
killing fifteen people. Lunching with Hitler on the sixth Goebbels found his patience
exhausted. ‘The Führer,’ he recorded, ‘is fed up. He clears London for bombing. It is
to begin tonight.’ Goebbels certainly did not discourage him, and that night what he
would call the Blitz began. Mapping out his own tactics in advance he confided to his
diary, ‘We’re expecting the British to launch a major air strike against Berlin tonight
[the seventh]. When it comes we’ll kick up one hell of a hullabaloo—and then we’ll
flatten London with day and night raids.’ These would go on around the clock for
three days. He only hoped that the weather held out.
Sure enough the British bombers returned. Thus Churchill and Hitler rose to each
other’s bait. Göring again sent his bombers over London that afternoon. ‘Let’s see
now how long the nerves of the English can ta
ke it,’ wrote Goebbels. He directed
William Joyce and the black ‘English’ transmitters to spread panic; and he told the
‘straight’ media that they were to stick to the official version that the Luftwaffe was
only attacking military targets.30 On the eighth, Reuter’s agency announced that seven
hundred Londoners had died the day before.31 As Hitler visited the Goebbels family
at Schwanenwerder on Sunday the eighth, Göring’s squadrons were however battling
worsening weather conditions. ‘Churchill,’ Hitler and Goebbels agreed, ‘is a
buffoon and the gravedigger of the empire.’32 The British prime minister displayed
himself to London’s battered East Enders and told the world’s press that they had
fêted him. ‘We believe you!’ mocked Goebbels; after Churchill’s bombers threw
another modest punch at Berlin that night the Nazi propaganda minister ordered
their overseas services to exaggerate it wildly to generate fresh alibis for what was to
come.33 The New York Times headlines read 1,500 NAZI PLANES BOMB LONDON on Sunday,
and MIGHTY NAZI AIR FLEET AGAIN BOMBS LONDON—DOCKS AND PLANTS HIT, FIRES RAGE on
the following day. London, it seemed to Goebbels, was one huge inferno. How long
could they take it?
612 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Over lunch on the tenth a buoyant Hitler again ventilated the one question that
mattered: would Britain give in? Goebbels thought they would, but Hitler could not
yet decide. ‘The military share my viewpoint,’ recorded Goebbels: ‘A city of eight
million cannot stand that for long… We have wiped the smirk off their Lordships’
faces. We shall thrash them until they whimper for mercy.’34
That night scattered bombs fell around the Reichstag. Visibly annoyed that Churchill’s
raids were proving so puny, Goebbels ordered his pyrotechnic experts to stage
more convincing fires on top of the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin’s famous landmark,
and then summoned the press photographers—‘to supply,’ as he unblushingly told
his diary, ‘an alibi for our own coming massive raid on the London government quarter.’
35 When a German bomb shortly after damaged one wing of Buckingham Palace
in London, Goebbels directed his agencies to claim that there were ‘secret military
targets’ nearby.36 The neutral press duly equated this raid with the British raid on the
Reichstag. ‘Thus we are not barbarians,’ Goebbels congratulated himself. ‘It’s just
two superpowers knocking the living daylights out of each other.’37
Hitler too was taken in. Furious about the raid on the Brandenburg Gate and his
Reichstag he told Goebbels that he was now going to blast Mr Churchill’s ancient
parliament to smithereens. Together they listened to the prime minister broadcast
that evening. It was an insipid speech in Goebbels’ opinion, riddled with vulgar abuse
at his beloved Führer. ‘Poor fool,’ he commented: ‘In his impotent fury he flails at a
genius of whose greatness he has not the slightest inkling.’38 Churchill however was
every inch a match for him. Although he too knew from codebreaking that no German
invasion was planned, he predicted a date for the event: it was an old but effective
propaganda trick, raged Goebbels—Churchill could then claim a victory when
no invasion came.39 His admiration for Britain’s indomitable prime minister grew.
‘You can’t help respecting him,’ he wrote, ‘in his bulldog way.’40
Despite all Göring’s attempts the British defences seemed intact. On September
15 the Luftwaffe dropped two hundred tons of bombs on London, and lost fortythree
planes in the battle. Churchill coolly inflated that figure to 155. ‘Churchill has
got to cheat,’ Goebbels reasoned, ‘because the devastation in London is so appall-
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 613
ing.’41 The Luftwaffe’s losses faced him with a problem however. He had virtuously
ruled only ten days earlier that even if the Luftwaffe was worsted on some days, its
losses were to be faithfully reported.42 But now it was becoming something of a
liability. All German radio stations had to shut down at ten P.M.43 The same Hermann
Göring who had bragged that no enemy bomber would darken German skies now
allowed the world’s press to report that he had personally flown over the blazing
streets of London in a Stuka dive bomber. Goebbels forbade the German press to
print the story (‘for cogent reasons’).44 Instead, he told their black transmitters to
remark on the luxury air raid shelters, complete with armchairs and dancefloors,
installed for London’s plutocrats beneath the Grosvenor House hotel.45 When Hitler
retailed to him reports that the London police had had to use firearms to quell disturbances,
Goebbels was however sceptical.46
‘Not yet,’ was his terse assessment when his department heads asked whether the
British capital was entering its death throes.47
In mid September 1940 Hitler still hoped that this blitz would do the trick. ‘If
eight million inhabitants go crazy,’ he said, ‘that can bring about a catastrophe. If we
get good weather and can neutralize the enemy air force, then even a small-scale
invasion can work wonders.’48 Over lunch on the twenty-third however Goebbels
heard him admit that they were nowhere near achieving air superiority.49 The British
killed eleven more Berliners that night. Goebbels mechanically called the raid ‘massive’
in his diary. ‘We hype it up colossally.’ Hitler compared the contest with a boxing
match. After slogging on for round after round, one pugilist might suddenly
slump to the canvas.50 To Goebbels however the London blitz began to reek of uglier
examples in history, and Major Rudolf Wodarg, his Luftwaffe liaison officer, put the
same fear into words: ‘London,’ he said, ‘is turning into a Verdun of the air.’51
GOEBBELS was not really prepared for this situation. He spent October 1940 in the
doldrums, becalmed in a silent, unreasoning hatred of Ribbentrop, of Dietrich, of
the plutocrats in London, and of the Jews. He was waiting—waiting for the air war
to end, waiting for the renovation of No.20 Hermann-Göring Strasse to be com-
614 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
pleted, waiting for Magda, yet again, to give birth. ‘Mothers in labour are like soldiers
on the battlefield,’ he decided.52 Often a single British nuisance raider triggered
a stampede by four and a half million Berliners into their makeshift shelters.53 On
October 2 a detonation not far from Lanke marked the end of one British bomber.
Goebbels saw the flattened pile of twisted metal the next day and the charred remains
of the three aviators, and shuddered.54 The air staff now asked Goebbels not to
announce when the British missed their targets. Goebbels was baffled. ‘We are giving
them the freedom of our air waves,’ he commented, referring to the ten P.M.
radio shut-down, ‘and now we are voluntarily to abstain from rebutting their propaganda
lies.’55
He travelled to France, at Göring’s invitation. He took tea in the Edouard Rothschild
palace—the château, replete with pheasants, was now a Luftwaffe command post—
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 100