to France (NA film M.1270, roll 19).
60 Diary, Aug 3, Sep 18, 24, 25; Freybe to Frau Weinhold, Oct 15, 1940 (ZStA Potsdam,
Rep.90 Go 2, vol.3).
61 Ritschel to Magda, Oct 16; Magda to Ritschel, telegram, Dec 4, 1940 (ibid.)
62 Diary, Jul 21, Oct 13, 1940.
63 Ibid., Jul 24, 1940.
64 Ibid., Sep 29, 1940; and cf. Nov 19, 1941 and Oven, 230.
65 Diary, Oct 15, 1940.
66 Note by Schweitzer, Nov 13, 1940 (ZStA Potsdam, Rep.50.01, RMVP, vol.5).
67 Diary, Oct 29; and Bartels, note on desk cost, Nov 12, 1940 (ZStA Potsdam, Rep.50.01,
RMVP, vol.5).
68 Ibid; and Behrend, op. cit., No.19, May 10, 1952.
69 Note by Ministerialrat Christian Spieler, Oct 31, 1940 (ZStA Potsdam, Rep.50.01,
RMVP, vol.5).
70 Estimate by Vereinigte Werkstätte, Jul 30 (ZStA Potsdam, Rep.50.01, RMVP, vol.759);
diary, Feb 25, 1941.
71 Naumann to adjutants, Aug 6, 1940 (ibid).
72 Diary, Nov 2, 1940.
73 Ibid., Nov 26, 1940; Apr 17, Jun 8, 13, 1941. ‘My ministry is gradually turning into a
major art collection.’
74 Diary, Nov 2, 5, 23, 1940.
75 Speer to Bartels, Sep 9, 1940 (ZStA Potsdam, Rep.50.01, RMVP, vol.5).
76 Diary, Dec 5, 1940; cf. Jan 12, 1941.
77 MinConf., Oct 20, 1940.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 621
78 Ibid., Oct 9; and see MinConf Oct 24, 1940: London was claiming to have killed 2,871
Berliners in the last raids, the real figure was twelve.
79 Diary, Nov 1, 1941.
80 Ibid., Nov 2, 1940.
81 Speech on occasion of 50th Family Favourites concert (Wunschkonzert), Dec 1, 1940
(publ. in Zeit ohne Beispiel, 331f).
82 Diary, Jul 5, 1940.
83 Ibid., Jul 30, 1940.
84 Ibid., Aug 5, 10, 16, 1940.
85 Ibid., Aug 9, 1940.
86 Ibid., Aug 15, 1940.
87 Ibid., Aug 16, 24, 1940.
88 Ibid., Sep 14, 19, 1940.
89 Ibid., Nov 10, 1940.
90 Ibid., Nov 11, 12, 1940.
91 G Sander, op. cit.; and see JG’s Tagesparole (message for the day), Nov 14, 1940, cited
in Boelcke, 566.
622 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Goebbels
40: A Few Choice Drops of Poison
HE NO longer spoke to Ribbentrop. A state of armed truce existed between
them. The two ministers insulted each other by proxy and wounded by
petty, bureaucratic devices when they could.1 ‘Everybody has their own day-dream
for when this war is over,’ Goebbels would write. ‘Mine is: to loaf around and sleep
and make music and read fine books; to lie in the sun; not to pick up a newspaper;
and to hear nothing whatever about the foreign ministry.’2 Ribbentrop fired off a tenpage
missive at him in February 1940, but Goebbels disdained even to reply, marvelling
that his old enemy had time for such things, and calling him a megalomaniac.3
(‘A sick man,’ he assessed later, ‘childishly stuck-up and pompous, with little behind
the facade.’4) Ribbentrop then wrote a twelve-page letter demanding that Goebbels
turn over all foreign-language broadcasting to his ministry.5 After Holland surrendered
he tried to snatch the powerful Hilversum transmitter from under Goebbels’
nose.6 When Goebbels sent out one of his best propagandists, Werner Wächter, to
organise in Paris, open warfare with Ribbentrop was the result.7 As a direct snub to
him, Goebbels set up a Reichspropaganda-Amt ‘Ausland’ (Abroad) to match those
attached to each gau, under Felix Schmidt-Decker.8 Learning that the Börsenzeitung
had fêted Ribbentrop as a second Bismarck, Goebbels ordered Fritzsche to ensure
(‘in Ribbentrop’s own interest’) that it did not happen again.9
In November 1940 there was a ludicrous show-down, and almost a shoot-out,
between the two ministries. Pursuant to Hitler’s decree of September 8, 1939
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 623
Ribbentrop had emplaced liaison units in various propaganda agencies like the Berlin
short-wave radio station at No.77 Kaiserdamm. Goebbels refused to tolerate these
‘spies’ and ordered them out.10 Ribbentrop instructed the Kaiserdamm unit, under a
Dr Timmler, to stay put. They did so until November 29, 1940 when Dr Glasmeier,
head of broadcasting, threatened to evict them by force. Timmler and his colleagues
and shorthand ladies stalked out, leaving safes and cabinets open and pictures of
Ribbentrop on the wall. Ribbentrop sent them back in the next day, backed by his
own fifteen-man S.S. bodyguard, with orders to use force if necessary, and he then
sent Goebbels a telegram from his château at Fuschl telling him what he had done. In
a paroxysm of rage Goebbels appealed to Himmler.11 Over the next week he whipped
up the entire Reich Chancellery into a froth of indignation.12 Ribbentrop secured
Bormann’s backing, but Bormann did not yet wield the power that he would in later
years and Timmler’s unit was again evicted, this time for good. Ribbentrop retired to
lick his wounds and cast about for revenge.
HITLER had lost the strategic initiative that November of 1940. Göring had given up
hope of defeating Britain in the air and taken six weeks’ leave. With Milch in command
the Luftwaffe bombers battered away at London, Coventry, and Birmingham.
‘When will that Kreatur Churchill finally capitulate?’ wondered Goebbels. ‘Britain
can’t take this for ever!’13 Reading up on that country’s national character, however,
he came across the ominous words phlegma and bovine dullness (Stumpfsinn). ‘In
their shoes,’ he cursed, ‘any other nation would have collapsed long ago.’14 Tiring of
Berlin and the increasingly sterile war of words he left for Norway, to lay a wreath on
the newly dedicated Blücher memorial in Oslo.15
Back in Berlin after that, he cracked jokes with Hitler about Ribbentrop’s seizure
of the radio building. For a while in Hitler’s private cinema they watched newsreels
on London in flames. ‘The British empire is self-destructing,’ Hitler had said a few
days earlier. He now suggested that Britain was banking on Moscow.16 The war would
continue all winter, he added. He would abstain from bombing over Christmas, in
the hope of wrongfooting Mr Churchill who would surely display no such restraint.17
624 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
‘After which,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘the British shall see reprisal raids until the tears run
down their cheeks.’18
Italy’s entry into the war—in mid June, after France’s defeat was assured—presented
Goebbels with special problems.19 She had done so little even then that
Goebbels had to inspire rumours that this was at the Führer’s specific request.20 In
Greece, Albania, and Africa the Italians let down the Axis badly. Fearing ugly demonstrations
from the ordinary Berliners, he had to discourage the Italians from participating
in the next street collections for the Red Cross.21 ‘These are fine allies
we’ve got into bed with,’ wrote Goebbels.22 As Italy’s rapid retreats degenerated into
routs, he advised German radio to stop broadcasting Italian ‘quick marches.’ Once,
the Italian ambassador asked Goebbels why his launch was laid up. ‘We could have
such a nice time on the Wa
nnsee,’ he added wistfully. ‘A hot Sunday, charming ladies.’
Goebbels murmured something about the fuel shortage. ‘I can get you all the gasoline
you need,’ exclaimed Alfieri, and Goebbels, well aware whose government supplied
it to Berlin’s embassies, choked on those words.23
Standing beside Hitler in the Borsig munitions works on December 10 he was
relieved to hear him say, to loud cheers, that he was not going in for costly prestige
victories—a veiled reference to his resolve not to risk an expedition across the English
Channel.24 Hitler repeated this in a secret speech to all his gauleiters, including
Goebbels, the next day. Putting a brave face on things he called the war as good as
won. ‘Not that he had wanted this war at all,’—so Goebbels summarized his remarks
—‘and he would still agree to peace on an acceptable basis. Invasion not planned
for the time being. Air supremacy necessary first. Hydrophobia. And he is not one
for taking risks if things are possible without them. He wants to avoid heavy casualties.’
Goebbels also heard Hitler refer briefly on this occasion to the Soviet Union—
she was lurking in the wings, but he was undaunted. He was sending more troops to
Romania, his only source of oil. ‘We’re not letting anybody in there,’ he promised.25
One week later Hitler signed the Barbarossa decree, instructing his generals to
prepare a short sharp war against the Soviet Union. He dropped not a hint of this to
Goebbels for four more months. Lunching at the chancellery the minister was puz-
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 625
zled to hear Hitler say that he ‘hoped’ the war would be over in 1941; Hitler again
revealed the irrational dread that restrained him from a cross-Channel invasion. ‘He’s
frightened of the water,’ Goebbels realized again. ‘He says he would undertake it
only if he was in the direst straits.’26
ON December 30, 1940 Goebbels pre-recorded his New Year’s Eve broadcast, to
avoid having to leave the comfort (and safety) Lanke on the night.27 His original
script had read:
People would probably have called me a fool or a dreamer, or anything but a
politician worthy of serious consideration, if I had prophesied on New Year’s Eve
1939, when I spoke from this very spot to the German people, that at the end of
the New Year then just dawning, 1940, the German front line would extend from
Kirkenes to the Bay of Biscay … that Norway would have been taken under our
wing as far as the Arctic Circle, that France would have suffered a total military
defeat, and that Britain would be so stricken by the German counter-blockade
and by our Luftwaffe’s day-and-night reprisal raids on her vitals that, reeling under
the hammer blows of the German armed forces, she would be struggling for
naked survival and pleading with the rest of the world to help her out—even if
only for a few more weeks.
Hitler, censoring his script, scratched out the last word and wrote months; he also
pedantically corrected Goebbels’ errors of grammar and style. When, moreover,
Goebbels had written that only one thought inspired them, of victory—‘For that we
shall work and we shall fight, until our last enemy lies shattered on the ground’—Hitler
changed it to read ‘until the onslaught of our last enemy has been repulsed.’ Goebbels’
boast, ‘Never shall we capitulate—never’, was scratched out altogether.28
THE new year opened on a low key. Goebbels found himself further than ever from
626 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
his old intimate relationship with Hitler. Italy lost both Bardia and Tobruk. His diary
makes no mention of Rommel’s expedition to Libya until the end of January 1941 or
of Rommel himself until three weeks after that; so Hitler had not told him of that
diversion either.29
A new trade pact was signed with Moscow; unaware of the sinister strategic purpose
with which Hitler had vested it, Goebbels saw it only as another slap in the face
for Churchill.30 His admiration for the British prime minister remained undiminished,
particularly after another belligerent speech by him to Parliament in December
1940. He wrote a flaming attack on Churchill for Das Reich but ordered the rest
of the press to lay off him for fear of creating a dangerous legend around the man.31
‘Our press is publishing things which absolutely speak for the old swine, for instance
scurrilous things about his lifestyle which are not at all ludicrous or even contemptible.
He has some attractive features,’ admitted Goebbels privately, ‘which we don’t
want to underscore in the press. You’ve either got to hate your enemy or expose him
to ridicule.’32
When Hitler returned to Berlin on January 28, 1941 he did not at once send for
Goebbels. Goebbels told his diary that he had prior engagements.33 The erosion of his
influence is plain from a bleak entry ten days later, after Otto Dietrich had once again
put his nose out of joint. ‘I may now have to appeal to the Führer,’ he wrote, ‘awkward
though that may prove for me right now.’34 And then there was the war department
(O.K.H.): they had borrowed Goebbels’ best film technicians to make their
movie ‘Victory in the West’; now they refused to let him have them back—another
indicator of his momentary impotence.35 For the first time in years he stayed away
from the party’s foundation ceremony in Munich on February 24; he listened to
Hitler’s speech on the radio, a peculiar sensation, he admitted, without being more
explicit about their estrangement.36
ASSUREDLY it is Magda who is causing his problems with Hitler. Goebbels treats her
more scandalously than ever. Her father, his life slowly ebbing in Duisburg, sends to
Magda and her mother Auguste Behrend a Christmas telegram which studiously omits
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 627
all mention of Dr Joseph Goebbels. When she visits the city hospital, her dying father
has to send her three hundred marks to defray her travel expenses.37 On April 3,
1941, Magda returns to Duisburg to share her father’s last hours on earth. Her sorrow
leaves Goebbels stone cold. ‘I barely know him,’ he callously observes in his
diary, not caring who may read it later, ‘and I shall not be losing anything when he
goes.’38
What else has caused the friction? A terse line in his diary for December 20, 1940
refers to a ‘short palaver’ with Magda—his euphemism for a blazing row—between
two air raid alerts.39 The likely cause is as much the reappearance of Karl Hanke, now
a bemedalled war hero of thirty-eight, as the arrival at Schwanenwerder early in
November of the vivacious young Ursula Quandt, who has just divorced Magda’s
boring and half-blind stepson Herbert Quandt. Ursula, nearly a generation younger
than Magda, ‘now looks quite delicious,’ as Goebbels candidly observes.40 His diary
mentions her no fewer than thirty-nine times in the next six months. Over Christmas
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 102