10, 1941 he directed Dr Taubert to resuscitate his anti-comintern staff secretly again.96
Taubert’s eastern department eventually became a huge body with eight hundred
employees running the radio, press, film, and cultural life of the occupied territories
except the Government-General, with a vaguely anti-Moscow-centralism, antisemitic
line.97
That rainy Easter weekend, he took a few colleagues out to Lanke. ‘How do you
think,’ he suddenly asked, strolling around the little Bogensee, ‘the German people
are going to react to a war with Moscow?’ Without waiting for the answer he continued:
it would be their most gargantuan propaganda feat ever. For fifteen years they
had demonized the Russians. Then Hitler had signed his pact with Stalin. ‘If we do
another about-face,’ he pointed out, ‘nobody is ever going to believe us again.’ He
lapsed into silence, as he limped along the board-walk round the lake, then brightened.
‘But as nobody will be believing us anyway,’ he exclaimed, ‘we won’t ever have
to take anybody into consideration again!’98
634 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Stalin obviously feared something. Standing on the Moscow railroad platform for
Matsuoka’s onward journey to Japan, he hugged the German military attaché Krebs
and loudly promised eternal friendship. ‘Splendid,’ commented Goebbels privately.
‘Stalin evidently doesn’t want to make the acquaintance of our panzer divisions either.’
99 Before leaving Moscow, Matsuoka rather inconsiderately signed a Japanese-
Soviet non-aggression treaty. ‘That doesn’t suit the Führer one bit,’ Goebbels observed,
‘given the on-going planning.’100
Churchill’s air raids were raising both strategic and propaganda problems. That
April he started dropping four-thousand pound bombs on Berlin. ‘That makes the
future look pretty bleak,’ Goebbels admitted.101 But he remarked to Hitler that if
anything the raids were making their own public even more refractory.102 Neither
paused to consider that the Luftwaffe’s raids might be having as little effect on the
English public. On the sixteenth and nineteenth the Luftwaffe executed its heaviest
raids yet on London, dropping one thousand tons of bombs each time.103 The British
merely shrugged. ‘The British are of a rare toughness,’ Goebbels decided, astonished.
‘But they will snap some time.’104 After violent raids on Kiel, he took charge of
relief measures himself, ordering the evacuation of women and children and the
construction of shelters, and rushing furniture and clothing to the blitzed naval base.105
At Emden he did the same. These were in fact his first overt steps in the drive to
become Germany’s next dictator.
He also set fresh accents on his propaganda. Since Churchill’s raids on Berlin would
evidently continue Goebbels ruled that only Berlin’s evening newspapers were permitted
to poke fun at the English air raid boasts; a catastrophic air raid might well
occur after the morning dailies went to press.106 Goebbels also ordered editors to
tone down their comments on the Luftwaffe’s raids. No more ‘we stuck it to the
British this time,’ or ‘yesterday’s raid was a real corker.’ The tone had to be masculine
and serious— ‘After all,’ he reasoned, ‘immense damage is being inflicted on cultural,
economic, and indeed human assets.’107
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 635
ON the evening of April 18 the High Command’s liaison officer Major Hans-Leo
Martin gate-crashed the little birthday party that Goebbels was staging for his mother
in Hermann-Göring Strasse, took him aside, and said: ‘Herr Reichsminister, I have
been instructed to inform you that our Wehrmacht is shortly to attack Russia.’108
Goebbels’ face revealed not a flicker of emotion.
He had neither compunctions nor fears about the operation. He shortly quoted in
his diary this facile assessment by Hitler: ‘The entire fabric of bolshevism will collapse
like a house of cards.’109 Summing up the Balkan campaign in the Reichstag a
few days later, Hitler spoke for the first time of the war continuing into 1942. The
public was dismayed. Goebbels however was already discussing the new fanfare for
Russia with his radio bosses.110
Returning from Gotenhafen (formerly Gdynia) and Danzig where he had felt the
muscles of the mighty new battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz, Hitler again remarked
moodily to Goebbels on the damage that Churchill was doing to the British empire.
Only President Roosevelt would benefit. He ruminated angrily on Italy’s unbroken
series of defeats. ‘Without them,’ he said, ‘Pétain would have stayed at our side,
Franco might have joined us after all, and Gibraltar would be in our hands. Then
Turkey would have been open to offers too. It just doesn’t bear thinking about.’ For
a while he day-dreamed on: Suez dropping like a ripe fruit into his hands, England
surrendering. No more. ‘We have all that to thank our gentleman-allies for.’ But on
balance he still felt that Britain had lost the war in May 1940, at the time of Dunkirk.
111
The moon would soon be full. Goebbels drove out to Lanke for the weekend. The
Luftwaffe was out in strength that Saturday May 10, delivering one last thundering
night attack on London before regrouping to the east. The Houses of Parliament
were seriously damaged. Goebbels took note of all the war news that Sunday evening.
‘The day was quiet,’ he wrote the next morning, ‘without any major sensation.’112 He
settled down to vet the latest newsreel.
It featured a visit by Hitler’s beetle-browed deputy, Rudolf Hess, to the
Messerschmitt aircraft factory in Augsburg.
636 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
1 JG took spiteful disciplinary action against three of Ribbentrop’s pet journalists: Press
conf. of Oct 24, 1940 (BA files, Brammer collection; ND: NG–3870).
2 Diary, Dec 4, 1940.
3 Ibid., Feb 6, 7, 16, 1940.
4 Ibid., Oct 16, 1940.
5 Ibid., Mar 30, cf. Jun 6, 1940.
6 Ibid., May 17, 1940.
7 Ibid., Jun 16, Aug 4, 1940.
8 JG circular, Sep 2 (Reich Chancellery files, ND: NG–4189); diary, Oct 9, 23, Nov 5,
Dec 13, 1940.
9 MinConf., Oct 22, diary Oct 23, 1940.—Hitler often compared Ribbentrop with Bismarck:
cf. Likus report, Nov 13, 1938 (AA files, Serial 43, 29044ff).
10 Diary, Dec 2; Glasmeier to JG, Dec 2, 1940; and letter from Richard Schulze-Kossens
to Reinhard Spitzy, Nov 2, 1986 (author’s collection).
11 Ribbentrop to JG, Nov 30, and reply, Dec 2 (ibid.); JG diary, Dec 2–5, 1940.
12 Ibid., Dec 6–7, 1940.
13 Ibid., Nov 20, 1940.
14 Ibid., Nov 26, 1940.
15 Ibid., Nov 30, Dec 1.—The Swedish government refused him permission to arrive in
Sweden aboard a warship: Mallet (Stockholm) Tel. No.1255 to FO, Nov 28, 1940 (PRO file
FO.371/24838).
16 Cf. diary of Field Marshal von Bock (C-in-C East), Dec 3, 1940.
17 Confirmed by Milch diary, Dec 26, 1940: ‘From Dec 24–26 A.M. no raids on Britain on
Führer’s orders’ (Author’s film DI-59).
18 Diary, Dec 4; similar words on Dec 5, 1940.
19 ‘German home morale a
nd neutralising Italian defeat,’ in PWE Analysis Of German
Propaganda Dec 1–16, 1940 (PRO file FO.898/30); MinConf., Jun 23, 1940.
20 MinConf., Jun 16, 1940.
21 Ibid., Jul 15, 1940.
22 Diary, Sep 11, and cf. ibid., Sep 13, 1940.
23 Behrend, loc. cit., No.22, May 31, 1952.
24 Diary, Dec 11, 1940.
25 Ibid., Dec 12, 1940.
26 Ibid., Dec 22, 1940.
27 Ibid., Dec 31, 1940.
28 Script of JG’s broadcast, amended by Hitler, in the files of his adjutants (BA file NS.10/
37).—Hitler also asked JG to shelve an article which he had written attacking the legal
profession (diary, Jan 12, 1941).
29 Diary, Jan 30, Feb 22, 1941.
30 Ibid., Jan 12, 1941.
31 JG, ‘Winston Churchill,’ in Das Reich, Feb 5; cf MinConf., Dec 22, and Diary, Dec 22,
1940, Jan 5, 6, 1941.
32 Diary, Jan 26, 1941
33 Ibid., Jan 29, 1941.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 637
34 Ibid., Feb 14, 1941.
35 Ibid., Feb 18, 21, 1941. For the planning of the film Die Feuertaufe (Baptism of Fire) and
a film on the Wehrmacht against England, see JG to Brauchitsch, May 9, reply May 20, 1940
(NA film T78, roll 295, 4501ff).
36 Diary, Feb 25, 1941.
37 Ritschel to Magda, Dec 26, 1940, Jan 28, 1941 (ZStA Potsdam, Rep.90 Go 2, vol.3);
diary, Jan 6, 7, 8, 1941.
38 Diary, Apr 4, 5, 1941.
39 Ibid., Dec 22, 1940.
40 Ibid., Nov 5; cf Nov 10, 1940 for his unconcealed delight.
41 Ibid., Dec 27, 1940. Regierungsrat Heiduschke had joined the Fallschirmjäger (paratroops)
in May 1940, but JG had retrieved him on Oct 1, 1940 as his adjutant. See ibid., May
13, Oct 2, 31, 1940.
42 Ibid., Jan 3, 18, 1941.
43 Ibid., Jan 29, 1941.
44 Ibid., Apr 24, 1941.
45 Ibid., Jun 17, 1941. ‘To show an interest in’: mich des Kindes anzunehmen.
46 See the MS by Rittmeister Dr Wilhelm Scheidt (IfZ, Irving collection).
47 Diary, Jan 29, 1941; cf. Hanke’s biography in Das Reich Mar 11, 1945, and JG diary, May
5, 1940: Hanke was with Rommel’s division, but ‘is heading for Silesia later.’
48 Ibid., Jan 30. On Feb 9 Hess spoke in Breslau at Hanke’s induction as gauleiter (ibid.,
Feb 10, 1941).
49 Ibid., Jan 25, Feb 3, 13, 1941
50 Ibid., Feb 8, 1941.
51 Ibid., Mar 25, 1941; JG’s New Year’s broadcast, 1940/41.
52 Diary, Apr 4, 1941.
53 Ibid., Feb 8, 11, 13, 14, 1941.
54 Ibid., Feb 14–16, 1941.
55 G Sander, op. cit.; diary, Feb 18, 1941.
56 Diary, Feb 16, 17, 21, 24, 1941.
57 Ibid., Feb 21, 23, 26, 1941.
58 Ibid., Mar 3, 1941.
59 Ibid., Mar 16, 17, 1941.
60 Ibid., Mar 15, 17, 18, 23, 1941.
61 Ibid., Mar 29, Apr 11, 20, 21, 1941.
62 Ibid., Apr 14, 1941.
63 Ibid., May 1–3. Linz Irkonsky had provided the summer house (ibid., Apr 2, 1941).
64 G Sander, op. cit.
65 JG used the same phrase in his domestic propaganda: PWE Report on Axis Propaganda
and Strategic Intentions, No.25, Jan 6–12, 1941 (PRO file FO.898/30); diary, Jan 10, 1941.
66 Ibid., Feb 1, 4, 1941.
67 Ibid., Feb 7, 1941.
68 Das Reich, Mar 7, 1941.
69 MinConf., Mar 14, 1941.
638 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
70 Undated transcript and Reuters rewrite dated Mar 10 of JG’s speech of Mar 7 in PRO
file FO.371/26518; PWE Report on Axis Propaganda and Strategic Intentions, No.33, Mar
3–9 (PRO file FO.898/30); diary, Mar 8, 1941.
71 Diary, Mar 11, 1941.
72 Ibid., Mar 16, 1941.
73 Ibid., Mar 17, 1941.
74 Ibid., Mar 3, 1941.
75 Ibid., Mar 18, 1941.
76 Ibid., Mar 21, 1941.
77 MinConf., Mar 21, 1941.
78 Diary, Mar 25, 1941.
79 Ibid., Mar 29. He added that there were already 300,000 troops in Norway. ‘Moscow
won’t have anything to laugh about when the balloon goes up.’ On Mar 30, 1941 he noted
that the SD Meldung reported reservations in the public’s mood toward Russia; people
seemed to have a premonition. ‘But this summer will see this problem solved too.’
80 Diary, Mar 28, 1941.
81 Ibid., Apr 4–6, 1941.
82 Ibid., Apr 6, 1941.
83 Semler, ‘Apr 5, 1941.’
84 Diary, Apr 6, 1941.
85 Shorthand transcript of MinConf., Apr 6, 1941.
86 Erwin Lahousen diary (Author’s film DI–43).
87 MinConf., Apr 10; diary, Apr 11, 1941.
88 Ibid.., Apr 7, 1941.
89 Diary, Apr 13, 1941.
90 Stenogramm of MinConf., Apr 15; diary, Apr 16, 1941.
91 Diary, Apr 17, 1941.
92 Ibid., Apr 8, 1941.
93 Ibid., Apr 8, 9, 1941.
94 Ibid., Apr 24, 1941.
95 Ibid., Apr 24, 1941.
96 E Taubert, “Der antisowjetische Apparat des deutschen Propagandaministeriums” (BA
file Kl.Erw.617).
97 Interrogation of Fritzsche, Nov 1, 1946 in OMGUS files (NA, RG.250, shipping list 53–
3/7, box 16).
98 G Sander, op.cit; JG did not visit Lanke between Feb 22 and Apr 11, 1941 (diary).
99 Diary, Apr 14, 1941. Semler’s account of the Apr 12 Krebs incident, dated ‘Apr 1,
1941’, must be discounted.
100 Diary, Apr 15, 1941.
101 Ibid., Apr 20, 21, 1941.
102 Ibid., Apr 1, 1941.
103 Ibid., Apr 18, 21, 1941.
104 Ibid., Apr 20, 1941.
105 MinConf., Apr 17; diary, Apr 17–19, 23, 1941.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 639
106 Ibid., Apr 26, 1941.
107 Ibid., May 12, 1941.
108 Hans-Leo Martin, Unser Mann bei Goebbels (Neckargemünd, 1973), 115; diary, Apr 19,
1941.
109 Diary, May 1, 7; cf Walther Hewel diary, May 1941 (author’s film DI–75).
110 Ibid., May 5, 8, 9, 1941.
111 Ibid., May 9, 1941.
112 Ibid., May 12, 1941.
640 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Goebbels
41: The Malodorous Thing
The sensation had already happened. On Monday May 12, 1941 the phone
rang at Lanke. It was somebody at the Berghof—though not Hitler himself,
he was still too shocked to speak—reporting that the Deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess,
had taken off for Scotland in a Messerschmitt late on Saturday and was now missing,
perhaps dead. Hitler was therefore issuing a communiqué speaking of Hess’s ‘dementia.’
1 ‘What a sight for the world,’ exclaimed Goebbels in his diary. ‘A mentallydefective
deputy to the Führer.’ He blamed Otto Dietrich for this infelicitous choice
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 104