Wagner, one of the July 1944 traitors, met his Maker.
AFTER his visit to Lithuania, Goebbels witnessed how ruthlessly Hitler dealt with the
recalcitrant. At the party anniversary in Munich, Hitler prefaced his secret speech to
the gauleiters by having Gauleiter Joseph Wagner of Bochum physically evicted from
their midst: his wife had written an imprudent religious letter to a relative. The
brown-uniformed audience was stunned by Hitler’s little display of savagery. Viktor
Lutze took in the clucking and clatter that broke out, as though a fox had just raided
a chicken coop.57 Others like Goebbels felt a frisson of approval at the Orwellian
scene.
Twice that month, November 1941, he was able to chronicle important meetings
with Hitler, recharging his emotional batteries each time.58 He was growing concerned
about North Africa and Russia, but Hitler knew how to bolster his morale.
678 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
He told him that if he, as a half-blind corporal in a field hospital in 1918, believed in
victory then why should he doubt it now as commander of the mightiest army on
earth? Having said that he advised Goebbels not to stage the winter equipment display
right now, since none of it had actually reached the front.59 Before they parted
Hitler reminisced about his childhood: his parents had squabbled about how to bring
him up, and at school he had been, he admitted, a problem child. Ultimately however
he had straightened out. (‘And how!’ dictated an admiring Dr Goebbels.)60
In confidence, Hitler promised to address the Reichstag soon.
When they met in Berlin again, on November 29, Hitler’s armies had begun to
retreat for the first time. Bitterly criticising von Brauchitsch, his army commanderin-
chief, he remarked that he had always opposed occupying the larger Soviet cities;
he had no interest in capturing even Moscow—not just to stage a victory parade
there. But when his offensive resumed in 1942, he promised, he would advance on
the Caucasus for the oil, and he would conquer the Crimea, as a colony to be called
the East Gothic gau. ‘What need,’ he asked, ‘do we have for colonies on other continents?’
61
The Russian winter’s savagery temporarily put paid to all these dreams. A German
reconnaissance battalion reached the outskirts of Moscow in a raging blizzard, but
got no further. On December 5 and 6 Stalin’s armies opened their counter-offensive.
German tank tracks froze to the ground; their guns jammed; their explosives
fizzled and squibbed. Barbarossa had come to a standstill.
GOEBBELS did not share Hitler’s hopes for a timely Japanese intervention. He expected
Tokyo to sit this war out.62 Ribbentrop secretly encouraged the Japanese to
believe that if they declared war on the United States, Hitler would follow suit.
When a Reuter’s communiqué on the night of Sunday December 7 announced that
the Japanese had struck at the American Pacific fleet in Hawaii, Hitler telephoned
Goebbels and said that he would leave for Berlin by train the following evening. At
first Washington admitted only to having lost two battleship and a carrier at Pearl
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 679
Harbor, with four more battleships and a four cruisers damaged. ‘That,’ wrote
Goebbels with satisfaction, ‘is a loss of blood … that they’ll never make good.’
He was thrilled by Japan’s infamy. Japan, he accepted, had had no real alternative.
Acceptance of Washington’s ‘provocative and insolent’ demands would have meant
her abdication as a great power. ‘The Japanese went ahead quite calmly and deliberately,’
he wrote, ‘and did not take any other power into their confidence.’
There could be no doubt whatsoever as to Hitler’s next move. ‘We shall have no
choice,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘but … to declare war on the United States.’ Now, he gloated,
Roosevelt had got his war. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘what he’s got is very different from
what he anticipated. He certainly imagined that he could deal with Germany first.’
War with the United States had long seemed likely, particularly since the speech by
Hitler in Munich a month before.63 With Japan taking the first step, what Goebbels
described in his hitherto unpublished diary as a ‘gasp of relief’ escaped the German
public: the psychological terror, the uncertainty, was over.
A mood of invincibility swept over the Nazi leaders. Hitler remarked that they
now had an ally, undefeated in three thousand years.64 Goebbels listened to Churchill’s
broadcast and concluded from his delivery that he was drunk. Hearing Roosevelt’s
address to the Congress he remarked that he had taken care not to provoke Nazi
Germany. ‘But it is too late for that,’ he happily dictated. ‘We are now in the fortunate
position of being able to pay them back.’65
He hurried round to see Hitler immediately after he arrived in Berlin at eleven
A.M. on the ninth.
He is filled with joy at this happy turn of events [recorded Goebbels]… He
rightly points out that he always expected this. That’s true. … He always expressed
the view that when the hour struck the appeasers in Tokyo would have
nothing left to say… There are certain situations in the life of a great power when
it has to take up arms if is not just to abdicate.
680 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Hitler had known nothing beforehand about the outbreak of war, he told Goebbels.
‘He was taken completely by surprise and, like myself, at first didn’t want to believe
it.’ In his estimate the Japanese now controlled the Pacific Ocean. ‘The Japanese
adopted precisely the right tactics by attacking right away and not getting drawn into
lengthy preliminaries.’ ‘A boxer’ dictated Goebbels, ‘who saves his best punches for
the fifth or six round is likely to go the same way as [Max] Schmeling in his last bout
with Joe Louis, namely getting himself floored in the first.’ ‘The Führer,’ he continued,
‘is rightly of the opinion that in modern warfare it is wholly out of date, even
mediæval, to issue an ultimatum. Once you make up your mind to defeat an enemy
you should wade right in and not hang around until he’s braced himself to take your
blows.’
Hitler confirmed to Goebbels that he wng troops, and the army reinforcements
arriving still wearing their thin Afrika Korps uniforms. Returning by train on December
16 to the Wolf’s Lair, he dictated a famous Order of the Day, forbidding his
soldiers to yield even one inch of the eastern front. His generals seemed paralysed by
their own plight.
On the same day, the sixteenth, Hitler sent for Goebbels; he confided to him the
next day at his HQ that he had decided to replace all three army group commanders
as well—they all had ‘stomach problems,’Goebbels.
In Japan, Goebbels summarized the next day in his diary, Germany had at last
found a worthy ally although they could not well harp on that without hurting Italy’s
feelings.66 In the Indian Ocean Japanese aircraft trapped and sank two of Britain’s
proudest warships, Prince of Wales and Repulse. At lunchtime Goebbels found Hitler
filled with unstinted Schadenfreude.67
They were now figh
ting a global war. The implications were immediately thrust
upon Goebbels: Tokyo, eight time-zones ahead of Berlin, pleaded for the historic
Reichstag session to be held early so that Japanese listeners could heard Hitler live
declaring war on America; but if he spoke too early, most American listeners would
be denied that pleasure.68 Thus the deputies were convened at three P.M. on the eleventh.
Everybody new what was in the air, but Hitler teased them for a while. He
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 681
revealed that Germany’s losses so far in Barbarossa were around 160,000 dead, a
figure which provoked a perceptible murmur. In a mocking tone he then laid into the
‘warmongers’ President Roosevelt with a biting irony that had the Kroll opera house
rocking with unkind laughter.69
At his ministerial conference the next morning Goebbels again warned against
encouraging excessive optimism.70 Over lunch Hitler however expressed confidence
that Japan would soon take the Philippines, Hongkong, and Singapore.71 With less
than utter candour Hitler described their soldiers’ plight on the eastern front as less
fraught than might at first seem. There were pain and suffering, he agreed, but he
hoped to reach the prescribed defensive lines without serious losses. Not for the last
time the unpublished diaries show Hitler and Goebbels infusing each other with
fresh courage in the face of a generally darkening situation with, this time, Japan as
their rising sun. Goebbels drew upon the history of the party, conjuring up heroic
analogies from the early ’30s about how they had snatched victory from those hours
of defeatist darkness before the dawn.72
Addressing the gauleiters while still in Berlin Hitler opted for greater candour. He
confessed that he had spent sleepless nights worrying whether he was doing the right
thing in declaring war on Roosevelt. ‘The Führer,’ Goebbels reported to his diary, ‘is
convinced that he would have had to declare war on the Americans sooner or later…
Now the conflict in the Far East drops into our laps as an added bonus.’ He viewed
the Battle of the Atlantic with greater confidence. Whoever won there would win the
war. Hitler was sure that the western ‘plutocracies’ would not abandon their Far East
possessions, but would fritter away their forces around the world. The present impasse
on the Moscow front was, he said, no more than ‘an unavoidable glitch.’73
Far from Berlin, Hitler’s soldiers were dying agonizing deaths in the icy blizzards.
The injured froze to death if they were not dragged under cover within minutes.
From one of his staff Goebbels received a horrifying letter describing the useless
tanks, the munitions, guns, and planes being blown up by retreating troops, and the
army reinforcements arriving still wearing their thin Afrika Korps uniforms.74 Returning
by train on December 16 to the Wolf’s Lair, he dictated a famous Order of
682 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
the Day, forbidding his soldiers to yield even one inch of the eastern front. His generals
seemed paralysed by their own plight.
On the same day, the sixteenth, Hitler sent for Goebbels; he confided to him the
next day at his HQ that he had decided to replace all three army group commanders
as well—they all had ‘stomach problems,’ he said: magenkrank. It is not plain if he was
being sarcastic. He revealed that he was going to take over command from their
‘church-going’ C.-in-C., field Marshal von Brauchitsch. ‘The more pious the general,’
agreed Goebbels, whose loathing of the general staff matched Hitler’s, ‘the
more useless he is.’ Again he sought to encourage Hitler by reminding him of how
petty in retrospect all the party’s momentous set-backs in history now seemed. Already
the British were reeling under Japan’s victories. ‘They’re fighting for their
empire’s very survival,’ he said.75
There is no doubt that in the failure of these army generals Goebbels saw his chance
of establishing himself higher in Hitler’s esteem. Before returning to Berlin he set
out his own plan to rescue the eastern armies from freezing to death. He would
launch a public appeal for woollen clothing. At first it seemed so unpretentious as to
be almost ludicrous. But he calculated that this Aktion would help to take the country’s
mind off its other grim preoccupations. Hitler was unenthusiastic. He feared
that the appeal would damage the Reich’s impregnable image. Goebbels however
won him round. Back in Berlin he called a joint conference with the High Command,
the Post Office, and the transport and other concerned ministries. The bureaucrats
expressed immediate doubts that the public would rise to the occasion.
The soldiers were downright hostile. Their obstructionism only spurred Goebbels,
the crippled civilian, to greater efforts.76
The next day, Saturday December 20, he broadcast his famous appeal throughout
Germany. ‘Particularly during these festive days,’ he said, ‘countless Germans at home
will be conscious of the debt that we all owe to our soldiers and above all those at the
fighting front.’ How could they best express this gratitude? ‘The responsible
Wehrmacht authorities,’ he reassured his listeners, ‘have done everything to provide
the front with adequate equipment for the winter.’ He saw no point in exposing the
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 683
inefficiency of the war department. Nevertheless, he purred, the front needed winter
gear. ‘Top-boots, padded or fur-lined if possible; warm woollen clothing; socks,
stockings, waist-coats, cardigans, pullovers, and warm (particularly woollen) underwear,
vests, under-pants, body belts, chest and lung protectors, all manner of
head-gear, ear-muffs, mittens, kneepads’—and so the list went on.
On December 27 the huge collecting Aktion began. When the German public eventually
handed in sixty-seven million items of winter gear, the plodding desk-generals
—men, snorted Goebbels, who would not have made it above junior adviser in
his ministry—refused to shift them. Goebbels then ordered the party’s welfare agencies
to handed out this winter gear to the raw riflemen on the railroad stations as
their trains passed through Germany on route to the eastern front. Every document
testifies to the uplift which this unique Aktion provided for home morale, as well as
for the eastern front. On New Year’s Eve he himself visited a collecting point on
Kurfürstendamm and saw this for himself. ‘The party is glad to have something to
do,’ he said, ‘and the public is glad to make the sacrifice and to get involved with the
war.’77 When Goebbels phoned his Führer on New Year’s Day, he basked in the latter’s
praise for this great feat.78 Together he and his Führer had saved the eastern armies.
Goebbels remarked to other ministers that their generals had finally proved their
mediocrity, and the party had come out on top. In that respect, he was heard to say,
it was actually a good thing that the war had not ended at Dunkirk.79
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 111