for Das Reich:: ‘The greatest political error that our adversaries have committed in
this war is to impose on the Reich a struggle of life and death.’38
The Allies listened to his message no less intently than the Silesians. ‘Goebbels,’
President Roosevelt learned, ‘has taken and twisted the slogan of unconditional surrender
and made the people feel that the slogan means unconditional annihilation.’39
‘He also stresses here the theme,’ the same source reported, ‘which we can expect to
have repeated from now on, that bolshevism is on the threshold of Europe.’40
WITH Göring in disgrace, the undeclared fight for Hitler’s succession began. Speer
and Goebbels, ostensibly still friends and allies against Göring, jostled each other for
control of total war and the supreme authority that would go with it. Leading industrialists
told Goebbels that they had investigated the Wehrmacht and found hundreds
of thousands of idle troops, just as he had told Hitler. But Speer too had reported this
to Hitler; Speer suggested a new Total War committee.41
Speer thought he had a trump card. After lunch one day he showed to Goebbels
Peenemünde’s secret film of the coming rocket missile. The film left Goebbels breath-
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 833
less. Hitler had told him more details of this fourteen-ton projectile when they last
met—it was ‘like something out of the imagination of Jules Verne,’ he told his staff.42
In full colour the newsreel showed the bomb-proof underground factory where slave
labourers were assembling the rocket engines. At a firing range deep in Poland a
special rocket transporter hoisted the ‘V–2’ upright onto its fins. Repeated launches
filmed from inside the blast-proof control bunker showed the missiles lifting off and
gathering speed above the surrounding tree-tops, balanced atop a blinding white
flame, and vanishing into the blue sky leaving only jagged vapour trails. Speer told
Goebbels that at the height of its trajectory the V–2 was one hundred miles above the
surface of their earth. ‘If we could show this film in every movie theatre,’ exclaimed
Goebbels as he hobbled out past the S.S. men guarding the door, ‘the most hardboiled
pessimist could no longer doubt our victory.’43
They talked until two in the morning. Speer told him that during June they had
turned out 3,200 fighter planes (he had just taken control of aircraft production.)
He would increase output to four thousand by closing down four-engined bomber
production. He agreed that there were a million men to spare in the economy. He
suggested that Hitler would be more receptive now than when Goebbels had last
ventured to speak with him. Goebbels however shied away from another marathon
debate and decided to set down his views on paper.44 Interestingly, Speer again decided
to get at Hitler first and submitted another paper on total war to Hitler two
days later, appropriating many of Goebbels’ ideas as his own.45
There was little time to lose. Thundering hordes of tanks and men were bearing
down on East Prussia. Hitler flew back to his Wolf’s Lair HQ there on July 16; the
army’s general staff HQ, awed at the Russian approach, moved five thousand of its
officers in the opposite direction. ‘I’d like to turf out every cowardly man-jack of
them,’ snarled Goebbels.46 The chief of general staff General Zeitzler resigned, pleading
a nervous breakdown.47
Hitler carried on regardless, unaware that the hand of history was about to be
raised against him.
834 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
DATED July 18, 1944, Goebbels’ memorandum on Total War, which we shall examine
first, was a masterpiece of advocacy. In its final form it was forty-one pages long, and
phrased as a personal appeal from one of Hitler’s oldest supporters. ‘I have stood by
you for twenty years now,’ he wrote, ‘and believe I have always been a staunch companion
when the going was roughest.’ Events of the last weeks, he said, had proved
how thinly their front lines were manned. While his faith in the party was boundless,
that in the Wehrmacht was ‘badly shaken.’ Given the right powers, the gauleiters
would be able to raise vast quantities of manpower. He believed that Speer too could
release more currently exempted young men from industry to the forces. ‘We must
act today,’ he insisted, ‘if we want to see results in three or four months’ time.’
Germany needed a firm hand, he argued. In Berlin, each day still brought invitations
to official receptions and other functions. Events had rendered Rosenberg’s
ministry totally redundant. Nobody would miss Ribbentrop’s press office either if it
was dissolved. During the winter air raids, he recalled, some government agencies
vanished for weeks, but nobody had missed them. ‘How primitively we worked earlier
in the party,’ he argued, tugging at Hitler’s nostalgia-strings. Hitler himself must
now give sufficient authority to ‘men of backbone and character’ to take charge—
men not yet wearied by this war (a sideswipe at Speer, who had returned only in May
from his three-month convalescence.) Yet another ‘committee’ such as Speer was
proposing would do more harm than good, objected Goebbels. ‘I went along with
the farce of the “Committee of Three” and would warn most urgently against any
revival of it.’
After shamelessly reminding Hitler of his own achievements since 1926 Goebbels
urged him to give ‘a man of your confidence’ the job of coordinating all the others
‘just as we, for example, have been doing highly successfully in the Reich Air-Warfare
Inspectorate.’ He boldly guaranteed, if given such powers, to raise fifty new
divisions within three or four months, while Speer would still get additional manpower
for his arms factories. True, the enemy would crow that the Nazis were at
their last gasp. But had not Churchill—his hero—called for an all-out effort after
Dunkirk? Had not Stalin, when Moscow itself was threatened, cried ‘Better to die on
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 835
your feet than survive on your knees?’ In another well-aimed dig at Speer, Rosenberg,
and Ribbentrop, all authors of many a verbose memorandum, Goebbels reminded
Hitler that this was the first such document he had submitted in twenty years.
With suitable contrition he added:
In the twenty years that I have been with you, particularly in 1938 and 1939, I
have occasioned you much private grief. You always responded with a nobility and
charity that today still fill me with deep emotion when I think of them.
‘But,’ he added after these allusions to the Lida Baarova affair and probably the
Kristallnacht, ‘I believe I have brought no dishonour upon you during this war.’
In battles in Roman times, he concluded, the message was, when all seemed lost:
Res venit ad triarios! —When the first two ranks fell in battle, he explained, it was up
to the third rank, their hardiest warriors, to save the day. ‘This hour now seems to
have struck for the nation… The people wants to do more than we are asking of it.
Call in the triarios to fulfil the people’s wish!’48
THE events of Goebbels’ next few days are uncertain and not
easy to reconstruct. His
diary entries of July 19 to 22 inclusive are missing.49 Perhaps he never dictated them.
Perhaps he did, but later ordered them destroyed. What is certain is that Goebbels’
heroic document of July 18, 1944 was forgotten midst the extraordinary events that
rocked Hitler’s empire two days later.
There was an odd prelude. On July 19 a news report was telephoned from Berlin
to Stockholm that Heinrich Himmler was shortly taking over all military personnel
matters, currently the business of Generals Schmundt and Fromm. No sooner had
this report reached Stockholm than all telephone lines from Berlin were cut.50 It is
worth recalling that the telephone monitoring agency was Göring’s monopoly. The
next day was no less crowded with the inexplicable: Field Marshal von Brauchitsch,
the retired army C.-in-C., was seen being driven through Berlin in full uniform.51 It
836 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
also seems necessary to report here that General Heinz Guderian, Hitler’s formidable
inspector of tank forces, knew full well what was about to happen and elected to
wait outside Berlin.52 Himmler too kept well away from Berlin until later that day.
The behaviour even of Albert Speer, a close associate of both Generals Fromm and
Wagner, also seemed odd in retrospect to Dr Goebbels. For a long time after the
Twentieth of July nobody trusted anybody any more.
1 Diary, May 25, 1944. ‘I can not share this viewpoint,’ he noted.
2 Speech text in VB, Jun 6, 1944; cf. Heiber, Goebbels-Reden, vol.ii, vol.ii, 323ff.
3 Oven, 322f; JG had also seen her in Feb 1944 (ibid., ‘Feb 10, 1944,’ 230.)
4 Schäffer proposed to JG on May 25, 1944 printing propaganda on the aluminium foil
anti-radar strips (‘chaff’) dropped on Britain (ZStA Potsdam, Rep.50.01, vol.813).
5 Berndt to JG, Jun 3; one copy found in Sep 1964 concealed in the Black Lake, Czechoslovakia
(Hoover Libr. TS Germany P96 B531); another in ZStA Potsdam, Rep.50.01,
vol.816.—JG dismissed Berndt for an indiscretion at this time (diary, Jun 7; Berndt to
Himmler, Jul 11 (T175, roll 33, 1405) and notes, (pp.1399, 1402) and Aug 2 (BDC file,
Berndt); promoted to SS Brigadeführer on Apr 30, 1943, Berndt joined the 5th SS Pz. Div.
‘Wiking’ on Jan 19, 1945, and died in action at the end of the war in Hungary.
6 Rommel left for Germany on Jun 4, 1944 to visit his wife (Rommel diary, and David
Irving, Trail of the Fox, London & New York, 1977, 361.)
7 Oven, ‘Jun 5, 1944,’ 336.
8 Diary, Jun 6, 1944.
9 See Bormann’s note on the table talk on Jun 5, 1944 (BA file NS.6/166).
10 JG had first met Hase on Dec 11, 1940, when he adjudged the new city commandant ‘a
magnificent officer with a very positive attitude toward the party.’ By 1941 this honeymoon
was over. Hase threatened to place the ‘Frasquita’ bar off limits to the troops; JG suggested
he ask his permission first (MinConf., Mar 3, 1941).
11 Since Jun 1 the SD had been aware of certain BBC messages whose broadcast which
would presage the invasion. See Kaltenbrunner’s telex to the OKW, Jun 1, and OKW to
Foreign Armies West, Jun 2 (NA film T78, roll 451, 6880f); Army Group B war diary, Jun 5
(NA film T311, roll 3, 2156ff); and David Irving, Hitler’s War, 633.—At 9:15 P.M. on Jun 5,
1944 the Fifteenth Army had intercepted the first such BBC messages. Oven, 336f, says he
tried to phone JG with news of this.
12 Milch diary, May 7, 1947 (author’s film DI–59).
13 Diary, Jun 6; Semler, ‘Jun 6,’ 127f; and Oven, ‘Jun 6, 1944’, 336f.
14 Karl Koller diary, Jun 6, 1944 (author’s film, DI–17).
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 837
15 Diary, Jun 7, 1944.
16 Report by Allen Dulles (OSS), Berne, cited by Donovan to FDR, Jul 5, 1944 (FDR
Libr., PSF box 168).
17 JG in Das Reich, Jun 11; OSS report, Jun 16, 1944 (NA file RG.226, entry 16, box 0877,
file 76692).
18 Diary, Jun 16, 1944.
19 Oven, ‘Jun 13, 1944,’ 352f.
20 George Axelsson in NYT, Jun 11, 1944.
21 Diary, Jun 17, 1944.
22 Oven, 357f.
23 NYT, Jun 18; war diary, ‘Flak Regiment 155(W),’ Jun 17, 1944.
24 Diary, Jun 20, 1944.
25 Ibid., Jun 14, 1944.
26 Ibid., Jun 16, 1944.
27 JG, ‘Führen wir einen totalen Krieg?’ in Das Reich, Jul 2; diary, Jun 20, 1944.
28 Koller diary, Jun 21, 1944; Freeman, 158.—On Jun 26 JG wrote Hitler recommending
the Swords to the Knight’s Cross for Emil Beck and Johannes Engel for heroism during the
raid (BA file NL.118/106).
29 Diary, Jun 22, 1944.
30 Ibid., Jun 20, 1944: Kaltenbrunner had furnished him with an SD monograph on ‘Stalin
and total war.’
31 Ibid., Jun 26, 28, 1944.
32 JG, air war notice No.151, Jul 14, 1944 (NA film T84, roll 322, 1419f).
33 Oven, ‘Jul 1, 1944,’ 377.
34 As JG himself noted, diary, Jul 8, 1944.
35 Hanke married Freda Baroness von Fircks (formerly married to von Johnston), daughter
of a landowner, on Nov 25, 1944 (Dr Bernhard Kortüm to Milch, Mar 6, 1950, in Milch
papers; and author’s interview with the late Freda Rössler.
36 Ebermayer & Meissner, Revue, No.20, May 17, an No.26, Jun 21, 1952.
37 JG’s speech, ‘Das Vaterland ist in Gefahr,’ in VB,Ê Jul 8, NYT, Jul 9, 1944.
38 JG, ‘Der Krieg in der Sackgasse,’ Das Reichˆ, Jul 9, 1944.
39 W J Donovan to FDR, Jul 15, 1944 (FDR Libr., PSF box 168).
40 Ditto, Jul 12 (Ibid.); cf. Oven, Jul 4, 1944,’ 378, and JG diary, Jul 23, 1944.
41 Ibid., Jul 11; Oven, 390ff.—Speer suggested the committee might comprise Himmler,
Lammers, Keitel, Sauckel, JG and himnself, but not Bormann. On Jul 6–8 Speer had drawn
Hitler’s attention to the under-utilized manpower still latent in the domestic economy and
the armed forces. Speer’s notes, Jul 10, 1944.—See too JG’s correspondence with Unruh at
this time (ZStA Potsdam, Rep.50.01, vol.862).
42 Oven, ‘Jun 23,’ 368.—In NYT on Jul 16, 1944, George Axelsson mocked that the
current rumour of a twelve-ton rocket ‘smacks of Jules Verne.’
43 Oven, ‘Jul 11, 1944,’ 390.
44 Diary, Jul 11; Speer had received a letter from his chief economist Kehrl, dated Jul 10,
1944, drawing attention to under-utilized manpower in the cities. Cf. Peter Longerich,
‘Joseph Goebbels und der totale Krieg,’ VfZ, 1987, 289ff.
838 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
45 Speer to Hitler, Jul 12; Speer chronicle, Jul 1944.
46 Diary, Jul 15, 1944.
47 Schmundt suggested Manstein as Zeitzler’s successor.—Dr Weber confirmed in an interview
with the author that he had signed a sick-note for Zeitzler to cover his ‘retreat’.
48 JG to Hitler, Jul 18, 1944 (BA file NL.118/107); Longerich, writing in 1987, is incorrect
in calling this ‘an unknown memorandum.’ Oven’s ‘diaries,’ published in Buenos Aires,
1950, vol.ii, 89, refer to it, and I used the actual text in Hitler’s War (New York & London,
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 137