The Work I Did

by Brunhilde Pomsel

  We were the first to be bombed out, and in 1943 things really got going. I often had to stay at work until eight in the evening. And the sirens went off at seven o’clock, so that you couldn’t go into the street. The all-clear often didn’t come until ten or twelve o’clock, which meant I couldn’t get home. We had lovely comfortable armchairs, so I pushed two of them together and had a snooze. We did that often. We had no choice.

  When a raid came, we often had to lock up Goebbels’s little private apartment. He had a sweet little apartment in the Propaganda Ministry, separate from the ordinary Public Enlightenment and Propaganda business. But access to that apartment was opened up when the air raids increased, because the moment the sirens went off, anyone still at work had to secure everything. It was an old building. So we had to open all the windows, then draw down the blackout blinds. We had these special blinds that didn’t let a ray of light outside. Then we had to run water into all the basins and tubs so that we had water to put out the fires. We had to do the same in that little apartment. It was a very nicely furnished flat with lovely carpets, a little kitchen, a pretty little sitting room with very elegant furniture and a bathroom with an enormous bathtub. We had to fill the tub and seal up the windows, and when the alarm was over it all had to be removed again. We sometimes even dared to sit down on the chairs. They had this French pattern – wonderful upholstery. Unbelievably chic. That was where Herr Goebbels’s love scenes were supposed to have been played out when he was associating with that Czech actress, Lída Baarová. I saw a film about her later, after the war, when she talked about her love life with Goebbels. I think she probably really loved him very much. I could also imagine that there were moments when he thought: dear Christ, all this political shit! Living with this beautiful woman is much nicer.

  The atmosphere in the Propaganda Ministry was the same as in the whole country, but it would soon worsen. Things went into decline, especially supplies, and everything got very much worse. Stalingrad10 had changed everything – the loss of the army. We sensed that in the Ministry too… For the first months it was wonderful there and after my initial doubts I liked it very much. All the coming and going, the beautiful furniture, the nice people. But then everything collapsed. The whole atmosphere had changed. Stalingrad was played down; they tried to present it as a mere trifle. But they didn’t succeed.

  Then the war really got going. From then on Goebbels was in the Promi a lot, limping through his office. He couldn’t hide the limp. That was a time when you couldn’t do as much as you can now. Today they would sort it out in some way so that you didn’t notice it. But it was impossible to ignore. He limped in, and his suit could be as smart as you like, and as well fitting, but he limped, and that made you feel a bit sorry for him. He made up for it all with incredible arrogance and self-confidence. Before – he was often shown in early pictures when he was canvassing for Hitler with other people on trucks and things, with a cap – he looked dreadful. Now, he was always a gentleman when he came into the office. Because sometimes there were people with him – you can imagine, they had some pretty tough discussions. Once I remember us all saying, ‘He really shouted today,’ when he had shouted at somebody or other. We all thought that was incredible. Never again. Just that one time. He was a man who had – what do they say? – composure, self-control.

  There were also comical moments. Someone had thought of sending Goebbels’s dog to him in Venice. Goebbels had gone to the Venice Biennale with his wife and stayed there for a few days. Someone had probably got word that Goebbels had said it would be nice if his dog were there too, so some eager staff member called us to say that Herr Minister wanted to have his dog in Venice. We said, ‘Are they mad, sending a dog on a plane to the Biennale in Venice? As if they have nothing else to worry about, in the middle of the war…’ So we thought it was infuriating. Someone was given the task of going to Tempelhof airport and ensuring that the dog would fly to Venice – but accompanied by somebody, with the dog as hand luggage. Some chief of press was flying to Venice every day anyway, taking the latest foreign news so that Herr Minister could keep up to date. That was Herr von Schirmeister,11 another assistant. Schirmeister was told, ‘If you fly tomorrow, take the dog with you to Goebbels. Herr Minister would like to have his dog there.’ ‘Never,’ Schirmeister said. ‘I will never do anything like that.’ He was a slightly older, sensitive gentleman, who thought this was an infuriating presumption.

  It was no good: they handed the poor chap the dog at the airport and he flew with the dog to Venice, but there he was received with the greatest displeasure. I think Goebbels himself was furious. What idiot had come up with the idea of flying that oversensitive, nervous animal all the way there? He was a shy animal, in fact; he was big and beautiful, but if you took a step towards him he always flinched. He had been spoilt, somehow. So the dog was sent back, and that was all in the third year of the war. So there was an almighty to-do from Goebbels. We thought that was a wonderful story; we laughed our heads off.

  I discovered his true nature only very slowly. I remember the famous event at the Sportpalast – ‘Do you want total war?’12 We knew Goebbels was delivering a speech that afternoon. At that time all events had been moved to the afternoon, because the sirens went off every evening at half-past six, whether planes came or not. They almost always did; it was very rarely a false alarm. There were no evening events any more, there were no theatre performances, no films in the cinema, everything was moved to the afternoon. So Herr Goebbels was to give a speech in the Sportpalast, and suddenly they were saying that two ladies from the outer office were to come to the Sportpalast too. ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t know, they just want two to come.’ ‘Who?’ We all looked at each other, and no one volunteered. Frau Krüger was the oldest so she didn’t need to, and it fell to me and a young girl.

  An SS man came and put us in an elegant Mercedes. That was a lovely start, and he drove us to the Sportpalast. It was on Potsdamer Strasse, and he took us to one of the rows of seats. Really good seats, very near the speaker’s podium. The hall was already full of workers who had been drummed up. For these events, if people in the factories were called on – who wants to go? – at first everyone ducked out. At around this time, certainly. No one volunteered; they were mostly chosen. So they were dragged out of the plants and factories to take part in this announcement in the Sportpalast. I still remember the actor Heinrich George, the father of Götz George, sitting in the third row at the front.

  And as soon as we were there, it got going. Frau Goebbels was sitting behind us with two children, and SS men sat next to us; we really were in an elite position, I would say. The marching bands came in, with the usual military marching music and singing and everything else that went with it. Then Goebbels got up to make his speech. He spoke very well; he was a persuasive speaker. That day he actually became so intense, it was really an outburst – like an outburst in a mental hospital, I would say. It was if he’d said: now you can all do whatever you want. And then, as if every individual in that crowd had been stung by a wasp, all of a sudden they all let themselves go, shouting and stamping and wishing they could tear their arms out. The noise was unbearable.

  My colleague sat there with her hands clenched; we were both so horrified by what was happening. Not by Goebbels, not just by the people – but by the fact that it was even possible. The two of us weren’t part of this crowd. We were onlookers; we were perhaps the only onlookers.

  It came to the point where I don’t think even Goebbels knew what he was saying. I lack the words to describe how he managed to get these hundreds of people to the point where no one was sitting down, but they were all jumping to their feet and shouting and cheering. He did it; I don’t think even he knew how. I still remember how we stood there, firmly clutching each other’s hands, my little colleague and I. It was as if we were frozen to the spot by everything that was happening. Behind us stood an SS man, and he patted us on the shoulders and said, ‘At least clap along.’ So of course we cl
apped along. You had to, of course. He even said so. You couldn’t exclude yourself; there was no option. We clapped along. It was as if we were drunk. We both had a sense of something very terrible happening.

  And then it was over, after they had cheered themselves out. I think that anyone who hadn’t cheered along would have been murdered by his neighbours. I don’t know. In my whole life I had never experienced anything like that; it wasn’t enthusiasm, it was as if they didn’t know what they were doing. ‘Do you want total war?’ ‘Yes!’ The ‘Yes’ was quite unambiguous. The SS man who had brought us drove us home again, and we were both completely horrified by the whole performance. We hadn’t grasped what he had been talking about. There was the impression of this clamouring crowd that had no idea why it was clamouring. It was a natural event; the whole crowd could do nothing about it. Goebbels himself probably couldn’t either. It seemed to me that he himself didn’t understand what he had started. Like a little flame that didn’t know what its possibilities were, and then that clamouring crowd. Oh God, they could just as easily have charged forward and killed him.

  Until then we hadn’t known that side of Goebbels. We had never gone to any rallies of any kind. So we were quite shaken; it was a complete change. But we probably didn’t think much more about it than that. We were bowled over by the moment, then we somehow came to terms with it. God, we were young, and we didn’t think about it so much, not the way we thought about it later, when it was all too late. You weren’t even aware of it yourself. While now, when so many years have passed and so much has happened, I see it all quite differently. Much more deeply, and much stranger. That one person was capable of putting hundreds of people in a state where they were shouting, shouting, shouting: ‘Yes, we want total war!’ If you tell somebody that today, they would just shake their head and say, ‘Right – were they all drunk or what? What was it that made those people shout like that?’ But they had to. They had really been put under a spell by a single person.

  I mean, there are psychologists and science that deal with that whole thing, about how a thing like that is possible. When I remember that again, I think: how was that possible? That it had such an effect on us? They didn’t shout because they had to shout, because somebody had said to them, ‘Now go to the rally and then you all have to shout.’ No, they shouted at that moment because at the front someone was telling them something they agreed with. Like Jesus did or… I don’t know. There are things that explain why people en masse do inexplicable things. If they were asked about it, they themselves would be startled.

  All I can say about Goebbels is that he was an outstanding actor. He was a good actor. Hardly any actor could have given a better performance of the transformation of a well-brought-up, serious person into a crazed brawler than he did; you can certainly say that. He was unrecognisable. That was another thing that left us so shaken by that Sportpalast event. A person you see almost every day in the office – nicely turned out, elegant, almost a noble elegance – and then that raging dwarf. You can hardly imagine a greater contrast.

  At that moment I found him terrible. Frightening. But then I repressed it again. I never lionised him or anything like that. Not even later, when he came into the office and asked us politely for something. I already had in the back of my head how he had shouted in the Sportpalast: and here you are now playing the part of the elegantly dressed civilian.

  A short time later there was an invitation to dinner from Goebbels. The minister had been informed that the ladies in his office sometimes had to spend the night there, because there were no available means of transport after the air raids. A gesture was required. So they said that at some point the minister would invite the secretaries to dinner, but not all at once. Always two at a time, to a personal dinner.

  Two of the secretaries got the ball rolling and the next day came enthusiastically into the office and told the others: ‘We were collected from the office, in a car, of course, and brought to Schwanenwerder, and there was Frau Goebbels, and there was fabulous food!’ No exaggeration – there was a war on, after all. Goebbels always set a good example: he didn’t put on anything too luxurious. But everything was lovely and pleasant. ‘It was a terribly nice evening, you can look forward to it when your time comes,’ they said.

  It was a few weeks before it was my turn, and I looked forward to it very much. It started exactly like this: a limousine pulled up, and an SS man took us to Wannsee, Schwanenwerder. We went in, and we were led into the dining room. There was a big table laid out, and at least twenty people standing around – Gauleiters or Deputy Gauleiters – and I knew some of them from visits or because we’d even dealt with them before. So we weren’t alone with Herr Goebbels. Then Goebbels came and greeted us with a handshake, and we sat down. I sat beside him, on his right side; I felt very honoured.

  Then we ate. But he didn’t say anything to me – he just talked about unimportant matters. The food was nice; I think there was a goose, which in itself was cheering. Then Goebbels sounded off across the table. Sometimes someone else spoke as well, but Herr Minister was the main speaker. He ate quite quickly and not very much, and so did the others. I had been told beforehand: ‘Don’t put off eating for very long. When Goebbels puts his fork or his knife down, then you stop eating and you don’t eat any more. So you have to eat what you’re served very quickly, so that you get the benefit of it.’ I followed that advice.

  The dinner was over, and then there was pudding. Politics and air raids were the main topics. He only exchanged banalities with me and never asked any personal questions. How long have you been here? Or: are you married? Do you have relatives, maybe you have a husband or a father who’s at the war? Nothing. He didn’t ask me a single personal question. And Frau Goebbels wasn’t there at all, which was the big flaw in the evening, because she would have turned it into something jolly and cheerful, with a lot of charm. That was missing from the evening. Unfortunately, I had got the wrong day.

  Then we were led into a side room, and there was this sort of screen there, showing some stupid film that had just come out. We were allowed to watch that, and then we were served something else, a mocha or something. And then the SS man reappeared and drove us back to the city. My colleague and I were very disappointed by that evening.

  After my release from prison I was often asked what kind of things crossed our desks. As administrators, we also had to deal with very harmless things. There wasn’t really that much work to do. We sat there in the outer office, and we made lots of phone calls. All very simple things, the kind that happen in any firm where not everyone knows straight away what’s going on.

  No one at the Corporation ever told me, for example, what they were able to listen in on via that London station. They must have had critical things to say. I didn’t have friends like that. Perhaps people were a bit cautious with me because I was sitting in Goebbels’s office, so they didn’t want to tell me anything.

  But we didn’t want to know anyway. We knew it was a terrible war that was served up to us as a necessary war, a war we needed to preserve Germany, which was treated with hostility by the rest of the world. We had no friends abroad either: our friendships and acquaintances weren’t as extensive as that. We were very much limited to ourselves, and even more so as a result of the war.

  As far as we outer-office ladies were concerned, our function was simply to be ready to leap in. We were a cheerful, harmonious gang. We worked well together. We were a nice collection of colleagues, nothing more than that. Our desks were in a rectangle. All the reports, requests and changes produced in the building landed on our desks, but lots of things, probably including the most controversial, had been decided already. Only things that were particularly important reached all the way up to the Minister himself, and we got those on our desks. I remember that we weren’t allowed to scribble on them. We always had to use blue ink. Not red, not green. Green was the Minister, I think; red was the Secretary of State. I can’t remember if those colours are right. But
anyway the colours indicated who the documents were meant for.

  There are lots of things I can’t remember sixty years later. The phone was constantly ringing, but not for Goebbels. He didn’t get phone calls directly from his people, from his fellow ministers. He had the latest invention from Siemens: a telephone table, so that you didn’t have to dial, you just typed, then you got straight through to Hermann Göring. But those connections were closed to us. We could press the keys as much as we wanted, but nothing happened. Otherwise we could have called anyone at all – very important people.

  Of course, much of the work involved embellishing the bare facts from the front or in the Reich; they were corrected on instruction to make things look more positive for us. That was the fundamental principle of Public Enlightenment: the people were now enlightened, when they had previously always been lied to by the other governments. That had been the fundamental principle of the Nazis, but I can’t remember any examples today.

  Otherwise our days were always exactly the same. Really controversial things like the Scholl case [the White Rose] didn’t cross our desks. But Herr Frowein, Goebbels’s personal advisor, handed me all the files, the court files, unsealed. I was to put them in a safe. ‘Please don’t look inside,’ he said. And I didn’t, because my boss asked me not to. Or maybe he said: ‘I’m relying on you not to peek.’ It was all very quick, and then he went away. I was left alone with the thing and didn’t look inside. And I thought, oh, God, I’d love to. But I won’t: he’s relying on me not to do it, so I won’t do it. I was still very proud because of the trust he put in me. That was more important than satisfying my curiosity. I thought that was very noble of me; I’ll never forget that.

  Towards the end of the war we kept getting these coloured sheets of paper, pink or yellow. They contained the latest truths, not least about figures – casualty numbers in battles, and about rapes of German women by the approaching Russians. Unimaginable. We passed that on to the Corporation and the newspapers. If it said ‘Twenty women were raped in the village’ we turned it into thirty and so on. Those things were conveyed to the people in an exaggerated version. The terrible crimes of the enemy were all multiplied. I remember that very clearly.