Goebbels: A Biography

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Goebbels: A Biography Page 15

by Peter Longerich


  Although the NSDAP was still no more than a splinter party with modest results at the polls, there was one sense in which it had succeeded: It was now the only radical right-wing organization of any note surviving in Berlin, and its structures were gradually firming up, even if the position of the SA within the Party as a whole was still problematic.58 The “Gau days” instituted by Goebbels played an important part in strengthening the organization: Roughly once a month, the Gauleiter called all the leading Party officeholders together. He observed in December that a “leadership cadre” was now gradually taking shape in Berlin, not least thanks to the good work done by the National Socialist functionary Reinhold Muchow, who had been appointed head of the administrative department in July 1928.59

  Following the model of the German Communist Party (KPD), Muchow introduced a system of street cells led by civilian Party comrades; in this way SA members were released from the organizational work of the Party and freed up for other tasks. By the beginning of 1930 the Berlin NSDAP could count on over nine hundred street cells coordinated by forty sections. The street cells carried out the detailed work of campaigning above all: For example, they distributed “block newspapers” produced independently by the sections themselves. In this system, there were twelve hundred functionaries working for the Party.60 In 1929, to form a second component in the organization of the Gau—again following the KPD model—Muchow set about building up a cell structure within industry. From these—initially slow—beginnings, the system of National Socialist industry-based cells developed into the NSDAP’s employee organization.61

  The price to be paid for this steadily increasing political success was—something Goebbels himself desired—his gradual isolation from his Party cronies, tending eventually to solitude. Whereas early in his time in Berlin he had struck up friendships with various Party comrades, now he was far more concerned to keep his distance. By October 1928, the only two people he considered friends were Hans Herbert Schweitzer and his driver, Albert Tonak. Five days later he even wrote that he had “no friends.” “Everybody makes claims on my person,” he complained a few weeks later, “but I have no claim on anyone else. It’s lonely at the top!” More than a year later, he felt “how solitary I have become. But perhaps that’s a good thing.”62 In August 1931 he explained to a colleague “why I have no close friends in the Gau. I’ve been disappointed often enough. Business and friendship don’t mix.”63

  GOEBBELS AND WOMEN

  The many affairs that Goebbels engaged in from spring 1928 on, as the Berlin Party was being re-founded and the Party organization built up, failed to overcome his loneliness. All these affairs were in any case eclipsed by the resumption of the relationship between him and the still-idolized Anka.

  His ex-girlfriend made a surprise visit in March to tell him how unhappy she was. Her husband—his old rival Mumme—had cheated on her. She sat at home with her little four-year-old son, “unloved and joyless.” In Goebbels the old emotions were immediately rekindled: “You have one great love in your lifetime. Everything else is deception or a business deal: Mine was called Anka.”64 A few weeks later they met up in Thuringia,65 and a few days after that she was back in Berlin: “Anka loves me, I love her, neither of us says anything about it, but we know it all the same.”66

  In April he met Anka in Weimar. In the evening, as they were sitting together in a wine bar, a former lover of hers, an artist, appeared. Goebbels was forced to listen to the stories told by this “horror”: “He’s a pacifist and a militarist, anti-Semite and Jew vassal, democrat and aristocrat, enthuses about the East and praises classicism. A dreadful conglomeration. And full of jealousy, too.” On top of everything else, Anka took his side against Goebbels: “I give in. I’m too good to be just the tail end of a failed marriage, even if she is called Anka. Farewell, Anka! You will be ruined by sin or bogged down in mundane life. It’s a shame about you. But evidently it can’t be helped.” When Anka turned up in Berlin a few days later, he spurned her. But two weeks later they met again in Weimar and were reconciled.67

  The reunion with Anka cast a shadow over his relationship with Tamara,68 who revealed to him a few weeks after his passion for Anka had been reignited that she was now “with the Jew Arnold Zweig.”69 This relationship was now over as far as he was concerned, for “since I’ve seen Anka again, the beauty of all other women fades before my eyes.”70 Goebbels now constantly fell in love, and with a wide variety of women, often sustaining two or three affairs at a time. The old love for Anka flared up again and again, but he could not bring himself to make her leave her husband. It seems as if he was keeping the affair with Anka up in the air for as long as he could in order to wreak revenge for her earlier unfaithfulness. And yet he did not want to commit himself to other lovers, because all his affairs were overshadowed by Anka. His behavior naturally provoked jealousy and led to many a tearful evening. But he was neither able nor willing to empathize with the injured women. For him there was only one thing that mattered: his state of mind. He convinced himself that there was an inherent tragedy hovering over all of his relationships and that it was all Anka’s fault. This tragedy, which he invoked constantly, was part of his self-dramatizing narrative: With a glittering career ahead of him, he had to make this sacrifice—and the women had to share his fate.

  In his almost total self-absorption he thought women he had met only briefly were in love with him. He was completely sure of their feelings, although not a word was exchanged, not a gesture reciprocated. So, for example, on an outing of Berlin Party employees he sat “next to a lovely girl, and without saying as much, we love each other. Neither of us shows it, but it is so.”71 Less than a week later, he experienced a very special erotic attraction during a theater visit: “During the last act I sit next to a wonderful woman, and we have a little celebration of love, without a word, just two glances, a couple of indrawn breaths.”72

  In August he fell instantly in love with the wife of the right-wing writer Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz but after seeing her a few times came to the conclusion: “Maybe not.”73 On a short visit to Innsbruck, he met Pille Kölsch with his young wife and immediately confessed that “this young woman, this little devil,” had him under her spell.74 In September he met the young Party supporter Hannah Schneider, “a true German girl,” with whom he immediately fell in love.75 But this affair had hardly begun when he received a cry for help from Anka: She had now decided to ask for a divorce.76 He met her again at the beginning of October. But by then, for the sake of her son, she had already dropped the idea of divorce. Trouble seemed to be looming: “Now she wants to leave Weimar for a few months and come to Berlin. Things could get quite lively.”77

  In October Goebbels broke up with Hannah: The relationship was becoming too complicated for his liking.78 “A man with a mission can’t afford unhappy love affairs,” he wrote.79 Goebbels clearly felt that beautiful women were positively pursuing him: At one of his events in Wilmersdorf, the audience contained “Fräulein Müller from Borkum”;80 his ex-girlfriend Tamara, with whom he spent a few moments after the meeting; and a new “lovely girlfriend” who visited him next evening at home.81 This was Johanna Polzin, and it would not be the last evening they spent together.82 And an eighteen-year-old girl, Jutta Lehmann, came into his life one day in December.83 “She wants to be my loyal comrade. Temptation to escape from the burden of loneliness around me. […] Love and duty in conflict. But I love her all the more because I know I must lose her, just as I’ve lost all other women, because I must serve my cause. Farewell! Adio! Jutta!”84 However, in the next few weeks there was no further mention of farewells, and he decided he was “very happy to have her.”85 In February he found that “in the last few days I have not been able to relate properly to Jutta. I don’t know whether this is due to my general agitation, or whether I’ve tired of [the affair] again because of my insatiable need for change.”86 But he did not want to make a real break with her.87

  Over the winter of 1928–29 he saw Anka when
he was passing through Weimar, and from time to time she came to Berlin.88 He felt as if “she were a good friend to me. With her it feels like being with a mother.”89 She attended a performance of Goebbels’s play Blood Seed. But afterward they clashed badly over “the Jewish question”: “Her thinking is still too bourgeois.” Late at night Anka described her difficult private situation, which drew sympathy from him: “What a burden of sorrow and suffering Anka has had to bear!” “Is this fate revenging itself on her for what she did to me?”90 After many more meetings91 he believed that she was once again “allowing herself to be formed by me. She is becoming a part of me.”92

  At Easter they took a trip to the Harz Mountains. The party included the Schweitzers, Fräulein Bettge—a Party employee devoted to him—and Anka’s husband:93 “She’s wearing a green leather coat and looking wonderful. The Stalherm lady. How did she end up with this man?” Georg Mumme’s behavior was odd: “She cold-shoulders him completely, and he puts up with it. […] He doesn’t understand Anka at all. And she doesn’t love him anymore, either. The man expresses his admiration and respect for me in Anka’s presence. Let anyone work that out if they can.” They went to see the Kyffhäuser monument, Harzburg, Goslar, and Wernigerode. “This poor, marvelous woman in the hands of that pseudo-educated philistine. Makes you want to wade in.” So it was that “retribution came late, but thereby took even crueler revenge. But it’s right that it should be so. We were not meant to be together. I had to take the path of action. It was for her to help me as much as she could.”

  During the car journey they sat “close to each other like lovers. Under cover of the car rug Anka passed a ring to me that her mother gave her. Thank you: so kind! I’ll keep it like a talisman.” After they had parted company in Aschersleben, his mood was sad: “Why must I forgo happiness?” But he knew the answer of old: “Probably so that all Germans can be happy again one day. A few must sow for many to reap. It’s hard, but that’s how it has to be.”

  Between meetings with Anka he sought consolation, and the pattern was always the same. There was, for example, an Anneliese Haegert who loved him “beyond measure”: “But I can’t decide. Anka always intervenes.”94 One evening in April he was visited by the “lovely Xenia”: Her full name was Xenia von Engelhardt, and she told him how she had to suffer at the hands of “her faithless young man.” Goebbels offered consolation in a “night vibrant with happiness.”95 He declared on May 20 that he loved her “beyond measure.” She was “like Anka in many ways.” He was with Anka from late May to early June in Weimar.96 As Mumme spent a good deal of time away, the two were left completely undisturbed: “We were both happy beyond measure. Anka looked after me like a mother.”97

  But he was not comfortable with the role of “man friend” and occasional lover, either. At the end of July in Weimar he made a decision: “Farewell, you two. I’ve got to leave you in all your misery and futility. I haven’t got the time to give myself completely to women. Greater tasks await me.”98 He was to visit Anka in Weimar again in December and in January 1930, but after that he thought he had gotten over her.99

  As Xenia had found out in July about his visit to Weimar, their relationship entered a serious crisis.100 In the meantime, during a vacation in Mecklenburg, he had met Erika Chelius, “daughter of a head forester from Angermünde”: “not beautiful, but charming and pleasant” and, most important of all,101 “so like Anka Stalherm. When she was young and not weighed down by marriage and bourgeois life.”102

  In August Erika accompanied him to the Nuremberg Party rally, where Xenia unexpectedly turned up too.103 During an excursion he kissed Erika goodbye.104 Back in Berlin, he found his mind constantly dwelling on his new conquest, although he was certain that “I won’t be any more committed to her than to all the others.” Gradually he began to feel “pangs of conscience about all these tortuous relationships. […] It’s enough to make you despair. Women! Women are to blame for nearly everything.”105

  In the following weeks he saw Erika several times in Berlin, or visited her at her parents’ place in Grumsin in Mecklenburg, where he spent New Year’s.106 He told Xenia in mid-August that he wanted to end their relationship, and on the same evening he met Julia, with whom he likewise made a final break: “Enough! Enough! […] Otherwise I’ll end up [wrung out] like a washcloth.”107 But Xenia did not completely disappear from the scene: She came to his place often during the autumn and winter of 1929.108 Of one particular evening, for example, when he had come home exhausted, he wrote: “Get Xenia to come over, so I’m not quite so alone. […] I’ve got to have someone to whom I can pour my heart out. Xenia is a good listener.”109

  In February he met Charlotte Streve.110 “She loves me to distraction,” he noted. “But more for what I want than for what I am.”111 In the next few weeks he spent plenty of time with Xenia, too, of whom he wrote almost apologetically in his diary that she was “a welcome counterweight […] to all this mass activity.”112

  Over lunch one day at the beginning of March he talked to Erika Chelius about his relationships with women: “I need women as a counterweight. Particularly on critical days they have an effect on me like balm on a wound. But I must have different types of women around me.” Erika reacted “very understandingly” to this avowal. That afternoon he was visited by Xenia: “Made coffee and played around.”113

  CHAPTER 6

  “A Life Full of Work and Struggle”

  Politics Between Berlin and Munich

  Credit 6.1

  The Prussian police and judiciary were far from passive observers of the continual provocations from the Berlin Gauleiter. The constant interrogations, court cases, and convictions visibly affected Goebbels. This picture shows him shortly before being found guilty on account of an article in Der Angriff that was judged to be insulting to the Reich president, May 31, 1930.

  From spring 1929 onward, Goebbels observed with some suspicion the closer collaboration Hitler was developing with two nationalist groups: a veterans’ organization called the Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet) and the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People’s Party, DNVP). Central to this cooperation was the Stahlhelm proposal to form a united front of the nationalist right and to organize a plebiscite to bring about fundamental changes in the constitution: The powers of Parliament were to be devolved to the president of the Reich and the Weimar democracy turned into an authoritarian state.1 Goebbels was afraid that if Hitler fell for the blandishments of the Stahlhelm and supported what he, Goebbels, regarded as a “pointless referendum,” then the Führer would become too deeply embroiled in a right-wing opposition front, and the NSDAP’s scope for action would be significantly curtailed.2

  On March 24 Goebbels wrote in his diary: “I’m scared of a rerun of November 9 [19]23. Nothing connects us either with the right or with the left. Ultimately, we stand absolutely alone. And that is good. We must not forfeit our own preeminence in opposition.” One thing that particularly worried him was that “the boss doesn’t reply to any inquiries.” But at the end of the month he noted with relief that Hess had assured him on Hitler’s behalf that there would be nothing more than “friendly relations” between the Party and the Stahlhelm, and there was “no question of going along with the mad policy of the alliance. Especially not the plebiscite.”3 But just a few days later his anxiety returned, above all because of the very receptive attitude shown by the Völkischer Beobachter to the Stahlhelm. Commenting on a conversation with Horst Wessel, he wrote: “The Munich circle is intolerable at times. I’m not prepared to go along with a bad compromise […]. I have my doubts about Hitler sometimes. Why doesn’t he speak out?”4

  On his next visit to Berlin, Hitler was able to reassure him: “He too rejects the plebiscite in the sharpest terms, and has even written a cutting critique of it. There can be no question whatsoever of collaborating.”5 Goebbels thought a “fairly crude letter” written by Hitler6 to the head of the Stahlhelm, Franz Seldte, was not quite adequate: “Our intention is to be, a
nd remain, revolutionaries.”7 In May he ostentatiously published two editorials pillorying “the reactionaries.”8 In May, finally, Hitler attacked the plebiscite plan in a memorandum “which was refreshingly direct about the bourgeois party rabble.”9 For the moment, Goebbels was satisfied.

  He went on polemicizing against the “united front of Dawes patriots,”10 an allusion to the fact that in 1924 some members of the DNVP parliamentary party had voted in favor of the Dawes Plan, the first international agreement to restructure reparation payments. He also declined to take part in a large-scale event staged by the nationalist right on the grounds that he did not want to collaborate with “parties and men who have said ‘yes’ to Versailles or Dawes, since this means they have accepted the war-guilt lie and appear unfit to conduct an honest campaign against it.”11 But in the meantime a new plebiscitary movement was being launched by the nationalist right, calling for a petition for a referendum on the Young Plan, accepted by the Reich government on July 21, which was designed to make German reparations payments somewhat more manageable but which, according to the nationalists, would actually serve to guarantee the delivery of payments and cement reparations in place.

  At the beginning of July Hitler spoke to a rally of National Socialist students in Berlin; during this visit he stated his intention “to go in with the German nationalists” on the plebiscite against Versailles and Young.12 A terse diary entry for that day concealed a resounding defeat for Goebbels: Although the terms of the proposed petition had been altered, the NSDAP was nonetheless allying itself with the “reactionaries” he disliked so much. He was suspiciously quick to spot a positive side to this setback, however: “But we’ll take control and rip the mask away from the D.N.V.P. We’re strong enough to dominate any alliance.”

 

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