Goebbels: A Biography

by Peter Longerich

  For the time being, Goebbels swallowed his reservations about Munich. He decided to rent an apartment in the Bavarian capital at the Party’s expense and “gradually move to Munich” after the election.6

  Following the guidelines established at the Gauleiters’ meeting, Goebbels now exercised a decisive influence on the election campaign. However, the Reich propaganda department’s management of the campaign was far from optimal: The Party’s propaganda machine was not yet streamlined enough for that.7 At Goebbels’s suggestion, the whole campaign was fought under a single slogan: “The fight against the Young parties.” The plan was to attack the SPD above all, but also the Center Party, the DVP, and the DDP, thus targeting the government parties that had voted in the Reichstag in March for the restructuring of reparations under the Young Plan. In terms of content, then, the new head of Reich propaganda continued along the lines that had been central to the Party’s agitation in previous years.

  Typical of the campaign was a poster featuring the massive figure of a martial-looking worker wielding a huge hammer with which to smash some creatures representing the “Young parties” (“Pulverize them!”) or another showing a caricature of a Social Democrat functionary willingly carrying out the Young Plan by shifting billions of marks abroad: “Stop! That money belongs to hardworking people.” Aside from this, the NSDAP’s most important campaigning methods consisted of mass rallies and propaganda marches.8

  While he was working on the campaign, Goebbels was deluged with court cases. On August 12 he had to appear in a court in Hanover to answer a charge of slandering the Prussian prime minister, Otto Braun. Goebbels managed to extract his head from this noose not by denying the remarks, which had been an accusation of corruption, but by claiming that his remarks did not refer to Braun at all but rather to the former Reich chancellor Gustav Bauer. And he actually got away with this charade; the court found him not guilty.9

  Potentially more threatening was a summons from the Leipzig High Court, which wanted to question him about a speech he had made in 1927 in which he had speculated about a possible SA putsch—or at least, that was how the law perceived it. He was investigated on suspicion of high treason. When cross-examined at the end of July, he pretended that he could not remember the speech. The case was eventually dropped for lack of evidence.10

  Meanwhile, there was a development in the appeal hearing connected with the “Hindenburg trial.” Goebbels had already learned from his defending counsel that Hindenburg had indicated to his state secretary, Otto Meissner, that he wanted to drop charges. Goebbels’s lawyer worked with the Reich president’s office to draw up a corresponding statement.11 The hearing was postponed;12 when it finally took place, on August 14, the state prosecutor revealed to an astonished public a letter from Hindenburg stating that13 on the basis of the explanation he had received from Goebbels he had concluded that no insult to his person had been intended, so that he was no longer inclined to press charges against the National Socialist politician.14 Instead of the fine of 800 marks the court had earlier imposed on him, it now brought in a verdict of not guilty: “Hurrah! Great result!”15

  But Goebbels did not get off so cleanly in every case. On August 16 the court of lay assessors in Charlottenburg ruled against him because of an article in Der Angriff in December 1929 in which he called members of the Reich government “hired traitors.” However, the court did not wish to sentence him to six months’ imprisonment, as the public prosecutor had demanded, but thought that a fine of 600 marks would suffice.16 On the same day, two other fines were imposed on him.

  STENNES’S REVOLT

  It was not only the law that was putting pressure on Goebbels at this point but his own people as well. Just as the election campaign was getting under way, a conflict broke out that was extremely dangerous for Goebbels and the NSDAP: The SA was flexing its muscles. On August 7 Goebbels met Stennes and other SA leaders, who bluntly presented him with their demands: “The gentlemen want to be in the Reichstag and don’t wish to be subject to Party discipline, and since this has been turned down, they’re staging a kind of mini–palace revolution. […] Stennes has told me brazenly and sanctimoniously that if they were to quit, the SA would drop from 15,000 to 3,000 men.”17

  The same day, Goebbels phoned the head of the SA, Franz Pfeffer, who had undertaken a similar initiative, in his case against Hitler himself: “He is subdued. Hitler tore him to shreds. Called the whole move mutiny and conspiracy.” Goebbels told the Berlin SA leader Ernst Wetzel that he considered Pfeffer a “schemer” who had led the SA to the point of “rebellion.”18 In the middle of that month, he met Pfeffer, who “surely must have realized” that the SA “had overshot the mark on this question of the nominations.”19

  The SA revolt was to break out openly at the end of the month. On August 27 Goebbels heard “the first report of a rebellion planned by the S.A.” His initial reaction was incomprehension: “They propose to give us an ultimatum [parliamentary candidate nominations] and lash out if they don’t get their way. In the middle of the battle. […] Stennes squats like a spider behind the scenes.”20 Some hours later—despite the worrisome news, he had gone to a campaigning event in Dresden—he learned that “the affair is worse than I feared. The Standard leaders have joined forces and openly rebelled against [the] Gau and Munich.”

  Back in Berlin, he jotted down the next day: “Terrible disappointment. Talks with Stennes. He shamelessly states his demands: 3 nominations. Money, political power.” Stennes had openly threatened to break up an event planned for the Sportpalast the next day. Goebbels made a decision: “Pretend to give in. Take revenge on September 15.” Unfortunately, he was committed to another work trip, this time to Hamburg. After many fruitless attempts, he finally got a call through to Hitler. But the telephone conversation took a disappointing turn: Hitler “hasn’t grasped the situation at all. Takes it too lightly.”

  Only just arrived back in Berlin, he noted on August 29: “Chaos. A shock troop from Standard IV set on demolishing our office and beating up Wilke and Muchow. It takes all my authority to make them see reason. Stennes wilfully lets the affair come to a head and then sees he’s out of his depth.” Under the circumstances, Stennes was prepared to compromise: “His demands are diminishing by the hour. Endless telephone calls to Munich. Can’t get ahold of Hitler. And the others are dimwits.”

  Goebbels decided to act on Stennes’s suggestion that he should address the SA that evening. As Der Angriff reported, he used the event in the Sportpalast to “hold [to account] the rumor-mongers in Jewish pay who are now trying to sow discord in the National Socialist ranks just before the election.” Furthermore, he wrung a statement out of Stennes that he published in Der Angriff: The rumors of a mutiny by the Berlin SA were “all lies”; the SA stood “loyally by the Party and its leader.”21 Goebbels regarded the pledge he had made to Stennes as null and void, since it had been obtained “by coercion and was therefore invalid.”

  For a while, things seemed to settle down—in any case, Goebbels was determined not to let the Berlin crisis ruin his election campaign plan, so he duly set off for Breslau on August 30. It is tempting to think that in these stormy days his external commitments were not at all unwelcome, as they prevented him from being pulled into the Berlin quagmire. During the last Stennes crisis, in the summer of 1928, he had not even thought it necessary to break off his vacation in Bavaria. However, that night in Breslau he received alarming, if not entirely unexpected, news: “S.A. has stormed and demolished office. S.S. defending, two injured.” He decided to return to Berlin. There at midday he met Göring and Hitler: The latter had come up from Bayreuth. In the evening they toured the SA drinking haunts together. Although Hitler was “greeted with enthusiasm” everywhere, the prevailing “mood was subdued.”

  Late in the evening he received a visit—clearly an unexpected one: “Around 10 o’clock the Berlin SA leaders turn up at my place—Hitler talks to them. He’s not in good form.” There were signs that the atmosphere
was deteriorating: “The vulgar behavior of these people. They tell him what’s what.” Goebbels could not resist adding, “In many ways they’re not entirely wrong. […] Poor Hitler! That’s the price you pay for years of negligence.” In the end Stennes too had a talk with Hitler; it lasted until dawn but achieved no clear-cut result.

  That morning Goebbels had yet another court appearance to make: He received a six-week prison sentence and a fine of 500 marks for his repeated smears against Deputy Police Commissioner Bernhard Weiss.22 “Went during adjournment to Hitler, who is with Göring. New situation. I urge reconciliation, otherwise we’re facing disaster. The rebellion is already spreading to the countryside.” A decision was reached at four that afternoon: Hitler dismissed Pfeffer, took over command of the SA himself, and simultaneously decreed an improvement to the SA’s finances, to be funded by raising special levies from the Party.23 The SA leaders accepted the proposal the same afternoon, and Goebbels tried to represent the last-minute compromise as a defeat for the SA: “Revolution is held indoors.*1 Stennes has submitted.”

  In the evening there was a gathering in the Veteran Soldiers’ House to make a conspicuous show of celebrating the reconciliation. The SA, Goebbels wrote, which “just before had been intent on an explosion, is now sitting horror-stricken and weeping. Hitler speaks.” The Berlin police recorded that after a lengthy speech Hitler issued a call for loyalty from the SA, “raising his already strained voice to the pitch of an almost hysterical shriek.” Following him as speaker, Goebbels had delivered some “sentimental remarks” intended to “draw a line” under the whole affair. Goebbels’s own comment on his address was triumphant, however: “I speak. Everything goes fine. That’s the end of the Stennes putsch. The consequences will be seen after September 14.” But he omitted to say that Stennes spoke after he did, announcing Hitler’s new arrangements and proclaiming himself the victor.24

  A few days later Goebbels conspicuously demonstrated the reconciliation to Berliners. He wrote that he had moved around Berlin with the SA the whole day, from morning until the late evening: “Both a battle march and a triumphal and celebratory procession. It was glorious. Right through the red citadels.”25 On September 10 Hitler spoke at an event in the Sportpalast.26 It was the high point of the election campaign. Afterward, Goebbels was sitting with the Party leader: “Boss wants me to hang on in Berlin. I must do that, although I don’t really feel like it anymore.” At least Hitler had recognized that he bore “not an iota of guilt” for the recent events and that it had been more about “a structural flaw in the organization.” Now the “influence of the political leaders” would have to increase.27

  The next day Goebbels had a long discussion with Stennes, with whom he “gradually got into contact.”28 He had no choice: The SA was essential for his strident style of agitation. On the other hand, if he was too closely identified with the SA and overplayed the part of a radical, he would inevitably come into conflict with the Party leadership.

  CLASHES OVER THE PARTY LINE

  As Goebbels had expected,29 the NSDAP enjoyed some spectacular results in the election of September 14, 1930, taking 18.3 percent of the vote. Without a doubt, the Party had now become a mass movement. All the same, the results in Berlin were distinctly below average for the Reich as a whole: The Party achieved only 14.6 percent in the capital.30 Nonetheless, in the Sportpalast on the evening of election day there was an air of “excitement as in 1914.”31 Goebbels celebrated the victory in Der Angriff with the assertion that “in the long run a National Socialist government in Germany is inevitable.”32 In his view, now was the moment to draw a line under recent disputes. At the Gau day on September 17 he magnanimously announced a “general amnesty”33 and put intense effort into reinforcing the settlement between the Party and the SA, on whose loyalty he ultimately depended. On September 20 he had a long, “open and amiable” talk with Stennes,34 but after a few days he began once more to doubt that Stennes would sustain the peace.35

  On September 25 Goebbels went to Leipzig with Göring to appear as a witness in the so-called Leipzig Treason Trial. The German public was taking an intense interest in the case: Three Reichswehr officers stationed in Ulm had attempted to organize a National Socialist cell within the army and were now being tried for treason. To clarify where the NSDAP stood in relation to the constitution of the Republic, the court had called in leading National Socialists as witnesses. Coming immediately after the surprising success of the Party in the Reichstag elections, their court appearances promised to give important clues as to the Party’s future direction.

  Hitler was the first to deliver his testimony. He declared unequivocally that the NSDAP aimed to achieve power purely by legal means. Goebbels was in the public gallery with Göring, listening to Hitler’s evidence. He had reason to fear that the state prosecutor’s material aimed at disproving Hitler’s assertion would include some of his own “revolutionary” writings. This fear proved to be unfounded. In the end, Goebbels was not called as a witness.36 Once again, any open disclosure of the differences between the “legal” Hitler and the “revolutionary” Goebbels was avoided.

  After its election successes, the elite of the NSDAP began—in keeping with their “legal” policy—to sound out the chances of joining a Brüning-led coalition. On one of his visits to Berlin, Hitler let Goebbels know his three conditions. The Party would demand three ministries: “Foreign Affairs (Rosenberg); Ministry of the Interior (Frick); and Ministry of Defense (probably Epp)” as well as the withdrawal of the Center Party from the coalition government in Prussia, which it shared with the SPD and the DDP. It seemed that some quite fantastic vistas were suddenly opening up for Goebbels’s personal future: “If we participate, then for a start I’ll gain power in Prussia. Then there’ll be a clearing-out.”37

  Hitler, seconded by Frick and Strasser, had confidential discussions with Brüning on October 5. The NSDAP drew a blank: There was no possibility of its taking part in a Reich government.38 Goebbels was one of the first to be told: “We remain in opposition. Thank God.”39 Goebbels still hoped his chance would come with the collapse of the coalition in Prussia, the largest German state.40 But there was a long way to go before that. Until the opening of the new Reichstag, Goebbels lacked immunity from the law, and the authorities used the situation to increase pressure on him. To avoid imminent arrest, on October 10 Goebbels escaped to Weimar.41 He was back in Berlin for the opening of the Reichstag on October 13 and managed to evade the agents of the law waiting for him to enter the building. Der Angriff revealed some of the details of this hide-and-seek game a few days later.42 Goebbels’s parliamentary privileges were now restored to him.43

  He soon had a chance to strengthen his position as a publicist. After some unpleasant clashes—“that loathsome Amann! I hate him”44—in September he reached an agreement with the Eher Verlag whereby Eher and the Gau would jointly publish Der Angriff as a daily paper. Goebbels was jubilant: He was now “in sole charge, commercially and intellectually, I’m completely independent.”45 At the beginning of October 1930 he signed the definitive contract with Amann: “But he’ll do the dirty on me all the same.”46 However, starting on November 1 Der Angriff did indeed appear as a daily paper.47

  In November he discovered in Munich what Hitler planned to do about the SA crisis that was still smoldering: “Röhm is coming back. From Bolivia, where he’s been working with the army. He’s very nice to me, and I like him. An open, straight military type.”48 Röhm came to Berlin at the end of the month. “He’s a lovely chap,” wrote Goebbels, “but no match at all for Stennes.”49

  Ernst Röhm had actually gone to Bolivia as a military instructor after a disagreement with Hitler in 1925 over the incorporation of his creation, the Frontbann (a surrogate organization for members of the prohibited SA), into the re-founded NSDAP.50 Hitler’s decision to put Röhm in charge of the SA, which he pushed through despite some resistance at the SA leadership conference on November 30 in Munich, was bound to lead to furt
her conflicts over the medium to long term. The self-confident Röhm was not the man to play second fiddle to Hitler. But in the short term, Hitler’s aim was to keep Stennes and his henchmen in check by appointing Röhm.51

  GOEBBELS ACTS RADICAL

  Goebbels had his own prescription for keeping the SA under control in Berlin: permanent violent activity to reinforce the internal cohesion of the SA and to satisfy the hunger for action among the young brownshirts, as most of them were unemployed. He hoped that this would give the rapidly expanding and heterogeneous organization some sense of momentum.

  In November 1930 he found a new target in his war against the “system”: the American film All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the 1929 novel of that name by the German antiwar writer Erich Maria Remarque, a realistic description of trench warfare. Goebbels saw the film as an attack on the honor of the German front-line soldier, and it was obvious to him that Jewish machinations lay behind the movie project. The screening of the film in Berlin must be prevented at all costs; that was his aim.