Goebbels: A Biography

by Peter Longerich

  The next day, over a meal, Magda asked Hitler to be a witness at their wedding in December. Hitler agreed, as Goebbels noted, “with pleasure.” In this emotional atmosphere Hitler began to talk about Geli: “He loved her very much. She was his ‘good comrade.’ He had tears in his eyes. […] Magda is very kind to him. Why shouldn’t we be? This man, at the height of his success, without personal happiness, simply committed to the happiness of his friends.”

  Hitler persuaded Goebbels and Magda to go with him to Munich the next day. They stopped off in Weimar, where they went to the theater in the evening. Goebbels then went on to Munich by the sleeper train, reporting that “the others are coming by car.”48 He spent a strenuous day in the propaganda office and met Magda that evening in the hotel where she had just arrived, still chilled to the marrow by the drive in an open car. During dinner, which they ate with Hermann Esser and Prince Philipp von Hessen, she “did not behave very well” and eventually went off to her room. Goebbels then stayed on with Esser until the wee hours in Hitler’s favorite haunt, the Café Heck. When he came back to the hotel, an “almighty argument” with Magda followed; she returned her engagement ring and wanted to leave. But they made their peace again.

  Goebbels does not divulge what brought this scene on. In fact, the whole journey to Munich is mysterious. It seems that Hitler used this short trip to have an undisturbed talk with Magda—hence the separate journeys from Weimar to Munich. Did Magda and Hitler touch on subjects that triggered the argument with Goebbels that evening?

  The next day’s lunch was a kind of engagement celebration, attended by Hitler, who had sent an “enormous bouquet” and conducted himself “like a good father.” Goebbels later bought Magda an engagement present, a “wonderful convertible” made by the Wanderer company, half financed by “advertising in the V.B. [Völkischer Beobachter]” and half by his “royalty account.” A reference to Amann, whose “assistance had been heartwarming,” makes it clear that the head of the Eher Verlag had advanced the purchase price. The mention of “advertising in the V.B.” can be understood to mean that the Party newspaper carried “unpaid” advertisements for the Wanderer company, but Amann in return accumulated credit in kind with the company to meet half of the price of a private car for the future wife of the Berlin Gauleiter Dr. Joseph Goebbels.

  This was, to put it mildly, a fairly corrupt transaction, which would have cost the participants their Party careers if it had become public knowledge. It is scarcely credible that such a deal could have happened without the acquiescence of Hitler, the Party boss. It is also hard to imagine that Goebbels, persuaded by Hitler on the evening of October 30 to go with him to Munich, would simply have marched two days later into a automobile showroom in Munich and used a complicated financial arrangement to buy an expensive sportscar. The whole story only makes sense if you assume that Hitler, having given his blessing to their marriage, issued the invitation to Munich in order to mark the engagement; used the time en route to have a confidential chat at his leisure with Magda; and then, as generous as “a good father,” enabled Goebbels to give his fiancée an extravagant engagement present. In other words, Goebbels’s rather laconic diary entries point to a triangular relationship that meant for Magda in particular a testing emotional burden and led her occasionally to consider breaking off the engagement to Goebbels. Immediately after returning to Berlin, Magda went into the hospital for a “small operation.” Goebbels mentions the reason in his diary: “She wants to have children, and I’m very pleased about it.”49 The operation went “satisfactorily.”50

  Goebbels postponed their plans to rent a house together because he did not want to appear a “big shot.”51 Magda sympathized with these reservations. For the sake of simplicity, in November Goebbels moved into Magda’s spacious apartment on the Reichskanzlerplatz (today called Theodor-Heuss-Platz) in Westend, where Magda equipped a study and a bedroom for him.52 Magda did not leave the hospital until the day after he moved in. Goebbels went to meet her and took her back to the apartment they now shared. He gave two speeches and then returned to the Reichskanzlerplatz. In the meantime, company had arrived: “Boss and Hess already here.” Hitler was to keep up the habit of dropping in casually at the Reichskanzlerplatz apartment during his Berlin visits. On this particular evening the atmosphere was relaxed, and Hitler waxed personal: “Boss tells us about women, whom he loves a lot. About the special woman he cannot find. About the hysterical females who pursue him. About Geli, whom he has lost and whom he mourns with all his heart. […] Takes such a sincere pleasure in our happiness that we are almost ashamed. He likes Magda very much, and she’s good at dealing with him.”53

  One day in late October Anka surprised him by turning up at the door. She had no inkling of his marriage plans and upon hearing the news became completely distraught. He reflected with a certain satisfaction: “This is revenge for her earlier unfaithfulness. Life goes on.”54

  Shortly before the wedding he met Günther Quandt, Magda’s ex-husband. “He’s going to donate to the Party. Magda takes him to task. She is our best advocate. […] He’s very well disposed. An old man. But clever, energetic, a brutal capitalist, has come over to us completely. Quite right—and he should give us money, too.” All the same, it was with a heavy heart that he took Quandt’s 200 marks for “people in prison and the wounded.” The tone of the conversation was “not as cold as I expected,” he noted. No doubt the atmosphere was improved by Quandt’s donation but also by his lavish praise for Goebbels’s new book, Battle for Berlin.55

  Three days later he burned “packets of old love letters” and commented: “Not an ounce of melancholy.” But emotions were running high all the same: “Argument with Magda, of course. We didn’t say a word to each other for the rest of the evening.”56

  Just before the wedding, articles appeared in the hostile press asserting that Magda was “born a Jewess.” In fact, her stepfather, Richard Friedländer, the second husband her mother had married five years after the birth of Magda, was from a Jewish background. Goebbels took the accusation hard, as his diary shows.57

  The wedding—Magda was a few weeks pregnant by then—took place on December 19 in Severin, Mecklenburg, where the Quandt family owned an estate. The right of residence there had been conceded to Magda by Quandt as part of the divorce settlement. The nuptials were organized by Walter Granzow, Quandt’s brother-in-law and one of the leading National Socialists in Mecklenburg.

  The registry-office wedding was conducted by the mayor of the village of Frauenmark. Goebbels was moved by this “village idyll,” he records. His witnesses were Hitler and Franz Ritter von Epp. After the ceremony, says Goebbels, Hitler “gave him an emotional hug.” “Magda gives him a kiss. He has tears in his eyes.” The religious ceremony—which Goebbels was loath to forgo, despite his hostility to the church—took place immediately afterward in the village church in Severin. Goebbels’s sister Maria was a bridesmaid, and Magda’s son Harald, once more in SA uniform, was Goebbels’s “aide” at the altar. The wedding breakfast took place in the nearby manor house, that is to say on Quandt’s property—supposedly without the owner’s knowledge.58

  ELECTORAL BATTLE FOR THE PRESIDENCY: HITLER VERSUS HINDENBURG

  In November 1931 the leadership of the SA in Munich had merged the previously separate SA troops of Berlin and Brandenburg into a single unit, the “Berlin-Brandenburg SA group,” and appointed Helldorf, the organizer of the Kurfürstendamm assaults, to lead it; he had previously headed the Berlin troop. Goebbels supported the appointment.59

  But on December 8, within the framework of a broader emergency decree issued by the president, the Brüning government imposed a general ban on uniforms and insignia for political organizations. “Reality in Germany. The beginning of the end,” Goebbels wrote.60 Goebbels’s appalled reaction did not have to do with the practical effect of the ban, which was negligible. Uniform bans were already in place in several German states, among them Bavaria and Prussia. But with a decree issued at Rei
ch level Brüning had unmistakeably signaled that he personally intended to take a tougher line with the NSDAP. The chancellor underlined this stance in a broadcast speech on December 8, which contained explicit warnings to the Party. The occasion for this was the discovery of the “Boxheim documents,” plans drawn up by leading members of the NSDAP in Hesse to seize power by force; this revelation was extremely embarrassing for a movement allegedly committed to taking power legally.61 Goebbels was not the only one who wondered whether Brüning was planning to “decamp to the SPD.”62 At the same time, as Gauleiter of Berlin, he found the grip of the Prussian authorities as tight as ever. On December 1 Der Angriff was banned for a week, and it had only just reappeared, on December 8, when the Prussian minister of the interior imposed another weeklong ban.63

  On the one hand, in this way the Brüning administration built up a threatening backdrop; on the other, it felt obliged to heed the NSDAP. In the event, at the turn of the year the government faced an increasingly urgent problem: How was it to handle the approaching end of the president’s seven-year term of office, which was due to expire in spring 1932?64

  After taking soundings65 from the NSDAP leadership and from Hugenberg, on January 5 Hindenburg finally authorized Brüning to initiate talks with the parties about extending his presidency.66 To this end, Brüning negotiated with an NSDAP delegation led by Hitler,67 but the latter raised “constitutional objections” to these proposals, thus attempting to represent the chancellor to the president as a man willing to push the head of state into a breach of the constitution.68

  The tactic Hitler was pursuing emerges from a diary entry dated January 12. Goebbels was always kept informed about these discussions:69 “Boss sends Hindenburg short memorandum with constitutional reservations about Brüning’s proposal. The idea is that as a result the old gentleman declares today that he thinks Brüning’s route is impracticable. That kills Brüning off.” But the plan failed. Hindenburg was not yet ready to cut Brüning loose, and the maneuver ended in a resounding defeat.70 On the other hand, the question that now arose was whether Hitler would take up the challenge of pitting himself against Hindenburg in the forthcoming presidential election.

  On January 18, 1932, Goebbels went with Magda to Munich, where they met Hitler in the evening. Once again, at the sight of the Goebbelses’ happiness, Hitler fell into a sentimental mood: “Hitler talks movingly about his youth. About his strict father and kindly mother. She was exactly as my mother still is. That’s why my mother has a special place in his heart. My good Hitler, whom both of us, Magda and I, love dearly.”71

  The next day the couple visited Hitler in his apartment to discuss the “Reich presidency question.” Goebbels was able to tell him that just before leaving Berlin he had learned from Arno Kriegsheim, one of the leading functionaries of the Reichslandbund, that his organization would not be supporting Hindenburg.72 But Hitler could not make up his mind to run. Goebbels’s diary entries show how difficult it was to bring the Party leader, plagued by gloomy feelings, to make a political decision. In the evening, at a private reception, Hitler “conversed about questions of marriage”: “He feels very lonely. Yearning for the woman he can’t find. Moving and touching. He likes Magda very much. We must find him a good wife. Someone like Magda. Then he’ll have a counterweight to all these men.”73

  At this time Goebbels spent a lot of time with Hitler: “Discussed and made plans for the future. Boss offers me my later job: Wants me to be minister for popular education. Film, radio, schools, university, art, culture, propaganda. The Prussian Ministry of Culture will then be added. A huge project.”74 A few days later he heard the news that a “Hindenburg committee” had been formed to get the incumbent reelected. Goebbels noted impatiently: “Hitler is taking too long. Brüning will end up checkmating him.”75 After a certain amount of tactically motivated hesitation,76 on a visit to Berlin on February 22 Hitler “finally” gave him permission to announce his candidacy. Goebbels did so that evening at an event in the Sportpalast. His comment on the news that the Stahlhelm and the DNVP had put up their own candidate—the deputy leader of the Stahlhelm, Theodor Duesterberg—that same day was cheerful: The “Harzburg Front” he so disliked had proved ineffectual.77

  On February 23 Goebbels gave a speech in the Reichstag whose content he had cleared with Hitler in advance;78 it was conceived as a reckoning with the Brüning government. When he eventually turned his fire on the president, accusing him of being supported by “the party of deserters,” there was uproar in the ranks of the SPD (at whom this jibe was aimed and who included many war veterans and members disabled in combat). The president of the Reichstag, Paul Löbe, interrupted the session and, after consulting the House Advisory Committee, excluded Goebbels from taking any further part in the proceedings on the grounds that he had insulted the head of state. On behalf of the centrist parties, Ernst Lemmer read out a statement distancing them from Goebbels;79 then the Social Democrat Kurt Schumacher took the floor to rebuke the National Socialists and specifically their head of propaganda, Goebbels: “If there’s one thing we concede to National Socialism, it’s the fact that it has succeeded for the first time in German politics in the total mobilization of stupidity.”80

  Two days later Goebbels was back in the Reichstag to finish his speech. First of all, he rejected the accusation that he had intended to insult the Reich president. To “prove” his innocence, he read again from the parliamentary record the sentence containing the reference to the “party of deserters” to outraged protests from the Social Democrats, but he was safely protected by standing orders. Then in the rest of his speech Goebbels embarked on a frontal attack on Chancellor Brüning, declaring that the coming presidential election would be a referendum on Brüning’s policies. On March 13 the country would decide “who deserves power in Germany, we or you.”81

  After his speech he went to the Kaiserhof, where, according to Goebbels, Hitler was highly “enthusiastic” about his performance. Goebbels also accounted it a triumph for the National Socialist cause that the Party leader had just acquired German citizenship by virtue of his appointment as an official in Braunschweig—where the NSDAP already governed—so that he was now for the first time legally entitled to take public office in the Reich.

  For the campaign beginning on February 27, Goebbels temporarily moved part of the Reich propaganda office to Berlin.82 On February 29 he briefed Hitler on his campaign strategy: “We will conduct our war mainly through posters and speeches.”83 But Goebbels also used unconventional methods. He made a gramophone record, of which 50,000 copies were circulated, as well as a sound film that, among other things, showed him in action as a speaker.84

  Goebbels styled the election as a “decisive battle” between the Weimar “system” and National Socialism, the latter personified by “the leader of young Germany,” the challenger to the aging Hindenburg.85 Hitler was presented to voters in a double role: as the bringer of hope and savior of the nation, standing above petty party squabbles, but also as a figure to identify with, an ordinary person and a former front-line soldier. The cult of the leader, prevailing within the Party since 1922–23 but reinforced after the re-founding of the Party in 1925, was now systematically used for the first time as a campaigning stratagem.86

  Goebbels had done everything he could—despite his occasional doubts about the leader—through his totally Hitler-centered policy to strengthen the personal position of the latter within the Party, and positively transfigure his role as leader. But focusing Party propaganda entirely on Hitler was a first, even for Goebbels. In keeping with this approach to the campaign, he celebrated Hitler in a series in Der Angriff (which was again banned for a week at the beginning of the campaign),87 as a “political fighter,” a “statesman,” and not least as a “kind-hearted person” who was “especially child-loving.” Hitler was a man of “the finest intellectual taste, of pronounced artistic sensitivity,” who “never uttered a word he did not personally believe in.”88

  On Ma
rch 1 Goebbels embarked on a speaking tour that took him to Magdeburg, Essen, Düsseldorf, and Cologne.89 On March 6, 1932, right in the middle of the election campaign, the Social Democrat newspaper Welt am Montag published some letters from Röhm to Karl-Günther Heimsoth, a doctor and pioneer of the homosexual liberation movement, in which Röhm talked openly about his same-sex proclivities.90 Goebbels immediately called Röhm, who admitted “that it’s true.” He also telephoned Hitler, who instructed him to “reject all accusations as downright lies.”91 Disgusted, Goebbels groaned: “Oh, I’ve had it up to here with all this queer business.” When he met Röhm a few days later and found him to be “full of beans,” he simply could not believe it.92 But he was glad to discover a little later that in his rejection of homosexuality Hitler “takes as strong a line as I do. […] Eradicate!”93

  There was a “big gathering” in the Goebbelses’ apartment on the Reichskanzlerplatz on the evening of March 13 to celebrate Hitler’s anticipated victory in the presidential election. But it was not to be. “Getting on for 10 o’clock it becomes clear: We’re beaten. Terrible prospects!” In fact the NSDAP gained only 11.3 million votes, against more than 18.6 million for Hindenburg, who narrowly missed achieving the absolute majority required to win the first round of voting outright. Goebbels tried to pick himself up again: “Our Party comrades are depressed and discouraged. Now we need to make some big move.” “On phone to Hitler. He is terrifically surprised by the result. We set our sights too high. We have all made mistakes.” But Hitler showed himself determined to carry on the fight into the second round of voting.94

  This was also the opinion of the majority of leading National Socialists when they met the next day at the Brown House in Munich:95 “We go on fighting.” Above all they expected that participating in the second round, even with no prospect of beating Hindenburg, would mobilize voters for the Landtag elections due to take place shortly afterward in Prussia and other states.96