Goebbels: A Biography

by Peter Longerich

  On June 9 the head of his propaganda staff in Munich, Heinz Franke, briefed Goebbels on the situation there, particularly on the imminent reorganization of the Party leadership by Gregor Strasser. Goebbels summarized his plans: “Strasser will give radio talks, Strasser will put together the list of candidates, Strasser appoints the Gau commissars. Strasser takes Hitler for a ride. And he doesn’t put up any resistance.”143

  On June 14 he had a “good long personal talk” with Göring, whom he had so often criticized and disparaged. They agreed to bury their past differences; the background of this ceasefire was obviously the common interest they had in preventing Strasser from gaining influence.144 On the evening of June 14 Goebbels listened to the speech his Party rival Strasser was allowed to give on behalf of the NSDAP on nationwide radio. For the first time, party political broadcast time had been allocated in this election campaign, and as Hitler would not agree to the conditions—speeches had to be submitted for vetting beforehand—Strasser stepped in. Above all Strasser emphasized state intervention to boost the feeble economy and reduce unemployment. Goebbels’s verdict was: “Not aggressive enough. Too ‘state-political.’ That man will become a danger to Hitler one day.”145

  Despite his tireless contribution to the Party’s propaganda work, Goebbels could not prevent Strasser, who had consolidated his position within the Party leadership, from putting his stamp on the campaign with his demand for job-creation measures. So, for example, Strasser distributed six hundred thousand copies of his booklet, Urgent Economic Program of the NSDAP, across the Party organization, setting out his agenda for job creation.146

  In the instructions issued by the Reich propaganda office led by Goebbels, the stress was above all on distancing the Party from von Papen’s cabinet and the Party’s commitment to fighting the KPD as much as the “system” and its parties, particularly the SPD and the Center Party.147 Once again, great emphasis was laid on “individual propaganda”: “Every comrade must select 2–3 fellow citizens and work on them very intensively until polling day.”148 The attention of the Party organization was drawn explicitly to the whole gamut of publicity methods available: from mass meetings, loudspeaker vehicles, sound films, flags, and banners to flyers, the campaign newspaper Der Flammenwerfer, leaflets, and posters.149

  In mid-June, more or less as a prelude to the election campaign, Goebbels spent an evening with SA leaders in full uniform in the Haus Vaterland, the big amusement palace on Potsdamer Platz—a deliberate provocation in response to the ban on the SA. But the police did “not do the participants the favor of intervening,” observed Goebbels. At this point he was not aware that the Reich government had lifted the ban.150

  On June 27 he was at a meeting of Gauleiters in Munich to present his planning for the ongoing election campaign. There he found out that by means of “organizational changes,” Strasser had been “rigging the Party to suit himself”: “The General Secretary. Means to gradually displace Hitler. Honorary President. That’s not what he wants. He must be primed. Str[asser] is giving all the jobs to his lackeys. That’s how he’s rigging the whole machine. The Party dictator!”151

  On July 8 Hitler came to Berlin. Goebbels learned from Alvensleben that Hitler was talking to Schleicher and preparing their next joint move, which this time would be directed against von Papen: He had to “fall.”152 On July 9 Goebbels gave a speech in the Lustgarten in front of—according to the Völkischer Beobachter—a crowd of two hundred thousand; by Goebbels’s highly exaggerated estimation “the biggest and most powerful rally Berlin has ever seen.”153 The next day he set out again on the election trail, starting in Rheydt and taking in several west German towns. Back in Berlin, he shared a platform with Goebbels in the Sportpalast.154 But the main attraction of the campaign was another aerial tour by Hitler through Germany, spun by the Nazi press as a “freedom flight.”155

  On July 18 Goebbels gave his first broadcast talk, the von Papen government having enabled the parties for the first time to use the new medium for propaganda purposes.156 He had to make substantial changes to the script—originally titled “National Socialism as a State-Political Necessity”—after lengthy wrangling with the Reich minister of the interior, whose approval was required for this kind of party-political broadcast. In the end his talk was on “National Character as the Basis of National Culture.” He for one was more than pleased with the result: “The speech makes a fabulous impression. I’m in top form. Brilliant press reaction today.”157

  Meanwhile, the von Papen government after its fashion was setting about resolving the stalemate in Prussia. The Prussian government under the Social Democrat prime minister Otto Braun had resigned after the Landtag elections in April, but was still acting as a caretaker administration. The coalition parties—the SPD, the DDP, the Center Party—no longer had a majority in Parliament. In terms of numbers, there was a possibility—while there was still a Brüning government, a politically feasible one—of forming a Center Party–NSDAP majority coalition. But under von Papen, who had severed all ties with the Center Party, the NSDAP no longer saw any chance of such a political arrangement at the Reich level. This was why in internal Party discussions since June Goebbels had been strongly opposed to compromising with the Center Party in Prussia.158 In principle, his preferred option (but only if the Party was also participating in a Reich government) was to appoint a governor in Prussia. This option was something Schleicher had brought into play as early as autumn 1931. Since June he had been discussing it with the NSDAP leaders, and now, in July 1932, it was a solution the Reich government was seriously trying to put into effect—albeit without the participation of the National Socialists. At the same time, however, it was an advance concession to a future alliance with the NSDAP.

  On July 20, 1932, von Papen made use of an emergency decree already signed by the president159 giving him carte blanche powers and appointed himself state governor of Prussia. He called in Franz Bracht, mayor of Essen, to be his minister of the interior. The excuse for this step arose out of the events of the “Altona Bloody Sunday,” a violent clash on July 17 involving the police, National Socialists, and communists that resulted in eighteen deaths.160 All Social Democrat officeholders were relieved of their positions at this time, as were the top echelon of the Berlin police headquarters, including Goebbels’s arch-enemy Bernhard Weiss.161

  The Nazi leadership knew about the forthcoming “Prussian coup” by July 19, 1932, as Goebbels’s diaries demonstrate.162 When the action took place on July 20, Goebbels confirmed that everything was “going according to plan,” and he recorded that the Nazi leadership was putting together a “wish list” for Bracht, together with a “list […] of all those in Prussia due for the axe.”163

  Goebbels threw himself once more into campaigning, putting in appearances all over Germany.164 On July 31, election day, he went to Munich to join in celebrating the anticipated victory. The National Socialists managed to win 37.4 percent of the vote, which gave them 230 seats, making them the largest party in the Reichstag.

  Goebbels, whose result in Berlin was, at 28.7 percent, far below that of the average in the Reich as a whole,165 drew his conclusion: “Now we have to gain power and eradicate Marxism. One way or the other! […] We won’t get an absolute majority this way. So take a different path.”166 But he did not mention what that path would be.

  * * *

  * Translators’ note: Curt Severing was SPD minister of the interior in Prussia.

  CHAPTER 9

  “I Have a Blind Faith in Victory”

  On the Way to Power

  Credit 9.1

  As head of Reich propaganda, Goebbels in 1932 was responsible for four country-wide election campaigns. But the permanent mobilization of Party comrades against the Weimar Republic did not lead to the expected political breakthrough. Despite making consistent election gains, at the end of the year the NSDAP experienced its stormiest internal crisis.

  On August 2, two days after the elections, there was an outin
g to Lake Tegernsee: “Hitler deliberates. Difficult decisions ahead. Legally? With the Center Party? Makes me sick! […] We consider, but come to no conclusion.”1

  A few days later, on August 6, Hitler informed Goebbels in Berchtesgaden of a discussion he had recently conducted with Schleicher in Fürstenberg, near Berlin. According to this report, the situation seemed to have changed radically. And Hitler’s appointment as chancellor seemed imminent: “It will all be out in the open in a week’s time. Boss becomes Reich chancellor and Prussian prime minister. Strasser interior minister for Prussia and Reich. Goebbels Prussian culture and Reich education. Darré agriculture in both places, Frick state secretary in the Reich Chancellery, Göring Air Ministry. We still have Justice Ministry. […] If the Reichstag rejects the Enabling Act, it will be sent packing. Hindenburg wants to die with a nationalist cabinet. We’ll never relinquish power; our dead bodies will have to be carried out first.”2 The next day he continued the discussion with Hitler until late into the night: “I get schools, universities, cinema, radio, theater, propaganda. A huge territory. Will fill a whole life. A historic task. […] The national education of the German people is placed in my hands.”3

  Hitler had certainly painted a very optimistic picture for Goebbels—according to Meissner’s report4—of his future sphere of government activity. In his talks with Schleicher he had not actually requested the Ministry of National Education on behalf of Goebbels. And in the following months, too, Hitler continued to conjure up for Goebbels a conception of his future ministerial activity that went far beyond the responsibilities he was actually to be given in spring 1933 as Reich minister for popular enlightenment and propaganda. Hitler did not share Goebbels’s vision of himself as national educator of the German people. For him Goebbels was a competent and willing head of propaganda—and, as Hitler saw it, that was what he ought to remain after the “seizure of power.”

  But first of all, Hindenburg would need to agree to Hitler’s appointment. The elite of the SA, which convened at Lake Chiemsee on August 11, was informed that Hindenburg was still relentlessly opposing such a step. The decision was made to go on negotiating with the Center Party in order to put von Papen and Schleicher under pressure to act.5 In addition, the SA organized large-scale “maneuvers” in the Berlin area as a way of putting further pressure on the government.6 The next day Goebbels—having meanwhile returned to Berlin—noted how eager the SA people were to march, which led him to worry that Helldorf might one day lose his grip on his units.7

  The decision about Hitler’s chancellorship came on August 13. He talked first to Schleicher and then to von Papen; they tried to persuade him to accept the position of vice chancellor, which he rejected.8 He then went on to see the Reich president. After forty-five minutes he was back in Goebbels’s apartment, reporting that it had been established all along that von Papen should remain chancellor. He had not even had a chance to speak but had really been “lured into a trap.” For Goebbels, the idea that Hitler could be fobbed off with the vice chancellorship was “grotesque nonsense.”9 The official communiqué about the meeting was packed with lies, it was claimed, which is why von Papen and Schleicher were called on to produce a new version. When they failed to do so, the Nazi leadership produced their own report of the encounter.10

  It now became ever more difficult to rein in an SA that considered itself already on the brink of power. In the evening the Berlin SA leaders met in Goebbels’s apartment to confer: “Helldorf above all was overoptimistic. Now we’ll have to break this news. A bitter task.” A few days later the Völkischer Beobachter carried an appeal by Röhm to his “SA and SS comrades” announcing a “pause in the action.”11 To put pressure on the government, the Party leaders returned to the project of a parliamentary solution to the conflict in Prussia. Negotiations with the Center Party began but were soon broken off by the other side.12

  Goebbels now found time for a week’s vacation on the Baltic.13

  BATTLE WITH VON PAPEN’S GOVERNMENT

  When Goebbels resumed work in Berlin on August 22, the political situation was dominated by five death sentences pronounced by a special court in Beuthen against National Socialists for the brutal murder of a communist in the Potempa area of Upper Silesia. The accelerated sentencing of violent political aggressors, which was specifically aimed at combating Nazi terrorism, was an innovation that had gone into effect only a few days earlier.14 At the beginning of August, the SA in East Prussia and Silesia had begun to subject its political opponents, mainly on the left, to a wave of terror, carrying out several bomb attacks and attempted assassinations that had resulted in injuries and one death—that of a communist local councilor.15 The Potempa murder case thus represented the high point of a campaign of violence to which the state was now seeking to call a halt. But the reaction of the Nazi leadership left no doubt that they approved of the violence of their rank and file. Hitler sent the murderers a telegram of sympathy, which was published by the Party press on August 23,16 while in an editorial in Der Angriff of August 24 Goebbels came up with the pithy formulation “It’s the Jews’ fault.”

  On August 24 Goebbels learned that the sentences would not be carried out. But the political repercussions were nonetheless considerable: “Schleicher of two minds. General mood against us. Schl. says Röhm has done the dirty on him. He didn’t want to order anything illegal, but what about East Prussia.”17

  There remained the Center Party option. On August 25 Goebbels was with Hitler in Berchtesgaden. They were joined by Frick and Strasser, who had just met with Brüning in Tübingen: “The Center Party wants to go with us. Condition is a durable alliance and Prussian minister to be Goerdeler. […] Strasser strongly in favor of Center Party solution. Hitler and I on other hand are for continuing with the presidential idea.” Eventually the group agreed on three possible options: “1. Presidential. 2. Coalition. 3. Opposition. Work on them in that order.”18 The diary documents Goebbels’s willingness to accept all conceivable tactical variations compatible with the “legal” course of the Party. He could see only too clearly that to continue with political terror methods as practiced in East Prussia and Silesia would only lead the Party into the wilderness.

  The following weeks saw all sorts of complicated tactical maneuvering. The very next day Goebbels met Schleicher in Berlin, but the stance of the latter remained unclear. Goebbels thought he could apply pressure on him with the threat of a coalition with the Center Party and reported to Hitler accordingly.19 The next day he traveled to Caputh. In this village near Potsdam, Goebbels had for the first time rented a vacation home, where Hitler appeared at 10 P.M. with a “large entourage”: “We must get into power. If the government breaks constitutional law, that’s an end to legality in general. Then there’ll be tax refusal, sabotage etc.”20 This final step was, however, not a desirable option for Goebbels in August 1932. He had internalized the policy of obtaining power by means of negotiation.

  The next day in the Hotel Kaiserhof he met with Hitler, who informed him about the talks he had held in the meantime with Brüning, von Papen, and Schleicher: “Always the same delaying tactics.” There was a threat that the Parliament that had just been elected might be dissolved immediately: “And we’re left in the lurch.”21

  On August 30 Goebbels attended the inaugural session of the Reichstag. The house elected Göring as its president, a decision to which Goebbels initially reacted with mixed feelings. But over the course of the session he found that Göring did “a good job.”22

  At a party in Göring’s house on August 31, Hitler, Goebbels, Göring, and Röhm withdrew for a “secret conference” in which a “bold plan […] for toppling the old man” was “hatched.” Goebbels’s diaries for the next few days reveal the strategy.23 The idea was to make use of Article 43 of the Reich constitution, which stipulated that if two-thirds of the Reichstag supported a motion to depose the president, it could be taken to a referendum. The first thing was to make sure of Center Party support, which, together with th
e BVP and KPD, would constitute a large enough majority in Parliament.24

  As the Party leaders conferred on this issue, Goebbels eagerly added to his list of criticisms of Strasser, who “as ever” was against the plan because, as Goebbels speculated, the fall of the president might interfere with his own machinations. He registered that both Göring and Röhm had a negative opinion of Strasser and that Hitler “spoke out sharply against him,” even questioning Strasser’s recently completed reorganization of the Munich headquarters: “Hitler is afraid of Strasser, but he’s not fond of him.”25

  It was during these days of intrigue that Goebbels became a father for the first time. On September 1 at 2:20 P.M., Magda gave birth to a baby girl they would name Helga. “Only a girl, unfortunately,” recorded a disappointed Goebbels. But Hitler was “thrilled”: “Hr had always predicted a girl.” “A girl is better,” Hitler consoled him the next day, “because a boy was bound to fall short of his father.” Hitler was also full of praise for Magda, “whom he very much admires and considers the loveliest, dearest, and cleverest of women.”26

  On September 8 and 10 Goebbels took part in talks at the Reichstag Presidential Palace that brought together delegations from the Center Party and the NSDAP. Here Hitler leaned heavily on the Center Party, calling for its support in toppling Hindenburg. Goebbels had the impression that the Center Party representatives were receptive to this demand. However, they asked for time to think it over.27 It took a powerful intervention by the former chancellor, Brüning, to fend off this attack on the Reich president.28 But both parties did agree on the basis of a new bill relating to the Reich president’s deputy. They no longer wanted the Reich chancellor to deputize for the president when the head of state was not available but rather the president of the Reich Supreme Court. This move was motivated by the desire to prevent a concentration of power in the hands of Chancellor von Papen, in the reasonably likely event of Hindenburg’s suffering a serious illness.29