Goebbels: A Biography

by Peter Longerich

  In the Lippe election the NSDAP received just 39.5 percent of the vote, less than the record result of July but markedly better than in the Reichstag election in November. In the event, the Party’s propaganda declared this success an overwhelming victory. In an editorial in Der Angriff, Goebbels announced that the “popular verdict of Lippe” showed that the stagnation of the NSDAP was over.81 Hitler was so reinvigorated by this favorable election result that he even felt able to tackle his relationship with Gregor Strasser, left unresolved since December. At a Gauleiter conference on January 16 in Weimar, he managed to set practically all of the Party elite against the dissenter: “Poor Gregor! Butchered by his best friends,” wrote Goebbels.82

  On January 24, over coffee in Munich, Hitler explained to Goebbels, who was not involved, the latest developments in the negotiations to form a government: “On Sunday he was together with Papen, Meissner, and Hindenburg Junior. […] All three sharply opposed to Schleicher. He must go. Papen wants to be vice chancellor. That’s all. Schleicher’s position very much endangered. He still seems unsuspecting. Poor naive creature!”83

  Two days later, while Goebbels was on an election trip to Upper Silesia, he learned that Schleicher was going to fall in a few days: “Harzburger Front reappears. Frick and Göring negotiating.”84 He made no comment on the sudden resurrection of the alliance with the far right, the Stahlhelm, and the DNVP, to which he had objected so strongly in earlier years. The following day, with Goebbels back in Berlin, there was still no decision about Hitler’s chancellorship: “The old man doesn’t want it. So: Keep at it!”85 He registered varying items of news about the negotiations,86 until he heard of the final outcome from Göring: “Hitler Chancellor, Papen Vice Chancellor, Frick Reich Interior, Göring Pruss. Interior. Hugenberg Emergencies etc. And above all: The Reichstag is to be dissolved.” “The last time [i.e., the last election],” wrote Goebbels: “We’ll manage it.” Finally, Hitler told him that the promised Ministry of Popular Education was reserved for him—but first there was an election to get through.87

  INTERIM REVIEW: GOEBBELS’S PATH TO THE “SEIZURE OF POWER”

  Watching the negotiations about forming a government from the perspective of a mere onlooker, early in 1933, was not a new experience for Goebbels. He had never been directly involved in the various discussions and soundings undertaken by Hitler in the preceding years to move the NSDAP closer to power.

  Surveying the deliberations, advice, and initiatives associated with Goebbels up to this point in the National Socialist quest for power, the inconsistency and at times even naïveté of his approach become apparent. Ever since Hitler had begun in 1929 to seek a closer liaison with the DNVP and the Stahlhelm, Goebbels had always been hostile to this alliance, afraid that the NSDAP would be too restricted politically by such a constellation. At the same time, he had presented himself as an uncompromising radical. Eventually, after many crises, when this partnership had finally shown itself in the presidential election of 1932 to be incapable of action, Goebbels, in an astonishing change of direction, became willing to entertain the other alternative, a coalition with the Center Party (in the Reich and in Prussia), in particular because he hoped in this way to be able to play a decisive role in Prussia. For a while, with the fall of Brüning and von Papen’s accession to the chancellorship at the end of May 1932, it seemed that this dream was about to be fulfilled. But it ended when the Center Party broke with von Papen. Goebbels’s comportment in these months indicates that he had finally realized that his ostentatious posturing as a radical was a hindrance both to the Party and to his own career. He now swung completely behind Hitler’s tactical policy of negotiation. When the NSDAP emerged from the election of July 1932 as the strongest party, Goebbels—spurred on above all by the promise of an extensive Culture Ministry—naturally supported Hitler’s project of becoming chancellor with full presidential powers. When Hitler’s plan was frustrated by Hindenburg’s resistance, Goebbels willingly followed his leader’s policy of tolerating a Schleicher cabinet. When Hitler returned in January 1933 to his original approach of seeking a coalition with his old partners from the Harzburg days, the Stahlhelm and the DNVP, Goebbels noted this without commenting. In the last year before the “seizure of power,” he simply went with the flow of NSDAP policy, determined by Hitler.

  Goebbels’s behavior makes superabundantly clear his total dependence on Hitler. Any doubts he might have had about the Party leader’s policies—whether it was in relation to the Stahlhelm and the DNVP, the question of the Party’s “socialism,” Hitler’s stalling over the Reich propaganda position, and other such occurrences—he always put aside in the end, submitting completely to Hitler’s political genius. Correspondingly, his position within the Party was based entirely on Hitler’s support. He was not tied to firm alliances with other leading Party comrades or to networks: In fact, he shied away from such ties in order to give himself maximum freedom to accommodate the Party leader. His total dependence on Hitler also explains why Goebbels relied completely on the nebulous ideas of the leader as far as future National Socialist policies for governing were concerned and why he made no significant effort to develop political concepts of his own: By 1931 he had dropped his vague “socialist” notions for good. After the end of the 1920s, when he gave up the idea of an alliance with Russia, he never had any thoughts about future foreign policy; equally unfathomable is his conception of the office of “National Educator” that Hitler dangled in front of him from time to time.

  In his special area, Party propaganda, Goebbels had likewise done little to make himself stand out. In his first election, in summer 1930, when he had admittedly only just taken office, he did not diverge at all from the previous line of targeting the “fulfilment policy” of the Young Plan. It was in the presidential election campaign of spring 1932 that he first deployed the idea of placing Hitler squarely at the heart of Party propaganda, but the defeat of Hitler in this contest emphatically showed the risk of such a single-pronged propaganda ploy. For that reason the Reichstag election of July 1932 was dominated by other themes, above all the fight against the “system parties.” It was not until the November election that the spotlight returned to the person of the Party leader, presented as an alternative to von Papen and “the reactionaries” but once again with only limited success. For all Goebbels’s admiration for Hitler and his dependence on him as the central fixed point determining his political activities, it was only at a relatively late juncture, hesitantly and with dubious success, that he imposed his “Führer cult” on Nazi propaganda—and even then, primarily out of tactical considerations. Only under the conditions of dictatorship and within the constraints of public surveillance did he succeed in establishing the Führer myth, the notion of a far-reaching union of Volk and Volksführer, as a central element of his propaganda.

  1933–1939

  CONTROLLING THE PUBLIC SPHERE UNDER DICTATORSHIP

  CHAPTER 10

  “We’re Here to Stay!”

  Taking Power

  Credit 10.1

  Book burning in the Berlin Opernplatz on May 10, 1933, where Goebbels made an inflammatory speech. In the first months after his appointment as minister, Goebbels’s reorientation of German cultural life was quite unmistakable.

  After the appointment on January 30 of the Hitler–von Papen coalition government, combining National Socialists, German Nationalists, and the Stahlhelm, Goebbels was fully taken up with preparations for the next election campaign.1 The president’s order to dissolve the Reichstag, a precondition for calling new elections, was in Hitler’s hands by February 2, 1933. At a cabinet meeting on January 31, Hitler’s national-conservative coalition partners had reluctantly acceded to his demand for an election. He declared that this poll for the Reichstag would be the last.2

  Goebbels was disappointed to discover that for the moment nothing came of Hitler’s magnanimous promise of a grand-scale Ministry of Popular Education, one that would assume responsibility for schools and univ
ersities. He heard on February 2 that Bernhard Rust was to have the Ministry of Culture, and not simply—as he had still been thinking right up to that morning—as a “stand-in” for himself, but permanently.3

  According to the diary, however, Goebbels had been given far-reaching promises of a future ministry in January 1932 and again the following August.4 Significantly, in the Kaiserhof version of the diary he edited the relevant passages in order to conceal his setback. There was no longer any mention of the promised responsibility for schools and universities, just as he also omitted the “link” with the Prussian Ministry of Culture he had been promised in January, and he turned the assurance of a position as minister of popular education received in August into a “plan of popular education.”5 Magda, released from the hospital on February 1, was “very unhappy. Because I’m not getting ahead.”6 The rumor that reached him around this time was that he was going to be fobbed off with the subordinate role of “commissioner for radio” (“disgusting”).7

  He was then approached by Walther Funk, who a few days earlier had been appointed head of the government press agency (until then Funk had headed the economic policy unit of the NSDAP), with the request to be made “state secretary for press and propaganda.” “That’s all I needed,” was Goebbels’s furious reaction. In short, he concluded, “I’m being pushed out of the way. Hitler doesn’t help much. I give up. The reactionaries are calling the tune.”8 Two days later he learned via a phone call from Hitler that the leader had already confirmed Funk in his future office. For Goebbels, this appointment meant that his most important collaborator would simultaneously be serving as Hitler’s government spokesman, directly under him and continually on the receiving end of the leader’s directives. Responsibility for press policy in the new government was therefore divided from the start, so that there were constraints on Goebbels’s freedom of action as head of propaganda.9 In the version of his diary published in 1934 he turned this painful defeat on its head: “The director of the Reich press office was my choice for state secretary.”10

  At the behest of the new government, on February 4 the president signed an emergency decree “for the protection of the German people,” giving the regime the power to forbid strikes, meetings, and demonstrations. It also became easier to silence newspapers, a provision the new masters of Germany exploited to the full in the days that followed.11

  The funeral of Hans Maikowski, the leader of an SA unit dubbed “Murder-Stormtroop 33” by his opponents, was a chance for the new regime to put on a lavish display. He had been killed on the evening of January 30 in an exchange of fire with the communists after the SA march through the Brandenburg Gate.12 Following the ceremony in the cathedral and a slow march through the city, Goebbels gave a memorial address in the Invalidenfriedhof (Veterans’ Cemetery) that was broadcast by all the German radio stations. “Perhaps we Germans do not know how to live—but we certainly know how to die fabulously”: This rhetorical high point of his speech was borrowed from the U-boat movie Morgenrot (Dawn), whose premiere he had attended the day before.13

  On February 6 Goebbels succumbed to the constant strain and disappointments he suffered in the early days of the Third Reich, going down with an influenza attack that kept him in bed for several days with a high temperature.14 Barely recovered, a few days later he plunged energetically into the task of organizing the election campaign, both in the Berlin Gau and in the wider Reich.15 Initially, however, the campaign was handicapped by an acute lack of funds.16 For a while Goebbels was even forced to halt the printing of propaganda material.17 This, together with his disappointment over government positions, led to a degree of resentment toward the headquarters in Munich, which he vented in his diary: “Munich=Mecca=murder of NS.”18 Eventually he was in danger of falling into a bout of depression.19

  When Göring appointed the new Berlin Police Commissioner, Magnus von Levetzow, Goebbels’s diary entry for February 16 records the fact with no great enthusiasm but also reveals that as Gauleiter of Berlin he was not consulted at all about filling this important position—one from which he had, after all, often been attacked over the years.

  But at the same time there was a change of fortune: In the middle of the month, Frau von Schröder, the wife of the Cologne banker in whose house Hitler and von Papen had planned the formation of a new government, donated twenty thousand Reichsmarks to the Berlin Gau election campaign, and a few days later Goebbels heard from Göring that three million marks were available for the nationwide campaign: “Now we can really put some pep into it.”20

  The themes of the campaign centered on the slogan “Build with Hitler” and—reinforced after the Reichstag fire—on confrontation with left-wing parties, with “corrupt rule,” and with communist “terror.”21 Goebbels appeared at a series of mass rallies throughout the Reich, sometimes together with Hitler, whose speeches were broadcast, introduced by a commentary from Goebbels. Broadcasting election campaign rallies was a novelty for German radio. Although von Papen had used the radio for government propaganda purposes, in principle broadcasting had been limited by party-political neutrality. As a result some regions that were not yet dominated by National Socialists took exception. According to the cabinet decision of February 8, a compromise was reached whereby Hitler would enjoy airtime only in his capacity as head of government (and not as leader of a party), and the introduction should be limited to no more than 10 minutes. However, Goebbels managed to stretch out his evocative commentaries to nearly 45 minutes.22 In February and the beginning of March he appeared at mass rallies in, among other places, Stuttgart, Dortmund, Essen, Cologne, Hanover, Frankfurt, Breslau, and Hamburg, and of course he spoke in the Berlin Sportpalast.23 At the end of the month Hitler expressed himself simply “delighted” with his commentaries.24

  On one of these trips he visited his hometown, Rheydt; sat ensconced in the town’s Palast Hotel with family and friends for long sessions; and obviously enjoyed being cheered in the streets as a celebrated son of the locality: “The whole town in uproar,” he recorded.25

  Even his relations with Hitler, troubled for a while, were now straightened out, with the Führer promising him that his ministry would be set up immediately after the election.26 Together with Magda they attended a Wagner opera, and Hitler resumed his evening visits to the Goebbels apartment.27

  A new acquisition seems to have contributed a good deal to improving Goebbels’s mood. At the Berlin automobile exhibition, opened on February 12 by Hitler and visited twice by Goebbels, he admired a new Mercedes, a “top-class, highest-quality product.”28 A short while later in Stuttgart he had an opportunity to raise the matter with Jakob Werlin, a Mercedes dealer who had often been helpful to Hitler and the NSDAP.29 Once again it turned out that Werlin was able to help, and a week later in Berlin Goebbels took delivery of his glamorous automobile, “on the most favorable terms.”30

  THE REICHSTAG FIRE

  On the evening of February 28—Hitler and Prince Auwi were visiting—Hanfstaengl called Goebbels at home with the startling news that the Reichstag was on fire. It transpired that what was thought at first to be just some “crazy fantasy” was actually true. They drove quickly to Parliament: “The whole building is in flames. Inside. Göring already there. Papen, too, whom I meet here for the first time. Fire set in 30 places. Carried out by communists. Göring is furious. Hitler in a rage. […] Now is the time to act!”

  While Hitler and von Papen were conferring, Goebbels was at the Gau headquarters taking the first steps to quell a supposed communist uprising. Later they met up again in the Kaiserhof in high spirits: “Everybody’s beaming. That’s exactly what we needed. Now we’re sitting pretty. Perpetrator caught. 24-year old Dutch communist.”31

  Goebbels’s diary entries show that from the point of view of the Nazi elite, the Reichstag fire was a unique stroke of luck, presenting the National Socialists with the perfect excuse to proceed against the left, particularly the KPD, with the utmost brutality. All that we learn from the diary about
the actual culprit is that it was the twenty-four-year old Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe, later condemned to death by the Reich Supreme Court for this act. In Goebbels’s notes there is not the slightest hint that the Nazi leadership seriously thought that Lubbe’s action was intended by the KPD as a signal for revolt. And the turn of events clearly caught communist leaders themselves completely unawares. The action taken by the new regime that night was prompted not by genuine fear of a communist uprising but by a sense that fate had played right into their hands.

  Too good to be true? There is nothing whatsoever in Goebbels’s diary to support the suspicion, still often mentioned to this day, that the Reichstag fire was staged by the Nazi leadership. But this omission is not conclusive; it is quite possible that the real perpetrators behind the arson attack (Hitler? Göring?) left Goebbels in the dark about their plans, and it is also conceivable that even if Goebbels had been initiated into these plans he might have feigned innocence in the diaries.32