On a normal Berlin working day, therefore, these extended sessions in the Reich Chancellery meant that Goebbels’s time was taken up for practically the whole afternoon. The hectic pace at which he worked and the overwork that he constantly describes in the diary—the “mountains of work” which he “rushed through” “at full pelt”—were partly due to the fact that on many days he had only the morning hours at his disposal.3 In time he seems to have found these lengthy sessions with Hitler increasingly onerous, so that he was positively relieved on those occasions that lunch was canceled or he had a good excuse to miss it. Then he could for once “work right through without interruption.”4
In the evenings he often found himself back in the Reich Chancellery, where Hitler liked to end the day by watching feature films. Hitler’s comments on these were, of course, extremely important for Film Minister Goebbels. In the first half of 1934, therefore, Goebbels spent at least twenty-six evenings in Hitler’s private cinema in the Reich Chancellery5—although Hitler’s taste in films did not always agree with his own, and often it was only the presence of “lovely” or “nice” women that helped him get over “bad films.”
Magda often accompanied him on these visits to the Reich Chancellery,6 although she sometimes called on Hitler without her husband7 or escorted the Führer to events.8 Conversely, Hitler was in the habit of returning the honor by dropping in on the couple in their official Berlin apartment or at their summer residence.9 Sometimes the Führer made such visits unannounced10 or was already there when they returned from a journey. Often, he then stayed on late into the night.
In March Magda found “a little summer house on the Wannsee” in the village of Kladow, right on the edge of Berlin. By March, the Goebbels family had already moved into their summer quarters, remaining there until September.11 At the Berlin water sports exhibition, a particularly fine motorboat caught Goebbels’s eye, and he bought it a few days later.12 In the season that followed, Joseph Goebbels fancied himself as a Sunday skipper, although he left the steering to his driver, Albert Tonak.13 Spending a day in Kladow in April—his first visit there—Hitler was enthusiastic about this summer retreat, and from then on during the summer months he made use of every opportunity to spend his leisure time there, scooting about on the Wannsee and nearby waterways with his propaganda minister. But other people too came to enjoy their spare time at the Goebbels place, for example the Helldorfs, the Blombergs, Party treasurer Franz Schwarz with his family, or Pfeffer.14
On April 13 Magda gave birth to her second child: “Once again, the Führer was the only one who got it right. It’s a girl.” They decided to call her Hilde.15 Two days later, when Goebbels went to see Magda in the hospital, he found she had another visitor: “Führer already there” ran Goebbels’s laconic remark in the diary. At this time Hitler helped with another piece of Goebbels family business. According to the divorce settlement between Magda and her first husband, on completing his fourteenth year their son Harald was supposed to move from his mother’s household to that of his father. With this deadline approaching, Goebbels made every effort to annul the agreement. To this end, he applied massive pressure in his dealings with Quandt’s lawyer. He prevailed without too much difficulty—after all, a few days after the birth of Hilde, Hitler had promised him his full support.16 Shortly afterward, on the occasion of the first Reich Theater Festival Week in Dresden, Hitler opened up to him about his own private concerns. Goebbels’s comment on the discussion was: “He is so nice, it’s touching. He’s so lonely. Must have a wife. It can’t go on like this.”17
His close, almost daily contact with Hitler had its down side. He was no longer master of his own spare time. Hitler and the Goebbels family—Magda had by now recovered from the birth—were supposed to be going on a trip together for Whitsun. But when it came to it, Hitler dithered about the arrangements, and as late as the Friday evening he had still not made up his mind. Goebbels was obviously annoyed: “It’s sickening. I’m not waiting any longer. I’m pushing off. To Cladow. I need to relax. I can’t spend the whole of Whitsun waiting around, after all.”18 On Whitsunday he heard that Hitler intended to fly to Munich. Goebbels could enjoy a quiet day off.19
During this time his relationship with Magda underwent various crises. At the end of May Hitler had warned him of “nasty females spreading gossip about Magda,” and the next day there was a violent argument with Magda that went on for days.20 “I’m sick and tired of all this,” he commented on the situation at home at the beginning of June.21 His wife did her best to sort things out: “Magda has spoken to Führer. I must have a vacation. As soon as possible.” But the rest of summer 1934 was so eventful that Goebbels was obliged to do without his vacation.
A few weeks later he heard “a terrible thing about Magda.” He does not say what this was, perhaps more evidence of her unfaithfulness. In any case, there had been “dreadful scenes,” which left him shattered. The next day the couple carried on with their bitter argument. Surprisingly, though, Goebbels was prepared to come around in the end, because Magda was “basically good”: “I’m very much to blame as well. I must make up for it.” The next day they reached an agreement—if only temporarily.22
HOW MUCH FREEDOM WILL THE DICTATORSHIP TOLERATE
Politically, the year 1934 began on January 30 with the celebration of the first anniversary of the “seizure of power.”23 In the Reichstag, Parliament passed the “Act for the Reconstruction of the Reich,” which among other things abolished the parliaments and sovereignty of the federal states and gave the government the authority to bring in new constitutional laws without consulting Parliament.24 In the evening Goebbels gave a speech in the Sportpalast on the topic of “Germany’s change of fortune: one year on.”25 There followed a two-day Gauleiter conference, at which he expressed dissatisfaction with the Prussian ministries and with those addicted to presenting themselves in puffed-up, overweening style.26
With the title “No Pomp, but 22 Million for the Poor,” on January 30 in Der Angriff Goebbels published his own contribution to the anniversary. He proclaimed that January 30 was the “day of the national community” and announced that in honor of the occasion Winter Relief would be distributing generous quantities of food and coal coupons. However, the festivities should not be too luxurious. He called on people “as befits the hardships and seriousness of the times, to abstain from all showy, pompous festivals, torchlight processions and the like […] but to give visible expression on January 30 to their joy, confidence and heartfelt satisfaction by flying the flag of the Reich from 7 in the morning until 8 in the evening.”27
Just a few days later he published in the Völkischer Beobachter another article, which attracted considerable attention.28 Under the headline “More Morality, Less Moralizing,” he took exception to “the vice-sniffing which […] might just be all right for regulating the life of a convent community but is completely out of place in a modern civilized state.” In the article, he particularly objected to the Party’s stereotypical ideal image of the “German woman.” In fact, there were “good and bad, hardworking and lazy, decent and less decent women, with or without bobbed hair; whether they powder their noses or not is not always a sign of their intrinsic worth, and if they smoke the occasional cigarette at home or in company, this does not mean they should be condemned and cast out.” He ironically criticized the notion that a Nationalist Socialist must not enjoy life but live it in “pessimism” and “misanthropy”: “So: more embracing of life, less sanctimoniousness! More morality, but less moralizing!”
He recorded that Hitler was “enthusiastic” about the article.29 But two weeks later, asked to say something about the “woman question,” he took a completely different approach. On February 11 he gave a talk to the National Socialist Women’s Association of the Berlin Gau on the topic of “National Socialism and the Woman Question.” The role he assigned to women in the Third Reich of the future clearly contradicted the “modern” image of women he had put forward in his “mo
ralizing” essay at the end of January. Women, he explained, had “understood that it is a great calling, in no way inferior to the calling of men, to lend spirit, emotion, and—so to speak—‘color’ to men’s decisions.” But women would find fulfillment “precisely in their finest vocation, that of mother.”30
Goebbels’s contributions in January and February 1934 show how eager he was around this time to give the public image of the Third Reich some kind of face. They indicate that in many areas of life the regime had not yet succeeded in imposing truly binding norms of behavior.
This also applied to the question of how much public criticism the new regime could tolerate. On February 7 Goebbels gave a speech to the Presidium of the Reich Culture Chamber, in which he complained that the German press was either “anarchic, destroying and undermining everything, or it was as tame as a lapdog!” It was simply not capable of finding “a golden mean,” “that is to say an independent, decent, well-intentioned critique of individual measures mixed with good, positive advice!”
The speech provoked contradiction. The old flagship of the German liberal press, the Frankfurter Zeitung, offered a direct response to Goebbels’s speech a few days later in an editorial.31 Wrapped up in polite language and deference to the minister, the message was that the press was no longer in a position “to echo public opinion,” for “who is this public for whom the press would like to speak?” The article suggested that to call for more criticism from the press, as Goebbels had done, was rather simplistic. For the “desire to avoid fruitless criticism under any circumstances” had in reality led the press—under government tutelage—“for the time being to stop dealing with certain topics.” Finally, the paper nailed its colors to the mast by defending the “principle of press freedom as a life element indispensable in the long run for the existence of the state.”
In another article, bearing the byline of the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Rudolf Kircher, the newspaper returned to the theme a few weeks later, on March 24. It addressed openly the “crisis of the press,” reflected not least in falling subscription figures.32 “Germans,” the article asserted, had certainly “been brought to recognize clearly their ties to the community,” but within these ties they also wanted, “thanks to their unchanging German character, the open expression of their feelings and judgments, subject only to tact and decency.” Under the article there was a very somber obituary for the Vossische Zeitung, that other great liberal newspaper, which had just ceased publication—after 230 years!
Finally, on April 19 another article by Rudolf Kircher appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung, this one dealing with a decline in the standing of the German press abroad and diminishing sales at home, but not inclined to view this situation as irrevocable. This series of articles in the Frankfurter Zeitung represented a valiant attempt to defend at least the remnants of press freedom under dictatorship. It is remarkable that Goebbels was prompted by these comments to go on responding publicly, rather than simply resorting to repressive measures to silence the newspaper.
On April 19, the same day that Kircher’s attack on the system of press control appeared, Goebbels was already hitting back. At an event to which the Reich Press Association had been invited, he felt obliged to take up the charge of the “monotony” of the press. He blamed the journalists, who were practicing “excessive compliance.” They needed to be gradually replaced by “young blood […]; we must have people raised in the spirit of National Socialism, who have it in their blood.”33
Naturally, the speech received a mixed reception. While Der Angriff spoke of a well-founded critique, executed with “biting sarcasm,” of this “limp-rag mentality,” the Berlin correspondent of the press agency “Dienst aus Deutschland” (German Service), Georg Dertinger, wrote a letter to the editor deploring the “undifferentiated defamation of non–National Socialist journalists” and declaring himself incapable of writing any commentary that “might reflect our views and yet be compatible with present possibilities.”34
But in an editorial in the next day’s Frankfurter Zeitung Rudolf Kircher found a way of countering Goebbels’s attack by using irony in response to his sarcasm. The journalists, stated Kircher, had sat in front of Goebbels like “school-leavers facing the school principal as he hands out the exam results. Needless to say—nobody passed.” Kircher continued: “Of course, the easiest thing for us journalists would have been for the government to declare from the start that in such difficult times there must not be any criticism. But instead of that the cry goes up, ‘Don’t be shy, take a risk—but only where you should!’ There’s something almost cruel about this. Yet the minister left the podium amid storms of applause.”
A further response appeared on April 29 in the Sunday paper Grüne Post; it was written by the editor-in-chief, the author Ehm Welk. In ironic form it shot Goebbels’s accusation of the uniformity of the German press back at him: “Herr Reich Minister, I see what you’re asking, but frankly—I’m not sure I’m with you.” This disrespectful article earned the Grüne Post a three-month ban as well as banishment to a concentration camp for Welk.35
Less than three weeks later, at a “press convention” for Party journalists, Goebbels came back to his speech and the slogan “More courage!” He used the occasion to read out a new announcement “easing” press conditions, ostensibly giving journalists greater room to maneuver, as well as moderating the Propaganda Ministry’s insistence that the press should publish official pronouncements.36
It was pure sarcasm when the conservative journalist Georg Dertinger reported to his editorial office a few days later that according to the propaganda minister the “partial restoration of press freedom” had now proven its value in practice. Dertinger was referring to an address given by Goebbels on May 11 in the Berlin Sportpalast. It was designed to overrule any possible criticism of the regime as the superfluous grumbling of people who “get themselves down” and “always object to everything.”
Goebbels had no doubt about who was behind such criticism: “the Jews” and “small cliques within the churches.”37 In the space of a few days, therefore, the vaunted “easing” of pressure on the press had turned into an all-out campaign against critical voices.38 When Goebbels proclaimed in the Völkischer Beobachter two weeks later that the purpose of his propaganda efforts was to instill “dedication to the high aims of the National Socialist state,” the direction of the winds was clear.39 There would be no public criticism of the press control system from now on.
Goebbels’s launched a campaign in May 1934 against “grumblers and faultfinders.” It was an impressive demonstration of how much distance there now was between subtle debates about the nuances of press freedom and the reality of the ruthlessly manipulated public sphere in the Third Reich. The campaign was aimed first and foremost at criticism of the regime from reactionary and ecclesiastical sources. The official publication of the Reich propaganda office printed a firsthand account by a Party functionary in Wiesbaden about the conduct of the campaign. It was held up as a model, and it made clear the extent to which everyday life just over a year after the “seizure of power” was already dominated by the detailed work of local Party organizations.
When the high point of the action was still two weeks away—it was to culminate in a wave of events—the whole of the local press was forced to report daily on the campaign. Among other things, the papers called on readers to acquire swastika badges—giving right of access to the planned rallies—and to wear them in public. A week before the series of events, four thousand posters went up around the city, and during the day before the action itself they bore stickers with the text “Tonight only moaners will stay at home.” Banners were stretched across the street bearing messages such as “Moaners are traitors,” “Don’t whine, work!” and so forth. Twenty groups of painters were set to work applying the same slogans to the pavements.
In the course of the action, furthermore, fifty thousand leaflets were distributed to all households; sixteen trucks drove throug
h the city, each carrying thirty or forty uniformed Party comrades chanting slogans; troops of speakers visited pubs according to a prearranged program to deliver short speeches; and in the cinemas public announcement slides were inserted into the scheduled screenings. The main meetings then took place simultaneously in one evening in twenty-four halls. To make up for any possible shortfall in audience numbers, Hitler youth members had been placed on standby to fill the gaps, but it turned out that the meetings were over-subscribed, so that on short notice—by resorting to a special “reserve pool” of speakers—further meetings were improvised in the open air. Would anybody have been able to resist “invitations” on this scale? Nothing was left to chance: At the end of the action all the inscriptions and posters instantly disappeared from the city scene.40
STRUGGLES WITH RIVALS FOR CONTROL
From the beginning of 1934, Goebbels made considerable efforts to consolidate and extend his control of propaganda and cultural areas, both at the state level and within the Party. Early in the year he started restructuring the Party propaganda office to align it more with the ministry.41 Goebbels also took care to ensure that the newly created—on April 1—regional branches of his ministry, called Landestellen (federal state offices), known from 1937 onward as Reichspropagandaämter (Reich propaganda offices), were staffed by personnel who covered the same duties in the Gau propaganda departments. However, the Gau propaganda directors, now also working for the central state propaganda office, were in practice much closer to their individual Gauleiters than to Goebbels, so that he could not afford to rely on them as thoroughly as his own lieutenants.42
In 1934 Goebbels was at great pains to underline his central role in cultural politics. Among the steps he took to achieve this was the creation of national book and film prizes. In Hitler’s presence, on May 1, 1934, at a gala event of the Reich Culture Chamber in the Berlin State Opera House, Goebbels presented prizes to the Nazi writer Richard Euringer and to Gustav Ucicky for his anti-Soviet film Flüchtlinge (Refugees).
Goebbels: A Biography Page 32