Goebbels: A Biography

by Peter Longerich

  Weakened by the withdrawal of Mussolini’s support, Chancellor Schuschnigg was forced to settle with Nazi Germany.66 In what was called the July Agreement, there were negotiations, among other things, over improving press relations, to which both countries had assented by August 1935 in an exchange of communiqués.67

  Goebbels, whose area of responsibility involved many parts of the July Agreement, had been following the negotiations conducted by Ambassador von Papen in Vienna68 from the sidelines with a degree of skepticism, but he had no part in the final formulation of the accord.69 Nonetheless, he could not refrain from announcing the communiqué of July 11 to the regular press briefing as a “big sensation.”70 Naturally, as Goebbels and Hitler agreed, the accord should above all be a platform from which further to undermine the authority of the Austrian government. At the beginning of May Hitler had left with him the memorable sentiment: “We must maintain tension in Austria and Czechoslovakia. Never let things settle down.”71

  On July 19 Goebbels once again went to Bayreuth for the Wagner Festival. While he was following the performances (mainly with enthusiasm), taking an interest in the personal details of top artists, and chatting for hours with Hitler about this and that, the latter—without bringing Goebbels into the actual decision-making process—was initiating a momentous change of direction in German foreign policy.72 For on July 25 Hitler granted an audience to an envoy from General Francisco Franco, the leader of an officers’ plot against the left-wing government in Madrid. Soon after that he gave orders to support the putsch, so that the revolt, based in Spanish North Africa, could be successfully transferred to metropolitan Spain.73

  This significant foreign relations decision sprang from a mixture of ideological, strategic, anticommunist, and military-industrial motives and was highly significant in paving the way for the subsequent German-Italian alliance. Nonetheless, it was a decision that passed Goebbels by, even though he was on hand in Bayreuth at the time, preoccupied with a performance of Siegfried. It was not until the next day that Hitler and Göring informed him of the decision made the previous night, to which Goebbels pointedly attributed only minor significance in his diary entry: “So we’re getting a bit involved in Spain. Planes etc. Not obvious. Who knows what the point is.”74

  All the same, Goebbels followed the developments in and around Spain very closely in the following weeks and months.75 While the Luftwaffe continued to increase its covert support for the rebels, Hitler pursued far-reaching deceptive tactics at the diplomatic level. In August Germany joined an arms embargo initiated by France and starting in September took part in meetings of an international non-intervention committee.76 In line with this new foreign policy orientation, the topic of “anti-Bolshevism” became more central to German propaganda in the months to come.

  OLYMPIC GAMES AND OLYMPIA

  When Goebbels returned from Bayreuth to Berlin at the end of July, he discovered a “proper festival city,”77 abundantly decorated and comprehensively geared up for the imminent Olympics.78 In the next two weeks he plunged completely into the Olympic proceedings, attending numerous sports events, taking an active part in the accompanying social and cultural program, and using the opportunity to mingle with high-ranking foreign guests such as the Bulgarian Tsar Boris III, the Italian crown prince, Dino Alfieri (Goebbels’s Italian counterpart), and Sir Robert Vansittart, the longstanding undersecretary of state at the British Foreign Office. He registered German sporting successes as “the outcome of reawakened national ambition.”79 But it stuck in his craw that so many medals were won for the United States “by negroes”: “It’s a disgrace. The white race should be ashamed of itself.”80

  At the end of the Games, Goebbels organized on the Pfaueninsel (“Peacock Island,” on the River Havel) a magnificent party for some three thousand guests, meant to outshine all the other festivities and celebrations during the Berlin Olympics. Goebbels welcomed the Bulgarian tsar, the whole of the diplomatic corps, numerous representatives of the Reich government, and many Gauleiters and NSDAP Reich leaders. The Wehrmacht Pioneer Corps had erected a pontoon bridge—hung with festive lanterns and with the Berlin regional orchestra playing on it—across to the island for the occasion. Three more dance bands and the German Opera House Ballet provided the entertainment, and the midnight fireworks display was so colossal that it reminded the U.S. ambassador, William Dodd, of a battle scene.81

  On August 16 Goebbels took part in the closing ceremony in the Berlin Olympic stadium, summing up: “With 33 gold medals, Germany easily tops the table. The leading sports nation. That’s glorious.”82

  By summer 1935, Hitler had commissioned Leni Riefenstahl to make a permanent film record of the Olympics, a project Goebbels was happy to pursue and of which he was the official promoter.83 In October 1935 the Propaganda Ministry awarded the project 1.5 million Reichsmarks, a fund to be administered by a specially created company, Olympia Film Ltd.84

  Riefenstahl’s energetic working style and her unstoppable determination led to unpleasant scenes here and there in sporting arenas with the supervisory staff. Goebbels found himself forced to intervene in one of these confrontations: “I chew Riefenstahl out. Her behavior is impossible. A hysterical woman. She’s just not a man!”85

  As a result of the enormous film footage, which Riefenstahl with her characteristic perfectionism finally assembled into two feature-length movies, completing the film cost a considerable amount of time and money. Accusations of profligate spending and negligent use of funding—Goebbels referred to “complete financial chaos”86—were later withdrawn.87

  Despite resistance from Goebbels, in a personal audience with Hitler in November 1937 Riefenstahl succeeded in securing extra funding for the film. The Propaganda Ministry had to supply a further 300,000 marks.88 Meanwhile, Goebbels was obliged to put out a press statement denying reports in the foreign press of a shouting match between Riefenstahl and himself at a social event. Hitler and Goebbels then visited Riefenstahl in her villa in Dahlem; the German press published photos of their visit.89

  In November 1937 Goebbels had a chance to see some parts of Riefenstahl’s opus—and he was utterly captivated.90 The gala premiere planned by Hitler and Goebbels for both parts of the film, Festival of Nations and Festival of Beauty, finally took place—after many postponements91—on April 20, 1936, Hitler’s forty-ninth birthday, in the presence of the entire Nazi elite.92 On May 1, 1938, Leni Riefenstahl once again received the National Film Prize, from Goebbels himself.93

  THE FRUITS OF SUCCESS: TRAVEL, CELEBRATIONS, HONORS, GIFTS

  For the regime, the Olympics represented a considerable increase in international reputation. This, as well as a few other factors, contributed to the sense that the regime was now by and large securely established. Political opposition had almost been eliminated; there was a ceasefire in the war against the churches; and mass unemployment had been considerably reduced by the rearmament buildup. Staged in the form of a celebration of national unity, the “election” and the Olympiad had provided plenty of opportunities to show off the supposed harmony between regime and people. Now, at the end of the summer, there began a period of some months when Goebbels could bask in the glory of success, collect rewards and approbation, and savor to the fullest the privileges that went with his status.

  At the end of August he spent three days at the Venice Biennale with Magda. Goebbels was highly impressed by the city, which he found “absolutely stunning.”94 He noted with satisfaction the results emerging from the International Film Festival: Trenker’s The Emperor of California was declared the best foreign film.95 Flying back, he interrupted his journey to stay for a few days on the Obersalzberg. He discussed various political topics with Hitler, but there was also time for relaxation: “Bowling. But the Führer is the master of that, too.”96

  The Nuremberg Party rally of 1936—Goebbels had tried in vain to persuade Hitler to shorten the program, in view of the recent Olympic upheaval, or even cancel the rally altogether97—took the mo
tto of “anti-Bolshevism.” Goebbels made his main contribution on September 10 with a speech on “Bolshevism, the World Enemy.” He had already belabored the theme in his address the year before, but now, against a background of ongoing international developments, the speech was the starting signal for a big anticommunist propaganda campaign.98 Hitler found the speech “classically good,” and as usual Goebbels could not get enough of the press response, which, being under the direction of the Propaganda Ministry, was outstanding.99 During the Nuremberg show, with its usual parades, military displays, solemn ceremonial, torchlight processions, receptions, and endless speeches, he found time, as we have seen, to cultivate the first tender links with Baarová.

  On September 20 Goebbels left on his long-planned trip to Greece.100 In Athens on September 22, visiting the Acropolis, Goebbels experienced “one of the most profound and beautiful mornings of my life. […] Spent hours strolling through the most noble site of Nordic art. The Propylaea, the Parthenon, and the Erechtheion. I’m quite stunned. Over everything this deep blue Attic sky. […] How the Führer would love to be here with us!”101

  The next day they went on via Thebes to Delphi: “That’s antiquity, our blessing and our great saving grace.” In the evening they boarded a little steamer in nearby Itea. Of the nighttime journey he noted that it had been sultry, almost unbearable, and Magda did not feel well. In fact, this is one of the very few entries in his detailed travel diary in which his wife gets even a brief mention. He does not seem to have shared with her the impressions that had moved him so deeply in the previous days but had quite deliberately chosen to enjoy these intense experiences alone. Significantly, it was Hitler he missed on his visit to the Acropolis.102

  After a cruise of some days with the ship, during which he visited various excavations, he returned to Athens, from which he took his “melancholy” leave a few days later.103

  Contrary to his principle of not accepting any pompous official honors,104 he had not been able to refuse the highest Greek order, which Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas bestowed on him in Athens. Goebbels had to “accept with a good grace.” Hardly had he returned home when Alfieri gave him the Order of Mauritius. “Rather an embarrassing situation. But what can I do? Put a brave face on it and accept!”105

  A month after his return, on October 29 and for the following three days Goebbels found himself at the center of numerous celebrations and honors. His thirty-ninth birthday coincided with the tenth anniversary of his tenure as Berlin Gauleiter, and this had to be celebrated in style. First he received a delegation of German artists, to whom he announced a donation of two million marks for the artists’ old-age fund, and then the twenty-eight oldest Party comrades in the Gau, upon whom he bestowed the Party’s Golden Badge of Honor. For Berliners who were not lucky enough to be able to congratulate the Gauleiter in person on his big day, lists were made available in the ministry to sign.

  Finally, Hitler himself appeared at the ministry, and they both retired to Goebbels’s private office. Deeply moved, Goebbels cherished the precious moments: “And then he talks to me very nicely and confidentially. About the old days, how we belong together, what he says to me is so moving. Gives me his portrait, with a wonderful dedication. And a painting of the Dutch School. It is a wonderful hour alone with him. He poured out his whole heart to me.” There followed a torchlight procession in the Lustgarten, a military review of Hitler’s SS bodyguard, the Leibstandarte, and then at home he gave a reception, at which Hitler was present once more.106

  The next day, at a reception in the City Hall, Goebbels presented himself completely as a “socialist.” He maintained in his speech of thanks that he felt “more closely connected to the poor of our own country than to the king of any other.”107 The City of Berlin turned over to him a “simple log cabin by one of the quiet lakes around Berlin,” as Der Angriff reported in a special jubilee issue.108 It was in fact a four-room timber house with various outbuildings, situated in the middle of a large forest plot on the Bogensee, about twenty-five miles north of the center of Berlin, directly on the newly completed Berlin-Stettin autobahn. He had the use of the house cost-free for life.109

  After this, he visited an exhibition called “10 Years of Struggle for Berlin,” laid the foundation stone of a “Goebbels housing estate” in Friedrichshain, and placed a wreath on Horst Wessel’s grave. In the evening he made his way through a city decked out with flags in his honor to the Sportpalast, where he and Hitler spoke: “He presents me in a way I’ve never heard before. I hadn’t expected that. I’m moved and touched. He finishes by calling for a ‘Heil’ for me. I’m so happy. Frenetic storms of applause.”110 The next day he made sure that Hitler’s speech was given due prominence in the press.111

  On October 31 there was an SA roll call in the Lustgarten, and in the evening a “Party festivity” was held in the Deutschlandhalle. “I’m being spoiled with love and devotion. It’s so wonderful.”112 Gratefully he received “good wishes”113 from all sides, “mountains of letters, flowers and presents,”114 expressions of love “from the whole nation.”115 He was “completely stunned” and “deeply moved” by the many honors.116

  There was still a “youth rally” to come, on November 1 in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo (Ufa cinema near the Zoo Station), where among other things Schirach “gave a lovely speech” in Goebbels’s presence. A Hitler Youth read out his Wessel obituary from 1930: “What a poem of an essay.” The festivities ended in the evening with a performance of The Merry Widow, which he attended in the company of old Party comrades at the Berlin Opera House.117

  FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN AUTUMN 1936

  In the months after Mussolini’s victory in Ethiopia, and under the impact of the Spanish Civil War beginning in August, Hitler’s foreign policy underwent a change of direction. Precisely because Goebbels was excluded from the actual process of foreign policy planning and decision-making, he was all the more eager to collect in his diary any hints of the Führer’s intentions.

  Until spring 1936, Hitler went on thinking that the chances of an Anglo-German alliance were improved by Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia and the international crisis it created. But now, viewing international affairs from the perspective of a comprehensive bloc formation, he began to push things in that direction. In autumn 1936 Hitler frequently evoked for Goebbels the inevitability of confronting “Bolshevism.” The topic had been the leitmotif of the Party rally and since then had been widely deployed by propaganda. In view of what Hitler saw as the distinct possibility that France would go communist and the fact that he did not expect German rearmament to be completed until 1941, he began to pin his hopes on an anticommunist bloc including—first and foremost—Italy, and then Japan, and eventually Great Britain.118

  As far as the understanding with Italy was concerned, Goebbels was only too willing to act as go-between. The annual Farmers’ Rally was a convenient occasion to bring together, through his mediation, Hitler and Goebbels’s Italian counterpart, Alfieri.119 Hitler wanted Italy to leave the League of Nations. “Then we’d have freedom of action. He doesn’t intend to do anything against Italy. Wants an entente of minds. Mussolini invited to Germany. Direct talks.”

  On October 24 Ciano visited Hitler at the Berghof. During this conversation, according to Goebbels’s record, Hitler opened up to his Italian guest much broader vistas of German-Italian cooperation, which was to grow into a European anti-Bolshevist front. Furthermore, Hitler declared unambiguously that Germany would be ready for war in three to five years and designated the Mediterranean and Eastern European areas, respectively, as Italian and German spheres of interest.120 Mussolini picked up this clear signal a week later in a speech in Milan, where he talked of a “Rome-Berlin axis” around which “all those European states can move which have a will to cooperation and peace.” Goebbels interpreted this speech immediately as an obvious message “to Germany, Austria, and Hungary.”121 In mid-December he met the new Italian consul-general, Major Giuseppe Renzetti, a close friend of Mussolin
i’s whom he had already gotten to know in the 1920s as an important intermediary of “Il Duce”; he discussed with him possible ways of “supporting and promoting the German-Italian relationship.”122

  Along with the improvement in German-Italian relations, the alliance with Japan was also strategically significant. Hitler had already told Goebbels in June that he believed a clash between Japan and Russia was inevitable, and once the colossus to the east began to totter “we must supply our need for land for the next hundred years.”123

  On November 25 the Anti-Comintern Pact was signed with Japan in Berlin. The pact aimed to combat the Communist International by exchanging information. In a secret rider, both states agreed to remain neutral in the case of an attack by the Soviet Union and in addition pledged not to conclude any treaties contrary to the “spirit of this agreement.”124

  In a three-hour speech on December 1, Hitler explained his view of things to the cabinet; aside from the account given in Goebbels’s diary, no other record of this talk appears to exist. Europe, said Hitler, was already divided into two camps. France and Spain were the next victims of the communist drive for expansion. If communist regimes were to come to power there, it would lead to a Europe-wide crisis for which Europe was not yet militarily prepared.125 In the long run the “authoritarian states” (Poland, Austria, Yugoslavia, Hungary) were not dependable either. The only “consciously anti-Bolshevist states,” apart from Germany, were Italy and Japan, and with them “agreements” would be concluded. “England will come in if France goes into crisis.”

  When addressing his closest followers, at least, Hitler persisted in the notion that his increasingly aggressive foreign policy would still lead to an alliance with Great Britain.