Goebbels: A Biography

by Peter Longerich

  * * *

  * Translators’ note: The SPD in exile in Prague.

  CHAPTER 16

  “The Most Important Factors in Our Modern Cultural Life”

  Consolidating Nazi Cultural Politics

  In 1937, Goebbels made considerable efforts to establish his absolute leadership of cultural politics. This picture shows him with the architect’s model of an exhibition hall designed for the Berlin exhibition “Give Me Four Years.” On the right is State Secretary Walther Funk.

  On January 30, 1937, Goebbels was among Reichstag members when Hitler addressed the house on the fourth anniversary of the “seizure of power.”1 In his speech, Hitler, among other things, unilaterally rescinded the recognition of the war guilt clause of the Versailles Treaty that the German government had been forced to accept in 1919—a symbolic step toward annulling the peace settlement. At the same time, Hitler promised that “the time of so-called surprises is over”; however, his sharply polemical attacks on British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden made clear that he had certainly not been converted to pacifism.2

  On the contrary: Just a few days earlier Hitler had remarked to Goebbels that he hoped “to have another 6 years,” but if a good opportunity arose, he would not want to miss it.3 Some weeks later he added that he expected—as Goebbels has it—“a great world conflict in 5–6 years. In 15 years he would have wiped out the Peace of Westphalia. […] Germany would be the victor in the coming battle, or cease to live.”4 It is against the background of this long-term perspective that Hitler’s foreign policy actions in the next few months must be viewed.

  In the following months, between the beginning of 1937 and spring 1938, Hitler conducted a reorientation of German foreign policy clearly documented in the propaganda minister’s diary entries. The Führer largely gave up his hopes of an alliance with Britain and concentrated on his Italian ally.5 The joint engagement of the two states in the Spanish Civil War and the helpless efforts of Great Britain to establish a policy of “non-intervention” by diplomatic means formed the background to this change of policy.6 With regret, Goebbels observed the widening rift with Britain but placed the blame for it on the German ambassador in London, Ribbentrop, and not on Hitler.7 Hitler’s calculation was that before too long the new alliance would allow him to subjugate Austria and Czechoslovakia. He was already telling Goebbels on March 1, 1937, that it was necessary to have these two states “to round off our territory,”8 and it was in this light that Goebbels perceived the beginnings of Austria’s gradual isolation.9

  This period of largely silent reorientation had an effect on propaganda policy. Goebbels had now entered a phase in which propaganda was no longer concentrated primarily, as in earlier years, on the stability of the regime at home or dealing with foreign affairs crises. Matters of cultural policy were now central to his work. Between the autumn of 1936 and the spring of 1938, his objects were to assert the absolute grip of National Socialism on the central areas of cultural policy and to give the regime as a whole a rounded cultural policy profile. Naturally, this effort was also calculated to distract attention from the tinderbox situation building up internationally.

  The first priority was to dispel the influence of the Church on public life, as it was the only institution that contested, or was in a position to contest, the claim to total power of National Socialism. One episode, on January 30, shows how urgent a task the regime considered this. Still in shock, Goebbels reported that after Hitler’s speech, the “inconceivable” happened. Hitler, “deeply moved,” had thanked the cabinet for their work and solemnly declared that in honor of the anniversary all cabinet members who were not Party comrades were to be accepted into the Party. But Reich Transport Minister Paul von Eltz-Rübenach flatly rejected this offer. He thought National Socialism would “suppress the Church”—and, what is more, he demanded a statement of Hitler’s proposed policy toward the Church.10 According to Goebbels, Hitler ignored this intervention, while the other cabinet members sat “as though paralyzed.” The “mood is ruined.” Inevitably, the minister had to resign on the spot.

  STRUGGLE WITH THE CHURCHES

  After the ferment over Eltz-Rübenach, the struggle between National Socialism and the churches entered a decisive phase. It had become increasingly evident since the end of 1936 that the policy of Hanns Kerrl, the Reich minister for church affairs, of uniting the Protestant church had failed.11 Within his inner circle, Hitler criticized Kerrl for this12 while at the same time taking an uncompromising stance toward the churches.13

  With the Reich Church Commission stepping down (this was the body created by Kerrl to unite the Protestant church) on February 12, 1937, Kerrl announced that the churches would now be placed under much tighter state control.14 To discuss this question, on short notice Hitler summoned Kerrl, Frick, Hess, Himmler, and Goebbels to talks on the Obersalzberg.

  Along with his fellow passengers, Himmler and a state secretary in the Interior Ministry, Wilhelm Stuckart, Goebbels used the train journey to prepare intensively for the top-level meeting. It is probably no coincidence that they were traveling on the same overnight train, considering that they all—together with Hess’s deputy, Martin Bormann—subscribed to a rigorous approach to the church question. They were united in opposition to Kerrl’s policy, which aimed to reconcile the Protestant church with the National Socialist state under the leadership of the pro-Nazi German Christians. In his notes on the nighttime debate en route, Goebbels concisely summarized the anti-Kerrl position: “Kerrl wants to conserve the Church, while we want to liquidate it. Our differences are not just tactical but fundamental.”15

  After the session in Berchtesgaden, Goebbels summarized Hitler’s thinking on church policy as follows: “He doesn’t need a battle with the churches at the moment. He anticipates the great world struggle in a few years. If Germany were to lose yet another war, that would be the end.” For this reason there was no question of accepting Kerrl’s proposed measures, which would amount to making him a combined secular/religious ruler, a “summus episcopus” (as the minister for church affairs) and could only be imposed “by force.” After Himmler had expressed himself “very forcibly against Kerrl and his see-saw policy” and the target of his attack had responded—as Goebbels saw it—with nothing but “empty phrases,” the propaganda minister seized the opportunity: “I put forward the suggestion that we either separate church and state—which I think is premature—or elect a new synod to revise the constitution (keeping the Party and the State out of it), with the most liberal proportional representation, and then generous stipends for the synod delegates. In a year they’ll be begging the State for help against themselves.” His suggestion immediately met with a positive response, and a declaration to that effect was formulated. Goebbels called a press conference in Berlin on the theme of “Führers step toward peace in the Church question.” He gratefully acknowledged a directive from Hitler whereby all press contacts concerning the church question were to be channeled solely through his ministry.16

  Two days later Goebbels discovered that his suspicions about Kerrl had been justified: “Kerrl wants to support the German Christians. That is out and out sabotage of the Führer’s plans. Utterly scandalous.” From the Obersalzberg he learned through the head of his Press Department, Alfred-Ingemar Berndt, that the Confessing Church, the ecclesiastical opponent of the German Christians, was unwilling to take part in the elections: “Kerrl is making things too easy for these parsons,” he noted angrily. “He’s incapable of carrying out his very delicate mission.”17 In contrast to Kerrl, Goebbels favored “absolute neutrality” with regard to the proposed church elections.18

  Just a few days later, however, on February 27, he found that he was already out of step: Hitler had changed course. He was now fully behind the German Christians, and after their victory in the ecclesiastical elections he intended to annul the Concordat with the Vatican. In the long term the dictator proposed to declare National Socialists “the only true Christians.” “Chris
tianity means a call to destroy the priests, as Socialism once meant the destruction of Marxist apparatchiks.”19

  Goebbels was so impressed with all this that he did not find it too difficult to switch to the new course—supporting the German Christians. During discussions in April and May, he patiently acquiesced by letting Kerrl and his state secretary, Hermann Muhs, explain the new line to him. Finally, at the end of July, preparations for the church elections were halted, never to be resumed. Goebbels’s grand plan had sunk without a trace.20

  In the meantime, relations with the Catholic Church, too, had deteriorated.21 In February Goebbels had already noted irately that Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber had “delivered a sharp sermon against the Führer in Munich.” It was time to “talk straight to these priests.”22

  But things very soon got worse. Late in the evening of March 20, the head of the security police, Reinhard Heydrich, called on Goebbels to tell him about an impending message from the Pope to his German bishops. He meant the encyclical With Burning Concern, in which the Pope pronounced on the Nazi regime and its pseudo-religious ideology, openly bringing up the many violations of the 1933 Concordat.23 How should they react to this? Heydrich and Goebbels were in agreement: “Act indifferent and ignore it,” “economic pressure instead of arrests,” “confiscation and banning” of church publications, and in general “keep calm and wait for the right moment to shake off these agitators.”24

  Two days later Goebbels was pained to see that the foreign press had made a meal of the pastoral letter. And whereas restraint was supposed to be the watchword—a view shared by Hitler—the situation was further exacerbated by “a very clumsy article” of Rosenberg’s in the Völkischer Beobachter.25

  A few days later, however, Hitler told him on the telephone that he now wanted “to take action against the Vatican.” He proposed to reopen on a grand scale the pedophile abuse cases that had been put on ice in summer 1936. They should start with a raft of charges already filed with the public prosecutor in Koblenz. Hitler envisaged as a “prelude” the “horrifying sexual murder of a boy in a Belgian monastery”; Goebbels immediately dispatched a “special rapporteur” to Brussels.26

  Shortly afterward, Hitler ordered the judicial authorities to reopen the trials.27 There was no lack of suitable ammunition, as Goebbels wrote some days later: “We’ve still got 400 unresolved cases.”28 The series of trials in Koblenz began at the end of April. Goebbels was displeased by what he considered the inadequate reaction of the media, and he summoned a special press conference at which the papers were commanded to launch “a large-scale propaganda campaign against the Catholic Church.” The results were so impressive that Goebbels was moved to express his appreciation of the journalists at the press conference the next day.29

  In May, he recorded with satisfaction that Hitler was pleased with the new wave of propaganda. He also learned that Hitler did not want “the Party to be identified with any denomination,” and neither did he want “to be given god-like status.” Rather, the National Socialist movement should “make the churches bend to our will and become our servants.” In concrete terms, celibacy should be abolished, the wealth of the churches seized, and no one under the age of twenty-four should be allowed to study theology. Moreover, the religious orders must be disbanded, and the churches must lose their license to teach. “That’s the only way we’ll break them down in a few decades.”30 Over the next few days Goebbels savored the press reports of the trials31 and reacted hypocritically to the demagoguery persistently encouraged by his own ministry32 by registering “disgust and outrage.”33

  On May 28 Goebbels gave a speech in the Berlin Deutschlandhalle condemning “the sex offenders and those behind them.” The key sentences of this speech (which is generally regarded as the high point of the regime’s campaign against the churches in 1937) were not his own, however, as the diary reveals: “Führer with me, dictating my declaration of war against the clergy today regarding the sexual abuse trials. Very stinging and drastic. I would not have gone that far.”34

  In his speech Goebbels made clear that the cases of sexual abuse by the clergy that had for some time been filling the courts of the National Socialist state were not “regrettable isolated incidents”; it was, rather, a matter of “general moral decay.” Striking the pose of a disgusted paterfamilias, Goebbels did not shrink from giving details of this “hair-raising moral degeneration”: “After confession, sexual offenses occurred with under-age young people in the sacristies; the victims who had been seduced were rewarded with pictures of the saints for their cooperation with the depraved desires of the sex offenders, and after the offense the violated youngster was given a benediction and a blessing.”

  Goebbels announced that “this sexual scourge must and would be wiped out at the root”; it might be necessary “to hold some very highly placed members of the clergy […] to account in court under oath.”35 The next day he noted that the domestic press, whose attention since May 26 had repeatedly been drawn by the Propaganda Ministry to the fundamental importance of the speech, had printed it “whole and prominently, with powerful, outraged commentaries. It shows you how well I expressed everybody’s feelings.”36

  On July 2 Goebbels was present at the Air Ministry when Hitler addressed the Gauleiters on the topic—among others—of church policy; he said that he declined the “role of religious reformer.” Goebbels was pleased to hear it: “All this is grist to my mill. I’ve been proved 100% right.”37

  In the following weeks he continued to stoke the propaganda campaign against the Catholic Church.38 At the beginning of July, though, he became angry about what he considered the lenient sentences handed down in the “priest trials.”39 The arrest of Pastor Martin Niemöller in early July—the leading representative of the Confessing Church was accused of “inflammatory remarks” about prominent National Socialists—suited Goebbels very well: Niemöller must be “put away until he can no longer see or hear.”40

  During the Bayreuth Festival he had further discussions with Hitler over the church question. On this occasion he advised the Führer to break off the trials for a couple of months “so that people don’t become blunted to them.”41 Goebbels’s advice clearly came after the event, however, because Hitler had already stopped the court cases by July 24 at the latest. Presumably the reasons why Hitler declared a truce with the churches had to do with foreign policy. The press was briefed accordingly at the end of July.42

  It was in Bayreuth that Goebbels also heard that, to his surprise, Hanns Kerrl had now switched to a policy of separating church and state. He wanted a vote on this in the Protestant churches, which Goebbels initially thought “very questionable.” But when he heard the next day that Hitler agreed with Kerrl, he found Kerrl’s idea was “quite good”: “This will be a total disaster for the churches.”43

  The struggle with the churches had Goebbels in its grip over the following months. He made several attempts to persuade Hitler to resume the “priest trials.”44 He also read Ludwig Thoma, and as he wrote in the diary: “I fill myself with hatred against the priests.”45

  But Hitler urged “restraint” over the church question. According to Goebbels, he was moving “more and more toward separation of church and state. But that will mean the end of Protestantism. And then we’ll no longer have a counterweight to the Vatican.”46 However, in light of a huge rearmament drive and preparations for war, altering the status quo with regard to church policy was the last thing on Hitler’s mind.47 His caution concerning church questions shows that after more than four years of dictatorship, the regime was still insecure about its hold on the population.

  When the trial of Pastor Niemöller began in 1938, such a highprofile action against one of the leading representatives of the Confessing Church no longer fit the political bill. This is why the case did not quite work out in the way radical enemies of the Church had hoped. Despite constant pressure on the judiciary from Goebbels to end the case quickly and “silently” with a severe sentenc
e—Hitler assured him that in any case it was his wish that the pastor “should never be released”48—this was not the way things went. The courtroom gave Niemöller the opportunity to talk at length about himself and his motives, to call highly regarded witnesses for the defense, and to expand his closing statement into a wide-ranging lecture. Goebbels was not a little angered by the procedure.49

  Eventually Niemöller was sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment and a fine of two thousand Reichsmarks. The judge’s reasoning read like a declaration by the pastor. However, instead of being set free immediately because of time already spent in custody, Niemöller, on Hitler’s orders, was hauled off to a concentration camp,50 where he was held until the end of the war as a “personal prisoner of the Führer.”

  “The foreign press will rage for a few days,” concluded Goebbels. “But we can put up with that. The main thing is that the people are protected from the subversion and division [caused] by these irresponsible creatures.”51

  GOEBBELS’S ASSERTION OF HIS LEADERSHIP IN MATTERS OF CULTURAL POLICY

  Ousting the churches from public life was one side of National Socialist cultural policy and the main focus of Goebbels’s work from the end of 1936 onward, following the domestic and foreign affairs stabilization of the regime. The other side consisted of the minister’s sustained attempt to bring individual cultural areas, as well as the entire media landscape, as much as possible under his control and imbue them with something like a National Socialist spirit. These efforts can be observed in all of the central areas of cultural and media policy.