Goebbels: A Biography

by Peter Longerich

  At the Berghof Goebbels had a chance to discuss all kinds of political topics with Hitler.270 Goebbels left the Obersalzberg for Berlin on January 8; Hitler followed the next day. Magda, however, stayed on in Hitler’s residence a little longer for a rest. Hitler kept her company there again starting on January 18 and then traveled back with her to Berlin five days later.271 During this separation from Magda, Goebbels remarked repeatedly in his diary how much he missed his wife in Berlin and hated being alone: He seemed to resent the fact that this time she was the one who had left hearth and home behind.272 In these days, Goebbels sought opportunities to air personal matters: On January 18 he sat with Magda’s sister-in-law Ello and the actress Erika Dannhoff (a frequent visitor to the house) talking “for a long time about love, marriage, jealousy, etc.” The next day he had a long talk with his state secretary, Funk. “I tell him about my worries and fears. That I can never find peace and completely lack freedom.”273 During these days alone in Berlin, he seems to have become aware how much his marriage and his whole private life were interlinked with his political position in Hitler’s regime. The more he allowed Hitler to take part in his life and that of his family, thus increasing his closeness to his idol, and the more his family life became a component of his existence as a public figure, the less his family could offer him something like a protected private space. When his wife and children finally returned from Obersalzberg to Berlin, he was quite relieved, and his diary entry suggests that there were emotions at play here that went beyond the pleasure of reunion after a fourteen-day separation: “It’s wonderful. The Führer is very kind, Helga is crying with joy, and then Magda and Hilde. I’m so happy. At home Magda tells me all sorts of things about the Führer, life up there, we talk everything through.”274 He spent the next few days with Magda in their Berlin house.

  Family life was overshadowed by serious concerns in the following months. At the beginning of February Magda, who was pregnant, suffered from heart problems and had to go back to hospital once more.275 There, on February 19, she gave birth to her fourth child, a daughter.276 But it was four weeks before she was allowed home.277 Magda’s doctor told Goebbels that she should not have another baby for two years, to give herself the chance of a complete cure.278

  As Magda lay in hospital in March, they had planned with Hitler a “summer as a trio together,”279 but Hitler’s invitation to a trip down the Rhine had to be declined because of Magda’s poor health.280 Once Magda was feeling slightly better, though, they spent a good deal of leisure time together: In the spring the Goebbels family moved back into their summer residence on Schwanenwerder, where the dictator often visited.281 When he did so, Hitler took an active part in the Goebbels family life. Among the children, it was Helga with whom he was most taken; at the beginning of February Hitler was “extremely” pleased with some photos showing Helga on the Obersalzberg: “Says that if Helga was 20 years older and he was 20 years younger, she would be the wife for him.”282 The Goebbels family made return visits to the Reich Chancellery, and it often happened that Magda spent time in the Reich Chancellery without her husband.283

  In June Magda had to go off again for several weeks to undergo heart treatment in Dresden.284 After her return, there followed a shared vacation in Upper Bavaria, as prescribed by Hitler, although only Magda was able to enjoy it without interruption. But her health was still so fragile that she elected not to go with her husband to Bayreuth.

  Even after the family had moved out to Schwanenwerder, Goebbels stayed for the most part in his official house in Berlin or on the Bogensee and mainly went to the Wannsee to receive guests, whom he took for trips around the nearby lakes. Otherwise, he nearly always made just short visits there. Gradually he began to distance himself from the routine of life there. About one of his visits, Goebbels noted at the beginning of June: “To Schwanenwerder. Magda is expecting ladies for tea. I push off again right away.”285 In August he found his brother Hans with his family there as well as his sister Maria and her fiancé: “Family tittle-tattle. I can’t take it anymore. I’ve grown completely away from that milieu.”286 Schwanenwerder seemed to him less and less like a genuine family refuge; for him it had become a place for display, with his family above all part of Goebbels’s self-presentation.

  It was in August that Magda—in spite of the doctor’s warning—discovered that she was pregnant again. Magda now decided to follow the medical advice and largely withdraw from Berlin society. So she stayed on at Schwanenwerder even over the winter,287 which suited Goebbels’s tendency to gradually detach himself from the everyday life of his family. “I get a great reception, like a guest,” he noted—somewhat surprised—on November 6, when he appeared at Schwanenwerder to join in Magda’s birthday celebration.288 In December he established himself in the “Gentleman’s House” on the grounds so that he would no longer have to spend the night under the same roof as Magda when he visited.289

  On Schwanenwerder, what he enjoyed most was time spent with the children. But the countless entries in his diary where he mentions romping around and horseplay with the “lovely,” “sweet” children are remarkably stereotyped and superficial. Basically he had little interest in their development and education. From time to time, though, he found himself obliged to give them a “thrashing,” to beat the “stubbornness” out of them—as Goebbels saw it, a tried and tested educational method.290 The family happiness he constantly invoked in his diary meant one thing above all for him: It was an important accessory to demonstrate his personal success story.

  As Goebbels isolated himself more and more from other people, he was at the same time set on making his lifestyle as lavish and prestigious as possible. It is almost as if he was doing so precisely in order to further emphasize his distance from others. From April 1937 onward Magda and Joseph Goebbels were preoccupied with plans for a new house to replace their old home in Berlin, which had become “much too small” for five children.291 Goebbels’s justification to the Finance Ministry for this new building (which at Hitler’s specific behest was meant to conform to his plans for the “rebuilding of Berlin”) was that it had to meet the high standards set by the Führer for his future capital. A “prestigious and spacious treatment” was therefore essential.292 Speer was then called in to cooperate on the plans.293 But when these were ready in the autumn, they did not meet with Hitler’s approval, and the project was put on hold.294

  In October Hitler raised Goebbels’s salary “substantially.”295 This raise came at exactly the right time, as he was about to replace his Horch with a Maybach (“A magnificent car!”).296 For her birthday in November Magda too received “a beautiful new car.”297 But in January 1938 he decided to exchange his Maybach for another Horch, because he now found it “too clumsy.”298 Soon afterward his eye fell on two other luxury cars he wanted to add to his pool.299 In 1939, there was further progress in the motorizing of the family: In April he gave his mother a car, and Magda received another new one in June.300 When in August Ley let him try out one of the new Volkswagens, he saw immediately: “That’s the car for our children.”301

  There was one reason above all for his family’s extremely lavish lifestyle: It served to confirm his success and his unique greatness. First and foremost, however, it reflected recognition by his political idol, Hitler, to whose generosity he owed all this. And the more recognition and affirmation Goebbels received, the more he cut loose from the mundane ties binding him to the people around him.

  Even after many years of activity as propaganda minister, the need for further recognition and success was the most important driving force behind Goebbels’s restless work. He never tired of celebrating his unusual success as a politician, propagandist, journalist, and orator; carefully documenting this was a central motive for his regular diary entries. It did not bother him that the overwhelming response his work met with in the German media was imposed and carefully orchestrated by his own ministry: For him, the fine, staged illusion was the same as the real thing. It is true
that the emotional thrill of success, which he wanted to feel always, was often disturbed by other moods, particularly when autumn was approaching or the weather was dismal. At these times he was overcome by a melancholy, brooding feeling.302 But he knew the antidote: “Work. Medicine for melancholy.”303

  * * *

  * Translators’ note: A major film company.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Don’t Look Around, Keep Marching On!”

  The Firebrand as Peacemaker

  Credit 17.1

  A rare snapshot: Goebbels’s secret mistress, Lida Baarová, at the premiere of Leni Riefenstahl’s film Olympia, April 20, 1938.

  At the end of September 1937, the Third Reich reached the highest point so far in its efforts to achieve international recognition: a state visit by Benito Mussolini, which “Il Duce” began in Munich on September 25. The program opened with a tour of the new showcase state buildings in the Bavarian capital, and on the following days Mussolini dropped in on Wehrmacht maneuvers and visited the Krupp Works.1 As on previous encounters, Goebbels positively melted under the impact of the Italian charm offensive: “You can’t help really liking him. A great man! […] Alfieri tells me that Mussolini is quite taken with me. And I am with him.”

  Il Duce’s visit continued in Berlin, where he was to celebrate the German-Italian alliance at a gigantic rally. Goebbels had the honor of receiving Hitler and Mussolini at the entrance to the Maifeld, the great parade ground in front of the Olympic Stadium. His words of greeting were broadcast on all stations: “I report: on the Maifeld in Berlin, in the Olympic Stadium and the spaces around the Reich Sports Field, 1 million people; on the route from Wilhelmstrasse to the Reich Sports Field 2 million people, so in all 3 million people gathered for this historic mass meeting of the National Socialist movement.”2

  A glance at the newspapers around that time reveals that the appearance of the three million—a majority of Berlin’s population—was not exactly a display of spontaneous popular enthusiasm. On September 26, for example, there was an article in the Völkischer Beobachter peremptorily commanding “the working Berlin population” to attend the rally en masse. The guarantee of “en masse” participation was achieved—to mention only one detail of the nearly perfect planning for this event—by the German Labor Front. After work ended early, they made the staff fall in and marched them en masse to their allocated sector of the approach roads. It was not easy to escape: If you felt ill, for example, you had to request special permission to leave from the works organizer.3

  On the evening after the mass rally4 at which Mussolini and Hitler had celebrated the friendship between their two countries, Goebbels noted Hitler’s reaction to Mussolini’s demeanor: “He will never forget our help for him. Acknowledged it openly. And will go all the way with us to the end as a friend. And there’s nothing else he can do. England wants to destroy him. He has to stick with us. That’s the best basis for friendship.” But Goebbels added: “But let’s hope he’s not deceiving himself.”5

  TOUGHER LINE IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND PERSECUTION OF JEWS

  A choral festival attended by Hitler and Goebbels in Breslau at the end of July at which thirty thousand people took part;6 the Party rally with its strong anticommunist message;7 and the sealing of the partnership with Italy—all were part of the consolidation of the regime’s new foreign policy turn, which Hitler had prepared in 1937 with his swing toward Italy. The Third Reich was now openly on the path of expansion. The objects of this policy were primarily Austria and Czechoslovakia.

  The pretext for a contrived clash with Czechoslavakia was provided in autumn 1937 by an incident in Teplitz-Schönau, where Karl Hermann Frank, a leader of the National Socialist–oriented Sudetendeutsche Partei (SdP, Sudeten German Party), was arrested after a violent altercation with a Czech security agent. Thereupon Goebbels started a press campaign against what he called the “Prague rabble.”8

  The intense polemical pressure of the German media, coupled with the aggressive behavior of the SdP, led to a sharp reaction on the part of the Czechs: The Prague government postponed the local elections that were in the offing and banned all political meetings. Goebbels called off the campaign on November 3 after representations from Karl Henlein: The head of the SdP feared events might escalate out of control, something that would not suit the Reich government at this juncture.9

  There was now an attempt by the Germans to prevail on the Czechoslovak government, by diplomatic means, to act against those German-speaking newspapers, the “émigré press” published by anti-Nazis who had fled the Reich to Prague. The threat to resume the anti-Czech press campaign lurked in the background. The Czechs then promised to put pressure on the newspapers in question.10

  On November 5 Goebbels was at Hitler’s lunch as usual: “We talk over the situation: restraint on the Czech question, because we’re not yet in a position to follow through with any consequences.” Goebbels then went home; his diary entry indicates that Hitler was “busy with General Staff discussions.”11 In fact, this was the afternoon when Hitler held the conference that paved the way for war, informing War Minister Blomberg, Foreign Minister Neurath, and the heads of the army, navy, and air force of his political and strategic plans. A summary is preserved in the well-known memorandum by his Wehrmacht adjutant Colonel Hossbach, who took notes for his own use.12

  Hitler made clear at the beginning of his talk that this was by way of “a testament he was setting out in case of his death.” He went on to cite the Germans’ “lack of living space” as the central problem of the future; only “the way of force” could solve this problem, and that could “never be risk-free.” Starting from this premise, it could only be a matter of deciding “when” and “how.” The optimum time for a German war of conquest would be in the years 1943 to 1945, at a juncture, that is, when rearmament would be complete (scenario 1); after that point, time would be working against Germany. However, there were two possible circumstances that would make it necessary to strike earlier: If France was paralyzed by a civil war (scenario 2), or if there was a war against Italy (scenario 3). In both cases the “moment for action against Czechoslovakia would have come”; if France was embroiled in war, Austria should be “overthrown” at the same time. Hitler thought it possible that scenario 3 might come about as early as the summer of 1938. He was therefore reckoning with the possibility that the alliance with Italy might trigger concrete action quite soon.

  The discussion demonstrates not only Hitler’s grim, long-term determination to wage war but also shows that he was already thinking that solving the “problem cases” of Austria and Czechoslovakia in the medium term was possible only through conventional military surprise attacks in the context of a convenient European situation in which France was incapacitated. At this point he does not seem to have had in mind the mixture of internal and external pressure by which, in the coming year, he would “annex” Austria and carve off the Sudeten German territories from Czechoslovakia. And if he did have such ideas, he was leaving his most important collaborators in the dark about them. It is not surprising, therefore, that when Henlein wrote to him two weeks later asking him to annex the whole Bohemian-Moravian-Silesian area to the Reich and offering him the help of the Sudeten German Party in doing so, he did not consider this initiative at all. At the time, the idea of using the SdP as a fifth column was obviously beyond his intellectual horizon.13

  Evidently Goebbels was completely oblivious to all of these deliberations on how to put a quick end to Czechoslavakia. During these weeks he was concentrating entirely on his contribution to a policy aimed at forcing the Czech government to capitulate on the “émigré press” question.14 By the end of the year, the result of German-Czech negotiations was a “press truce” imposed by the Reich; it was to last into the first few months of 1938.15 However, Goebbels declined to enter into a formal “press agreement” with Prague, although such an agreement would be concluded with Austria in the summer of 1937,16 and deals with Yugoslavia17 and Poland18 follo
wed the same pattern in January and April 1938, respectively. In this case he did not want to tie the German side down to any commitments.19

  In parallel with its incipient policy of expansion, in autumn 1937 the regime entered a new, more radical phase of Jewish persecution. After setting the signals at the Party rally, Goebbels continued this course in November during the usual ceremonies around the anniversary of the 1923 Hitler putsch in Munich, where he and Julius Streicher opened the exhibition “Der ewige Jude” (The Eternal/Wandering Jew). The “Jewish question” was a “world problem,” declared Goebbels in his opening address, which he used among other things to revive memories of his campaign against Police Commissioner Weiss.20 In the evening, as was usual on these occasions, he was in the Bürgerbräu beer hall, where veteran Party comrades were treated to an hour-long speech by Hitler; the next day there was the customary march from the beer hall to the Königsplatz.

  A few weeks later Hitler tasked him with drawing up a law forbidding Jews to visit theaters and cultural events.21 Goebbels got to work immediately but learned from Hitler that this law was not the real aim: “The Jews have to get out of Germany, out of the whole of Europe, in fact. It will take time, but it must and will happen.”22 Then Hitler decided to ban Jews from cultural events simply by police ordinance, since a law would create too much of a stir, which he must have thought inopportune at that juncture in domestic politics.23