Goebbels’s diaries document the intensity of the regime’s preoccupation in the next few days with incorporating Austria. At the usual lunchtime session in the Reich Chancellery, there was already debate about autobahn routing when the road system was extended to Austria: “Linz is going to be completely rebuilt.” The reconstruction of Berlin was to be speeded up considerably, “because otherwise it will fall way behind Vienna.”88 Goebbels was invited to the Reich Chancellery the next evening to meet Austrian guests and discuss the Salzburg Festival, “which we’re going to make a good deal of.”89 At Hitler’s lunch table the next day the topic was the future of Vienna: “We’ve got to push the Jews and the Czechs out of Vienna quickly and make it a purely German city. That will also help to solve the housing problem.”90
Goebbels visited Vienna at the end of March. He entered the city in a “triumphal drive”—his preferred mode of transportation—and stopped at the Imperial Hotel, from whose balcony he received “a terrific ovation,” before moving on to the Town Hall to give a “short address” to “old campaigners.” Then he spoke in the great hall of the former North West Station, naturally “on top form.”
He held talks the next day in the Hofburg with Austrian artists, among others, and attended a performance at the Burgtheater in the evening: He found it good, even if not up to “Berlin standards.”91 At a reception in the Hofburg the next day, he took the actor Attila Hörbiger “seriously to task”: He really must do something about his wife, Paula Wessely, and all her “Jewish friendships.” In other discussions, he took soundings about the future directorships of the State Opera and the Burgtheater.
The election campaign concluded on April 9 with a big showpiece event, again in Vienna. At noon precisely, Goebbels proclaimed from the balcony of the Town Hall the commencement of the “Day of the Greater German Reich”: “At a given signal flags are hoisted throughout the Reich. 30,000 homing pigeons flutter aloft. Airforce squadrons appear. Sirens howl. Then the Führer steps on to the balcony.”92
On the same day Hitler had another discussion with the Viennese Cardinal Theodor Innitzer at which he intended to speak “quite openly.” Hitler’s interest in this conversation was far-reaching, as he confided to Goebbels: “We need a prince of the church if we want to break away from Rome. And we must do so. There must be no authority outside Germany able to give orders to Germans.” A few hours later, after the discussion, Hitler told him that Innitzer was “very depressed,” but he was resolute in his “commitment to German-ness”: “That’s something to latch on to. Start a secession movement and undo the counter-reformation. Well, we’ll see!” Goebbels’s diary shows that, if only for a brief moment, the bizarre idea was raised of a wide-ranging restructuring of church policy: the project of a German Catholic Church without the Pope.
From the balcony of the hotel Goebbels introduced Hitler’s concluding speech of the election campaign with a commentary broadcast over German radio.93 Hitler expressed his conviction that “this too was the will of God, to send a boy from here to the Reich, let him grow up, and make him leader of the nation so that he could bring his homeland into the Reich.” This self-bestowed aura of the One sent from God stirred deep emotions in Goebbels: He felt as if at a “religious service,” while the ovation concluding the event was “almost like a prayer.”94
They both left for Berlin by train. At breakfast the “Jewish question” came up: “The Führer wants to force them all out of Germany. To Madagascar or somewhere. Quite right!”95
In Berlin, where the Goebbels children greeted Hitler’s arrival by handing him bouquets, they proceeded to the Reich Chancellery, where the early election results were coming in. Goebbels himself described them as “incredible, fantastic.” In fact, with a turnout of 99.6 percent, 99 percent of valid votes were in favor.96
Studying a memorandum about the vote a few days later, he found that even to his mind they had gone a little too far this time in rigging the results. Munich had “cheated a bit,” and Gauleiter Adolf Wagner had “done it very stupidly.”97
THE SUDETENLAND CRISIS
After the Austrian Anschluss, the Nazi leadership cast their eyes on the Sudetenland as the next target of German annexation policy. As late as November 1937 Hitler had thought a move on Czechoslovakia impossible unless France was out of action, but now, buoyed by his Austrian triumph, he no longer considered this a precondition for aggression toward Czechoslovakia.
On March 19, in Hitler’s study in the Reich Chancellery, Goebbels was informed about Hitler’s further foreign policy plans: “Then we study the map: Czechoslovakia is next. We share it with Poland and Hungary. [Go in] relentlessly at the next opportunity.” It emerges at this point that “we wanted to bag” the Memel area, administered by Lithuania, “if Kovno had gotten into a conflict with Warsaw,” but the case had not arisen: “We are now a boa constrictor, digesting its prey.” But it did not stop there: “Then the Baltic, and a chunk of Alsace and Lorraine. We need France to sink further and further into its crisis. No false sentimentality.”98
Goebbels was not greatly impressed when, in the second half of March, the Czechs showed themselves increasingly prepared to concede more autonomy to the Sudeten Germans: “That won’t help them much anymore. They’ve had it.”99 Thus the leader of the Sudeten German Party was instructed by Hitler on March 28 to become more aggressive toward the Czech government,100 and Goebbels too was told “always to ask for more than can be given.”101
Correspondingly, on April 24 in Karlsbad, Henlein announced an eight-point program still ostensibly based on notions of autonomy but in fact framed in such a way that its demands could only be met by incorporating the Sudetenland into the Reich.102
During May, as instructed, the German press exercised restraint (relatively speaking) with respect to the controversial question of minorities. Incidents in the Sudeten territories should certainly be reported, but not in “sensational style.”103 This restraint was motivated mainly by a state visit to Italy that Hitler undertook, accompanied by Goebbels, from May 3 to 10.104 In his narcissistic quest for recognition, Goebbels was once more blinded by the lavishness of the social program, while merely noting the political results of the trip as a kind of side issue: “Mussolini completely agrees about Austria. […] Mussolini gives us an absolutely free hand over the Czech question.”105
While Goebbels was still in Italy, Magda gave birth to her fourth child, a daughter, to be called Hedwig. Goebbels heard the news from Hitler—they were on a warship in the Gulf of Naples at the time—who had received a telegram to that effect.106
After his return from Italy, on May 19 Goebbels set in motion a huge campaign against the Prague government. His pretext was an interview with Foreign Minister Kamil Krofta.107 The newspapers were ordered to appoint “special correspondents for Sudeten German questions” and not just go on producing “small beer.”108
By contrast, the Foreign Office continued to advise restraint on the Sudeten question.109 Ribbentrop himself complained to Goebbels about the “fierce campaign against Prague,” but knowing he had his leader’s support in the matter, Goebbels was like a brick wall.110 Hence on May 21 the German press made a great clamor about new incidents in Prague and Brno; this started a “hellish concert.”111 The Foreign Office now fell into line with Goebbels and did its best to inflame the anti-Czech polemic in the German press.112 This began a press campaign against Prague which—with Goebbels raising or lowering the temperature according to political expediency—was to last four months.
In May, false reports of alleged German troop movements and further incidents along the German-Czech border led to a “weekend crisis” full of hectic activity in Prague, Berlin, London, and Paris.113 Goebbels felt that the “pussyfooting” Ribbentrop was still putting the brakes on his campaign. He soon saw the German press engaged in “rearguard actions” so that the campaign had to be officially reined in by May 28.114 And on May 29 Hitler expressed his concern that they were “not yet there in terms of rearmam
ent.” Hitler added that this in no way ruled out “more hell-raising” against Prague.115 In this vein, the next day Hitler signed the “Führer directive concerning Operation Green,” in which he asserted, “It is my irrevocable intention to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future.”116
In the weeks that followed, Goebbels constantly took the initiative in blasting noisy propaganda at the Czechs to intimidate the Prague government.117 But he was also frequently forced to tone down his campaign,118 and not only for reasons of foreign policy: Domestically, too, it was not easy to sustain a mood of crisis in the long term without offering the home population some possibility of a solution.
In mid-July he came to the following conclusion: “The public are getting a bit tired of our campaign against Prague. You can’t keep a crisis on the boil for months on end.” But Goebbels was also deterred by the medium- and long-term effect his aggressive propaganda was having at home, for there was a growing “war panic” in Germany that might become unmanageable: “People think war has become inevitable. Nobody likes it. This fatalism is the worst thing of all. This is how it was in July 1914. So we’ll have to be more careful. Otherwise we’ll slide into a catastrophe that nobody wants but that happens all the same.”119 Two days later he reports that he has had a “serious discussion with Hanke about the possibility of war.” The press had made “mistakes,” he writes, using “the sharp weapon of attack too often, so that it becomes chipped in the process.”120
Despite these doubts and reservations on the part of the propaganda minister, the press campaign was continued into July, if only at a low level of intensity.121 But Goebbels’s entries for this month show how far he still was from taking the ultimate step and putting propaganda directly to work preparing for war. Given that the regime had avowed its peaceful intentions for years, such a complete U-turn would not have been unproblematic—and Goebbels himself was not yet ready for it.
A POGROM IN BERLIN?
Goebbels’s other main preoccupation in the months after the Anschluss was a new, more intensive phase in the persecution of the Jews.
The widespread acts of anti-Semitic aggression committed by Austrian Nazis during and after the Anschluss122 also aggravated Jewish persecution in the “Old Reich,” a tendency that had been encouraged by the Party leadership since autumn 1937, in parallel with the change of direction toward an expansionary foreign policy.123 Now, in March 1938, not only did Party activists in many places commit offenses against Jews but within the regime, too, efforts were stepped up to complete a process begun in 1933, expelling the Jews from economic and social life. In this, as in the waves of Jewish persecution of 1933 and 1935, Joseph Goebbels played a leading role. His ambition was to set an example in Berlin and thereby figure within the regime as the representative of a tough line on future “Jewish policy.” As he wrote, “You’ve got to make a start somewhere.”124
In April 1938 he began systematically to harass the Berlin Jews, aiming to isolate them from the rest of the population and drive them out of the city. This action was coordinated with Police Commissioner Helldorf, who ordered a comprehensive list of anti-Semitic measures for the capital to be drawn up.125 However, Goebbels then obtained Hitler’s agreement to postpone these measures until after his Italian journey.126
In fact, Party activists started in May to deface or smash in the shop fronts of Jewish businesses and to damage synagogues. Once again the propaganda minister interpreted these attacks as signs of “popular anger,” taking them as legitimating his move—in conjunction with Helldorf—to carry out his plans for a “Jew-free” Berlin utopia. Again he took care to secure Hitler’s agreement to his “Jewish program for Berlin” and then spurred Helldorf into action.127
In a big raid on the Kurfürstendamm—since 1931 at the latest, this stretch of road, so beloved of strollers in central Berlin, had been Helldorf’s happy hunting ground for anti-Semitic operations—the police arrested three hundred people in a café, mostly Jews. The following day, when, to Goebbels’s chagrin, Helldorf released the majority of them,128 the propaganda minister put Helldorf under great pressure, addressing three hundred Berlin policemen: “What I’m doing is trying to incite you. Against any kind of sentimentality. The watchword is not the law but harassment. The Jews have got to get out of Berlin.”129
Within the framework of a movement to apprehend “asocials” throughout the Reich, he did in fact bring about the arrest of increasing numbers of Jews—over a thousand in Berlin alone—mostly for minor transgressions. The message conveyed by propaganda concerning these arrests was clear: Jews were by nature criminals and asocials, and the power of the state must be used to exclude them. But in view of the great international tension around the Sudetenland crisis, Hitler could not afford any more negative headlines in the foreign press, which was following events in Berlin very closely. Hence his personal order on June 22 to halt the action.130
Thanks to reports in the foreign press and Hitler’s decision to backpedal, Goebbels appeared in a fairly dubious light as the originator of the Berlin action, as he had in 1935 following the “Kurfürstendamm riots.” He was already trying, to some degree, around June 20, 1938, to rein in the activities of the Berlin Party organization.131 He now tried to put the blame for the desecration of the Jewish shop fronts squarely on Helldorf, whose actions were, so Goebbels said, completely contrary to his own “orders.”132 Eventually Goebbels identified “a Police Director and a District Leader” as the real perpetrators of the “Jewish action.”133 At the Solstice Ceremony of the Berlin Gau, he made another inflammatory anti-Semitic speech but announced at the same time that the appropriate measures would be pursued within the law.
The Berlin “action” was followed in June, July, and August 1938 by further demonstrations and excesses carried out in other cities by Party adherents against Jews. In the case of Stuttgart at least, Goebbels’s hand can be seen in these events. At the same time, the Party press stepped up its anti-Semitic propaganda once again.134 Various entries in Goebbels’s diaries show that over the summer the propaganda minister continued to be very busy with police and administrative measures designed to chase the Jews out of the city; he secured Hitler’s backing for this.135 It was not until September, when the Sudeten crisis was mounting to a new peak, that the regime eased off somewhat on its anti-Semitic campaign.136
CONTINUATION OF THE SUDETENLAND CRISIS
During the Bayreuth Festival in July Goebbels had a lengthy discussion with Hitler about the Sudeten question, which the latter wished to see “resolved by force.” “The Führer wants to avoid war,” noted Goebbels. “That’s why he’s preparing for it by all possible means.”137
Starting in late July, German press policy toward Czechoslovakia was very much influenced by the Runciman mission, an unofficial British delegation under Lord Runciman due to begin an attempt at mediation in Czechoslovakia in early August.138 In the following weeks, the German press veered between a degree of restraint on the one hand (not wanting to give the impression that the Sudeten German Party was merely a puppet of Berlin),139 and on the other hand a combination of fiery polemics and demonstrations of German strength and determination, aimed at influencing the negotiations.140
Between August 22 and 26, Goebbels was completely taken up with the visit to Germany of the Hungarian “Regent” Miklós Horthy, whom he accompanied on trips to Kiel and Heligoland and during his subsequent stay in Berlin.141 During this time there was a temporary lull in sharp attacks on Czechoslovakia, but then the press polemics started up again with full force. As instructed, the German press questioned the raison d’être of the “Czech state,” while the Sudeten German Party was negotiating with Lord Runciman and Edvard Beneš.142
Meanwhile, Karl Hermann Frank, one of the Sudetenland’s leading figures, was directed by Hitler to provoke the Czech government.143 When the Prague government largely met the demands of the Sudeten German Party, coming up with its “Fourth Plan,” the SdP in Mährisch-Ostrau provoked a
n incident—a violent confrontation with the police—to provide a pretext for breaking off the negotiations. For Goebbels, this came “at exactly the right time.”144 The German press was instructed to say as little as possible in concrete terms about the Czech government’s proposals but make a splash with the events in Mährisch-Ostrau.145
The Nuremberg Party rally, taking place from September 6 to 13, gave the Nazi leadership another excellent opportunity to make further monumental threats against Czechoslovakia and the western powers. Hitler asserted in his closing speech that “Herr Benesch” was not in a position “to make any gifts to the Sudeten Germans”; they had the same rights as other peoples, and if the western powers “felt they must go all out to sponsor the repression of Germans,” then this would have “grave consequences.” In his diary, Goebbels gives a knowing interpretation of this passage, revealing the plain text behind this slyly phrased but in fact brazen message: “Herr Benesch must ensure justice. How he does so is his business. We’re not telling him what justice is. But if he doesn’t ensure it, which is something we will be the judges of, then we intervene.” In short: “a diplomatic masterstroke.”146
Immediately after the rally, events seemed to be about to peak. “The Sudeten Germans are driving the revolution onward,” noted Goebbels. “Massive demonstrations everywhere, marching, sometimes states of emergency. Things are developing just as we wanted them to.”147 After his return from Nuremberg on September 13, Frank further exacerbated the situation by issuing an ultimatum to the Prague government: They must suspend the martial law they had imposed on Western Bohemia because of the Sudeten German unrest.148 This obviously created a pretext that could have been used to justify intervention by the Reich.149 Goebbels threw himself into the campaign on September 14 with an aggressive editorial (appearing under the pseudonym “sagax”) in the Völkischer Beobachter.150 He was enthusiastic about the latest “alarming news from Sudeten Germany” and was obviously completely indifferent to whether the reports of atrocities had any foundation in reality: “They have found over 50 dead in just one village. This will trigger the most terrific revolutionary outbreak imaginable.”
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