CHAPTER 21
“Our Banners Lead Us on to Victory!”
Between the War in the West and the War in the East
Credit 21.1
On October 21, 1940, Goebbels inspects houses destroyed in the air war. The first air raids on Berlin in 1940, which caused comparatively little damage, were used as the pretext for the Blitz on London.
After Hitler’s July 19 “peace offer” to Britain—his “appeal that even Britain should come to its senses”1—was rejected, there was a lengthy phase when Goebbels received little information about Hitler’s political and military ambitions. He was only on the periphery of the soundings taken by Hitler as to whether it might be possible to form a European alliance aimed against Britain. By contrast he learned nothing about the alternative plan that was increasingly taking shape in Hitler’s mind of attacking the Soviet Union in order not only to eliminate the Bolshevist arch-enemy but also to crush Britain’s last potential ally on the continent.
During the remaining summer months, unburdened by such far-reaching strategic calculations going on behind his back, Goebbels concentrated entirely on the main task assigned to him by Hitler: Providing the accompanying propaganda for the air offensive that was designed to force Britain to surrender. The watchword that Goebbels gave to his staff in this new round of the conflict with Britain was: “Don’t attack the people, attack the plutocracy. […] In the process spread panic, suspicion, and horror.”2
On July 24 Hitler told Goebbels that he was planning to launch massive air raids on Britain.3 But at first the dictator hesitated. Final attempts to put out “feelers” to Britain via third-party states failed.4 On August 4 Hitler summoned Goebbels to the Reich Chancellery: “He has decided to get tougher. Large-scale air raids on England impending. Accompanied by a barrage of propaganda to the English people that I’m to prepare and carry out.”5
British air defenses were to be tested by major air raids combined with long-range guns based on the Channel coast. If the losses proved too much, the raids would be broken off and “new approaches would be tried.” But the dictator made it quite clear to his propaganda minister: “No invasion planned,” although propaganda should encourage fears of invasion by dropping hints “in order to confuse the enemy.”6
The dictator’s continued hesitation and poor weather ensured that the attack would once again be postponed.7 Goebbels recorded the events of the next few days in minute detail: After the first major air battles over the Channel, from August 11 onward the Luftwaffe increasingly focused on targets in Britain. On August 13 the first big raid, which had been long in planning, was launched with almost 1,500 aircraft sorties and, over the following days, it was continued on a massive scale.8 However, the German plans were increasingly hampered by fog and poor weather; large-scale raids could be resumed only toward the end of the month.9
The flip side of the coin was the advent of increased British raids on the Reich. After German squadrons had bombed residential areas in the East End of London, according to Goebbels an air raid warning lasting four hours on August 24 had put “the whole of Berlin in a state of turmoil” without the bombs causing significant damage.10 Two days later, twelve British planes turned up over the city and dropped several bombs, causing ten fatalities.11 On September 5, after further British raids, he learned from Hitler: “The Führer is fed up and has now permitted London to be bombed at will.”12 In the meantime, a ring of antiaircraft batteries had been established around Berlin that promised to provide improved protection from further retaliatory attacks.13
In September, in response to the reports from London (“frightful,” “an inconceivably huge inferno”), Goebbels had reached the conclusion that Britain would soon capitulate: “A city with 8 million people can’t cope with that for long.”14 He was already busy setting up a propaganda unit for London.15
Goebbels now gave instructions for propaganda to make more of the attacks on Berlin: “Make a huge thing of it in order to provide us with moral alibis for our massive raids on London.”16 Now German newspapers increasingly carried pictures of and reports on the destruction of civilian targets. On September 12, for example, the Völkischer Beobachter reported that “national monuments, hospitals, and residential areas” were the targets of the British air pirates. “We shall take revenge for that,” the paper reassured its readers.17
On September 23, during his midday visit to Hitler, Goebbels learned that an invasion was impossible without “absolute command of the air,” and “at the moment there was no question of that.”18 In fact, a few days earlier Hitler had postponed Operation Sea Lion, as the ambitious plan to invade Britain was called, indefinitely.19
On September 26 or 27 Hitler instructed Bormann to see to the evacuation of children from cities under threat from air raids. This directive launched the Extended Children’s Evacuation Program. What was in reality an evacuation to prepare for air war was portrayed as merely an extension of the program already in operation for improving children’s health by sending city children to the countryside.20
In Berlin an early announcement by the National Socialist Welfare Organization responsible for the program caused concern: The population gained the impression that the children were to be compulsorily removed from their parents, which was not in fact intended. Goebbels was concerned about the alarm provoked in the population. Initially he tried to reassure people by launching a big campaign by the Party and then made an announcement in the press. The whole affair showed how worried the population was about the air war, which was only just beginning.21
The unrest among the Berlin population was also due to the fact that the city administration had been in a bad state for a long time. Goebbels, as its power-hungry Gauleiter, was not prepared to tolerate a strong personality at the head of the city government. In 1933 he had appointed his old colleague on Der Angriff, Julius Lippert, as “state commissioner” to control the city administration. Despite his considerable doubts about Lippert’s capabilities22 (among other things, he called him “old sleepyhead,” “puppet”)23 in 1936 Goebbels had agreed to appoint him to succeed Heinrich Sahm, Berlin’s German nationalist Oberbürgermeister (mayor), who had stepped down the previous year. A law of December 1936 had combined Lippert’s position—in the meantime he called himself “City President”—with the office of Oberbürgermeister. The law permitted Goebbels as Gauleiter of Berlin to be consulted before decisions of “fundamental importance” were made, in other words a right to intervene that was not defined in concrete terms.24
However, even with his increased authority, Goebbels was still not content with Lippert. In August 1938 the tension between them reached a high point: In a long conversation Goebbels endeavored to make clear to him “all the mistakes and omissions that had been made in Berlin,” but Lippert, “a real numbskull with the stature of a Mecklenburg village mayor,” simply would not listen. Goebbels pondered whether he ought to appoint a commissioner with special powers above Lippert.25 During the following months he continued to express dissatisfaction with Lippert as well as with his deputy Gauleiter, Artur Görlitzer.26 But he did not want to dismiss them; he was presumably happy with the fact that the city and Gau administrations were both headed by relatively weak figures.
During the course of 1940, however, his criticism of Lippert increased. In May 1940 he issued “severe reproaches” to Lippert for “Berlin’s disorganization.” Above all, Goebbels was annoyed with the “unpleasant lines in front of shops,” which had to be avoided at all costs.27 The public image of the capital must on no account be marred by the shortages caused by the war. Finally, after a long period of in-fighting28 Hitler accepted Lippert’s resignation.29 Goebbels and Hitler now considered whether once again to separate the two combined functions of City President and Oberbürgermeister. But what “significant figure” could stay the course with Goebbels as Gauleiter? For the time being Goebbels and Hitler were unable to find a solution to this problem.30 And so for several years Bürgermeister Ludwig St
eeg, Lippert’s deputy, officiated as acting Oberbürgermeister and City President.
DIPLOMATIC INTERMEZZO
By the end of July 1940 Hitler had already told his military commanders to prepare plans for war with the Soviet Union. This was prompted by the belief that quickly crushing the Soviet Union, whose military was generally considered to be weak, would cause Britain to lose its last potential ally on the continent and thereby be forced to make peace. These were not, however, the only strategic considerations that underpinned this decision: The “Bolshevist” Soviet Union was Hitler’s real arch-enemy; in his view the pact with the Soviet Union could not last forever. Hitler would have preferred to start the war in the autumn of 1940 but had to take account of the concerns of his military leaders and postpone it to the following spring.31
Hitler evidently did not inform his propaganda minister at all about these plans. For Goebbels, who after his conversations with Hitler always conscientiously recorded all the Führer’s comments about his foreign policy and military plans, does not report anything in his 1940 diaries about concrete plans for an attack on the Soviet Union. Rather, Goebbels’s entries in his diary for August 1940 show that Hitler intentionally left him in the dark about his war plans. Thus on August 9 their conversation touched on the “terror regime” that the Soviet occupation forces had imposed on the Baltic states. Goebbels noted: “Bolshevism is world enemy No. 1. One day we shall clash with it. The Führer thinks so too.”32 But the dictator did not initiate Goebbels into his war plans: When it came to devising strategies for the continuation of the war, he was not Hitler’s trusted adviser but his propaganda minister.
Even when some days later Goebbels learned of substantial troop deployments to the east, he did not connect them with an impending military operation: “Reason: insecurity in the west because of air raids. In reality on the principle: better to be safe than sorry.”33 A few days later when he banned his department from making “any overtures to Russia” he did so knowing that conflict with the Soviet Union was inevitable, but the date for it seemed to him uncertain, a long way off: “One day we must settle accounts with Russia. When, I don’t know, but I do know it will happen.”34
Hitler’s plans for war with the Soviet Union were, however, only one of several options. At first he had, as we have seen, tried to defeat Britain militarily through massive air raids and even, conceivably, through an invasion. In September, however, this project had proved impossible for the foreseeable future. Before Hitler committed himself definitively in December 1940 to an attack on the Soviet Union, between September and December he had toyed with a third option, an alternative scenario through which to defeat Britain: This was Foreign Minister Ribbentrop’s idea of constructing a “continental bloc” against Britain—if necessary including the Soviet Union.35 The Tripartite Pact, the military alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan, initiated by Hitler and signed at the end of September, offered a basis for this. German policy initially focused on trying to reduce tensions in the Balkans and on bringing a few nations in southeastern Europe into the pact: Following the Vienna Award, which forced Romania to cede territory to Hungary at the end of August 1940, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia were admitted into the Tripartite Pact in November and, during the following months, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia were courted.
In order to expand the “bloc” still further, between September and December 1940 Hitler and his foreign minister met representatives of states that might be possible partners in the alliance against Britain: It was intended that Spain should join the Axis (and enable the Reich to conquer Gibraltar from the land side), that France should become actively involved in the war with Britain, and that arrangements would be made with their ally, Italy, as to what role the “new” partners, France and Spain, would play in the Mediterranean. Finally, the main problem facing the future “continental bloc” was the demarcation of interests with the Soviet Union.
Goebbels’s diary entries show that while during these months he was informed of particular diplomatic steps by Hitler, as far as the major lines of foreign policy were concerned he remained in the dark. He was neither given the full picture of the overall diplomatic project that lay behind the negotiations of these months, nor was he aware that the idea of a continental bloc that was gradually taking shape was just one option that Hitler was simply trying out, whereas the fact that the continental bloc proved not to be feasible relatively quickly strengthened Hitler in his determination to seek a final showdown with the Soviet Union. Goebbels remained to a large extent unaware of Hitler’s return to his original fundamental goals.
But let us return to the late summer of 1940, in other words to the point when Hitler began his foreign policy experiment. Goebbels was informed relatively early about Italy’s plans to extend the war in the Balkans, as is shown by his diary entry for August 24: “Italy wanted to intervene in Yugoslavia and Greece,” he wrote, but Hitler “expressed the wish that they not do that. We must defeat England. That is the first and most important task.” The Italians acceded to Hitler’s wish, but only for two months.36
At the beginning of September Goebbels noted mysteriously in his diary that Hitler still had “a few irons in the fire, which at the moment cannot be spoken or written about. Herr Churchill will have a surprise.”37 But he does not appear to have been informed about what these “irons” were. Thus, he was not told about the conclusion of the Tripartite Pact, which established the “axis” uniting Germany, Italy, and Japan until September 27, the evening before it was signed.38
Goebbels did not learn any details about the conversations Hitler had with Mussolini at the Brenner Pass on October 4 apart from the fact that the result had been “good, as I was told by telephone.”39 On the other hand, since the visit of the Spanish interior minister, Ramón Serrano Suñer, in the middle of September,40 Goebbels had been informed about the German-Spanish plans for a military coup against Gibraltar on which the Wehrmacht had been working since July.41 On October 23 Hitler met the Spanish dictator at the Franco-Spanish border in Hendaye in order to negotiate the planned alliance.42 On his return Hitler told Goebbels only that he had “not formed a good opinion [of Franco]. A lot of talk, but little will. No substance.”43 On December 4 he noted that the attack was “to go ahead in about 3 weeks.”44 But three days later Franco canceled it,45 which Goebbels did not note in his diary until nearly two weeks after the fact.46
During his journey to Spain in October, Hitler had stopped off twice in the town of Montoire in southern France in order to negotiate with the French government. On October 22 he met Pierre Laval, and after his meeting with Franco on October 24 he met Pétain and Laval.47 “This is the start of the new major development,” he commented meaningfully on the negotiations.48 He was not informed of the details of the conversations,49 but after a few days he was convinced that Vichy had “accepted”: “That means France is in the continental bloc. London is absolutely isolated.”50
In fact the results of Montoire were exceedingly meager: There could be no question of France’s having agreed to join in a war against Britain as part of a continental bloc led by Germany. That Goebbels had gained this impression shows the extent to which he was excluded from the actual diplomatic negotiations that were going on during these weeks.51
At the end of October 1940, during the return journey from the south of France Hitler had met Mussolini in Florence. During this meeting he learned that, despite his express wishes, the Italians had decided to attack Greece. As a result, the Balkans threatened to become a trouble spot directly contradicting the idea of a united continental bloc.52
The Italian action had been prompted by the fact that, responding to a Romanian request, the Germans had sent a military mission to Romania in October 1940. Their main aim had been to secure the Romanian oil fields. Feeling surprised and somewhat duped by this German action, the Italians now decided to push ahead with the Balkan plans that had long been in preparation and to attack Greece from Albania. Goebbels commented laconi
cally on the surprising move by Il Duce: “He too is trying to get what he can.”53 The advance soon came to a halt, however, and the Italian forces had to retreat back into Albania. The German leadership now believed that they had to intervene if they were to prevent Britain from becoming involved in the conflict and establishing itself in the Balkans.54 It is clear from various entries in the diaries that from December 1940 onward Goebbels was informed about the German military intervention in Greece.55
Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov’s visit to Berlin in the middle of November represented the high point of the diplomatic negotiations in autumn 1940. Goebbels, who ensured that the visit went ahead without much participation by the Berlin population, had resolved to “keep somewhat in the background” during the visit.56 However, this unusual display of modesty on the part of the propaganda minister did not derive from his own decision to keep a low profile; it was simply that Goebbels was excluded from the decisive conversations.
He took part only in a midday diplomatic “breakfast” in the Reich Chancellery on November 13 and used the opportunity to make some psychological observations about the Soviet visitors. Above all he noted “mutual fear and inferiority complexes”: “The GPU is keeping an eye on them.” He concluded that cooperation with Moscow must “in the future as well be [governed] solely by considerations of expediency”: “The more we move closer together politically, the more alien we shall become spiritually and ideologically. And that’s a good thing!”57
Goebbels: A Biography Page 56