Goebbels: A Biography

by Peter Longerich

  With the decision to begin the deportations, Goebbels’s policy of making the Jews visible in order to ban them from the public sphere was, as far as propaganda was concerned, redundant. For, as much as possible, the deportations were intended to be carried out without creating too much of a stir. In fact it turned out that the population’s response to the introduction of the badge was much less positive than Goebbels was expecting. Although morale was high because the war situation was perceived as positive, there was little enthusiasm for the introduction of the Jewish star.

  According to the minutes of the propaganda briefing of September 25, the ministry had been informed that “the Jewish badge had produced expressions of sympathy from a section of the population, particularly from the better off,” an impression that is confirmed by other sources.124 Goebbels expressed his disappointment at the negative reactions in bourgeois circles to his staff: “The German educated classes are filthy swine.”125

  The press was given appropriate instructions126 but in fact the “campaign to enlighten people about the Jews” initiated by the Propaganda Ministry did not happen.127 For the badge was evidently not a topic that lent itself to further intensive propaganda treatment; this was clear from the population’s negative reactions and, above all, from the fact that the deportations were not to be a subject for propaganda and thus it was not advisable to draw too much attention to the Jews who were being forced to wear a badge.

  Goebbels, however, found another way to prevent unwanted contacts between Jews and non-Jews. On the basis of a suggestion that he made at the ministerial briefing on October 6,128 the Reich Security Main Office issued a police regulation in October ordering that persons who conducted “friendly relations with Jews in public” were to be taken into “protective custody” and sent to a concentration camp for up to three months.129 Following Goebbels’s suggestion, the decree was not, however, published as such; instead, the propaganda minister took it upon himself to refer to its contents in an editorial, which was effectively a public announcement and to which we shall return.

  On October 2 the Wehrmacht began its autumn offensive on the Eastern Front.130 On October 3 Hitler arrived in Berlin and, “bubbling over with optimism,” told Goebbels that he was convinced that the Red Army would be “effectively destroyed within fourteen days,” provided that the weather cooperated. In the afternoon Hitler spoke at the opening of the Winter Aid program at the Sportpalast. It was his first public appearance since the beginning of the war in the east and had been longed for by Goebbels as a desperately needed appeal to the population.131

  The speech, in which Hitler spoke above all about the military successes as well as about the continuing reports of the progress of the German offensive, produced a distinctly optimistic tone in the propaganda media and the usual positive reports about morale. Goebbels had difficulty in “dampening down somewhat the excessive optimism aroused in the broad mass of the population.” He saw himself in the role of “the German people’s general practitioner who is continually concerned to keep the nation at the normal temperature.”132

  Reich Press Chief Dietrich, on the other hand, gave a further boost to the positive mood. At a press conference held on October 9 in Berlin he announced in all seriousness that the war in the east had been won.133 Goebbels by contrast was skeptical, indeed alarmed. “The mood,” he noted on the following day, “had turned around and was almost illusionistic.” Goebbels now began cautiously to counteract this trend and instructed the press to adopt a somewhat more realistic course.134 But now something began happening that on no account ought to have been allowed to happen, namely “a certain divergence between the Führer’s view and the view that was being given to the press here.” Goebbels responded by requesting that General Alfred Jodl adapt the Wehrmacht report to the “mood that was developing in the Führer’s headquarters on the basis of indisputable facts.”135 But this then resulted in the Wehrmacht report of October 16 announcing that the first defense line in front of Moscow had been breached. But whatever the advantages of a uniform news policy, such a report went too far for Goebbels, for he suspected, not unreasonably, that “given the actual situation the mood is somewhat too optimistic.”136

  In this critical situation the deportation of the Berlin Jews, which had been ordered by Hitler four weeks earlier, began on October 15. At the ministerial briefing on October 23 Goebbels ordered that, as far as the “deportation of the first 20,000 Jews” was concerned, “nothing [was] to be said on this topic.” The foreign correspondents should simply be told that “it is a matter of economic warfare that is not going to be reported. […] The Jews are not going to a camp, neither to a concentration camp nor to a prison. They will be treated as individuals. We cannot say where they are going for reasons of economic warfare.” By contrast, domestic propaganda “should not comment at all” on the issue of deportations.137

  At the same time—that is, on October 24—Goebbels wrote about the deportations: “The Jews are writing anonymous letters to the foreign press appealing for help and in fact some news is leaking abroad. I forbid any further information about it being given to foreign correspondents. Nevertheless, it won’t be possible to prevent the topic being taken up during the following days. That can’t be helped. Even if at the moment it’s rather unpleasant to have this issue being discussed in front of an international public, we have to put up with it. The main thing is for the Reich capital to be made Jew-free.”

  In the propaganda briefing of October 25, apart from the reporting of the foreign press, Goebbels dealt with the question of how they could secure the complete isolation of the Jews from the German people: It was “impractical to issue a general regulation that Jews have to give up their seats in public transportation vehicles; it’s the Party’s task to educate individuals to exercise tact and to have empathy. In addition posters are to be put up in the subway and other transportation vehicles in which, without referring to the issue of seats, it will be stated: ‘The Jews are our misfortune. They wanted this war in order to destroy Germany. German national comrades, never forget that!’ This will create a basis for possible incidents which can be referred to if necessary.”

  At the ministerial briefing on October 26 Goebbels ordered the intensification of anti-Jewish propaganda.138 In his diary entry of October 28, 1941, he also commented on the impending deportations. Unlike in the propaganda briefing, he made it clear that, according to the reports on morale, the population had relatively strong reservations about the deportations, which is confirmed by other sources.

  Thus in October 1941 Goebbels the propagandist was confronted by an almost insoluble dilemma. On the one hand, the deportations were not to figure in German propaganda; on the other hand, the topic was discussed abroad to such an extent that the ministry had to respond. Moreover, knowledge of the deportations was widespread among the German population, produced generally negative reactions, and threatened to add to the difficulties of what in terms of general morale was an already critical situation.

  Goebbels’s solution was to launch another anti-Semitic campaign at the end of October without referring to the deportations from Germany. This campaign once more targeted the alleged dominant influence of the Jews in the Soviet Union, in the United States, and in Great Britain and was intended to prove the existence of the Jewish world conspiracy.139 Another event, however, formed the prelude: A letter written by the Romanian head of state, Ion Antonescu, to Wilhelm Filderman, the leading Jewish representative in that country, in which he strongly rejected the latter’s complaints about the deportation of the Bessarabian Jews to Transnistria, was given widespread coverage in the press. The press was instructed to give this letter and the deportations from Bessarabia prominence and to recall Hitler’s prophecy of January 1939 in which he had predicted “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” in the event of a world war.140 The Völkischer Beobachter reported on October 27 under the headline “They Dug Their Own Grave! Jewish Warmongers Sealed Jewry’s Fate.”
As instructed by the propaganda minister, the article included the quotation from Hitler’s speech of January 30, 1939, in full and added: “What the Führer announced prophetically then has now become reality. The war of revenge against Germany stirred up by the Jews has now turned on the Jews themselves. The Jews must follow the path that they prepared for themselves.”141

  While this campaign was running, however, Goebbels had to deal with another, even more important factor influencing morale: At the end of October 1941 the whole military situation altered fundamentally. The change in the weather made major operations impossible. The “major offensive that had been planned,” Goebbels noted on October 31, “has for the time being ground to a halt.”142 As a result Goebbels had to make a major change in the war propaganda. From the beginning of the war until late summer 1941 it had operated in the context of the Wehrmacht’s great military successes; the burdens imposed on the population had been limited by the short “Blitzkriegs.” But now it was clear that the planned march to victory against the Soviet Union was turning into a lengthy war. In consequence propaganda was forced to undergo a fundamental reorientation.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Getting the Nation to Accept Tough Policies”

  The Winter Crisis of 1941–42

  Credit 23.1

  The more Hitler withdrew from the public following the winter crisis of 1941–42, the more Goebbels acquired the role of the regime’s most important communicator. The propaganda minister speaks at Heldenplatz in Vienna on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the Anschluss, March 13, 1942.

  During his visit to the headquarters of the Army High Command in Mauerwald near the Führer’s headquarters, the “Wolf’s Lair,” at which he met the commander-in-chief, Walter Brauchitsch, and the quartermaster general, Eduard Wagner, Goebbels made extensive inquiries about the reasons for the army’s failure in the east and was particularly impressed by an exhibition of the army’s winter clothing and equipment: “Everything has been thought of and nothing missed. If the enemy are pinning their hopes on General Winter and think that our troops will freeze or starve to death, then they’re barking up the wrong tree.”1

  Immediately after this visit Goebbels had his own experience of the Russian winter. Attempting to fly from East Prussia to Smolensk, he was held up in Vilnius because of poor weather.2 During an improvised sightseeing tour of the city, he also visited the ghetto: “There were frightful characters hanging around the streets, whom I wouldn’t want to come across in the dark. The Jews are lice that live on civilized humanity. They must somehow be exterminated, otherwise they will keep on tormenting and oppressing us.” On the following day it turned out that because his aircraft had iced up, it was impossible for him to fly back to East Prussia. He had a time-consuming journey by road in a convoy of cars through Lithuania and East Prussia, which made an impression on Goebbels: “It’s rather worrying seeing these piles of snow now even in East Prussia: What will it be like on the Eastern Front?!”3

  Back in Berlin, as expected he had to deal with sinking morale: “As I anticipated, following Dr. Dietrich’s forecast, people have gotten the wrong idea about what’s going on and we are having to pay the price.”4 But two days later he considered that the mood had “stabilized.” Although there were “a lot of complaints everywhere about this or that shortage or this or that problem that hasn’t been solved,” what seemed vital to him was that “the German people are gradually getting used to the idea of the war going on for some time and are putting up with it with stoicism and dignity.”5

  As this example shows, right from the start of the war in the east Goebbels was preoccupied with the fact that, as he could gather from the relevant reports, the mood of the population was fluctuating greatly. The reports on morale were largely intended to capture the immediate response of the population to military successes or to negative reports or the absence of reports from the front whereby the official propaganda line prevailing at the time provided the context within which the assessment was made. Inevitably he found the rapid “changes in mood” that regularly occurred extremely irritating when it came to planning a propaganda line.

  Goebbels had repeatedly attempted to keep morale steady at a moderate level, in other words to avoid excessive swings as much as possible. And now that they were faced with a hard winter at war—a war that was threatening to become a world war and that would continue for an incalculable length of time—he was forced to make increasing efforts to achieve this moderate level. Goebbels used various methods. First, he attempted to block optimistic reports, particularly those that were forecasting a rapid end to the war. If the propaganda was not too effusive but instead was more restrained, albeit still positive, then there would not be any euphoric reports. During the coming months, when dealing with this issue he kept returning to Dietrich’s October comments about the war in the east having been won, which in his view represented “the biggest psychological mistake of the whole war.”6

  Second, Goebbels began to introduce different criteria for assessing morale. During the autumn he changed the propaganda emphasis from promises of victory to a lengthy and tough war in which the Reich’s very existence was at stake, with the home front having to bear greater burdens.

  Third, comments that were too pessimistic and negative were removed from the reports. In the meantime, Goebbels had come to the conclusion that there were far too many reports on morale, most of them unreliable. The lower-level agencies “feel obliged to express their opinions in weekly or half-weekly reports on morale. If they haven’t got anything to say, then they invent something.” The reports that came about in this way tended to “provoke agitation in government offices” and thus had to be reduced.7 In particular the SD reports were in many cases unreliable and indulged in “hysterical and frightened descriptions of the situation.”8

  In all these measures to control morale, it was not of course a question of finding out what people were really feeling; on the contrary, Goebbels used all the means at his disposal through his control of the propaganda apparatus and the information services to establish guidelines for an officially approved state of morale, a model according to which people were expected to orient their daily behavior.

  Two editorials that appeared in Das Reich in November 1941 were responsible for setting out the guidelines for this change in approach. Goebbels had come to the conclusion that his Reich articles, which were regularly read on the radio and in some cases distributed by the Party in special editions,9 represented an indispensable “collection of arguments” for the ordinary Party member. They gave the “political fighter” the down-to-earth examples and proofs with which he could confront grumblers and malcontents.10

  The first article, for which Goebbels obtained Hitler’s approval before its publication on November 9,11 dealt with the tricky question of victory in the east, which kept being announced but now appeared to have been postponed to the distant future; he responded by asserting that it did not matter when the war came to an end, it mattered how it came to an end. In the case of the current war, according to Goebbels, it was a struggle for Germany’s existence. If the war was lost, then “our national life would be completely and totally” destroyed. Any further discussion of how long the war would last was unproductive and damaging; all effort had to concentrate on achieving victory: “Don’t ask when it’s going to come, let’s make sure that it comes.”12 That represented a clear ban on any further discussion about how long the war was going to last and a clear reprimand of Dietrich for his excessive optimism. On the day the article appeared, Hitler made a speech to the Reich Party leaders and Gauleiters on the occasion of the usual November celebrations in Munich in which he made the same point using virtually the identical words. Goebbels considered this “a marvelous confirmation of the propaganda line that I have been requesting for so long in vain.”13

  Goebbels’s article was not only read aloud over the radio; its publication was also made compulsory for the press,14 and a million copies o
f it were distributed to the soldiers at the front in accordance with an instruction from Führer’s headquarters.15 It appeared widely in the press of Germany’s Axis allies,16 and Goebbels considered the fact that it was printed word for word by The New York Times a particular honor.17 He was convinced that within the Reich the majority of people would gradually get used to “the idea of a long war.”18

  In the meantime Goebbels had written another major article, which appeared in Das Reich on November 16 with the title “The Jews Are to Blame!”19 In it Goebbels referred to Hitler’s prophecy of January 30, 1939: “We are now experiencing the realization of that prophecy and the Jews are experiencing a fate which, while hard, is more than deserved. Sympathy with them or regret about it are completely inappropriate.” “World Jewry,” Goebbels continued, was now suffering a “a gradual process of annihilation,” a phrase that left little doubt about the fate of those who had been deported.

  The article ended with a true edict from on high: detailed instructions for behavior toward the Jews remaining in Germany. This was not simply an appeal; the article represented the public announcement of the unpublished police regulation that had been issued in October on Goebbels’s initiative and that had threatened those who had contact with Jews with a stint in a concentration camp. This ban is contained in Goebbels’s article in the form of an ominous threat: “If someone is wearing the Jewish star, this means that he has been identified as an enemy of the people. Anyone who has private contact with him belongs with him and must be considered and treated as a Jew.”20

  With his statement, which was spread widely by German propaganda, Goebbels was making it clear that the regime was not prepared to tolerate expressions of disapproval of its official “Jewish policy” or gestures of solidarity. There were now definite rules governing the population’s behavior toward Jews, rules that had to be obeyed. Moreover, Goebbels also used an intensive anti-Semitic propaganda campaign by the Party to ensure that these instructions for behavior toward Jews spread to the furthest corners of the Reich and were effectively carried out in everyday life.21