As had been arranged during his visit to the Army High Command in October, exhibitions of winter clothing and equipment for the army were hurriedly prepared for five major cities to win the population’s support for the winter war. The opening was, however, initially postponed; in the end they were canceled altogether.22 During November it became clear that further mention of the topic was inopportune: The troops had not yet received the winter clothing.
At the beginning of December the German offensive in Russia came to a halt. Under the most extreme climatic conditions without adequate winter clothing and equipment, the German troops had to suspend their attack on Moscow and, in particular, withdraw their front line in the south. At the beginning of December Goebbels learned that while winter clothing for the troops existed, due to transportation difficulties it could not be delivered to the troops until the end of January.23 He was compelled “in view of the military situation” to order “our propaganda agencies to exercise restraint.”24 On the other hand, Goebbels saw in these negative military developments confirmation of the line he had been taking for months on the need to follow a “tougher” domestic policy.25 Hence his recommendations at the ministerial briefing that they should “tell it as it is and […] say: ‘We didn’t want this war; don’t talk so much and get used to it!’ ”26
THE DECLARATION OF WAR ON THE UNITED STATES
On December 8 the developing crisis was overshadowed by an event that came as a complete surprise to the German government: the Japanese attack on the American fleet in Pearl Harbor and the resulting extension of the war to the Pacific.27
Goebbels considered that “a complete shift in the world situation had occurred.” The United States would “now hardly be in a position to transport significant amounts of matériel to England or the Soviet Union; during the following months they will have need of it themselves.” As far as domestic politics was concerned, here too he only saw advantages: “The whole nation breathes a sigh of relief. The psychological fear of a possible outbreak of war between the USA and Germany has gone.”28
On December 9 Goebbels had the opportunity to discuss the new situation with Hitler.29 Although Hitler had told him at least two weeks earlier that he believed that Japan would become actively involved in the war in the foreseeable future (Goebbels did not agree),30 now, he told Goebbels, he had been “completely surprised” by the outbreak of hostilities “and at first, like me, had not wanted to believe it.” On this occasion Hitler informed him that he wanted to use his Reichstag speech, planned for December 11, to announce Germany’s declaration of war on the United States.
Goebbels also attended this session of the Reichstag.31 When, during the course of his speech, Hitler reminded the “homeland” emphatically of its wartime duties, Goebbels was pleased to note that this fit in “very much with the line that I have been following in German propaganda for weeks, if not months.”32
On the afternoon of the following day Hitler then spoke to the Reich leaders and Gauleiters who had gathered in the Reich Chancellery. Goebbels’s diary entry covering this speech, for which there is no other source, is six pages long.33 Hitler began by speaking about the situation created by the war with the United States. Goebbels’s report shows how on this occasion Hitler succeeded in putting a positive gloss on the extension of the war, which, in hindsight, appears to have been a decisive step on the path to his downfall: “Now the conflict in East Asia is a piece of luck for us. […] If we had declared war on the United States without the conflict in East Asia to compensate, the German people would have found it difficult to take. Now everyone takes this development for granted.”
Hitler dealt with the situation on the Eastern Front and, as he had done before with Goebbels, he tried to make light of it. The Wehrmacht was in the process of “carrying out a realignment of the front.” It was his “firm decision […] next year to finish off the Soviet Union at least as far as the Urals.” Finally, Hitler talked about the “Jewish question”: “As far as the Jewish question is concerned the Führer is determined to make a clean sweep of it. He had prophesied to the Jews that if they brought about another world war, they would experience their annihilation. That was not empty talk. The world war has happened. The annihilation of Jewry must be the inevitable consequence. This question must be regarded without any sentimentality. It’s not our business to have sympathy with the Jews, but only sympathy with our German people. If the German people have once again sacrificed 160,000 dead in the eastern campaign, the originators of this bloody conflict will have to pay for it with their own lives.” This clear statement by Hitler must have confirmed Goebbels in his conviction that his radical view of the “Jewish question” was very much in line with that of the Führer. Hitler had announced the “annihilation” of the Jews several times during the preceding months, and in his article “The Jews Are to Blame” of November 16, Goebbels had used the same phrase and significantly had referred to Hitler’s prophecy of January 30, 1939, just as Hitler himself had now done in front of the Reich leaders and Gauleiters.
The German declaration of war on the United States did not result in any fundamental change in the regime’s anti-U.S. propaganda. As before, it continued to concentrate on the American president and his “war guilt.” Above all, Goebbels assumed that by emphasizing the “Jewish question” he would make a big impact in the United States, since “all Americans are anti-Semites”—American anti-Semitism just needed to be organized. “The line must be: Roosevelt is to blame, and the Jews are to blame. Whenever the Americans have a defeat or a setback, we must point out: You can thank Roosevelt and your Jews for that.”34
THE COLLECTION OF WINTER CLOTHING
In the next few days Goebbels acquired a new task that was very much in line with his demand that domestic propaganda adopt a tougher approach. On December 17 Hitler made him responsible for a campaign to “collect wool clothing for the troops on the Eastern Front,” which had been requested by the Army High Command.
In view of objections from Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), which claimed that the clothing was actually available but just could not yet be transported to the front, on December 20 Goebbels secured Hitler’s agreement to announce the collection drive on the radio the very same evening.35
Goebbels used his authorization in order once again to dominate the Third Reich’s public sphere with one of his major campaigns, using all the media to project an image of the solidarity of the “national community.” “Domestic politics is completely dominated by my collection campaign. Our dramatic reporting of it has made a huge impression on the German people.”36 Moreover, in his view it offered him the opportunity to counteract what he considered the “melancholy” mood, which during the Christmas period must not be allowed to spread too far.37
Immediately after Christmas, however, there were an increasing number of negative reports from the various fronts. The British captured Benghazi and, according to Goebbels, various reports from the Eastern Front concurred in asserting that “our forces’ resistance has been reduced to an alarming extent.”38 For this reason it was excellent that “the clothing collection has started. For now at least people have a useful task, and the Party too has something to do and needn’t spend its time making clever assessments of the situation. In fact, all in all, it’s best if people get on with their daily lives and apart from that have faith in the Führer.”39 He made it clear in an article to which he gave the title “What Is a Sacrifice?” that the current “restrictions” were nothing compared with what people at the front had to put up with.40
During this period the clothing collection came up constantly in the ministerial briefing.41 “The more people at home have to do,” Goebbels concluded, “the better their morale will be; the more people believe that they are carrying out essential war work, the more they will be committed to the war and feel responsible for ensuring its success.”42 On January 21 he announced that over fifty-six million pieces of winter and woollen clothing had been donated; the final
result was sixty-seven million items. As Goebbels recorded, the whole operation had proved a “real blessing […] for our domestic situation.”43
The parallel action to collect ski equipment, however, proved to be rather a debacle.44 Pressed by the propaganda minister, hundreds of thousands of Germans delivered up their winter sports equipment, and at the same time all winter sports events were canceled.45 But when the campaign was already under way, the Wehrmacht suddenly declared that instead of a million pairs of skis it needed only four hundred thousand, considerably fewer than had been collected by that point.46 Goebbels, who found this change of plan “extremely embarrassing,” responded by ordering that the action should simply be dropped.47 Moreover, the Wehrmacht could not do much with the four hundred thousand skis it had collected because for the most part these were alpine skis designed for going downhill and not cross-country skis, which were what were required for winter warfare. In addition, the vast majority of soldiers were not able to ski and proved an easy target for enemy snipers.48 During 1942 Goebbels and the Propaganda Ministry then had to deal with the question of how, in accordance with a decision of Hitler’s, they were to return the skis that were left over to their owners.49
DOMESTIC PROPAGANDA: MORE TOUGHNESS AND CONTINUING HIGH MORALE
During the following winter months Goebbels was preoccupied above all with ensuring that, through a combination of increased efforts on the “home front” and the carefully controlled release of news, German propaganda could cope with the military crisis on the Eastern Front and in North Africa.
During the first months of 1942 Goebbels’s propaganda directives and public comments are replete with demands for greater “toughness,” both in information policy and more generally as far as the civilian war effort was concerned: “If we really get a grip on the nation, give it jobs to do and lead it, then it will certainly be willing to follow us through thick and thin. Also, such a nation can’t be defeated,” he wrote on January 8 in connection with Hitler’s New Year message.50
As far as he was concerned, the collection of wool clothing was a successful pilot project for a “tougher” domestic war policy.51 At the end of January he published an editorial in Das Reich in which he noted with satisfaction that there was hardly anybody left “who within their domestic circle allowed themselves the luxury of pretending that peace was reigning, while the furies of war were rampaging over Europe.”52 He praised Hitler’s speech of January 30 not least because of its attempt to “get the nation to accept tough policies.”53 He now believed that he could sense “a general firming up of attitudes.”54 As so often, he tried to find out more about the real mood through a long conversation with his mother: “She knows the popular mood better than most experts, who judge it only from an exalted academic standpoint, whereas with her one hears the true voice of the people. Once more I can learn a lot, above all that the people are much more primitive than we imagine.” He considered his basic views confirmed: “Thus, the essence of propaganda is to keep it simple and use constant repetition.”55
Apart from his dogged attempts to force the population to make greater efforts in support of the war, in winter 1941–42 Goebbels as propaganda minister followed a kind of compensation strategy by introducing a more relaxed policy for the mass media of radio and film, which were expected to deliver more entertainment and to put people in a “good mood.” These attempts can be traced back to autumn 1941 and reached their high point in February 1942.
Since Goebbels had concluded that radio was still not broadcasting enough “good and entertaining material,”56 as early as mid-October 1941 he had assigned the desk officer responsible for matters concerning the Chamber of Culture within the ministry, Hans Hinkel, the task of “contacting our best light orchestras, our best light music conductors and light music composers” and making sure they produced “a decent evening program.”57
After Hinkel had introduced the requested reforms, which soon covered the whole of the entertainment programming,58 Goebbels noted a generally very positive response from listeners. In January, however, he once again had some complaints about the radio programming. Hinkel was on vacation, so Goebbels mainly blamed the Reich head of broadcasting, Glasmeier, who was also head of the Reich Broadcasting Corporation.59 In February Goebbels became heavily involved in reforming the programming60 and in the end carried out a comprehensive reassignment of responsibilities.61 He gave Hinkel “overall responsibility for the artistic and entertainment programming of the Greater German Radio” and appointed Wolfgang Diewerge, who for years had been one of the most prominent propagandists in the ministry, to head its radio department and at the same time gave him “overall responsibility for the political and propaganda broadcasts of the Greater German Radio.”
Following Goebbels’s instructions Hinkel established an editorial staff consisting of ten groups, each of which was responsible for a particular branch of entertainment. Goebbels now had an organization that enabled him to issue direct instructions for the programming.62 He even made detailed comments on programming during his ministerial briefings. Thus, on March 9 he decided on the exact wording of the introduction to a Schumann Lieder recital.63
Simultaneously with the reorganization Goebbels reduced the authority of the director general of the Reich Broadcasting Corporation, restricting him to a largely administrative role.64 In an article published in the Völkischer Beobachter on March 1 he announced a reorganization of the radio program. While it was obvious that jazz music was unacceptable, at the same time “it was not right to insist that musical development came to an end with our grandparents’ waltzes and everything after that is bad.”65 He noted in his diary how pleased he was with the new program. It was “a pleasure to listen to a broadcast for half or quarter of an hour in the evening.”66
From autumn 1941 onward Goebbels also introduced a change in film policy;67 once again it would focus on light entertainment. “During this coming winter,” he had noted in September, “we must do all we can to keep the nation in a good mood.”68 This was “really vital for the war effort.”69 When the Rühmann film The Gasman was criticized by Party officials because it contained a reference to Party bigwigs, Goebbels, significantly, mocked those Gauleiters who thought that “morale would suffer because of harmless jokes, which once in a while may target state or Party institutions.”70
During the winter, cinemas were once again showing more entertainment films, which began to replace the political propaganda ones, although at the end of the year Goebbels was still undecided what line to take: “At the moment the situation is so uncertain that one hardly knows what to show: political, military, musical, or entertainment films.” In any case, it was a good idea to provide the nation with “the relaxation it needs through art, theater, film, and radio.”71 At the beginning of 1942 the preference for entertainment films was clearly established: “What we need is a domestic form of patriotism,” he wrote in January after visiting a cinema.72
An important reason for the change was the fact that “big films” were often opulently staged epics that were simply becoming too expensive,73 and for this reason alone Goebbels preferred relatively cheap comedies staged in studios: “What we need is good quality, good value entertainment films.”74 At the end of 1942 the Propaganda Ministry issued an edict to “improve the quality” of films, which brought together the whole of the film industry in an umbrella organization. All the existing film studios were brought together in Ufa-Film GmbH, with separate companies established for the old cinemas belonging to Ufa and for film distribution. At the same time, within the management of Ufa-Film, Goebbels created the new position of director of Reich film, to which he appointed Fritz Hippler, the head of the film department, who was specifically authorized to intervene directly in film production. The edict specifically established the priority of films “with entertaining content” for the period of the war.75 The parallels with the reform of radio were clearly more control and more entertainment. On the day the edict appeared G
oebbels made a speech to “film creators” in which he explained his new line: In general more films were to be produced, fewer grandiose and expensive “national-political” films, instead more “good, solid entertainment films.” The proportions of the two categories were to be around 20 to 80.76 The change produced, as Goebbels noted, “some astonishment” among his audience, indeed a certain discontent, for he was prompted to make the harsh comment: “If there’s anyone here who doesn’t want to cooperate of their own free will, he will simply have to be forced to do so.”
During 1942 Goebbels considered a whole series of films that fulfilled the criteria “cheap, entertaining, witty”—his comment on the film Meine Frau Theresa (My Wife Theresa)77—as the successful resuit of his changes.78 Summing up the reforms he had introduced at the beginning of March, he noted, “During this period of extreme tension film and radio must enable the people to relax. […] We must keep them in a good mood.”79
“FINAL SOLUTION OF THE JEWISH QUESTION”
In February Hitler had told Goebbels in connection with the impending destruction of Bolshevism that he was determined “ruthlessly to sort out the Jews in Europe”: “The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that they are now experiencing. Along with the destruction of our enemies they will now experience their own destruction.” The gradual improvement in the military situation in the spring, in particular on the Eastern Front, offered the prospect of the realization of this aim in the very near future.
Goebbels: A Biography Page 62