Goebbels: A Biography

by Peter Longerich

  Thus, on March 16, for example, he saw the “reform of the judicial system […] now being carried out in exact accordance with my views”; in particular the right of appeal in civil cases was to be abolished; in fact, however, there was merely a simplification of the appeal process.132 Concerning the same session he wrote in his diary that he had strongly criticized the way in which recruitment to the Wehrmacht was being carried out, but there is no record of his contribution in the minutes because, at Keitel’s request, the item had been removed from the agenda. Similarly, he praised his role in getting the Reich Headquarters for Regional Planning abolished; in fact, however, the decision was simply to reduce the scope of its activities.133 Having banned horse riding in the Berlin Tiergarten, Goebbels did not succeed in persuading Hitler to put an end to horse racing altogether. The latter took the view that “during wartime” they must “continue to maintain […] entertainment for the general public.”134

  Above all, Goebbels was aware that the most important obstacle to a rationalization of the administration—the unsolved and “difficult problem of the division of responsibilities between the various ministries”—could not be removed so long as Hitler could not be “persuaded to make clear and tough decisions.” But Hitler was precisely not prepared to do that, as his power depended not least on the carefully balanced rivalry and tension that existed among the individual members of the leadership corps. Goebbels could do nothing but comment with a certain resignation that it was “completely absurd that individual ministries and important agencies are fighting each other while the enemy is achieving one success after another.”135

  In the meantime, however, Goebbels had begun to assess the possibilities of undermining the power of the Committee of Three. One evening at home in February he discussed with Speer, Ley, and Funk the possibility “of neutralizing the Committee of Three by reviving the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich.” For this purpose, Göring, the chairman of the Ministerial Council, was to be provided with “a suitable deputy.” Right away Speer and Funk came up with the appropriate candidate: Joseph Goebbels. “I would be very happy to do it.” Goebbels then continued: “I would assemble a group of around ten men, who are all excellent people, and I would then rule with them, i.e. establish a domestic political leadership.”136

  Speer contacted Göring and two days later met the Reich marshal in Berchtesgaden.137 During a long conversation in which the “minor disagreements” of the past apparently no longer played a part, Göring agreed with Speer’s suggestion that the “leadership role carried out by the Committee of Three be transferred to the Ministerial Committee for the Defense of the Reich.” Moreover, both were agreed on “what would threaten us all if we became weak in this war”; they had committed themselves so far in the “Jewish question” that “there is no possible chance of escape. And that’s a good thing.” For “experience shows that a movement and a nation which has burned its bridges fights with far fewer reservations than one that still has the possibility of withdrawal.”

  During his next visit to Führer’s headquarters in Vinnytsia on March 8, however, Goebbels learned that “Göring’s prestige with the Führer had declined hugely”; indeed the Führer told him during a tête-à-tête that he wanted to dismiss Göring.138 Thus the plan to reactivate the Ministerial Council had to be postponed. At the decisive meeting on March 18, attended by, in addition to Goebbels, Speer, Ley, and Funk,139 it was agreed in principle to revive the council and for this purpose initially to add to it “a few strong men”; this meant in the first instance Speer, Himmler, and Goebbels. Funk was already a member of the council in his capacity as economics minister. Goebbels had to put up with the fact, as he put it, that “nolens volens” (like it or not), Frick was also a member.

  According to the plan, Göring was to propose the changes to Hitler, and then the work of the Committee of Three would be transferred to the reactivated Ministerial Council and dealt with there. In the event that Göring was not in a position to attend weekly meetings of the Ministerial Council, Goebbels would represent him. “It is intended that over time this will develop into a permanent deputization.” This would have had a not insignificant impact on the whole leadership structure. “Lammers would thereby lose his role as Göring’s deputy without much of a to-do, and he would be pushed back into the position of secretary, for which he was intended in the first place. In their spheres of operation Bormann and Keitel are also effectively secretaries of the Führer and have not the right to exercise power on their own authority.” The reactivation of Göring, which Goebbels energetically pursued during the following weeks, would thus have had far-reaching consequences for the regime’s whole leadership structure.

  However, as long as this had not yet happened and as long as the proposals for “total war” were blocked in the Committee of Three, Goebbels’s attempts to secure radical measures for the pursuit of the war were more or less ineffectual, indeed from his point of view were becoming counterproductive. Having appeared in the Sportpalast as the leading advocate of “total war,” he was now in danger of being blamed for its halfhearted implementation. He gathered from the SD reports that there was support for the planned measures but also growing criticism that the steps that had been taken were not radical enough. After reading the SD report he commented: “The point is: No storm has burst forth, as I promised in my Sportpalast speech.”140 When he read in the SD report that, on the contrary, sections of the population had reservations about class conflict tendencies in the “total war” campaign,141 he responded immediately. It was inevitable, he declared in an article in Das Reich, that total war would bring about a “certain amount of egalitarianism.” But this did not happen “out of envy or class prejudice” but rather “from absolute necessity, as a result of the goal being pursued.”142 A week later he followed this up with a further article in Das Reich objecting to the fact that “for example, a few hotheads are trying to exploit the favorable opportunity to indulge their unadulterated class prejudices.”143

  Clearly Goebbels, who had been so eager to appear as the advocate of a “socialist course” in the Nazi Party and who, the previous November, had referred to “war as social revolution” in Das Reich, was afraid that he could come under the not unjustified suspicion of wanting to introduce a kind of war communism. All this may have prompted him to gradually withdraw from excessive commitment to total war. There were other fields in which his radicalism could find expression.

  THE FACTORY ACTION

  In February he learned that the deportation of the Berlin Jews was to begin in March “in stages”; he set himself the target of ensuring that the city would be “completely free of Jews” by the middle or, at the latest, the end of March, from which he hoped for “a great relief of the psychological situation.”144

  On February 27 the “factory action” began in Berlin, the sudden arrest of more than eight thousand Jews, the majority at their places of work. “Unfortunately,” Goebbels noted a few days later, “the upper classes, in particular the intellectuals, don’t understand our Jewish policy, and some of them support the Jews.” Four thousand people had managed to escape because they had been warned in time.145 Moreover, a few days later he noted that “there have been some rather unpleasant scenes in front of a Jewish old people’s home where large numbers of people gathered, some of whom even took the side of the Jews.” And on March 11: “Unfortunately, initially the male and female Jews in privileged marriages were arrested as well, which has produced a lot of fear and confusion.” Goebbels was referring to silent protests, above all by non-Jews who were in “mixed marriages” with Jews who had been arrested during the action. Since a major air raid on Berlin had occurred on March 1, to which we shall return, Goebbels tried to persuade the SD to halt the deportations in order not to add to the tension that already existed in the city. However, the deportations continued. Around two thousand Jews married to non-Jews, who were incarcerated in the Jewish community offices in the Rosenstrasse, were
released after a few days. This was not, however, the result of Goebbels’s intervention, nor was it the result of the protests; the SD had not intended to deport this group from the start.146

  On March 8 and 14, Hitler once again told Goebbels that he was entirely correct in his policy of “getting rid of the Jews from Berlin as quickly as possible.”147 A few days later Hitler was “extremely shocked” by the fact that seventeen thousand Jews were still living in so-called mixed marriages in Berlin and gave Frick instructions, as Goebbels discovered, “to facilitate the divorce of such marriages and to terminate them even when a mere wish has been expressed.” Goebbels backed this initiative to the hilt148 and, furthermore, noted that he was convinced that “by liberating Berlin from Jews I have carried out one of my greatest political acts.”149 At the ministerial briefing he ordered that the number of “Jewish apartments” that had become vacant should be revealed via word of mouth propaganda.150 Furthermore, he asked to be regularly informed about the number of Jews still living in Berlin. He blamed them for “most of the subversive rumors” and did his best to have them “moved out” as soon as possible.151

  AIR RAIDS ON BERLIN AND THE RUHR

  At the beginning of 1943 Goebbels succeeded in formalizing the responsibilities that Hitler had given him the previous spring for combating air raid damage across the nation. On January 15 the Air Raid Damage Committee met for the first time under his chairmanship, after Frick had declined to chair it.152

  To begin with, however, Goebbels had to deal with the bomb damage on his own doorstep. In the middle of January, for the first time since the air raids of 1941, there had been a significant British raid on Berlin. It had been carried out by around thirty-five planes and caused relatively little damage but cost the lives of thirty people.153 Goebbels had complained in January that the civilian air defenses were very inadequate: “The whole apparatus has become completely rusty during the past few months because of the lack of air raids.” So he had made a “huge fuss” and boasted that he had “gotten the whole operation moving again within a very short time.”154

  The test came on the evening of March 1, 1943. Over 250 planes attacked the city, killing more than seven hundred people.155 Goebbels, who had been staying in Munich, arrived in the morning and inspected the damage. He considered the population to have demonstrated “a magnificent bearing” and he gave instructions to a hastily arranged meeting of the Berlin Party functionaries to ensure that this was sustained.156 Goebbels’s behavior is characteristic of the way in which he dealt with air raids. He was concerned above all to ensure that the population affected by bombing should maintain the “right bearing” (Haltung). This was the theme of the propaganda concerning the air war. In fact, by rapidly deploying Party agencies to the affected areas Goebbels aimed to prevent any indications of poor morale—apathy, war weariness, let alone discontent or protests. But he went even further: He kept visiting the affected areas, as in March 1943 in Berlin, in order to reassure himself that the “population is extremely nice and friendly to me.”157 The propaganda minister chatting with the victims of bombing became a central topos of propaganda during the second half of the war. Goebbels continued to be concerned with making absolutely sure that a certain image of the Third Reich be maintained in the propaganda media rather than finding out what the survivors of the bombing really felt. In a proclamation, which appeared in the Berlin press, he expressed “to the population of the Reich capital his acknowledgment of and gratitude” for the superb “bearing” they had demonstrated.158

  Given the continuing Allied air raids, people feared the worst when, on March 21, for the first time in four months, Hitler gave a ten-minute address in Berlin on the occasion of the Heroes Memorial Day, which was broadcast on all the radio stations. But, to Geobbels’s relief, the anticipated air raid did not occur. Goebbels considered the “construction and style of the speech marvelous,”159 but a few days later he was worried that the number of those killed in the war, given by Hitler in his speech as 542,000, which was probably more or less correct,160 was “generally considered by the German people to be too low.”161 There could hardly have been a clearer indication of the decline in the Führer’s aura and in the loss of the political leadership’s credibility.

  At the end of March a further British air raid on Berlin, this time with over three hundred aircraft, arrived punctually, as Goebbels had feared, to coincide with Wehrmacht Day.162 Two nights later the Royal Air Force appeared once again with three hundred bombers over Berlin. This time the raid resulted in over two hundred deaths, and the material damage was considerable. Among other things, the German Opera was hit. Goebbels, who sent all available fire engines to deal with it, credited the saving of the building to his own personal intervention.163

  But it was not only Berlin that was being affected by the air war. Between March and June the RAF carried out multiple raids on Essen, above all hitting the Krupp factories.164 Goebbels was extremely concerned about the damage.165 In April, in his role as chairman of the Air Raid Damage Committee, he visited the city, which had been so badly hit and which, he concluded, “to a large extent would have to be written off.” In Essen he had a meeting with Ley, the West German Gauleiters, and several Oberbürgermeisters. They discussed giving preference to the areas affected by the air war in the provision of necessities, the evacuation of the population, the construction of air raid shelters, and other matters.

  On the following day, at his ministerial briefing back in Berlin, he gave his impressions of the trip. The Party was gradually coming to be seen as “responsible for the population’s pastoral care,”166 and he gave instructions to the press to give more prominence to the provision of air raid shelters. Reporting the “Essen meeting” and the speech he had given at it would provide a “good opportunity” to do this.167

  MORE RELAXATION IN RADIO AND FILM

  The more the Reich was threatened by Allied bombers and the more the situation at the various fronts became critical, the more Goebbels endeavored to provide the population with relaxation through the most important mass media of the time: radio and film.

  Goebbels’s demand, which he had been making increasingly urgently since 1941, for more entertaining and reasonably priced films was largely being fulfilled by the film industry right up until the end of the war.168 The diaries show clearly that he was also prepared to admit—more or less unwillingly—that his demand for quality and good taste was increasingly being left on the cutting room floor and also that his ideas of “contemporary” topics and “homely patriotism” could not be realized. In his analysis of Goebbels’s film policy, the film historian Felix Moeller suggests that the “Film Minister” was unhappy with almost half the films produced during the second half of the war. In 1944 he banned more films on the grounds of their poor quality than ever before, and yet the majority of films were shown.169

  In September 1943, Goebbels noted that “a few entertainment films are being strongly criticized as no longer appropriate for the present time.” In fact he was finding himself confronted with an insoluble dilemma. For, as he continued, how “can one gear an entertainment film that was shot a year ago to the situation that exists 12 months later?”170 In December 1943 he noted that “the current standard of films is beneath contempt.”171 In 1944 he was particularly displeased with several productions set in the pre-1914 period.172 In December he wrote that he was going to deal “ruthlessly” with the tendency to avoid the tough conflicts of the present day by seeking escape in the Biedermeier period. He no longer wanted to view films that took place in a “blatantly luxurious milieu.”173

  There were, however, exceptions among the run-of-the-mill films, for example, the color film Münchhausen, produced in 1943, which Goebbels described as “an extraordinarily colorful and lively fairy-tale picture.”174 Goebbels also enjoyed the films Romanze in Moll (Romance in a Minor Key, 1943) and Unter den Brücken (Under the Bridges, 1944), both directed by Helmut Käutner. Käutner was “the avant-gardist among G
erman film directors.”175

  Goebbels focused mainly on the films remaining in the production program, some of which were elaborate propaganda films. The majority of projects, however, were victims of the times and therefore were rejected by Goebbels before shooting started or else displeased him when they had been completed. He judged that the film Besatzung Dora (The Crew of the Dora, 1943) would have been better suited to “the second year rather than the fourth year of the war,” and the film was not shown in cinemas.176 He also blocked various other film projects dealing with military triumphs of the Wehrmacht from the past. Also, films of catastrophes, that had already been completed, such as Titanic, or Panik (in which animals break out of a zoo after an air raid), or the Käutner film Grosse Freiheit Nummer 7, which is set in a Hamburg that had not yet been bombed, no longer reflected the reality of the war and so were also not shown in German cinemas.177

  He was impressed, however, by the film Die Degenhardts (The Degenhardts), completed in 1944, which deals with the topic of the air war by using the example of the destruction of Lübeck.178 He also liked the film Junge Adler (Young Eagles), directed by Alfred Weidenmann and based on the book by Herbert Reinecker, which was aimed at young people. This was the first production of the team that was to create a successful postwar television crime series. It was the story of a group of apprentices, who, with great enthusiasm, were helping in a factory building bombers. It was one of the few films of this period that showed swastika flags and Hitler Youth uniforms. The young main characters were played by the successful postwar actors Hardy Krüger, Gunnar Möller, and Dietmar Schönherr.179 To Goebbels’s disappointment, however, the film was not popular with the public; he suspected the reason was that people “don’t want to watch any political films at the moment.”180