Goebbels: A Biography

by Peter Longerich

  His favorite project was the history of the successful defense of the Prussian fortress of Kolberg by the Prussian army and the local militia against an overwhelmingly superior force of Napoleonic troops in 1807. The Kolberg project, he wrote in May 1943, will suit “to a tee the political and military situation that we shall probably be facing at the time when the film comes out.”181 He intervened frequently in the conception and production of this extraordinarily lavish film.182 He finally viewed the film in December 1944 on two occasions, one shortly after the other and, while recognizing that it was a “masterpiece of direction,” he demanded that its director, Veit Harlan, make some cuts.183

  He was not, however, at all pleased with Harlan’s changes: “He has treated the scenes of destruction and despair in the city so crudely that I’m afraid that in the current situation large sections of the public will simply refuse to watch it.”184 The film, which had been altered once again, was shown in cinemas in January 1945, but only a few copies were made available. The audiences in the bombed-out cities could watch the gradual destruction of an East German small town in 1807 whose inhabitants defied Napoleon but at the same time naturally could not prevent the defeat of the Prussian state. Goebbels, however, was pleased that Hitler “has been very enthusiastic about the effect of the Kolberg film,” which, in particular, “made a huge impression when shown to the general staff.”185

  When the real Kolberg had to be evacuated in March 1945 in the face of the Soviet advance, he did not want any reference to it in the OKW report. They “could do without” such reports “at the moment, in view of the powerful psychological implications for the Kolberg film.”186 Goebbels could not accept that reality had overtaken propaganda.

  Typically, he blamed all the difficulties that arose for German film during these years on other people and withdrew into the stance of a disgusted spectator. Initially, the head of production at Ufa, Otto Heinz Jahn,187 acted as his scapegoat, until in April 1943 he was finally replaced by the director Wolfgang Liebeneiner.188 Fritz Hippier’s reputation soon declined in Goebbels’s eyes, and on July 1, 1943, he was dismissed as Reich superintendent of film, although initially he was not replaced.189

  In July 1943, having secured Hitler’s approval, Goebbels relaxed his control over film production. He ordered that production companies should in future provide only short content reports for each film being proposed: “I only want to get involved in the script and the casting in the case of particularly important projects.”190 Hans Hinkel was appointed as the new Reich superintendant of film in April 1944, and he also took over the ministry’s film department.191 Shortly afterward, Gutterer, who was leaving his position as state secretary in the Propaganda Ministry, was given the sinecure of chairman of the Ufa board, although he soon ran into criticism from the propaganda minister in this job as well.192 Hinkel’s “strict regime” soon brought him into conflict with Goebbels’s Reich commissioner for the film industry, Max Winkler, who was continually complaining about the constant interventions in the current production and with the individual production companies, interventions that were contrary to Goebbels’s instruction of July 1943. Goebbels supported Winkler, who, “apart from anything else ensures that the film industry operates along commercial lines.”193 This was a clear admission by Goebbels of the failure of his film policy. For a long time he had opposed the existence of an independent film industry working along commercial lines and instead had attempted to subordinate film production to the political control of his ministry. Now he had given this up, as well as his ideas about how to reform the content of German film.

  As far as radio was concerned, during the second half of the war Goebbels continued to pursue his policy of a far-reaching “relaxation” of the program. In May 1943, for example, he complained to Karl Cerff, the head of the Main Cultural Office of the Hitler Youth leadership, that on the question of scheduling he was adopting “a rather too National Socialist standpoint.” It would not do for “radio music to be made exclusively with lurs.”*2, 194 Above all he pressed for a further reduction in the spoken word. With the exception of the first weeks after Stalingrad, in which the scheduling adopted a more serious tone, right up until the end of the war German radio broadcasts were dominated by entertainment and the attempt to create a good mood.195

  Apart from his assignment to take charge of the political and propaganda content of the radio schedule, in April 1944 Fritzsche was also made responsible for musical entertainment.196 He was supposed to achieve the right balance between “music” and “words.”197 Nevertheless, Goebbels kept intervening directly in the scheduling, attempting to achieve a balance between the modern entertainment music, which was so much in demand among the public, and the seriousness of the war situation. In August, for example, he objected to “a few excesses, particularly in the case of the dance and entertainment music.”198 As so often, it seemed to him that here too a middle way was required. They should “not have a mournful program or a program of marching bands” but “moderate entertainment.”199

  * * *

  *1 Translators’ note: Significantly, Goebbels uses the pejorative term revolt rather than revolution.

  *2 Translators’ note: A lur is an ancient Germanic musical instrument, a blowing horn without finger holes that is played by embouchure.

  CHAPTER 26

  “The Masses Have Become Somewhat Skeptical or…Are in the Grip of a Sense of Hopelessness”

  Crisis as a Permanent State

  Credit 26.1

  During the war, personal contact with Hitler continued to remain critical for Goebbels’s position in the Third Reich. The dictator and his propaganda minister on the Obersalzberg, 1943.

  At the end of February, as the first thaw set in, the Soviet winter offensive came to a halt and from the middle of March 1943 the situation on the Eastern Front had more or less stabilized; indeed, with its recapture of Kharkov the Wehrmacht had even achieved a prestige success.1 This development gradually had a positive effect on the nation’s mood; in March it increasingly appeared to have “stabilized,” and in April it continued to improve, at least according to the reports produced by the Party’s Reich propaganda offices and letters sent to the ministry.2 However, these reports did not so much reflect an improvement in the population’s mood as the fact that Goebbels had been continuing to alter the criteria for the assessment of its mood. On April 11 he expatiated once more on his preferred distinction between “mood” and “bearing,” the latter allegedly playing “a decisive role […] in modern war.”3

  In his view, however, the SD reports continued to be much more negative than those from his own area of responsibility.4 The SD reports, he noted in the middle of March, were recording “more grumbling” and “in general have recently been annoying me.” The reports recorded “too many details. The leadership of the Reich has no interest in knowing that somewhere in a small country town there is someone who is sounding off about something.” Thus he gave the head of the Ministry’s propaganda department, Berndt, the task of improving the harmonization of the reporting by the SD and by the Party’s Reich propaganda offices.5

  However, this did not happen. Instead, the SD’s “Reich Reports” were stopped in June 1943 and replaced by the Reports on Domestic Issues, which were geared to recipients responsible for particular spheres of responsibility.6 However, even in their new version Goebbels found the reports “completely useless for practical work” for, as before, they continued to record “what some anonymous person in some town or village or other has thought fit to express as his opinion.”7

  “TOTAL WAR” IS NOT HAPPENING

  In spring 1943 Goebbels had to face the fact that, as a result of the “slowly recurring spring or summer illusions,” his ideas of “total war” were being further undermined by every conceivable agency. Hitler, in particular, was all too prone to respond positively to such initiatives. Goebbels noted that these included such widely varying things as the reappearance of entertainment magazines, th
e reopening of casinos, the inadequate enforcement of labor conscription for women, the suspension of travel restrictions, and other issues.8 This situation was also reflected in the fact that Hitler was not prepared to discipline leading members of the regime whose personal conduct was grossly at odds with the requirements of total warfare.

  At the beginning of 1943 the Berlin criminal police uncovered a crime in which the Berlin food purveyor August Nöthling had delivered expensive foodstuffs to numerous prominent figures without the requisite ration coupons having been provided. Among those implicated were Reich Interior Minister Frick, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, Minister of Education Rust, Agriculture Minister Darré, and others, in other words figures who did not necessarily enjoy the propaganda minister’s approval.9

  In March, Goebbels, who had detailed information on the matter via the Berlin police chief, Helldorf, informed Hitler.10 He was “fairly shocked,” but did not want to make it a “matter of state.” Goebbels should contact the Reich minister of justice, Thierack, and get him to deal with the issue without too much fuss. “Sometimes the Führer is rather too generous in these decisions,” Goebbels commented.11

  He discussed the matter with Thierack the following day12 and a few weeks later learned that Hitler had at least ordered that those involved should be interrogated by Thierack.13 However, most of them had responded to the latter’s questions insolently, as Goebbels soon discovered.14 Apart from that, the case against Nöthling was soon closed following his suicide while on remand. As far as the prominent figures involved were concerned, in July Hitler finally decided that they were not to be prosecuted, which Goebbels was not entirely happy with.15 Hitler, however, was prepared to sign an “Instruction Concerning the Exemplary Behavior of Persons in Leading Positions.” But Goebbels was not surprised that the head of the Reich Chancellery, Lammers, had watered down the instruction, as he too had been one of Nöthling’s customers.16

  In the middle of April Goebbels’s idea of mobilizing Göring for his plans for making the war more total ended, for the time being in any case, in a fiasco. Goebbels’s health let him down in a decisive situation. His skin condition, a rapidly spreading eczema, had affected him so much that he had had to spend a few days at home convalescing.17 Then, on April 12, on the way to Berchtesgaden, where Göring had summoned a meeting intended to give a new impetus to the mobilization of labor resources, Goebbels suffered a “terrible pain in the kidneys” shortly before arriving. The pain was so “barbaric” that he was unable to leave his sleeping car.18

  Later he learned that Sauckel had largely gotten his way at the meeting. He had succeeded in portraying the situation in relation to labor deployment in such a way that neither Göring nor Speer nor Milch could put forward effective counterarguments in favor of further decisive measures for total war. For, according to Goebbels, they had naturally been depending entirely on his “knowledge and expertise” but had had to do without it because of his illness.19 After he had once again discussed the situation with Speer and Funk at the beginning of May, he came to the conclusion that at that point it was not possible to “persuade Göring to take over the domestic conduct of the war. At the moment he is rather weary and is on leave for four weeks.”20

  Although Goebbels noted that the dictator was “unreservedly” in favor of the principle of total war,21 a conviction in which he was encouraged by Speer,22 the reality was rather different. On May 9, for example, Hitler told him categorically that “total war” must “not involve a war against women […] as soon as you interfere with their beauty treatment you become their enemy.” Casinos and betting on horses were also to remain in order to soak up consumer spending.23 A few days later he was told that Hitler was opposed to all plans to use the measures for rationalizing the administration, which were being undertaken as part of “total war,” for bringing in a “reform of the Reich” through the back door, in other words to carry out far-reaching alterations in the structure of the Reich and the states (Länder) while the war was going on.24

  On the other hand, Goebbels felt duty bound: “The nation associates the notion and the conception of total war with me personally. I am, therefore, to a certain extent publicly responsible for carrying on total war.”25 Now the strategy he had adopted at the start of the year began to come home to roost. At the beginning of the year he, Goebbels, had attempted to fill the vacuum that had developed because of Hitler’s absence from the public sphere. He had announced “total war” in the latter’s name, and now, since he had been unsuccessful in pushing the responsibility on to Göring, he had to cope with the consequences of the unsuccessful mobilization measures. Goebbels’s solution to this dilemma was to play down the theme of “total war” somewhat during the following months. In the meantime he had discovered another topic, which he was to make the leitmotif of German propaganda during the coming weeks.

  KATYN

  At the end of March and the beginning of April 1943 Goebbels had ordered an increase in the existing anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic propaganda,26 and so the discovery of the mass graves of Polish officers at Katyn at the beginning of April—they had been shot by the Soviet occupation forces in 1940—offered an unexpected opportunity to make these topics the overwhelmingly dominant theme of German propaganda.27 Having secured Hitler’s approval, on April 14 Goebbels noted that the discovery of the corpses would “now be exploited in a major way for anti-Bolshevik propaganda”; using the available material would enable them “to keep going for several weeks.”28

  German propaganda crudely assumed that the murders were the work of Jewish communists. With Katyn the stereotypical image of Jewish Bolshevism had now acquired a human face. On April 16 Goebbels noted in his diary: “We shall stoke up anti-Semitic propaganda to such an extent that, as in the ‘time of struggle’ [i.e. pre-1933], the word ‘Jew’ will once again have the devastating impact that it should have.”

  The start of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 19 fit into the scenario of a threat from the Jews that propaganda had already been painting in broad strokes. Goebbels commented: “It’s high time that we removed the Jews from the General Government as quickly as possible.”29 The extent to which he coordinated the Katyn campaign with Hitler is clear from his diary entries during these days.30 By increasing anti-Jewish propaganda Goebbels was very much hoping to strengthen anti-Semitic sentiment in the enemy states, particularly in Britain.31 Moreover, the aim was to use the mass murders in Katyn to drive a wedge into the enemy coalition.

  Urged on by the Propaganda Ministry,32 under the motto “Katyn” the German press carried out what was probably the most vigorous anti-Semitic campaign since the start of the regime. On April 14 the whole of the press gave coverage, often sensationalist, to the opening of the mass graves of Katyn under banner headlines. Within a few days the whole of the press had adopted the slogan of “Jewish mass murder” (Der Angriff of April 16). For weeks this remained the main topic.33 In Goebbels’s view the breach between the Polish government in exile and the Soviet Union at the end of April represented the first success of his campaign.34

  It is clear from the internal documents of the Propaganda Ministry, however, that it was by no means satisfied with the way in which the press was conducting the campaign. Thus Goebbels expressed his disappointment at the ministerial press briefing on April 30. There were some editors who were past it, who were only carrying out anti-Semitic propaganda “by the book” and who were not engendering “any fury or hatred” because they “did not share these feelings themselves.”35 Thus the ministerial spokesman complained at the press conference that the press was “much too reserved” on this issue. The “authorities” had the impression that the “Jewish topic was felt to be unpleasant.”36

  The Katyn propaganda was now embodied in a key statement: The Jews must be destroyed in order not to be destroyed by them. This thesis can be found in numerous variations in the German press. Thus, referring to the Jews, Der Angriff of May 4, for example, states: “Their aim is
the destruction of Germany”; the May 6 issue of the same paper stated that “the Jews” will continue the war “with all available means until either Germany is destroyed or they themselves lie shattered on the ground.”

  Goebbels’s article “The War and the Jews,” which appeared on May 9, 1943, in the journal Das Reich, represented a high point in the propaganda campaign and summed up Germany’s lethal objectives by taking the line that “Jewry” was the real guilty party in this war and that the Jews represented the “cement that is holding the enemy coalition together.” Goebbels’s further statements leave little room for doubt concerning the regime’s intentions regarding this enemy. “It is thus necessary for the security of the state that we take the necessary measures within our own country that appear appropriate to protect the German national community at war from this threat. That may lead here and there to serious decisions having to be made, but that is unimportant compared with this threat. For this war is a racial war. It was begun by Jewry, and its purpose and the plan behind it are nothing less than the destruction and the extermination of our people.”

  In the end, according to Goebbels, “the Führer’s prophecy will be fulfilled, the one that, when it was made in 1939, world Jewry simply laughed off. The Jews in Germany also laughed when we began opposing them for the first time. But they’re certainly not laughing now. […] When they devised the plan for the total destruction of the German people, they were signing their own death warrant. Here too world history will be a world court.”