THE WINTER OF 1943–44: THE EASTERN FRONT AND THE AIR BATTLE OF BERLIN
After Operation Citadel had been abandoned, the military situation on the Eastern Front was dominated by the Wehrmacht’s retreat in all sectors; during the autumn and winter of 1943 German troops had to fight a series of defensive battles against the advancing Red Army.29
Goebbels believed that the depressing reports continually arriving from the Eastern Front offered him the opportunity of getting people used to the situation. He did not consider that the public mood was in permanent decline but interpreted the reports he received as indicating that the mood was stabilizing at a low level; above all, he detected a “great seriousness” and a “very firm and manly spirit.”30 His diary entry of November 12, 1943, is particularly revealing of the way in which the negative mood was prevented from having an impact: “The continual grumbling has been sharply reduced since we have been passing death sentences on defeatists, which we have carried out and publicized.”
After all, there was not an immediate threat of military defeat. The battles were continuing to take place hundreds of miles from the German borders, and the Red Army was not succeeding in cutting off and encircling German troops in large numbers. The argument widely used in German propaganda that they had won so much territory in the east that they could afford to give up large amounts of it for operational reasons appeared to make a certain sense.
The main concern in the winter of 1943–44 was a different one: the unprecedented extent to which Berlin was being bombed. The British air offensive against the capital began at the end of 1943. Between November 1943 and March 1944 the RAF took part in a total of sixteen major raids on Berlin. On November 18, during the first of these raids, 143 people died and over 500 houses were destroyed. “If the English continue carrying them out in the same way, they won’t be able to achieve much,” noted Goebbels.31 But during the following days three more raids occurred with far more devastating consequences. On November 22, 23, and 26 over 3,700 people were killed, and 8,700 buildings were destroyed.32
On the evening of November 22 Goebbels was surprised by an air raid as he was attending a Party meeting in Steglitz. He immediately went to the “command bunker” at Wilhelmplatz that he had established only a few days before33 as a base from which to direct “our defensive battles for the Reich capital.” The journey there turned out to be quite dramatic: “There are fires burning everywhere; the streets are blocked, bombs and mines keep falling, in fact it really feels like being in a war zone.”34 Among the buildings hit during this night were the Foreign Ministry, the Reich Chancellery, and the ministries of transportation, finance, and agriculture. Goebbels’s house in the Göringstrasse was also on fire. Numerous theaters had been hit, and many large cinemas had burned down.35
On the following evening, the city was, in Goebbels’s words, still “on fire” and the sky “blood red” when there was a further “major first-class raid.”36 Goebbels experienced it in his “command bunker” in Wilhelmstrasse. “A truly hellish noise is going on above us. Mines and explosives are continually raining down on the government quarter. The most important buildings are starting to burn one after the other.” The Propaganda Ministry was also hit, and it took hours to bring the fire under control.
Goebbels responded with tireless activity, just as he had to the series of raids in August and the beginning of September. His report creates the impression that he was entirely responsible for the measures being taken to limit the damage. Writing about the situation in heavily populated housing districts, he noted: “I quickly organize the evacuation of the population from the area and deploy large numbers of fire engines.”37 In another section of the same entry he reports: “I have to go to great lengths to get the traffic moving again.” “The Wehrmacht willingly adopts my plans and within 24 hours is prepared to put 2½ divisions, the equivalent of 50,000 men, at my disposal.” And: “I dictate a message to the population of Berlin in which I give expression to the feelings which are now in the hearts of everyone. […] The message is to be distributed in millions of leaflets to the welfare centers and will appear in the Berlin press.”
In fact Goebbels was responsible neither for the actual air defense measures nor for the reestablishment of public life after air raids. Firefighting, rescue, and recovery work were the responsibility of the police, the Reich Air Defense League, and the fire service; the reinstatement of essential services and transportation was the task of the municipal authorities and the Reich railways. By contrast, Goebbels’s task was to use the Party organization to help provide immediate assistance for the civilian population and, crucially as far as he was concerned, to subject those affected to propaganda. By intervening everywhere, tirelessly encouraging people to act, putting pressure on the authorities, and pushing the Party into the foreground on top of that, in the hectic atmosphere of these days he perceived himself to be omnipotent.
On November 26 the third raid in the series occurred, which this time focused mainly on the northern suburbs. During this period he reiterated that in his encounters with those who had been affected by bombing he had found “the attitude of the Berlin population toward me beyond praise.” He noted various experiences which confirmed this impression: “I take some of the women from the aid centers with me and have them brought to the east, which they can’t reach on normal public transportation. They’re delighted. By making a few small friendly gestures to these people one can wrap them around one’s little finger.”38 By continuing to try to convince himself that the population admired him and was maintaining its morale, he was not only satisfying his insatiable hunger for recognition but at the same time providing propaganda with a leitmotif: The nation, which Nazism had welded together into a community of struggle, was discovering that its sense of solidarity was increasing as a result of the efforts involved in fighting the war.
All these measures had the effect of raising the Party’s profile. It dominated the scene in the parts of the city that had been affected. Goebbels insisted that it must appear more “in uniform in public because many people believe that what’s being done for them is being carried out by the city administration.”39 Goebbels had two hundred Party functionaries who were proven good speakers brought to Berlin so that they could speak in the aid centers and in the provisional mass accommodation that had been created.40 At the beginning of December he brought around a thousand full-time Party functionaries from the neighboring Gaus to the city to support the Party’s aid and propaganda measures.41
Goebbels placed great emphasis on propaganda, continuing to stress the unbroken morale of the population that had been badly affected by the air war. On November 28 Goebbels spoke at a rally organized by the Hitler Youth in the Titania Palace, which had survived the bombing: “The speech is surrounded with a solemn, heroic ceremonial that will undoubtedly be very impressive for the radio broadcast. My speech is just right. When I get to the key sentences the audience breaks into loud applause. It almost looks as if we had devised this whole scenario in order to impress the English.”42 Goebbels was of course fully aware that this was the whole point of the occasion. On the following day the Völkischer Beobachter report carried the headline “The Whole of Germany Is Calling for Revenge!” on its front page.43
Goebbels’s vigorous activity in Berlin and the fact that he had kept approaching Hitler about matters to do with the air war now began to pay off. On November 25 Goebbels noted that “based on my Berlin experiences” Hitler had given him the task of establishing an “Inspectorate for Air War Damage” under his command. “This inspectorate has the task of visiting all areas in which air raids have not yet occurred and checking the measures that have been taken to deal with them.”44
Four weeks later Hitler signed a Führer edict ordering the inspection of “all measures that have been taken at local level to prepare for, prevent, and assist with aerial war damage” and to involve the relevant agencies.45 Since the air war was increasingly becoming the main issue in d
omestic policy, Goebbels had thereby acquired an instrument enabling him to intervene in matters affecting a whole range of aspects of life in the individual Gaus.
Hitler appointed Albert Hoffmann, the Gauleiter of Westphalia-South, as his deputy rather than, as Goebbels had wanted, the Cologne Gauleiter, Josef Grohé, whom Hitler envisaged for other tasks. Instead, Goebbels appointed Berndt (alongside his function as coordinator of the Air Raid Damage Committee) to be “secretary” of the new inspectorate. At the beginning of January 1944 three expert committees were created, which were to visit the Gaus.46
In December four more air raids on Berlin occurred, which together resulted in over a thousand deaths.47 Toward the end of the year Goebbels summarized the effects of the air war on the Reich: Up until then there had been ninety-eight thousand deaths, and around one million homes had been destroyed, about 4 percent of the total. “If the English carry on the air war in the same way they will have to go on for years if they really want to hurt us.”48 He spent Christmas Eve alone in Schwanenwerder: “This year it’s a sad Christmas, which I don’t want to spend outside the city with the family in Lanke.”49
The RAF continued its raids on Berlin over the New Year vacation. On January 2 and 3, 1944, the city was attacked once more, although losses and damage were limited.50 On January 20 there was a further raid that resulted in over three hundred deaths.51 At the end of January the British launched heavy raids on Berlin over three nights—it was not by chance that they coincided with the eleventh anniversary of the “seizure of power”—and more than 1,500 people died.52
On January 30, 1944, a “gray Sunday” as Goebbels noted, he reminisced “wistfully” about the “happy day” eleven years earlier.53 The prospect of having to experience another heavy raid seriously depressed him. In the middle of the broadcast of Hitler’s speech to mark the January 30 anniversary the air raid warning once again sounded, as a large force of American bombers was on its way. While the Americans peeled off just before reaching the city, there was a further British raid that evening, in Goebbels’s view “one of the heaviest we’ve experienced so far.” Among other buildings the Philharmonie burned down, as well as several theaters, but Goebbels was particularly upset by, on this day of all days, the “loss of our old battleground in the Potsdamer Strasse, the Sportpalast.”
For about a week Goebbels was preoccupied with reestablishing seminormal life in the Reich capital.54 On February 4 he undertook an extensive tour of inspection through the city, mingled with people at an aid center in order once again to note “how friendly and nice,” indeed “extraordinarily grateful” people were to him.55
He wrote an editorial in Das Reich on the theme of “The Battle of Berlin” in which he succeeded in praising the badly hit capital as a “truly socialist community.” He was once more proving that the expression “socialist utopia” that he had used in the 1920s could be applied to anything.56
ACTIVATING THE PARTY
In the middle of February Goebbels carried out one of his inspection tours of the city and convinced himself, as always, that the Party was engaged in dealing with all the trouble spots. “What would happen to the population of a bombed city,” he pondered, “if we didn’t have a Party!”57 In view of the very precarious general situation, Goebbels considered the Party to be the decisive instrument for stabilizing the Reich’s internal position. In order to counteract the population’s low morale,58 at the beginning of 1944 the Party’s Reich propaganda directorate began a new campaign to “mobilize the Party,” which after careful preparation culminated in a whole series of public meetings.59 The aim was to raise the Party’s public profile in order to demonstrate that the population was solidly behind the regime.
The Allied bombing campaign was also at the top of the agenda of a meeting of Gauleiters that took place on February 23 and 24 in Munich. After various contributions by, among others, Ley, Grohé, Backe, and Jodl, the first day concluded with a two-hour speech by Goebbels. According to him, its “middle and concluding passages were positively dramatic,” listened to “with rapt attention,” received with “huge applause,” and celebrated as “the sensation” of the meeting; there were spontaneous calls for its publication.60
On the afternoon of the following day in the Hofbräuhaus there was the usual celebration of the founding of the Party, suffused with the “old Munich atmosphere,” which “we Berliners don’t have much taste for but is nevertheless full of good cheer.” Hitler then spoke to the “Old Fighters.” He concentrated above all on the vital task of trying to convey confidence in victory. Goebbels noted down one of the key sentences in the speech: “Our enemies are now going to have to face everything that we went through in the struggle for power, but, the Führer emphasized, the Jews in Britain and America are still going to have to face what the Jews in Germany have already been through.”
Originally Hitler wanted his speech to be broadcast but then, after some hesitation, recognized that “because of an array of psychological issues”—his way of making light of them—it was not suitable for a general audience. Two months later Hitler admitted to Goebbels that “because of his health he does not feel he is up to speaking at a rally. He is afraid that in certain circumstances he might not be able to get through it and that would be a big risk.”61 Goebbels had to put up with the fact that the Nazi Party’s main rhetorical weapon was out of action. During 1944, apart from his addresses on January 30 and after the July 20 assassination attempt, Hitler made no speeches that were broadcast and did not speak at any major events.62 Goebbels was thus faced with the increasingly urgent problem of trying to compensate for the loss of the Führer’s authority with a substantial change in the public portrayal of the regime. It was now necessary to raise the profile of other figures engaged in public affairs without damaging the position of the Führer.
Goebbels was already thinking of several suitable people. After the Munich meeting he invited Himmler to give a talk on the “Internal Security Situation” at a meeting of the heads of the Party’s Reich propaganda offices. He considered Himmler one of the “strong personalities involved in the conduct of the war.”63 Goebbels found the talk very informative: “The concentration camp inmates are treated pretty roughly. They are all deployed in war production.” The production of the new A4, or V-2, rockets had been largely transferred underground, and Himmler was trying to do the same with aircraft production.
Afterward he joined the Reichsführer for “a cup of tea” and discovered that “Himmler has a very clear and penetrating sense of judgment.” Goebbels noted that he had an “excellent personal and comradely relationship” with Himmler.64 He was, however, forced to agree with Bormann, who had often complained to him that Himmler was “taking over too many things.” According to Goebbels, it was “not good if one of the NS leaders gets too big; then the others must make sure that he is brought back into line.”65 In the meantime Goebbels had developed a “good personal and businesslike relationship” with Bormann; he respected him above all because “he has been extremely useful in dealing with a whole number of things through his direct contact with the Führer.”66 Despite the rivalry between them, as representatives of the Party organization and the SS, Himmler and Bormann seemed to him to be important potential allies within the power structure.67 Goebbels envisaged a new coalition emerging with which he could attempt to transform the domestic conduct of the war. This would also include Speer, with whom he was in regular contact during these months,68 as well as the Gauleiters, in whom he placed great hopes following the Munich meeting, whereas in the meantime he had written off Robert Ley, whom he had regarded as an ally in his attempts to introduce “total war” during 1943, as well as Funk.69
STRUGGLES OVER RESPONSIBILITIES
Between autumn 1943 and spring 1944, while the air war was raging over Berlin, Goebbels’s disputes with his main competitors in the field of propaganda were continuing with undiminished ferocity. Thus, despite the continually shrinking area of the occupied eastern territo
ries, neither he nor Rosenberg saw any reason to moderate their conflict over the responsibility for “eastern propaganda.” Goebbels had been extremely discontented with the Führer edict of August 15, 1943, which regulated the dispute between him and Rosenberg over the responsibility for “eastern propaganda.” The edict decreed that the minister for the east should issue the “political guidelines,” while the actual propaganda would be carried out by the Propaganda Ministry with the aid of its own offices in the east.70 Goebbels considered the guidelines for eastern propaganda, which he eventually received from the Ministry for the East after a long delay,71 to be basically “anachronistic.”72 Goebbels once again contacted Hitler, who was very unsympathetic, insisting that the two ministers should sort the matter out themselves; he no longer wished to be consulted on the matter.73 Finally, in December 1943, after laborious negotiations,74 the two ministries reached an agreement.75 On the basis of this, during 1944 the Propaganda Ministry could establish its own offices in the eastern territories insofar as these were still occupied.76
Goebbels: A Biography Page 75