Goebbels: A Biography

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Goebbels: A Biography Page 80

by Peter Longerich


  In the meantime the reports that he was receiving described a further decline in the national mood. In his view this was due not least to people’s sense that the measures of “total war” were insufficiently comprehensive or radical.127 He faced serious problems in writing his editorials: “I can’t deal with the issues on which I could provide interesting information, and the issues I can write about have been dealt with so often that nobody’s interested in them anymore.”128 Writing them gave him a “real headache,” but he thought he could not possibly stop doing so because for the nation waiting for his articles to be read out on the radio every Friday it was “like its daily bread ration.”129

  At this point, thanks to an Allied indiscretion, he learned of the plan by the American treasury secretary, Hans Morgenthau, to deindustrialize Germany, turning it into a largely agricultural country. In this desperate situation the news came “as a godsend.”130 Goebbels gave instructions “to do everything possible to make the German people aware of this plan for our annihilation.” Accordingly, on the following day the press carried big headlines attacking “the Jewish financier Morgenthau” and his “threat of annihilation.”131

  GOEBBELS’S INITIATIVE FOR A SEPARATE PEACE

  Goebbels, however, was aware that while a further intensification of “total war” might gain time, defeat could be averted only through political action. Thus his fevered search for a way out of the disastrous situation in which the Reich found itself in the late summer of 1944 focused above all on one option: the possibility of making a separate peace, an idea that he had repeatedly put to Hitler since 1943. In August he had tried to convince Bormann of his plans. They must make the attempt somehow “to get out of the two-front war,” though this would be impossible so long as the Foreign Ministry was headed by “a stubborn, obstinate boss.”132 At the beginning of September he noted that “attempts had been made from every conceivable quarter to achieve a political dialogue about the war. We are receiving news from England that influential circles would like to reach a compromise with the Reich,” since they wanted to get out of the alliance with the Soviet Union.133 On the other hand, the Japanese were trying “to get us into talks with the Soviets.” Ambassador Hiroshi Ōshima, under instructions from his government, had already approached Hitler concerning this matter; his response had been noncommittal.134 Moreover, the Foreign Ministry had initiated contacts with “influential Soviet Russians” in Stockholm.

  On September 10 Goebbels noted that “Spanish diplomatic circles are making great efforts to mediate between us and the West. On the other hand, Japan is making feverish attempts to mediate between us and the Russians. […] It looks as if the Soviets are much more open to the possibility of a separate peace than our enemies in the west.”135 A few days later he learned that the Foreign Ministry was very actively engaged in this matter.136

  Goebbels did not believe that Ribbentrop was capable of conducting such a set of negotiations; they needed a new foreign minister. During this period he found himself urged from various quarters to play a leading role in foreign affairs in place of Ribbentrop. The state secretary in the Interior Ministry, Wilhelm Stuckart, wanted him to take over the Foreign Ministry; his own state secretary, Naumann, reported that Himmler, Bormann, and General Heinz Guderian were of the same opinion, while Speer believed that Hitler should grant Goebbels special powers in foreign policy in place of Ribbentrop.137

  After his conversation with Naumann Goebbels thought through the whole situation and concluded that if he replaced Ribbentrop he would be able to achieve “quite a lot” as far as the “political side” of running the war was concerned, as foreign policy needed to be “in the hands of a man with intelligence, energy, and the requisite flexibility.” At the same time he was quite skeptical about the possibility that Hitler could “decide to carry out such a far-reaching reshuffle of the German government at such a critical time.”138

  Goebbels paid great attention to the Quebec Conference attended by Churchill and Roosevelt on September 16. He suspected that it represented an attempt by the two western allies to improve the coordination of their positions vis-à-vis the Soviet Union that might presage the start of a serious conflict within the enemy coalition. However, he attributed reports in the neutral press, according to which the Soviet Union was planning separate peace negotiations with the Reich, to a tactical move on Russia’s part. It wanted “to put strong diplomatic pressure on the Anglo-Americans.” This was, of course, wild speculation. In fact the main issue discussed in Quebec was the future policy to be pursued in occupied Germany.139

  On September 19 Goebbels passed on an important piece of information to Himmler and Bormann so that they could give it to Hitler. He had learned from his state secretary, Naumann, that the Japanese ambassador, Ōshima, had renewed the offer of his services for negotiating a separate peace with the Soviet Union.140 But Ōshima’s initiative was not news to government circles in Berlin. Goebbels learned that Ley had spoken “to a group of intimates” maintaining that “negotiations with the Soviet Union were under way via Ōshima and that they would soon be making peace with Moscow.” Goebbels considered that this way of proceeding was “absolutely criminal,” and took Ley to task.141

  In fact the incident showed that Ōshima’s initiative was hardly suitable as the basis for a secret diplomatic démarche. Indeed there is some indication that Hitler had made sure that rumors about Ōshima’s activities were spread in order to sow mistrust among the enemy coalition and to lead his own officials to believe in the prospect of a political conclusion to the war. But Goebbels, who was completely incapable of seeing through such maneuvers,142 did not give up so easily. On September 20 he prepared a memorandum for Hitler proposing that they should follow up Ōshima’s initiative and attempt to begin peace negotiations with the Soviet Union through the mediation of Japan.143

  His proposal began with the point that they could “neither make peace with both sides simultaneously nor in the long term successfully make war with both sides simultaneously.” Goebbels stated bluntly that “we have never in our history won […] a two-front war and, based on the power relationships as reflected in terms of numbers, it is impossible for us to win the current war by military means either.” To win Hitler over to the idea, Goebbels made an analogy with the situation at the end of 1932. In those days they had also been confronted by an enemy coalition that they had eventually smashed by taking the initiative themselves. Goebbels then outlined to Hitler his view of the Quebec Conference and suggested that the contradictions that were allegedly emerging in the enemy coalition should be “seized on and exploited with every trick and cunning move possible.”

  A separate peace with the Soviet Union, Goebbels continued, “would open up marvelous perspectives. We would have room to breathe in the west and under the impact of such events the English and Americans would hardly be in a position to continue the war in the long term. We would not have achieved victory as we had dreamt of it in 1940, but it would nevertheless be the greatest victory in German history.”

  However, he made it clear that he did not consider Ribbentrop “capable” of carrying out such a step. He must be replaced by a foreign minister with the “requisite clarity of vision and toughness combined with a high degree of intelligence and flexibility.” It was only too clear whom he envisaged for this task.

  Goebbels anxiously awaited Hitler’s response. He learned via Hitler’s adjutant, Julius Schaub, that the Führer had carefully read his memorandum but had not commented on its contents.144 During this period Goebbels’s views were reinforced by reports from Britain, according to which “there is not the slightest willingness to negotiate with us. They want to carry through the experiment with Europe whatever the cost.”145

  But despite waiting anxiously for a response, he was to be disappointed. As Hitler fell ill at the end of September and was out of action for a week, Goebbels did not get the chance to speak to him personally about his proposals. Even after Hitler’s recovery there are
no entries in his diaries about Hitler’s response, and he does not seem to have taken any further initiatives in this direction.146 Goebbels had thrown all his political and personal weight onto the scales to persuade Hitler to undertake a peace initiative toward the Soviet Union. It appears that Hitler completely ignored his proposal. Goebbels, however, knew only too well that the continuation of the two-front war would inevitably lead to defeat. In reality he might as well have shot himself at this point.

  CHAPTER 29

  “But When Will There Be Some Action?”

  Downfall

  Credit 29.1

  Day trip to the front: Goebbels speaks to troops on March 7, 1945, in the marketplace in Lauban, Silesia, which had just been recaptured.

  On September 7 the army had begun to launch the first V-2 rockets at enemy territory. To begin with they were launched at London and Paris; then at other cities in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain; and from October 12 exclusively at London and Antwerp, the most important Allied supply harbor.

  The Wehrmacht did not report the deployment of the second “retaliation weapon” until November 8. The way in which the report was phrased, namely that the new weapon had already been deployed for weeks, was sufficient to remove any remaining illusions people may have harbored that the wonder weapon would produce a rapid change in the war. Repeated German propaganda reports of the rockets’ allegedly devastating effects on the population of London could not disguise the fact that this weapon was not going to decide the outcome of the war.1

  A few days before the launching of the rockets Goebbels had discussed the presumed effects of the new weapon with its designer, Wernher von Braun, and a fortnight after the deployment of the V-2 had begun Goebbels was briefed on the program by the man in charge of the operation, SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler.2 The news blackout that the British initially imposed on the effects of the new weapon prevented Goebbels from acquiring even a vague notion of the impact it was having. Thus he considered plausible reports that in London alone nine hundred thousand houses had been rendered uninhabitable, in other words that the city had been completely devastated; this was far from the truth. That the rockets were widely scattered and distributed over a long time meant that they were incapable of bringing such a vast city to a halt.3 When in November Churchill commented on the rockets publicly for the first time Goebbels gained the impression that the weapon had had a “fateful” effect. And he organized word-of-mouth propaganda to “pass this on to the German public.”4

  At the beginning of October the Americans launched an attack on Aachen; by the 16th they had surrounded it, and on the 19th the old imperial city capitulated, the first large German city to surrender to the Allies.5 On October 10 the Soviet offensive on the Baltic cut Army Group North off from the rest of the German forces, pushing it back toward Latvian Courland, where it continued to defend its position until the German capitulation in May 1945.6

  When in October 1944 Soviet forces advanced for the first time into East Prussian territory and German civilians in the village of Nemmersdorf were murdered in the most brutal fashion Goebbels decided to exploit this with a big propaganda campaign.7 But while on the one hand this atrocity propaganda met with disbelief, on the other hand people criticized that this strip of territory had not been evacuated.8 Thus a few days later Goebbels noted that at the moment he was disinclined to “inform the public” of further “terrible atrocities” by the Bolsheviks of which he had learned “because I don’t anticipate it having the effect of spurring on our troops.”9

  “TOTAL WAR”: “COMBING THROUGH” THE CIVILIAN SECTOR

  In the meantime, during the last months of 1944 and the beginning of 1945 Goebbels was continuing his tireless efforts to implement “total war.” However, the precipitate measures to draft labor into the Wehrmacht led to temporary unemployment, as the armaments industry was not in a position to employ a large number of unskilled workers as substitutes.10 Thus in October the Reich Plenipotentiary announced that those workers who had been earmarked for employment in jobs essential for “total war” and who “could not yet be assigned” to the armaments industry could also be employed in other spheres such as in workshops carrying out repairs or in the construction industry.11 As for those for whom there was no prospect of employment, in November the Reich Plenipotentiary announced euphemistically that they would provide the labor exchanges with a “labor reserve” that was “urgently required.”12 He was also forced to accept that a large number of the women liable to conscription could be employed only in part-time work.13 Moreover, in January he was complaining that the Wehrmacht’s preparations for processing the recruits remained inadequate, which “meant that the men who had been withdrawn from vital war work at home were sometimes sitting around in barracks for weeks on end with nothing to do.”14 It had become clear that to mobilize additional labor and soldiers was a highly complex task, one that was impossible to perform adequately with the kinds of impromptu initiatives carried out by Goebbels. He was also unsuccessful in gaining acceptance for his idea of a Military Auxiliaries Law subjecting all women under thirty to military conscription and thereby recruiting two hundred thousand women as “military auxiliaries.” It was blocked by Bormann and Himmler.15 Thus at the end of November he had the impression that “Bormann in particular is rather envious of the title I have been given as the person responsible for implementing total war measures,” and he was thus increasingly making difficulties for him.16

  At the end of October Göring delegated to Goebbels the authority to examine the whole of the Luftwaffe, starting with the Air Ministry itself, to facilitate mobilization for total war. Goebbels’s staff began the task at once. Goebbels bemoaned the ministry’s opaque bureaucratic structures, but he did not record what results, if any, were achieved by this investigation; his diary entries referring to it cease in November 1944.17 At the beginning of December he had a conversation with Göring at the latter’s country house, Karinhall, in which the Reich marshal sounded quite confident that “with a certain amount of difficulty and with a great deal of effort he would slowly succeed in recovering his position,” but in the New Year Goebbels was to give him up for good.18

  At the beginning of November he appointed inspectors to the individual ministries to examine what measures each had hitherto undertaken to implement “total war.”19 In this way for the first time Goebbels gained an insight into the internal workings of other ministries and rapidly came to the conclusion that “at the start of the total mobilization” his colleagues had “pulled the wool over his eyes by promising the earth.”20 It was not surprising that pruning those ministries that were headed by his archenemies Rosenberg and Ribbentrop afforded him particular pleasure. Rosenberg, he noted, “is desperately hanging on to a ministerial organization that has completely lost any raison d’être.”21 Ribbentrop’s resistance was equally vigorous when Goebbels set about abolishing those departments in the Foreign Ministry that in his eyes were in competition with the Propaganda Ministry.22 That the investigation of the Foreign Ministry was still going on in April 1945 and that at the same time Rosenberg was still defending his phantom ministry (the eastern territories) shows that their delaying tactics had been quite successful.23

  During the last months of the Third Reich Goebbels did everything he could to undermine Ribbentrop’s position. At the end of September, he prepared a memorandum for Hitler, based on information that he had received from Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, with the title “Defeatists and Turncoats,” which, according to Goebbels, the Führer read “with great interest” and which had awakened his “mistrust of German foreign policy.” Goebbels considered it his “national duty” to provoke this mistrust still further, as it was necessary “to remove” Ribbentrop and his “damaging influence on our foreign policy as quickly as possible.”24

  He aimed to use the investigation of the Wehrmacht High Command, which he had been authorized to carry out by Hitler at the end of the year (we shall return to this), in order to significa
ntly reduce the size of the Wehrmacht’s propaganda department, transferring its responsibilities to the Propaganda Ministry; here too he was unsuccessful.25

  The mobilization measures introduced by Goebbels had increased his differences with Speer, which had already emerged in August and also resulted in personal confrontations.26 As has already been mentioned, Goebbels had summed up the conflict by saying it was not a question of “weapons instead of soldiers” (as Speer maintained) but rather of “weapons and soldiers.”27 However, according to Goebbels, it gradually became apparent that “under constant attack from the Party” Speer had “become somewhat weak at the knees” and had started trying to repair fences with him.28 At the end of November they “sorted out their differences” during a long conversation because both had concluded that it “did not make sense for either of them to continue in this way.”29

  On January 3 Speer and Goebbels put their differences concerning priorities for the deployment of manpower to Hitler, and after a long discussion he insisted on a compromise between the claims of the Wehrmacht and the armaments industry. On this occasion Hitler announced that, during the coming summer, thanks to the fifty divisions that he would form from the 1928 cohort of recruits, in other words a “totally committed group of young men,” he would secure “the crucial breakthrough in this war.”30

 

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