him too.
No murder really fired the imagination of the Party so much as that, when his time
came, of young Horst Wessel himself. Goebbels had considered him one of his most
promising apostles although still only twenty-two.5 But he was a marked man. Wessel’s
No.5 Sturm had angered the communist high command by recruiting freely from
their ranks. More recently, according to Stennes, he had fallen in with bad company.
He dropped out of his law studies and was working as a labourer.6 Perhaps this was
no more than youthful rebellion—his late father was an evangelical pastor and
freemason. Against his mother’s will he had moved into a sleazy attic room at No.62
Grosse Frankfurter Strasse with his girlfriend Erna Jänichen, whom he had rescued
176 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
from the streets.7 That December his brother Werner had frozen to death in the
mountains; Goebbels buried him with a torchlight parade routed provocatively past
the communists’ Karl Liebknecht building. On the evening of January 14 the enemy
squared accounts with Horst: a dozen communists and Jews beset his lodgings;
Albrecht Höhler, Salomon Epstein, and another raced upstairs and hammered on his
door. As Wessel, inside with Erna and another girl, opened up Höhler, a carpenter,
shouted ‘Hands up!’ and discharged a nine-millimetre Parabellum pistol into his face,
blowing away his jaw. Seizing papers and a gun from Wessel’s locked cupboard (his
disaffected landlady, widow of a communist, had obliged them with the keys) the
attackers escaped; Höhler kicked the prostrate Wessel as he ran out, yelling, ‘You
know what that’s for!’ The communist HQ put a well-oiled escape plan into action
for Höhler, providing refuges in two Jewish households and then funds and a forged
passport to flee to Prague.8
Horst Wessel clung to life in the hospital for weeks. Goebbels visited him often,
and mused once that this was the stuff of a real Dostoyevsky novel— ‘The Idiot, the
Workers, the Harlot, the Bourgeois Family.’9
Once Wessel croaked, ‘We must go on!’10
Foolishly returning to Berlin, Höhler was arrested and confessed.11 The aftermath
was a textbook example of the brilliant disinformation techniques used by Goebbels’
opponents. The defence lawyer hired by the communists, Löwenthal, started a whispering
campaign to smear Wessel as Erna’s pimp.12 Thus he could portray Höhler’s
motives as purely personal. The ‘Judenpresse’ seized on this tidbit. Communist playwright
Bertolt Brecht mocked, ‘In the search for a fitting hero who really personified
the movement, the National Socialists opted, after considerable deliberation,
for a pimp.’ Goebbels gritted his teeth and fought back: he now had the one real
martyr the movement needed. On February 7 he had the Horst Wessel anthem,
‘Hold the Flag High,’ sung by massed choirs at the end of a Sport Palace rally. Visiting
the hospital he urged him not to give up the fight to live, but the young man died
sixteen days later. ‘Thou shalt live on with us,’ wrote Goebbels mawkishly after visiting
the death bed, ‘and shalt partake in our victory.’13 He ordained a colossal funeral
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 177
parade for March 1, and Hitler himself promised to attend. Fearing major disturbances
Dr Weiss banned the parade, allowing only ten cars in the cortege and a
ceremony confined to the walled Nikolai cemetery itself. Police officers confiscated
the flag draping the coffin. Communists, out in force along the route, snatched the
wreaths from the horse-drawn hearse and sang the Internationale.14 At the cemetery
Goebbels found a large libel painted on the wall: A FINAL HEIL HITLER TO WESSEL THE
PIMP! He swallowed his fury. As the coffin sank into the ground a thousand throats
defiantly roared the anthem that bore its murdered composer’s name. In ten years,
Goebbels prophesied to the S.A. men parading within the cemetery walls, in one of
the finest speeches he ever delivered, that anthem would be sung by every schoolchild,
by every factory worker, and by every marching soldier in Germany.15 A barrage
of rocks came flying over the wall from the jeering mob outside. ‘They rampage,’
recorded Goebbels upon his return home: ‘And we win.’16
HITLER had missed the funeral; he had decided to spend the weekend at his Obersalzberg
cottage with Geli instead. Goebbels took this very hard. He felt he had got to know
Hitler better, and deprecated his indolent, undependable, indecisive personality.17
He believed that Göring shared this view. ‘He [Hitler] works too little,’ wrote
Goebbels, ‘and then the woman, the women!’ How many promises Hitler had now
given him and broken: to attend the Horst Wessel funeral; to break with Otto Strasser;
to enable Angriff to appear as a daily newspaper; and to appoint him Reich Propaganda
Director—these were only some of them.18
The irrational feud with Otto Strasser was at the root of much of Goebbels’ misery
that first half of 1930. The bitter feelings ran so deep that one suspects some unknown
origin antedating even the famous club-foot article. He still respected Gregor,
but despised Otto who in turn loathed him. Each called the other ‘satanic.’19 ‘Hitler,’
he had decided in mid 1928, ‘will have to lay down the law however tough this may
make things with Gregor Strasser.’ Otto was the fly in the ointment. ‘He is ruining
Gregor’s entire reputation,’ Goebbels wrote in 1929.20
178 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Delayed by obstructionism from Munich Goebbels had failed to upgrade Angriff as
planned to a daily newspaper in January 1930.21 That month the Strassers announced
that they would publish a daily in Berlin, National Sozialist, from March 1. Since it
would flaunt the Party’s swastika emblem it would be a lethal stab in the back for
Goebbels. He protested to Hitler.22 Characteristically, Hitler did not even reply. ‘He
lacks the courage to take decisions,’ Goebbels deduced.23 Finally Munich phoned,
inviting him down to talk it over with Hitler. Goebbels set off determined to threaten
resignation.24 Hitler however claimed to know nothing of the Strasser’s newspaper
plan; he feigned a convincing rage about Otto’s ‘disloyalty,’ a rather smaller rage
about Gregor and, with the beloved Geli at his side, comforted the gauleiter, saying
he would publish VB in Berlin. ‘That puts Strasser up against the wall,’ wrote Goebbels
maliciously, ‘just where he wanted to put me.’25 He returned to Berlin appeased. In
fact, Hitler’s subsequent announcement of his plan seemed even to disavow Goebbels.26
There were howls of glee from Berlin’s organised Jewish community and particularly
from their Central-Verein Zeitung.
An open breach with Munich threatened. Hitler had promised to squelch Otto
Strasser’s plans to publish his daily newspaper; the Strasser brothers continued however
to announce it as coming.27 No sooner had Hitler persuaded the VB to publish at
item on Goebbels’ behalf than the Strassers talked him round again.28 Their new daily
newspaper hit the streets on March 1, the day of Horst Wessel’s funeral. Hitler’s
capitulation to the Strassers was evidently
one reason why he dared not to show his
face in Goebbels’ city.
Immediately after the ceremony Goebbels phoned him and drafted another letter
threatening resignation. He sent Göring down to Bavaria carrying this ultimatum.
Hitler offered still more promises to be conveyed back to Goebbels.29 He repeated in
particular the offer to make Goebbels Reich Proaganda Director (‘for the umpteenth
time!’ commented Goebbels sarcastically, learning of this.) His faith in Hitler
was cooling.30
SEVERAL times his diary carried signs that the Nazis were gaining support in Berlin’s
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 179
regular police force.31 Half of them were former army officers. While Dr Bernhard
Weiss seemed secure in office, to Goebbels’ delight his political superior Albert
Grzesinski was suddenly obliged to resign—on the day of the Horst Wessel funeral—
because of his marital irregularities. ‘That,’ Goebbels triumphed, ‘is one swine down.’32
He had relied hitherto on his parliamentary immunity to protect him. On February
11, 1930 the Reichstag took the first steps to revoke his immunity in three cases.
‘I’ll probably be spending the next years in the clink,’ he gloomily reflected.33 His
benefactress, the dowager Viktoria von Dirksen, asked Prince August-Wilhelm to
contact the lawyer Count Rüdiger von der Goltz. Goltz, an imposing figure who had
lost a leg in the war, would act for Goebbels, three years his junior, in many of the
coming court battles. They met over dinner at the Dirksen home in Margarethen
Strasse. When Goebbels boasted that his Nazis were willing to die for their ideals,
one guest, Baron Freytag von Loringhoven, murmured, ‘I am sure some might be
prepared to die for the D.N.V.P. cause.’
‘Indeed,’ mocked Goebbels, ‘but only of old age!’
Goltz agreed to defend him. He had already heard report of the gauleiter’s sharp
intellect. He found him modest, polite, and to the point. In the Gypsy Cellar in
Kurfürstendamm after that dinner party a young gipsy asked to read Goebbels’ hand.
Goebbels thrust him aside. ‘I can just see tomorrow’s headline in Eight P.M.,’ he
wisecracked: ‘The truth on hand, but a liar from head to toe.’34
The most serious allegation was that of high treason, and on March 10 the Reichstag
revoked his immunity on that charge. Meanwhile despite its crippling financial provisions
the government pased the Young Plan into law and Hindenburg signed it.
Anticipating violent opposition, the government revived the hated Law for the Protection
of the Republic. Goebbels led the parliamentary protest on March 13.35 Rounding
on Carl Severing, the minister of the interior, he evoked laughter when he recalled
that it was Gustav Noske, a predecessor, who had once said, ‘Even an ass can
rule by state of emergency.’36 And that was precisely what this new law was. ‘It is no
coincidence,’ he shrilled, ‘that the Law for the Protection of the Republic is being
given its second reading precisely one day after the Young Law is enacted.’ ‘You your-
180 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
self point out that in the course of the Young Plan economic harships are inevitable,
and that two or three millions will become permanently unemployed in Germany.’
This, he said, revealed the law in its true light— ‘A law against the unemployed… A
grotesque attempt to use artificial means to contain the revolutionary forces generated
by your own policies.’ Severing had wanted to call it a ‘Law for the Pacification
of Public Life in Germany,’ scoffed Goebbels. ‘Mr Severing! Public life would be
pacified if there weren’t parties of traitors in office today.’ Amidst righteous shouts
of indignation from the socialists he continued, ‘Public life would be pacified if you
kept your 1918 promises to the German people: you promised Freedom, Beauty
and, Dignity.’
Several times the Speaker sharply reprimanded him. ‘Marxism,’ declared Goebbels,
‘tried before the war to detroy an honest state with dishonest means. We want to get
rid of a dishonest state with honest means.’
The screams of fury from the Social Democrats turned to cheers as he was ordered
to sit down.
The new law was certainly repressive and designed to choke even the parliamentary
opposition: under it, any prison sentence rendered a person unfit for public
office: Dr Weiss’ police were empowered to dissolve any political association and
confiscate its entire assets. The crisis however continued, and Dr Heinrich Brüning
became chancellor.
Loss of immunity therefore threatened Goebbels with far-reaching consequences.
Apart from the old allegation of high treason the files which the police now avidly
dusted off were a ragbag of misdemeanours, many of them concerning his efforts to
puncture Dr Weiss’ pride and vanity.37 In Weimar Germany as in many authoritarian
states however the offense of lèse majesté was taken dreadfully seriously, and Weiss
was publicly considered the ‘uncrowned king’ of Berlin. The most awkward case
involved the president; a recent article and caricature in Angriff had asked ‘Is
Hindenburg still alive?’38 Goebbels had also declared at the last Nuremberg rally that
the present state was ‘an un-state.’ He had stated in another speech, ‘It is the Reich
defence minister [Wilhelm] Groener who is subverting the army and not the Na-
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 181
tional Socialist party.’39 Worse, on October 20 Angriff had referred to the then Prussian
minister of the interior as ‘Comrade Grzesinski, born in the House of Cohn.’
The court summons in this latter case survives in the archives, a cheaply printed
form folded into an envelope and stamped MOABIT CRIMINAL COURT40; more summonses
arrived it seemed by every mail— on April 14 he counted nine, including the one
alleging high treason. “A fine show this is going to be,” he wrote in his diary. “Several
times he simply refused to testify, and the hearings ended with the judge in a deeply
satisfying fury.41
But the writ from President Hindenburg disturbed him, and he cursed the editorial
staff of Angriff for saddling him with this case.42 Hindenburg’s personal prestige
was very great, and by modern standards of journalism the article was very tame. It
had appealed to Hindenburg to invoke his presidential powers to block the ruinous
Young Plan:
But even the remaining personal admirers and friends of Hindenburg entertain
few illusions as to any activity to be expected from him in this direction. Here as
in every other similar situation Mr von Hindenburg will do whatever his Jewish
and marxist advisers ask of him.
Goebbels was all for pleading justification (Ritter von Epp had provided him with
‘annihilating material’ about the field marshal).43 Goltz discouraged this. Goebbels
still drafted his own defence speech and looked foward to the court hearing set
down for the last day of May 1930. On the eve of the trial however Goltz brought
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 29
