Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death
Page 32
would invade telegraph poles, billboards, and newspapers.7 He printed millions leaflets
to be sold to Nazis at one pfennig each. Sleepless with work and worry, his nerves
tautened, frayed, and snapped. At the beginning of August 1930 one thousand of his
officials packed into a pre-election conference. From tram conductor to princess,
every rank of society was active in the party’s campaign.8
Flaunting beer-bottle rings on their white shirts as ersatz ‘uniforms’ the
Charlottenburg S.A. marched on Sunday August 3. The Red Flag shrieked for a counter-
demonstration. ‘When we reached Kaiserdamm,’ wrote one Nazi militant, ‘our
Doctor arrived. Roars of delight. Yes, “our Doctor”! The communists called him
194 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
“Berlin’s top bandit”… The report came that all of Friedrich-Karl Platz was in communist
hands… We had to fight our way in. Mounted police cleared part of the
square for us. The square was packed with hate-filed faces. And then our Doctor
spoke. As he spoke, the hubbub died away.’9 In this 1930 election battle Goebbels
would organise twenty thousand meetings up and down the country; in Berlin he
would stage twenty-four mass meetings on the last two days alone.
The ruling Social Democrats tried to bury Goebbels with court actions. The
Hindenburg case was revived along with the ancient charges of high treason. (‘The
judge was most decent,’ he wrote ironically after a new treason hearing. ‘Just wanted
me to remember what I said in speeches of ’27. They’ve gone plumb crazy.’10) Seven
more summonses arrived, accusing Goebbels of having libelled the Prussian prime
minister Dr Otto Braun11, Albert Grzesinski, municipal officials, and the entire Jewish
community.12 Fearing summary imprisonment he prefabricated a stack of articles
for Angriff; on August 3 he was notified of ten more court dates (‘with the gentlemen
of Angriff to blame for most of them’).13
While the S.A. built up an ugly steam head in his rear, Goebbels was fighting a
nationwide election campaign and preparing half a dozen trial defences. Thus the
S.A. could hardly have chosen a less propitious moment to strike. Stennes, a sheaf of
resignation letters from his commanders in his pocket, wrote to Pfeffer that his S.A.
had a right to a hearing from Hitler. He got no reply. He then tackled Goebbels and
threatened to withdraw his S.A. commanders—the Berlin S.A. would then shrink
from fifteen thousand to perhaps three thousand, he predicted. Goebbels exploded;
Hitler described the S.A.’s actions to Pfeffer as ‘mutiny and conspiracy.’ Believing
that Stennes’ clumsy intrigues were at the bottom of the S.A.’s unrest, Goebbels
tackled the top S.A. commanders in Berlin like Bruno Wetzel; he too spoke of mutiny,
comfortable in the knowledge that he had Hitler behind him.14 A few days later
Stennes took an S.A. delegation down to Munich where he demanded to see Hitler.
For two days they waited in the lobby. Loyal S.S. men barred the way. Goebbels,
worried, discussed the gathering crisis with Göring. ‘I don’t trust Stennes at all,’ he
warned his diary. ‘So let’s keep an eye on him!’15
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 195
HIS week in court arrived on Tuesday August 12, beginning with the Otto Braun libel
action in Hanover. The Hindenburg appeal was set down for Thursday in Berlin.16
President Hindenburg let it be known that he would drop the case if they could agree
on a joint statement; they could not.
On the twelfth he and his lawyer Goltz took the morning train to Hanover. An
eager crowd of Nazis met them at the station along with the local gauleiter Bernhard
Rust and his S.A. commander Viktor Lutze, one of the few who were refusing to
truckle to Stennes. The rowdy procession swept the one-legged Goltz and his lame
client along to the courthouse. The charge was that Goebbels had accused Braun of
taking bribes from ‘Galician spivs.’ Three police agents swore on oath that he had said
this; supported by witnesses, Goebbels admitted having accused Bauer, the former
Social Democrat Reich chancellor, of taking bribes. The prosecutor demanding nine
months prison, arguing that if Goebbels had even libeled Hindenburg he was quite
capable of having libeled the prime minister. Goltz pointed out that even the Jewish
arch-swindler Julius Barmat had been sentenced to only eleven months, with half
remitted. Goebbels was acquitted and awarded his costs. Instead of a jail term he had
won huge publicity. Burly S.A. men chaired him out of the courtroom, singing the
Horst Wessel anthem; he went off to carouse with Lutze, their commander.17
One down, three to go. The government’s Shylocks were determined to eviscerate
him now, in mid election campaign. The hundred pound Dr Goebbels was equally
determined to keep his flesh intact.
On Thursday the fourteenth the court heard his appeal in the Hindenburg case.
The prosecutor now demanded a nine-month prison sentence. Goltz however read
out a letter from Hindenburg—he himself wanted to withdraw the original complaint.
As that was not possible, he now considered the matter closed and had ‘no
interest’ in punishing Dr Goebbels.18 The public prosecutor snapped that he, and not
Hindenburg, represented the state in this courtroom. The judge disagreed; he too
acquitted Dr Goebbels, finding that his statements had been made in the public interest.
Goebbels could see that the newspapermen were stunned at this renewed
victory.19
196 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Still a free man he prepared for the third day in the courthouse at Moabit on Friday
the fifteenth. The plaintiffs here were the Reich government and ex-chancellor
Hermann Müller, charging that in Angriff in December 1929 he had labelled the
Social Democrats a bunch of hired traitors. The elderly judge Dr Toelke invited him
to justify the words, and Goebbels did so with relish, emphasizing how the Social
Democrats had signed away Germany’s birthright in the postwar treaties while deceiving
their own people. His lawyer read out devastating quotations: from the Social
Democrat newspaper Vorwärts , triumphing in 1918 that the munitions workers
strike was a telling blow, though not devastating enough; and from the plaintiff himself,
Müller, declaring that the strike’s purpose was to end the war by force. Goltz
told of how the Social Democrat governments of Saxony, Thuringia, and Prussia had
sabotaged the government’s postwar struggle for the Ruhr, how Saxony’s prime minister
had betrayed government secrets to France, how the Social Democrats had
thwarted attempts to rescue Schlageter from execution, and how their Philipp
Scheidemann had betrayed details of the Reichswehr’s violations of Versailles.
Judge Toelke was aghast. ‘If we are to hear evidence for all these claims,’ he stammered,
‘—well, I have two months from nine A.M. to six P.M., but—’
’Dr Goebbels,’ interrupted Goltz, ‘has stated openly what millions think. He wants
to justify his allegations. He is at the court’s disposal. We have the time!’
Goebbels had already brought a platoon of military witnesses into court. The judge
refused to allow them. Gol
tz solemnly picked up his crutch and hobbled out. The
prosecutor asked for a six month sentence on Goebbels. The court reserved its judgement,
and moved on without a break to the Grzesinski libel action.20
That Saturday, August 16, Goebbels expected to go to prison. Instead the court
stipulated modest fines of six hundred and four hundred marks for libeling the government
and Müller, and four hundred for Grzesinski. This was cheap publicity indeed.
‘These demanded court actions are doing my gut no good,’ wrote Goebbels. ‘It’s
enough to throw up.’
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 197
Three down: the court moved on to the next charge, of incitement to violence,
and handed down another petty fine, of three hundred marks.
‘Let them give their verdict,’ wrote Goebbels grimly on the seventeenth. ‘We shall
utter our verdict on September 14,’—election day.
He visited his mother at Rheydt. Berlin phoned him there—four more court
summonses had arrived. By the time of his return the number had doubled to eight.
Braun and Grzesinski had both appealed for stiffer sentences; Goebbels was now also
accused of having, in a speech at Prerow in July 1929, called the Reich’s war standard
‘a Jewish flag, a dirt rag,’ and any republic that it stood for a ‘Jew republic.’21 He
decided to ignore these fresh trials. Court officials demanded to see him. He refused
—he was now planning the biggest Sport Palace meetings of the campaign.
‘The courts,’ he recorded, ‘are now hounding me with summonses. I’ve got a thick
skin. I won’t budge.’22
BY the late summer of 1930 there were signs that his diaries had begun concealing his
true anxiety about the S.A. The incriminating notebooks might have been snatched
at any time by communists, the S.A., or the police. Thus the diary avowed that he
shared the S.A.’s indignation. In reality he got his office manager Franz Wilke to take
precautions against them. This became more urgent as rumours multiplied that Stennes
was planning to issue an ultimatum to Munich. Dr Leonardo Conti, the S.A.’s chief
physician, warned both Hitler and Goebbels that Stennes was up to no good.23 Stennes
and his staff routinely referred to their gauleiters as incompetent, and griped about
the Verbonzung, the top-heaviness, of the party leadership in Munich. He was dissatisfied
with the party’s infuriating new legalism. At the end of August, realizing that he
could not curb his underlings’ revolutionary passions, Pfeffer resigned in Munich.24
Stennes waited until Goebbels was away in Dresden, then called his commanders
together. Melitta Wiedemann, features editor of Angriff, could see him through the
windows one floor below standing in a white cap at the head of a table round which
crowded Berlin’s S.A. commanders. There were growls of approval as Stennes pro-
198 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
posed they go on strike immediately unless Hitler accepted their demands for a
bigger slice of the action.25
By telephone Goebbels heard from Berlin that the S.A. commanders had collected
their ragged regiments (Standarten) for a confrontation with both Berlin (Goebbels)
and Munich (Hitler). Later that night Dr Conti arrived from Berlin with a similar
report. This put the big Sport Palace election meeting on Friday the twenty-ninth at
risk. Back in Berlin on Thursday Goebbels found Stennes demanding three Reichstag
seats and more funds. Otherwise, in best trades-union jargon, he could not guarantee
that his S.A. lads would not break up Goebbels’ meeting, an ‘unparalleled impertinence’
in Goebbels’ view.
It was an ugly situation. He phoned Munich and advised them to play for time.
They could appear to yield to Stennes’ demands, fight the election, then take revenge
on him. Hitler however said he did not propose yielding anything. Goebbels swooned
with rage: Hitler had lost touch with reality: fifteen thousand S.A. in Berlin were
threatening violence against him and his embattled HQ. He left for Hamburg that
evening. In his absence thirty S.A. men appeared at the Hedemann Strasse HQ with
the intention of giving Franz Wilke the kind of head massage in which they specialized.
Only the intervention of Stennes himself, according to his diary, prevented a
rough-house. ‘The S.A. commanders,’ he dictated, ‘left no doubt that, far from protecting
today’s Sport Palace meeting of General [Karl] Litzmann, Dr [Wilhelm] Frick,
and Dr Goebbels, the S.A. men of the Gau Sturm intended to smash it up.’ Stennes
ordered them to assemble in a beer hall at Hasenheide instead, to receive special
orders from him (which his diary does not specify).
Wilke reacted by moving a reliable S.S. guard unit into the HQ building. Goebbels
discreetly left by car the next morning, Saturday the thirtieth, for Breslau. Stennes
ordered his commanders to meet him at Hedemann Strasse. As they were meeting
here, they found an S.S. man, Hertel, writing notes on their conference from the
locked room next door, ‘on orders from above.’ Stennes ordered the immediate
eviction of the S.S. unit by his own men under S.A. Standartenführer Döbrich.26 It
was two-thirty A.M. before he had enough men on hand, and the S.S. Sturmführer in
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 199
charge refused to comply, objecting that he took orders from Wilke not Stennes.
Hearing (he claimed) pistols being loaded behind the door, Döbrich ordered it battered
down and his men bloodily evicted the S.S. men, though not before one of
them, Walter Kern, had alarmed the police.27 Dr Bernhard Weiss sent a massive force
round within minutes, who hauled off the S.A. trespassers.
An urgent telegram notified Goebbels in Breslau. He phoned Hitler at Bayreuth;
Hitler said he would come to Berlin at once.28 Back in the capital Goebbels found his
HQ a shambles. There were bloodstains everywhere. Unshaven and baggy-eyed, Hitler,
Himmler, and Hess reached Berlin around eleven A.M. and checked into an hotel
near Potsdamer Platz.29 Hitler asked Wilke for a full report, then toured the city’s
S.A. units to test morale.30 He was jeered at some locations. That evening he invited
the lesser commanders, and then Berlin’s S.A. Oberführer Wetzel, to meet him in
Goebbels’ apartment. Hitler, Goebbels, Göring, and Himmler were present, but not
Stennes. ‘The Berlin S.A. commanders,’ recalled Himmler, ‘trooped into Dr Goebbels’
apartment that afternoon and acted in an incredibly rowdy manner toward the Führer.
Gangs of S.A. men were chorussing slogans outside in the street. Stennes had probably
staged the whole thing.’ For two hours they bandied allegations and counterallegations.
Rudolf Hess mentioned the odd fact that Stennes had a gun permit issued
by the head of the political police, Wündisch, and implied that he was a police
agent (a belief which Goebbels came to share).31 Hitler ruled that Stennes would
have to go. In the middle of the night however a Herculean figure, Richard Harwardt,
probably the toughest man in the Berlin Sturmabteilung (S.A.), came clattering upstairs