Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death
Page 34
on Nov 2, 1930 that the ‘Joseph’ concealed Jewish origins. His opponents called him
‘Goebbeles’—the ‘–les’ suffix being typically Jewish.
42 Author’s interview of Gutterer.
43 Diary, Sep 11, 1930.
44 Ibid., Sep 12; on Sep 21 he recorded a cordial encounter with Stennes, and believed he
could get on with him in future.
45 On Jan 4, 1932 disgruntled S.A. men would point out in a duplicated circular that the
Nazis’ 107 Reichstag deputies included thirty-three estate owners, manufacturers and businessmen;
thirty-one senior civil servants; nineteen lawyers, doctors, and other professionals;
nine former officers, eight salaried staff, and seven (‘yes, seven!’) workers. NSDAP
archives, files of 8 SA Standarte (BA file NS.26/322).
46 Diary, Sep 16, 1930.
47 Ibid., Sep 17, 19, 22, 27, 28, Oct 2, 1930.
48 Ibid., Sep 18, 24, 1930.
49 Ibid., Sep 24, Oct 1, 9, 1930.
50 Ibid., Sep 20, 1930; Angriff published on Jun 1, 1931 an appeal for eye-witnesses, resulting
in a letter from Lili and Erna Ernst (Hoover Libr., Goebbels papers, box 2); for Dr
Weiss’s prosecution of JG for libelling police officials this day, Sep 19, 1930 see Landesarchiv
Berlin, Rep.58, item 5.
51 Diary, Oct 13–14; Vossische Zeitung, Oct 14, 1930.—The Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung published
on Oct 28, 1937 a photograph of his dash.
206 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
14: A Blonde in the Archives
AFTER all the other deputies had taken their seats the Nazis marched in. Like
Dr Goebbels, all were wearing the forbidden brown shirt. A cacophony of
insults greeted them. Five days later Chancellor Brüning set out his economic programme.
To packed benches the bullheaded, broad shouldered Gregor Strasser delivered
one of the best speeches of his life. Even Goebbels was impressed. ‘The House
pays the closest attention,’ he wrote with more than a soupçon of envy. ‘Thus he’s
back again, firmly in the saddle.’1 The Nazis called repeatedly for votes of no confidence
in Brüning. The Reichstag was then adjourned until early December.
Goebbels was bored with it already. The fight had been the fun. ‘The toxic haze of
parliaments is not the right air for me,’ he decided. ‘I can’t breathe there.’ Back at his
lodgings he revived himself with whiffs of the Lieder of Brahms and Wolff, to which
he provided his own piano accompaniment.2
With the political wind in Germany now beginning to blow Brown, the highest
police officials faced an ugly option: to smash the Nazis or to join them. The first
alternative entailed facing the risk that the Nazis gained power. Increasingly the middle-
ranking officers decided that Germany’s future lay with Goebbels and Hitler.
According to Berlin’s Acht-Uhr Abendblatt at least one senior police officer had been
seen cheering the Nazis on during the riots of October 13, and singing a Nazi song.
Albert Grzesinski wrote to Prussia’s prime minister Braun that evening, protesting
at this ‘deliberate’ breakdown of police authority.3 ‘In grave times like these,’ he
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 207
wrote, ‘what counts is being tough—tough as nails.’ If Schutzpolizei commander
Heimannsberg himself proved guilty then he too must go. ‘If,’ wrote Grzesinski,
getting to his real point, ‘Comrade Zörgiebel [Berlin’s police president] stands up for
both these officers, we must not spare him either.’ Braun agreed; he dismissed Waentig
as minister of the interior as well as Zörgiebel, appointing Grzesinski in the latter’s
place. ‘It’s going to be some winter,’ commented a wry Goebbels in his diary. ‘But if
these bastards think they can get us down with terror and persecution they’ve got
another think coming.’4
The mood at Alexander Platz, the brownstone police HQ in Berlin, was jubilant.
Dr Weiss personally welcomed back his fellow socialist Grzesinski at a little police
ceremony. ‘When we heard it was you,’ said the oily Dr Weiss, the real power behind
the scenes, ‘we all cheered.’5
JOSEPH Goebbels has turned thirty-three. The newspaper saleswomen on Nollendorf
Platz toss him a birthday bouquet.6 That month he records his first radio broadcast,
debating international art with the renowned left-wing stage director Erwin Piscator.
A new friend, Arnolt Bronner, has arranged both this interview and one two days
later on neutrality in broadcasting and the cowardice of governments.7 Once he visits
Anka; he finds her mortally depressed but reflects that she did wrong by him too.
Fritz Prang, his old schoolfriend, has given him a splendid radio and he sits up late
marvelling at the sounds coming from Rome or Copenhagen. Home-hunting with
Xenia, he has found a comfortable apartment at Steglitz—No.11 am Bäkequell.8
Dispensing with the emotional problems that female secretaries still caused him,
Goebbels now generally prefers the aristocracy to carry his bags for him. He has
taken on the upright young Count Karl-Hubert Schimmelmann as his private secretary.
9 In the mirror he fancies he detects the first grey hairs.10 And he has yet to have
full sexual intercourse with a woman.
HIS party HQ in Hedemann Strasse was like a fortress. From the reception area one
door to the right led to the quarters of the increasingly ill-humoured S.A., the other
208 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
to the left to his gau headquarters. Uniformed men stood guard on each door. Visitors
were taken through a locked and guarded doorway at the end of a short passage,
past a long suite of rooms separated by shoulder-high glass partitions, to a side chamber
off which more locked doors concealed three large rooms; in the very last of
these sat the gauleiter, Dr Goebbels, in an otherwise empty room at a desk a full ten
yards from the door. He could reach this room via a side staircase directly from the
yard door where his new Mercedes delivered him each day.
He installed the editorial offices of Angriff on the first floor of this building. From
November 1, 1930 it appeared as a daily. Its mast-head now read, ‘Berlin’s German
evening paper.’ Months of wearying negotiations with Max Amann had preceded this
innovation. Goebbels mistrusted the party’s publisher, but in September a deal had
been worked out giving Franz Eher Verlag sixty percent of the stock in Angriff and the
gau forty percent. Goebbels retained editorial control.11 The new rotary presses had
been assembled at the printers, Süsserott & Co. That afternoon, November 1, Dr
Goebbels found the printers’ yard crowded with his Angriff salesmen all wearing
smart uniforms with the newspaper’s name picked out in silver on their red capbands.
The presses glistened with chrome and oil like a locomotive at a station. He
signalled to start the presses rolling. Everybody saluted, and Horst Wessel’s anthem
echoed until drowned by the whirring and clanking machinery.
Now a daily, the newspaper differed little from its predecessor except in topicality.
Goebbels demanded relentless personal attacks on Dr Weiss, and the editor Dr Lippert
complied. On November 3 the robust headline read BERNHARD WEISS ALLOCATES NIGHTCLUB
CONCESSIONS: HIS BROTHER
GETS THE BRIBES. The story dealt with Weiss’s murky
dealings with his criminal brother Conrad and an unrelated Jewish night-club owner
called Taube Weiss. On the fifth the headline was WEISS IN THE STOCKS! DEVASTATING
PHOTOS (‘even the Jewish Ullstein press has had to confirm the facts that we publish’).
On the sixth,as his headlines rhetorically asked BERNHARD WEISS TO RESIGN?,
Goebbels privately rejoiced in his diary: ‘Isidor is being destroyed.’ On November 8
Angriff reported that a communist had punched Zörgiebel in the face: ‘Sometimes,’
the newspaper editorialized, ‘though not often, the acts of the communists are not
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 209
entirely unwelcome to us.’12 For this licentious remark Grzesinski banned Angriff for
one week.13 Goebbels was livid; his newspaper would be banned on fifteen more
occasions before August 1932, for periods ranging from three days to six weeks.
Conferences [summarised Goebbels], agonizing money worries, embarrassing
letters, Angriff editorial meeting, ill-will from Munich, surrounded by people
filled with envy; that’s my day.14
Grzesinski, bolder than his predecessor, banned several Goebbels meetings too.
Rumours circulated that he would soon ban the party as well. Goebbels doubted the
police would really try that now.
Later in November the Sport Palace audience was treated to a double bill as he and
Göring harangued them. ‘I make short work of the Social Democrats,’ recorded
Goebbels. ‘The giant arena thunders with rage, hatred, and screams of revenge…
How much further can this be pushed?’15 He envied Göring his easy access to wealth
and high society. Already however a perceptible frost was settling over their relations.
On October 9 he had written of Göring, ‘He is a true comrade—but not
devoid of ambition.’ The day after the Reichstag had reconvened Goebbels commented
privately, ‘I rather fear that Fatso Gregor [Strasser] and Fatso Göring may
shortly hit it off together.’16 Admittedly the aviator had introduced him to several
useful contacts like Fritz Thyssen, the steel baron; the former airman Erich Niemann,
head of Mannesmann Steel, and Wilhelm Tengelmann (Ruhr Coal). They would inject
badly needed funds into the party in Berlin.17 But Hitler had now appointed
Göring his personal viceroy in Berlin. This was bound to lead to friction with the
gauleiter. As a Reichsleiter Goebbels in fact ranked somewhat higher than Göring in
the party. But he noticed that Göring did not invite him along when he met the
commander-in-chief of the army, General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord (‘He probably
fears his sun won’t shine quite so brightly next to mine’), and a hardier tone of
mordant criticism crept into the diary entries.18 He noted Göring’s corruption, and
his mysterious hobnobbing with political generals like Kurt von Schleicher; to
Goebbels’ irritation he even visited the exiled Kaiser in Holland.19 Viktoria von Dirksen
210 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
revealed confidentially to him that Göring was still having problems beating the recurring
morphine addiction inflicted on him by Austrian doctors in 1923. He made
a note to keep an eye on him.20
ENTERING his HQ one day in November 1930 Goebbels sees a platinum blonde coming
down the steps.
‘Donnerwetter, Schimmel!’ he exclaims to his private secretary. ‘Who was that?’
The blonde is working in his press-clippings section. The next day he sends for her,
to work on his confidential archives. She turns out to be wealthy, married, and twentynine
—much older than his usual preference. She rates another diary mention on the
fourteenth, helping to sort out early photographs.21
Thus he has finally met the woman he will marry. Other females will flit across his
stage as, aged thirty-three, he belatedly approaches manhood. There is his former
secretary the ‘wondrous, goodly, attractive, and affectionate’ Ilse Stahl who stays
over one evening until six A.M.; ‘and,’ he writes, ‘wholly sexually innocent, at that.’22
She blushes the next day and he scribbles her a note, ‘Phone me at seven.’ But that
evening he has a visit from another, the blonde actress Hella Koch, who is already
married.23 His roaming eye alights on Arnolt Bronner’s fiancée Olga Förster. Olga,
another petite actress, visits him alone a few days later and tries a much-worn female
ploy—she is engaged, she sighs, but does not really love her Arnolt. ‘But me,’ records
Goebbels smugly, ‘she likes a lot.’ He thinks of her that evening as he addresses the
gau’s Women’s Order—the women all ‘well behaved’ and the girls all ‘spotless’.24 He
invites Bronner and his Olga to the movies and she visits him again the next day. She
wheels out every available weapon in the arsenal of female seduction.25
He is a sitting duck. He is nest-building for his new apartment. He browses the
furnitures stores, determined to create a drawing room to rival Carin Göring’s.26 His
female admirers often come to see his performance in the Reichstag. And perform at
last he does: on December 6 the ‘touching’ and ‘devoted’ Olga comes round. ‘She
loves me madly,’ he resumés afterwards, to which he adds a nonchalant parenthesis:
‘(1, 2).’ Five days later Olga comes again—as indeed does Goebbels, not once, twice,
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 211
but thrice: ‘(3, 4, 5).’27 A week later she marries her Arnolt Bronner and that is that.
‘No regrets,’ writes Goebbels; not once, but twice28—although it does pain him
when a gossip columnist gets hold of the story and phones him about rumours that
Olga’s new husband has Jewish blood; Bronner assures Goebbels it is not so.29
For two months after his seduction Goebbels’ private life is a flurry of former
girlfriends. He has some catching up to do. He treats them, one hopes, more kindly
than in his diary. Helping move to Steglitz, Ilse is crowned by a falling equestrian
bronze and her head bleeds profusely. ‘She yammers on all evening,’ he writes heartlessly.
On the phone to Charlotte he lets fly about an arrogant letter she has written.
When both ladies turn up for housemoving duties the next day Goebbels writes,
‘I’m going to put more distance between myself and women.’ The year ends with a
hysterical scene from Olga and another abrasive letter from Charlotte. Charlotte is
working in his new ‘wigwam,’ as he puts it one day, but that letter has ruined everything.
30 Ilse is closer to his ideal squaw: she chats, cooks, cries a bit, and then brightens.
‘I am quite reactionary,’ he confesses to the Bronners. ‘Having, and raising, children
is a job for life. My mother is the woman I most revere … so close to life. Today
women want a say in everything, they just don’t want children any more. They call it
emancipation.’31
IN December 1930 Goebbels staged his most effective propaganda demonstration
yet, against the Ufa film version of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front.’ The film was