pacifist and anti-German (its author had already emigrated). In one scene, German
soldiers were depicted haggling with a dying comrade whose legs had been shot
away, over who should inherit his new boots. At its first public showing on the fifth,
Goebbels’ S.A. men emptied the cinema with stink bombs and live mice.32 For once
the Nazis found Berlin’s police, many of them ex-army officers, in broad sympathy
with them. Angriff reported laconically that their Doctor had been present ‘for informational
purposes,’ and planned to see the rest of the film for informational purposes
‘on Sunday evening.’ His men took the hint and trashed the movie theatre while
thousands of cheering Berliners looked on. The management cancelled the next per-
212 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
formance after that. Even the Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt dared not to criticize, because
this time he had the people behind him.33 On the seventh the movie theatre tried
again. Goebbels staged another ‘spontaneous’ riot. Afterwards his men smashed
through police cordons to the sound of the Horst Wessel anthem and rampaged down
Kurfürstendamm, while Goebbels himself took the salute at Uhland Corner in the
heart of the West End.34 He called for further protests the next night. The police
cordoned off entire districts. This time, he estimated, forty thousand Berliners turned
out to protest against the film; opposing newspapers put the figure at six thousand.35
Under pressure from Grzesinski the Prussian minister of the interior Severing banned
all open-air demonstrations.36 On the eleventh the Reichstag itself debated the situation.
Goebbels was evicted from the building, but the victory was his. At four P.M.
the Brüning government ordered the objectionable film withdrawn ‘because of the
danger to Germany’s image abroad,’ then adjourned until February 3, 1931.37
‘WE are going to be on the verge of power soon,’ assessed Goebbels on December 2,
1930. ‘But what then? A tricky question.’ He mistrusted the alliance that Hitler was
forming. Strasser warned the Nazi Reichstag bloc that they were making too much
headway in bourgeois circles and that this would taint the Party’s image (‘Bravo,
Strasser,’ observed Goebbels to himself.) At a function at the Görings afterwards he
had a long talk with Strasser, trying to find common ground with this impressive
politician. ‘I want to bury the hatchet,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘and I think he does too.’38
He celebrated a pagan Christmas with the S.A. around a Yuletide bonfire at
Schönerlinde. But he spent Christmas Eve with the Görings, who had less time for
such pagan rites. Carin gave him a fine porcelain bowl, decorated with white mice.
Her husband’s morphine addition caused him real concern, and he mentioned it to
Hitler. Hitler said he would take Göring under his wing.39
Turning to grand strategy Goebbels warned that their party was in danger of losing
momentum—it was approaching freezing point, as he put it. ‘We must start a
crescendo of operations.’ And he did: in July the Red Flag had challenged him to a
public debate, knowing full well that for him to accept would be to invite arrest. His
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 213
immunity restored, he now challenged both the Social Democrats and the communist
to debate before a working class audience at Friedrichshain. A thousand communists
turned up on January 22, 1931. Their ace propagandist Walter Ulbricht spoke
for nearly an hour; the communists then pitched into their rivals with chair legs and
broken bottles; while Goebbels and his Nazis held their ground, in Goebbels’ narrative,
Ulbricht fled ‘whimpering’ to the S.A. stewards for protection before leaving
the hall with his jacket over his head. ‘They banked on brawn instead of brain,’ mocked
Goebbels in Angriff, ‘then found that where they had arms, our S.A. men didn’t exactly
have liverwursts dangling at their sides.’ There were over one hundred injured
including his chauffeur Kunisch and Olga Bronner, who was taken to hospital with
concussion. The Red Flag declared the evening a VICTORY OF THE CLASS-WAR PROLETARIAT
OVER NATIONAL SOCIALISM. Goebbels replied with a leader article titled, with feeling,
‘Lying rabble.’40
A QUAVERING voice phones him in the small hours, after the riot: Olga, calling from
the hospital. Goebbels remains callous and aloof.41 Ilse Hess writes, chiding him for
his attitude to woman and holding up Carin Göring as a shining example of feminine
supportiveness. Goebbels replies evasively, promising to look the Hess’s up more
often in 1931. He plans to spend three days every fortnight down in Munich then.
‘Unfortunately my sister won’t be able to come either to Munich or Berlin,’ his
letter continues. ‘She has to keep my mother company—she’s feeling very lonely
since my father died.’42 For the first time since he was at university he has not gone
home for Christmas, guiltily suggesting in his diary that he must spare his mother the
risk.43
He moves into middle-class Steglitz on the first day of 1931. He has even bought a
piano for his increasingly well-appointed two-room apartment.
Meanwhile one woman has by her beauty and sheer force of personality crowded
out her juniors—Magda Quandt, the platinum blonde working in his private archives,
which consist of press clippings from all over the world. There is a perfumed
classiness about her. She finds herself drawn toward this Savonarola who has set all
214 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Berlin by the ears. Late in January his diary records her bringing her work on the
archives round to his new Steglitz apartment. ‘Knowledge is power,’ he explains to
Magda, gesturing towards the clippings files.44
She reminds him inevitably of a younger, classier Anka. The other girls’ names
gradually fade from the diary’s pages. Charlotte stalks around with a face like thunder.
When Magda visits him again, Goebbels finds himself wishing that she were in love
with him.45
Two weeks later, the wish becomes father of the deed.
1 Diary, Oct 18, 1930; and see Lohse, ‘The Strasser Case’ (IfZ, and Karl Höffkes papers,
Oberhausen.)
2 Diary, Oct 16, 17, 22, 1930.
3 Grzesinski to Braun, Oct 13, 1930 (BA file Kl. Erw. 144)
4 Diary, Oct 23, 1930.
5 Grzesinski MS
6 Diary, Oct 29, 20, 1930.
7 Ibid., Oct 21, 23, 1930. Bronner was an Austrian scriptwriter currently producing the
‘Berlin Radio Hour’ programme. Told that Bronner was half-Jewish, JG refused to believe it
(Ibid., Oct 4, 1930).
8 Ibid. Sep 25, Oct 1, 5, 6, 1930.
9 Ibid., Sep 14, 20, 1930.
10 Ibid., Oct 30, 1930.
11 Ibid., Sep 23, 26, Oct 9, Nov 2; Angriff, Nov 3, 1930; Eher Verlag to NSDAP archives,
Feb 27, 1936 (NA film T581, roll 47; BA file NS.26/968).
12 Angriff, Nov 8, 1930. JG was prosecuted for this editorial under the Law for the Protection
of the Republic (Landesarchiv Berlin, Rep.58, item 13).
13 Grzesinski to Angriff, Nov 11; JG diary, Nov 12, 1930; Eher Verlag to NSDAP archives
Jan 7, 1937 (NA film T581, roll 47; BA file NS.26/968).
14 Diary, Nov 9, 1930.
15 I
bid., Nov 22, 1930.
16 Ibid., Oct 15, 1930.
17 Ibid., Aug 24, Jan 1, 6, 1931.
18 Ibid., Jan 3, 1931.
19 Ibid., Jan 11, 13, 22 (‘Göring is snobbing around too much’), 28, 1931.
20 Ibid., Jan 4, 1931.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 215
21 Ibid., Nov 7, 14, 1930.
22 Ibid., Nov 7, 1930. A Nov 15, 1931 memo identifies her as a possible police informer
(BA file NS.26/325).—JG’s unpubl. diary, Jun 25, 1934, describes a late night with Ilse
Stahl—a ‘patentes Mädel’ (tip-top girl)—and her fiancé Gauleiter Josef Terboven. They married
a week later. JG went off Ilse soon after. ‘She’s all powder and paint,’ he wrote on Dec
13, 1935. ‘I’m glad to get away.’ ‘Mrs Terboven,’ he noted on Jan 15, 1936, ‘brings the latest
scuttlebut. She’s changed very much for the worse.’ Josef and Ilse Terboven blew themselves
up in May 1945.
23 Diary, Nov 9, 1930; he scores with Hella later (Ibid., Jan 16, 1931).
24 Ibid., Nov 21, 1930.
25 Ibid., Dec 1, 3, 1930.
26 Ibid., Nov 19, 27, 1930.
27 Ibid., Dec 12, 1920.
28 Schwamm drüber. Ibid., Dec 17, 1920.
29 Ibid., Dec 19, 20, 24, 1930.
30 Ibid., Dec 27–30, 1930; Jan 20, 1931.
31 Ibid., Jan 19, 1931.
32 Ibid., Dec 5, 1930. ‘In the evening we “take a look” at [the film].’ This was typical of JG’s
caution in writing up his diary.
33 Ibid., Dec 7, 1930. Police chief Grzesinski (memoirs) was frantic; to him, the film was
‘politically one of the most valuable in recent years.’ He blamed Brüning for the police
defeat. ‘A huge Nazi demonstration near Nollendorf Platz, at which Goebbels ranted and
raged, gave the government an external pretext for caving in.’ He himself had planned to
ban all demonstrations next day. (BA file Kl. Erw. 144).
34 Ibid., Dec 9–12, 1930.
35 E.g.Vossische Zeitung, Dec 12, 1930.
36 See Severing’s file on the ban (Friedrich Ebert foundation, Severing papers, folder 176).
37 For the transcript of the film censorship board’s deliberations on Dec 11, 1930 see BA
file Kl.Erw.457. Universum Film GmbH (Ufa) was represented by the lawyer Dr Frankfurter.
On behalf of the ministry of defence Lt Cdr von Baumbach described as ‘extremely
repellent’ the scenes of panicking, screaming and weeping volunteers under artillery bombardment,
their animal-like behaviour, and their wrangling over their dying comrade’s new
boots.
38 Diary, Dec 4, 1930.
39 Ibid., Jan 18, 1931.
40 Ibid., Jan 23, 24; Angriff, Jan 25, 1931.—On Ulbricht’s early career see NA file RG.319,
IRR, XE.188374.
41 Diary, Jan 24, 1931.
42 JG to Ilse Hess, Nov 24, 1930 (Hess papers).
43 Diary, Dec 12, 1930.
44 Otto Wagener, MS (IfZ archives); Turner, 377.
45 Diary, Feb 1; on Jan 28, 1931 he writes: ‘She is a very beautiful woman.’
216 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
15: Maria Magdalena Quandt
MAGDA Quandt was later the object of much malicious tittle-tattle. ‘She was
first married to a crook,’ sneered Prince Otto von Bismarck, a German
diplomat, ‘and earned money through prostitution. Later she became Goebbels’ friend,
but this did not prevent her from going to bed with many of the habituées of the
party meetings at the Sports Palace1… Now she goes around looking for men, and
when she does not suffice there is also her sister-in-law [Ello Quandt] who is another
prostitute.’2
None of this was true. Magda had been born in Berlin on November 11, 1901. She
believed her father was Oskar Ritschel, an engineer and inventor, of strict catholic
upbringing. Her mother Auguste Behrend was twenty-two, an unmarried servant
girl of the evangelical-lutheran faith working for a family in Berlin’s upmarket Bülow
Strasse.3 In fact she later gave this street as Magda’s birthplace, while her birth
certificate puts it in a working class suburb at No.25 Katzeler Strasse.4 Auguste was
in Goebbels’ words a frightful person5; she was probably never married to Ritschel:
in later years she was curiously vague about their divorce, stating that it was when
Magda was ‘about three’—the word ‘about’ seems to cast doubt upon the precision
of the matrimony itself.6 It seems unlikely that a man of Ritschel’s standing would
have married a servant girl.7 In a codicil to his will Ritschel mentioned his first wife
Hedwig, but no others.8 To Goebbels, Ritschel was always a Schubiak (a scoundrel)
and ‘wretched prig’.9
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 217
Since Ritschel was living in Belgium, Auguste chose the infant’s names herself—
Johanna Maria Magdalena, or Magda for short. Ritschel arranged for the girl to be
raised from 1906 in a convent at Thild in Belgium. Auguste visited her behind these
forbidding and often chilly walls with Friedländer, her Jewish boyfriend whom she
had (perhaps) married in 1908.10 Upset by the draughtiness of Magda’s dormitories
her mother transferred her to another convent, at Villevoorde. It was thanks to her
convent upbringing that Magda grew up loving music and the arts; by the age of ten
she was intelligent, gifted, and precocious. She adored Schopenhauer.
Her placid existence was interrupted by the Great War. The expatriates in Brussels
were shipped home to Germany in evil-smelling cattle trucks. It took six days for the
Friedländer family—they had all adopted 189
his name—to reach Berlin. In a refugee camp an East Prussian woman, a Mrs
Kowalsky, read Magda’s palm. ‘You will one day be a Queen of Life,’ she pronounced.
‘But the ending is fearful.’ Magda, always a romantic, often retold this prophesy. She
dramatised it sometimes, making the fortune-teller a gypsy, and having her appear
mysteriously aboard the refugee train. Friedländer became manager (or perhaps only
an employee) of the four-star Eden Hotel in Berlin.11 Their milieu was Jewish: Magda’s
first real friend was Lisa Arlosorov, whose parents were Russian Jews living in
Wilmersdorf. Ritschel paid for his daughter to attend Berlin’s Kollmorgen Lycée
and sent her three hundred marks as monthly pocket money.12 Friedländer, the German
Jew, faded from the picture and history does not what relate what became of
him.
In the autumn of 1919 Magda Friedländer matriculated and was found a place at
the exclusive Holzhausen ladies’ college near Goslar. Even at nineteen she was a girl
of considerable presence. Travelling down to Goslar on February 18, 1920 she shared
the reserved compartment of a Dr Günther Quandt, a prematurely balding, wealthy
entrepreneur just twice her age.13 His first wife had died in a ’flu epidemic two years
before, leaving him with two baby sons Hellmut and Herbert; he related all this to
Magda during the train journey. Strongly taken by this teenage girl with the foreign
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 35
