“If you get tired of Germany,” Rothermere boomed, “I’ll engage you at ten times the
salary.” “I’m not for hire,” responded Goebbels, and reported the remarks to Hitler
afterwards.15 Hitler threw a glittering party for his lordship on the nineteenth. Magda
was the star attraction. From Rothermere’s remarks, it was plain he was totally won
over to the Nazi cause.16 Travelling down to Munich on January 25 Hitler repeated to
him that the cornerstone of his foreign policy was an alliance with Britain. ‘We shall
be supreme on the ground, and they at sea, and we’ll be equals in the air.’ What then?
The fact that Hitler talked of wooing Poland—that would now be Göring’s task—
indicated expansion to the east.17
Speaking to eighty-seven thousand Nazi officials on February 24, Goebbels boasted:
‘If the great powers … now treat Germany as a sovereign nation again, don’t think
for an instant, my comrades, that this means the world has come to its senses! No,
it’s thanks to our tenacity, our resolution, and—I shall be blunt—our newfound
Macht, our power, alone.’18
Rosenberg choked on that word Macht. He, Rosenberg, was head of the party’s
office of foreign policy, he complained that this ‘sabre rattling’ by Goebbels contradicted
Hitler’s own theme, the desire for peaceful coexistence.19 Hitler however
trusted Goebbels. When Sir John Simon, the British foreign secretary, announced a
visit to Berlin Hitler asked Goebbels as well as Ribbentrop to supply a character
study on him.20 Increasingly sure of himself, the propaganda minister saw no need to
curry favour. He sideswiped at Dr Schacht, he dominated Hitler’s lunch table with
cruel, bantering witticisms and mimickry—imitating Robert Ley or Otto Meissner,
then saying with a disarming chuckle: ‘But we’ve got to be kind to poor old Meissner—
he did so much to help us into power.’21 Some found Goebbels infuriating. ‘His smirking
superficiality gets physically on my nerves,’ wrote Darré after one such chancellery
luncheon.22 At times Goebbels even gunned for Göring—nagging about the new
general’s indiscreet fling with the actress Emmy Sonnemann until Hitler coerced
them into marrying that May, and then revealing the staggering cost of the nuptials
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 365
to Hitler, then whispering around the diplomatic community that Emmy’s Aryan
pedigree was debatable.23
THE armed forces, Germany’s muscles, were now beginning to show. Goebbels’ unpublished
diaries, recently discovered in the Moscow archives, narrate Hitler’s next
crucial decision:
March 16, 1935 (Saturday). On Friday the Führer suddenly returned. Says he
wants to proclaim general conscription today… Flandin has spoken against Germany
in the chamber; two year national service accepted in France. Disarmament?
We too have to create faits accomplis. Hitler is right. I shall fortify him in
his intent.
Supper at Göring’s. Great pomp! Not to my taste. But to each his own weakness.
I escort Japanese ambassador’s wife to table; she couldn’t speak a word of
German. Frightful!
He’s very shrewd. I talk over the Russian problem with him.
March 18, 1935 (Monday). Discussions all Saturday morning. Führer fights
Blomberg over the number of divisions. Has his own way: thirty-six. Grand proclamation
to the people: law on rebuilding the armed forces; conscription. To put
an end to the haggling. You’ve got to create faits accomplis. The other side aren’t
going to declare war. As for their oaths: stuff cotton wool in our ears.
Cabinet 1:30 P.M. Führer sets out situation. Very grim. Then reads out the proclamation
and law. Powerful emotions sieze us all. Blomberg rises to his feet and
thanks the Führer. Heil Hitler, for the first time in these rooms. With one law,
Versailles is expunged. Historic hour. Frisson of eternity! Gratitude that we are
able to witness and take part in this.
The foreign press displayed consternation and panic. ‘So once more we are a great
power,’ concluded Goebbels. At four P.M.that afternoon he broadcast the proclamation
over the radio.24 Rome and Paris bleated protests. ‘Let them curse,’ wrote
366 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Goebbels smugly; ‘we rearm … and put on a brave face meanwhile.’25 Speaking in
Danzig, he bragged openly that they had smashed the Treaty of Versailles.
Sir John Simon hurried to Berlin with Anthony Eden, Minister for the League of
Nations, to ascertain the Nazis’ intentions. Goebbels attended the banquet, and found
Simon congenial but Eden cold and arrogant, as he had already warned Hitler from
his own sources (contradicting Ribbentrop).26 ‘Immediately afterwards with the Führer
at the Reich Chancellery,’ narrated Goebbels in his unpublished diary. ‘Göring and
Blomberg too. Führer reports; he has told the British some numbers: we want an
army of half a million, and we’ve already achieved parity with the British in the air.’
(This was bluff.) ‘Huge astonishment at that. Führer spoke out against Russia. Has
laid a cuckoo’s egg which is intended to hatch into Anglo-German entente.’
March 26, 1935 (Tuesday) Sunday … went over to the Führer. He outlines his
foreign policy plans to us. Short and long term… He’ll certainly win over the
British…
Monday: Noon to see the Führer. He had negotiated four hours and told me the
situation. Eastern pact: consultative and non-aggression pact, but not an alliance.
‘We are less frightened of the French attacking than of the Russians helping.’
Treaty violation: ‘Prussia also broke treaties. At Waterloo Wellington didn’t complain
about it but cried out, “Everybody wishes night would come, or the Prussian
treaty-breakers!” League of Nations: ‘Only if our right to colonies is restored.’
…
Friendly spirit of the talks. Führer is able to say what he wants. British ‘not
concerned with judging faits accomplis, but with seeing what can be done about
them.’
My characterisation of Simon is correct; Führer very grateful for my tip…
Simon is very approachable, Eden stubborner. Just as I predicted.27
Eden had silkily suggested that the ‘bolshevik world revolution’ was a Goebbels
fiction, and promptly flew on alone to Moscow, which rather devalued his talks with
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 367
Hitler.28 Unabashed, Goebbels printed a special horror-magazine, The Red Army, and
had it smuggled onto the desks of every delegate in Geneva.29
For a few days Hitler feared that Eden might pull together his own eastern pact,
signing up Moscow and Warsaw against Germany.30 He told Goebbels that he found
foreign affairs pure torture. Strolling with him in the garden on April 3 Hitler told
him he did not believe there would be war. ‘If it came it would be frightful. We have
no raw materials. We’re doing everything to pull through this crisis… We’ve got no
choice but to keep our nerves. Poland has stood fast. No question of [Eden’s] eastern
pact… Führer says, let’s just hope nobody jumps us.’31 Goebbels was alarmed that
irresponsible quarters were speaking of war as though it w
as a bagatelle. Aided by
Hitler’s adjutants Fritz Wiedemann and Julius Schaub he saw to it that Hitler was left
in no doubt; Major Fritz Hossbach, General von Fritsch’s adjutant, told him he had
been instructed by Fritsch to brief Hitler in the rawest possible detail about their
army’s true weakness.32
The foreign press association put Goebbels through its wringer at its next function.
He sailed through their questions with an affability that impressed the Americans.
More refined English ears, however, found him sadly wanting from an intellectual
point of view. ‘He gloated over the fact that Germany had rearmed secretly,
cunningly, and unknown to the world outside,’ wrote the British consul in Frankfurt
after hearing him speak there on April 11. Goebbels left him with the unedifying
impression that ‘a homicidal lunatic, with winks and whispers and sudden shouts,
was propounding his dark schemes to a somewhat bovine but gleeful audience.’33 The
British ambassador was equally contemptuous of Goebbels.34 A notorious drinker, he
preferred Goebbels’ official binges with loud brass bands ‘and copious glasses of beer
and plates of cold meat which seemed to melt into ravenous faces,’ as he wrote to
London.35
Goebbels was beginning to take on the great names in German culture. He forced
Wilhelm Furtwängler to eat humble pie and admit publicly that the state controlled
art.36 After Rosenberg had bombarded him with letters for a year complaining that
composer Richard Strauss had used the libretto of Stefan Zweig, a Jew, for his latest
368 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
opera, Goebbels had to dismiss Strauss as president of the chamber of music.37 He
absented himself from the opera’s premiere, and had it taken off the programme at
Heiligendamm where he was on summer vacation.38
He was also increasingly sensitive to criticism. In May 1935 the Gestapo drew his
attention to one cabaret, the Catacombs, in Luther Strasse. Agents reported the subversive
sketches of comedian Werner Finck, but Reinhard Heydrich reminded S.S.
chief Heinrich Himmler that their own Völkischer Beobachter had only recently praised
this act, and that Finck had been a star performer at Goebbels’ recent film ball.
Goebbels sent his own adjutant to spy on Catacombs and a similar establishment,
Tingel-Tangel, in Kant Strasse, and closed them down a few days later.39
GOEBBELS gets to know Magda better; she tells him about her life, much of it like a
stage play.40 Pregnant again, in January 1935 she takes their two children out to
Cladow.41 Late in March he begins a costly five month reconstruction of his official
residence, for the first of several times and at tax-payers’ expense. Only the finest
craftsmen are employed.42 At the same time he carps about the lavishness of the
Göring wedding staged on April 10. ‘Two events keep the world in bated breath,’ he
mocks in his unpublished diary on the wedding eve: ‘the conference at Stresa, and
Göring’s wedding. The world of reality, and the world of fantasy. Let’s hope the fantasy-
world one day stands up to the blows dished out to it by the real one.’ It is as
though he can see Göring’s hour of failure coming. As Berlin goes crazy next day,
with thirty thousand troops lining the streets and throngs cheering the wedding couple,
Goebbels turns melanocholy thoughts back to his own little country wedding at
Severin: he is not envious at all, he decides, but happy as can be. Unable to get Carin
Göring out of his mind, he accompanies Magda to the nuptials and the following
seven-course banquet (‘an impressive picture for the starving’) through whispering
and finger-pointing crowds; the embarrassment is just one more cross he has to
bear.43
Magda is momentarily quiescent, sunning herself in the Führer’s affections. Hitler
often comes out to Cladow and goes cruising with the minister across the lake to see
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 369
Potsdam’s trees in blossom, listening absently to Goebbels’ litanies against their turbulent
priests and their arrogant Jews. Hitler finds it hard to get worked up about
the Jews, now that he is in power.44 At other times the Cladow villa is filled with
brainless chatter as Goebbels invites over actresses like Angela Sallocker and again
the gorgeous Jenny Jugo, currently filming the Elisa Doolittle role in George Bernard
Shaw’s Pygmalion.45
Magda Goebbels’ family world revolves around her children—Joseph grumbles
once that she has forgotten to make Easter a bit nicer for him too. He takes a month
long seaside vacation at Heiligendamm, leaving her in Berlin. Indifferent to her feelings,
he invites stage actress Else Elster (Helldorff’s mistress) and film starlet Luise
Ullrich to join him.46 Ever present is Ello Quandt, who arrives with her nubile friend
Hela Strehl. ‘Both very nice,’ Goebbels records circumspectly, ‘and clever and good
lookers too.’47 When Hitler joins this beach party for two days Magda comes too—
only to return to Cladow abruptly.48 Goebbels writes in his diary the words ‘fond
farewell’ but there has in fact been a ghastly scene about which Hela at once advises
diarist Bella Fromm: ‘She [Hela] has little brains and even less gumption,’ records
Fromm, ‘but all the more charms for Mr Goebbels which she readily displays to him.
She went up to Heiligendamm with him, his wife and children and female secretaries
—of which two or three are always among his ladyfriends. From what one hears,’
recorded this Jewish gossip writer, her newspaper outlet now capped, ‘Frau Goebbels
did not know about it beforehand and departed suddenly after a violent row—not
that either Hela or Goebbels were the least upset.’49
Goebbels diary is not surprisingly oblique about these goings on.He returns to
Cladow on July 30. The mood is hostile. ‘Magda is crying,’ he tells his diary. ‘I can’t
help it.’ Magda, now very heavily pregnant, puts him through the wringer. Goebbels
enters into a discussion of ‘this disagreeable topic’ and at once regrets it. ‘She’s never
going to change,’ he notes mysteriously. A few days later, he tackles her again and she
promises to watch her tongue in future, particularly in the presence of Ello who
‘squawks’ far too much in his view. The matrimonial tussle continues all summer, his
diary seesawing between references to Magda and three-year old Helga as ‘both so
370 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
sweet’, and entries like: ‘Talked things over with Magda. We don’t really see eye to
eye any more. But things will probably get better after the birth.’50
Her confinement lasts for two weeks, while her jealous sister in law feeds her
details of Joseph’s alternative pursuits, i.e. Hela Strehl. He takes Ello sharply to task.
‘I rebuked her to her face about her loose tongue and she felt very small,’ he writes,
and adds the significant conclusion: ‘Now it’s all over between us. Never mind!’51
Even at the maternity clinic there is another colossal row with Magda about Hela—
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 60
