19 Ibid., Oct 6, 21, 1936.
20 Unpubl. diary, Apr 5, 1935.
406 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
21 Interview of Rudolf von Ribbentrop, Jul 20, 1989.
22 Diary, Sep 18, 19, 1936.
23 Ibid., Oct 2, 1936; interviews of Lida Baarova.
24 For JG’s Bogensee estate see CSDIC(UK) SIR.1008, an interrogation of the Lanke forester
Kloss, Sep 26, 1944, with his sketch plan; JG diary, Sep 16–18, 29, 30, Oct 4, 12, 23,
Nov 13, 1936.—For JG’s 1939 staff lists at Lanke see BA file R.55/14.
25 Diary, Sep 27, 1936. — ‘Tagebuch für Joseph Goebbels am 29. Oktober 1936 bis
Dezember 1939 (Haus am Bogensee).’ (Microfiche in Moscow archives, Goebbels papers,
box 1).
26 Ibid., Oct 6, 1936.
27 Ibid., Oct 11, 1936: Magda is ‘always the same: friendly, nice, obliging, amiable. I like
her best of all.’
28 Who did not come down? The diary (Oct 13, 1936) does not specify.
29 Ibid., Oct 29, 1936.
30 A former Berlin film talent scout told MI.14, British Intelligence, in 1944 that ‘the sole
inhabitant [at Lanke] is a manservant [Kaiser] who is sent away in the evening when Goebbels
entertains. It is here that Goebbels brings women secretly, offering them two alternatives:
either to drive back with him to Berlin, or to remain for dinner…’ (PRO file WO.208/
4462).
31 SS-Untersturmführer Alfred Rach, born Feb 8, 1911 in East Prussia, a stocky, blue eyed
ex-fitter with a broad Danzig accent, had been JG’s second chauffeur since the beginning of
1933. (BDC file). To him would later fall the grim task of burning his master’s corpse.
32 Interviewed in prison by Pinguin (Hamburg).
33 Ibid., Nov 2, 1936.
34 Ibid., Nov 12, 1936.
35 Ibid., Nov 18, 1936.
36 Ibid., Sep 17, 20, 1936; information from Lady Mosley, Jan 12 and 22, 1994, and see
her memoirs A Life of Contrasts and Loved Ones. W E D Allen, a former Conservative M.P., and
Captain Gordon-Canning were Mosley’s witnesses, Unity Mitford and Magda were the bride’s.
37 Ibid., Oct 12, Nov 14, 25, Dec 5, 1936.
38 R Likus to Ribbentrop, Dec 17, 1936 (NA film T120, roll 31); Lochner to his children,
Dec 10, 1936 (loc. cit.)
39 Ibid., Jan 23, Apr 12, 1937.
40 Ibid., Jan 20, Oct 2, 1937.
41 Ibid., Jan 12, Feb 7, Apr 10, 12, Aug 14, 1937. Lady Mosley does not believe that Hitler
provided funds, as the diary suggests; he did however help her to meet Ohnesorge, Minister
of Posts, about Sir Oswald’s plan for commercial broadcasting; the French government had
allowed Captain L Plugge, the Conservative MP, to establish Radio Normandy on as similar
basis.
42 Diary, Jul 5, 1936.
43 Ibid., Jul 18, 1936.
44 Ibid., Oct 21, 1936.
45 Ibid., Jan 22, 1937; text of JG’s speech to the Wehrmacht course on the elements of
Nazi propaganda, Jan 21, 1937 (BA file R.55/1338)
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 407
46 Diary, Jan 28, 1937.
47 Ibid., Sep 21, 1937. The RMVP subsequently drafted a general plan for propaganda in a
hypothetical war, and insisted on independent control of this ‘new weapon’ (Yivo: G-93).
48 Diary, Jan 4, 5, 1937.
49 Including Erika Dannhoff, who is (diary, Jan 11, 1937) in a good mood and amiable: ‘So
she’s learnt her lesson from our last talk’.
50 Diary, Jan 18, 1937.
51 MS of Fromm diary, ‘Feb 20, 1937’ (Boston Univ. Libr., Fromm papers, box 61).
52 Diary, Mar 4, 8, 11, 25, 1937.
53 Ibid., Feb 3, 1937.
54 Ibid., Feb 11; and see Jan 11, 1937.
55 Günther Rettelsky to JG, Feb 26, 1937, re Max Kimmich, born Nov 4, 1893 in Ulm
(ZStA Potsdam, Magda Goebbels papers, Rep.90 Go 2, vol.2); diary, Feb 18, 1937.
56 Ibid., Feb 3, 4, 1937.
57 Ibid., Mar 2, 4, 1937.
58 Ibid., Mar 18; on Mar 8, 1937 JG had written, ‘The old fool! Final fling.’
59 Ibid., Aug 25, 1937.
60 Ibid., Mar 5, 1937.
61 Ibid., Mar 8, 1937.
62 Ibid., Mar 11, 13, 15, 18, 1937. According to the talent scout mentioned above, when
Falckenberg refused to become JG’s ‘one-night mistress’ he banned her in Germany; she
escaped to Italy and married an Italian. (PRO file WO.208/4462). This well-informed source
says that the same fate befell Hedda Uhlen, and that when JG had the wife of a Dr Wittmann
‘kidnapped’ and taken out to Lanke, a scandal ensued.
63 Diary, Dec 10, 1937.
64 Ibid., Feb 3, 6, 7, 16, 20, 1937.
65 Cabinet, Jan 30, 1937; Milch MS; JG diary, Jan 31, 1937.
66 Karl-Wilhelm Krause, Zehn Jahre Tag und Nacht. Kammerdiener bei Hitler (Hamburg, 1949),
52.
67 Diary, Feb 6, 1937.
68 JG diary, Feb 16; Bormann diary, Feb 15, 1937.
69 JG diary, Feb 23; Bormann diary, Feb 22, 1937.
408 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Goebbels
27: The Round Table
HE was now in his fortieth year. The three years before war broke out would
show him at his most innovative as minister. He laid the foundations of an
imaginative welfare scheme for Germany’s elderly stars of stage and screen.1 He put
his ministry’s top officials into blue-collar jobs for two months to gain experience in
industry.2 He created the hugely successful travelling exhibition of degenerate works
of art confiscate from galleries and museums. Despite Hitler’s strictures he initiated
a pitiless campaign of legal repression against church officials, and he maintained his
very personal vendetta against the Jews. He bought up Germany’s biggest film studios
in a determined attempt to take on Hollywood. He consolidated his hold on the
printed and broadcast word, though he never truly controlled the newspapers. And
all the time he fine-tuned the propaganda weapon for Hitler’s coming wars of conquest.
His was the sharpest tongue in town. ‘I’ve got three men,’ Hitler would say, ‘who
just can’t stop laughing when they’re sitting down together.’3 He was referring to
Hoffmann, Amann, and Goebbels. At the chancellery’s round table the propaganda
minister, whom he dubbed the ‘chief jester’ of the Third Reich, usually sat directly
opposite him.4 Only Goebbels had the nerve and wit to interrupt Hitler’s monologues.
5 Confident of his personal status, he was merciless toward the other guests.
‘Well, Tiny,’ he would greet Winifred Wagner’s oafish daughter Friedelind, ‘as fat and
dumb and lazy and gluttonous as ever?’6 When the malodorous Otto Dietrich re-
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 409
marked that the best ideas always came to him in the bath-tub, Goebbels piped up:
‘Then you must have good ideas more often, Dr Dietrich!’7 Once, Viktoria von
Dirksen, outraged at a Goebbels barb, appealed: ‘Mein Führer, tell your minister to
shut up!’ (Hitler lapsed into Viennese dialect, grinned, and directed Goebbels to
change the subject.)8 Magda, the common object of their affections, winced at his
cruel wit.9 After ordering the summary arrest of all astrologers, magnetopaths, and
other occultists he would scoff: ‘Remarkably enough not one of these clairvoyants
foresaw that he was about to be arrested.’10
Those of his vic
tims who fought back lived to regret it. Once ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl
read out to the round table a Goebbels press announcement praising ‘the eternal
immortality of the German people.’ ‘Don’t you worry about my style,’ snapped
Goebbels. ‘With my style I have conquered Germany.’ Hanfstaengl retorted that he
had always thought the Führer’s style had done that.11 Hitler, put up to it by Goebbels,
despatched Hanfstaengl on a fake ‘parachute mission behind the lines to General
Franco’ in February 1937: terrified for his life, Hanfstaengl absconded to London.12
It was here at this round table that Hitler and Goebbels plotted the special edition
of a counterfeit Völkischer Beobachter in which their self-important radio chief Eugen
Hadamowsky could learn that he had been awarded the Goethe Prize (he had not.)
They ushered him out onto the balcony to take the plaudits of the Wilhelm Strasse
crowds; once out there, he found the street bare.13
The two Nazis had each other’s measure. Goebbels joked once that President
Roosevelt had written inviting him to become propaganda secretary in Washington.
‘A tough choice, dear Doktor,’ replied Hitler smoothly. ‘Let me know how you decide.’
14 Hitler would recall the election meeting at Stetting where Goebbels, replacing
him at short notice, found the ticket price slashed from 60 to 25 pfennigs. ‘Remember
now,’ he would chide Goebbels. ‘You’re not worth half as much as I.’15
Goebbels needed public adulation as a vampire feeds on blood.16 The British government
decided in June 1937 that he was out of favour, and losing influence in the
country.17 Like many small men he was sensitive to criticism, and swooned with rage
at foreign caricatures that highlighted his physical deformity. He had a youth who
410 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
called him a Jesuit catspaw sentenced to three months.18 The mayor of Halle earned
low marks for recommending in an article that promotions depend on physique. Yet
the women around Hitler adored him. Hitler’s junior secretaries would rush to the
windows whenever Goebbels walked by. ‘If you only knew what eyes he has,’ they
enthused to a new colleague, ‘and how captivatingly he laughs.’19 Hitler would also
mention that laugh, telling Streicher after Goebbels had spent a week at the Berghof.
‘Anybody who can laugh as loudly as this man, whom Nature has so cruelly afflicted,
cannot be all bad.’20 Streicher told him that Hitler had said he could not get along
without Goebbels.21 The other top Nazis were less easily captivated. Darré wrote of
the minister as a ‘mongrel apeman.’22 At one training course at Vogelsang, the Nazi
staff college, the eight hundred district leaders (Kreisleiter) by unspoken consent
greeted both Goebbels’ appearance and his speech with total silence. One participant
saw beads of perspiration trickle down his face before he furiously stalked off the
stage.23
His own self-image was of a family man and Hitler’s most universally popular minister.
24 Once that summer he decided to walk to the ministry in future. Two adjutants
fetched him from the villa in Hermann-Göring Strasse the next morning. None of
the thousands of passers-by took any notice, and he never did it again. He preferred
staged photo-opportunities, like the annual first day of the Winter Relief collection,
when he would face the photographers with his wife and children, all holding collecting
boxes. ‘What good fortune,’ he marvelled, ‘to be so loved by one’s people.’25
His postbag might contain a poem couched in plattdeutsch praising the new Four
Year plan; or a letter beginning engagingly, ‘As a fanatical female Nazi I make so bold
as to —’.26 His fortieth birthday would bring an avalanche of telegrams (‘Those
from the people,’ he confided to his diary, ‘are the most touching.’)27 The party’s
illustrated newspaper featured ‘Our Doctor, as Berlin’s gauleiter is called by his Berliners’
at home, with Helmut and his pony, and Helga with the toy sewing machine
given her by Hitler.28 Goebbels released a short film to the cinemas, ‘Papi’s Birthday,’
featuring himself arriving in yet another brand new car, a Maybach, at his country
estate, where feudal retainers bowed to him, and liveried grooms tended to the
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 411
childrens’ ponies. Some liked it: one cinemagoer penned these lines to Magda: ‘How
proudly in the cinema /I saw maternity thus blest. /I turned my mind toward the
home /where I have built my nest.’29 Berlin’s starving working class however hooted
at the screen and Hitler ordered the film withdrawn immediately.30
IGNORING Hitler’s call for peace on the church front, Dr Goebbels began a vitriolic
campaign against the two main churches that lasted from March until the end of
1937. It began when the Pope issued a pastoral letter critical of Germany on March
21. Goebbels at first persuaded Heydrich not to notify Hitler, arguing that they should
merely confiscate the church printing presses which had disseminated it.31 As a further
response, on April 1—according to Goebbels—Hitler telephoned the authorisation
to him to stage a series of show trials against the catholic clergy. The Nazi
prosecutors had a back-file of several hundred untried sex cases against catholic priests.
The catholics, decided Goebbels, had not properly appreciated the Nazis’ patience
and moderation. ‘Now let them find out how merciless we can be.’32 He sent Berndt
to cover a particularly sleazy case in Belgium, the sex murder of a youngster in a
monastery, and persuaded the Reich justice ministry to open the first sex trials at
Koblenz.33 He ordered sound recordings made, keeping Hitler closely informed at
each stage—or so his diary claimed.34
Goebbels honed the stage-management of these political trials to a fine art. The
first, of Franciscan monks charged with sexual perversions, began in Koblenz late in
April.35 He followed the propaganda coverage closely. One priest implicated the Bishop
of Trier himself. ‘That’s a real bombshell,’ chortled Goebbels, savouring his revenge.
‘I’ve had it all recorded on discs, in case.’36 he furnished regular summaries of the
sordid details to Hitler, who swore to ‘smoke out’ this ‘gang of pederasts.’37 From
catholic Austria, Ambassador von Papen pleaded with Goebbels to tone down the
campaign, fearing an outright ban on German newspapers there. At first the catholic
hierarchy maintained a dignified silence.38 Goebbels hatched further schemes to destroy
them— the sequestration of the church’s assets, and laws to end priestly celi-
412 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
bacy and to prevent anybody younger than twenty-four studying theology (‘Thus
we’ll deprive them of their finest raw material.’) Hitler however urged caution.39
Just as the Nazi campaign was flagging, Cardinal George Mundelein, archbishop of
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 67
