details of ministerial routine. Using Hilde Körber as a conduit he explains that
his decision (not to see Lida any more) is ‘unalterable.’12 That evening he has a long,
unforgettable, totally humiliating talk with Magda. ‘She is so hardhearted and cruel,’
is all he writes. ‘I have nobody to help me. Nor do I want anybody. One must drink
the full dreaught from this bitter chalice. And shrink back cravenly before nothing. I
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 467
am presently suffering the worst time of my life. With [Minister of Posts] Ohnesorge,’
he continues, without even dipping his pen, ‘I have discussed details of our share of
the reduced radio licence fee…’13
What a feast a psychiatrist can dish up from such passages, written in Goebbels’
refuge at Lanke as the wind sighs and the rainstorms spatter his lake. ‘I go to bed
early… Loneliness!’ He flees to his mother and bewails: ‘Ello has behaved despicably.
But what else was one to expect of her!’14 His mother falls ill with worry. Back at
the ministry on Thursday, Hilde Körber ‘comes with more sobstuff’—the German
weint mir etwas vor is just as deprecating in tone. He again visits the hard-hearted and
cruel Magda,15 and curses in his diary: ‘I’ve never seen her like this before.’ He swears
that he has now stopped seeing Lida. They agree on a truce until the end of September.
‘Much can happen until then,’ he reflects miserably. ‘Both for better and for
worse… Let time pass, the universal healer.’16
There are some awkward moments. During the important five-day state visit by
Admiral Nicholas von Horthy, the Hungarian regent—another of Czechoslovakia’s
predatory neighbours—Hitler orders Joseph Goebbels and Magda to appear together
at the state reception on the twenty-fourth and at the gala performance of ‘Lohengrin’
the next night. The photos show her sitting stiffly at her wayward husband’s side. ‘If
only I could drop into an everlasting sleep,’ writes Goebbels, still drinking deeply
from that chalice, ‘and never wake again!’ After the farewell banquet in Charlottenburg
castle, Magda snarls at him. Das alte Lied, he records with a wounded sigh: the same
old melody. He stays up late talking with his trusty Karl Hanke, then decides on a
little midnight motor excursion after all.17
He prepares a trial separation from his family. After seeing them briefly at
Schwanenwerder on August 27, he spends a crestfallen night out at Lanke, then drops
into the Scala strip club with a few friends. He decides to spend two weeks away
from Berlin. Magda’s nerves are in tatters too. Before leaving Berlin he phones her
but finds his wife more impossible now than ever.18 He wonders who is putting her
up to this and resolves not to phone her again until many more weeks have passed.19
468 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
THE WAR clouds now conjured up by Hitler over Europe were thus almost a welcome
diversion. Several times the diary showed him debating privately with his senior staff
whether there would be war—‘the one big topic now.’20 Through a British mediator
Prague had offered conciliatory terms to the Sudeten Germans, but this only embarrassed
Hitler. ‘The problem now,’ observed Goebbels,’is how the Führer can create a
suitable situation to strike.’
Much depended on whether Britain would then declare war. Goebbels’ man in
London, the fainthearted Fitz Randolph, lamely telegraphed that nobody could tell.21
Goebbels’ gut feeling was that Britain was merely bluffing. He ordered that Britain’s
threats not be reflected in his ministry’s monitoring reports, the so-called ‘Blue Telegrams’,
lest they frighten Ribbentrop’s diplomats. He studied Britain’s nerve-war
tactics with all the analytical detachment of a master propagandist. ‘The whole London
scenario is well thought-out,’ he wrote approvingly. ‘Cabinet meetings, Henderson
recalled to London, “prepared for grave steps,” and so forth. The old one-two. But it
doesn’t wash with us any more.’22
On the last day of August he flew down to the Berghof with Karl Hanke, evidently
on his own initiative.23 While waiting to see his Führer he was briefed by Göring’s
aide Karl Bodenschatz on the progress being made with the fortifications; the best
month to attack Czechoslovaka, said the colonel, would be October. Otto Dietrich
pulled a face and asked, ‘What will Britain do!’ Hitler, joining them, was reassuring.
He delivered a little lecture about Bismarck’s courage when it came to taking action.
Goebbels trudged afterwards downhill to the guesthouse—it did not escape him
that Hitler no longer housed him in the Berghof itself. He was frantic about this
mark of his slipping prestige, but he sensed too the clammy fear of war that was
spreading across all Germany.24 Using Helga’s sixth birthday as a pretext he put through
a call to Magda. She was as hardhearted as ever.25
The next day Hitler told them that the gap in their western defences was now all
but closed. ‘Britain will hold back,’ he predicted, ‘because she does not have the
armed might. Paris will do what London does. The whole affair must unroll at top
speed. For high stakes you’ve got to run big risks.’26 Goebbels could not get that
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 469
word risks out of his mind. Hitler’s talk with Henlein turned to finding a suitable
provocation to invade. That afternoon, September 2, Hitler delivered another little
peptalk to them all—Goebbels, Henlein, Ribbentrop, Bodenschatz, Bormann, Speer
and Hoffmann—on ‘keeping ones nerve.’ Goebbels passed the message on to Hanke
and Dietrich, who were beginning to waver.27
For all Goebbels’ atrocity propaganda, there was none of the public enthusiasm for
war that had marked August 1914. Berndt made this clear to him.28 Funk was pessimistic
too.29 France noisily called up her reservists and Goebbels had to remind himself
that they were already fighting a war—of nerves.30 When Czech police bludgeoned
more local German officials, he turned the entire German press loose again to
help Henlein in his assigned task of bringing the crisis to boiling point.31 The Times
suddenly sided with Hitler, recommending that the Sudeten territories be formHe
commands, we obey… I trust in him as I do in God.’ But even as he wrote these
lines, the nagging private fears returned:Ê ‘Just one question bugs me, day and night:
what’s it to be, war or peace!’
Smiling enigmatically, Henderson assured him that France was honour-bound to
aid Czechoslovakia, and then Britain could not stand aside. Goebbels was torn between
loyalty to Hitler, and his common-sense. ‘War and peace are in the balance…
I can’t get the thought out of my mind. But the Führer will see us through. In face of
danger he proceeds with the steady tread of a sleepwalker. That’s how it’s always
been.’32
At the Nuremberg rally, he branded Prague a ‘hotbed of the bolshevik conspiracy
against Europe.’33 But it was in Hitler’s closing speech that the world first heard of his
determination to go to war. The Sudeten Germans, he declared, were not alone. As
they marched out together, Hitler whi
spered to Goebbels, ‘Let’s see what happens
now.’34
‘Things are panning out just as we wanted,’ triumphed Goebbels as the world’s
press betrayed the first signs of panic. The death toll began to rise—‘over fifty in one
village,’ he recorded, carelessly confusing fact with his own propaganda. Addressing
his editors he called for tough nerves and perseverance.
470 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Then came the totally unexpected. The elderly British prime minister Neville Chamberlain
offered to visit Hitler the next day.35 Still hoping for a military showdown
which would give him all of Czechoslovakia, Hitler had little opinion but to agree.
For a moment Prague faltered, and relaxed her pressure. ‘Nevertheless,’ observed
the cynical propaganda minister, ‘we make a splash about “Czech terror.” Things have
got to be brought up to boiling point.’36 Chamberlain met Hitler at the Berghof on
September 15. At first Goebbels learned nothing except that he had asked for a
further meeting at Bad Godesberg. While awaiting word from Hitler Goebbels addressed
a steadying pep-talk to five hundred gau officials in Berlin.37 Hitler invited
him down to the Obersalzberg for a briefing. He flew down on the seventeenth,
talking Hanke, Gutterer, Fritzsche (press section) and Hadamowsky (radio) with
him. Hitler lunched alone with him and then invited him aloft to the newly-built
Eagle’s Nest, along with Himmler and the favoured British journalist Ward Price.38
The Eagle’s Nest was a teahouse built by Bormann’s engineers on top of the Kehlstein,
reached by an amazing lift inside the mountain. Here Hitler described Chamberlain
to these listeners as an ‘ice-cool,’ calculating Englishman. He had not minced his
language. London might fear a world war, he had boasted, but he was prepared to
accept that risk.
The English prime minister, he said, had undertaken to persuade his Cabinet and
the French to endorse a plebiscite in the disputed terrotories. This did not suit Hitler’s
purpose at all; but he expected Prague to hold out, which would leave the way
open for the total solution he preferred. It was a war of nerves. Goebbels predicted
that Prague would buckle under this pressure. Hitler disagreed. ‘In 1948,’ he said, ‘it
will be just three hundred years since the Peace of Münster [Westphalia]. We’ve got
to liquidate that peace treaty by then.’ Praising Goebbels’ propaganda effort so far,
he added: ‘We’ve half won the war already.’39
The Czech president Beneoar(s,ˇ), abandoned by Chamberlain, conducted frantic
telephone conversations with his legation in London. ‘Despair is the only word,’
recorded Goebbels smugly, reading the wiretaps Hitler showed him. ‘He [Beneoar(s,ˇ)]
just murmurs, “Yes, yes”.’40 Capitalizing on London’s sudden helpfulness Hitler upped
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 471
the ante. He sketched a new map showing still greater territorial demands, ready for
when he next met Chamberlain. With Goebbels limping at his side, he strutted up
and down the Berghof terrace beneath a clear canopy of stars. ‘Now for the closing
act,’ wrote Goebbels afterwards. ‘We’ve got to proceed with cunning.’ Later still:
‘Main thing is to keep our nerve.’41
He issued fresh instructions to Berndt to create the necessary frontier incidents.
Hitler mobilized Czechoslovakia’s other neighbours: the cowardly42 Hungarians made
no move, but the Poles were more obliging. They had already hinted that they would
entertain Hitler’s demand for the return of Danzig, and in gratitude Hitler dictated
to their ambassador what Poland might now demand with his blessing from Czechoslovakia.
43 According to what he told Goebbels, as they set off together with
Ribbentrop by train for Godesberg, the Polish ambassador had ‘promised’ force against
Czechoslovakia.44 Goebbels still predicted that the Czechs would ultimately cave in.
Hitler however told him that he was poised to strike on September 28—just one
week’s time.45
Goebbels attended both days of the Hitler–Chamberlain conferences at Godesberg.
The first on September 22 began at four P.M. and lasted for three hours. Hitler’s new
sketch-map shocked the Englishman. But Hitler reminded him that the frontiers
would look somewhat worse if he eventually had to use force. (The main thing,
realized Goebbels, listening to them haggling, was to get behind the formidable Czech
mountain fortifications.) Chamberlain said he would have to consult, and they all
adjourned, Hitler and Goebbels to a city launch that chugged up the Rhine into the
gentle autumn evening. The next morning Chamberlain sent over a letter to Hitler.
The Nazi wiretaps on the British and Czech international phone lines left no doubt
now that Beneoar(s,ˇ) was playing for time. Word came shortly that BeneO(s,ˇ) had
mobilized. Undeterred, Hitler handed new demands to Chamberlain.
There was a lot of play-acting on both sides. At that evening’s crisis session, Chamberlain
rose haughtily to his feet and threatened to walk out.46 Goebbels did not
know what to make of it all. His private alarm deepened. War hysteria was seeping
into the German press.47 Flying back to Berlin with Hitler he found a mood there
472 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
wavering between noisy jingoism and grim ‘determination’—for want of a more
gloomy word which he safely entered in his diary. The wiretaps showed Beneoar(s,ˇ)
digging his heels in. Would he give way? The question dominated Hitler’s lunch table.
‘The Führer thinks not,’ recorded Goebbels. ‘I say he will.’ Strolling with him after
lunch, Hitler again said that he would attack on or after the twenty-eighth. ‘That
gives the Führer five days,’ calculated Goebbels, adding: ‘He fixed these dates way
back on May 28.’ He gloomily agreed that the radical solution was the best. Ribbentrop
predicted that nobody would lift a finger to help Prague. For once Goebbels found
himself agreeing with him, but he still did not want war.48
On Prague’s response, Hitler proved right and Goebbels wrong. Beneoar(s,ˇ) rejected
Hitler’s territorial demands outright. Goebbels again had to lecture his editor
on steadfastness, and stepped up the propaganda war still further. Hitler addressed a
mass meeting at the Sport Palace.
The unwitting party faithful might cheer but others—intellectuals, generals, and
even ministers—began bombarding Hitler with warnings.49 Goebbels heard Himmler
complaining about the uselessness of the older-generation generals. Hitler gave the
Czechs until two P.M. on the twenty-eighth to agree to his terms. Wondering once
again how far the British had been bluffing, Goebbels mechanically told Berndt to
stir up discord between Beneoar(s,ˇ) and his people using clandestine transmitters
based in Vienna.50
This war of nerves climaxed on the twenty-seventh, when Hitler received Chamberlain’s
dapper emissary Sir Horace Wilson. He told Goebbels later that he had
screamed at the Englishman, accusing him of evasions.51 ‘The Führer,’ summarized
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 77
