fresh air,’ he pleads in his diary) and then another ten days later, followed by a ‘drive
through the Grunewald, just to get fresh air’ the next day.12 Lida still lives there, of
course. During early October, these motor outings multiply.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 479
While his own Staatssekretär Karl Hanke is now gathering evidence to aid Magda,
Goebbels apparently suspects nothing. On October 3 he has a long talk with him
about his personal affairs. Hanke is very nice about it, a real chum,’ he informs his
diary. ‘I’ve got one person at least I can talk things over with. I couldn’t have gone on
like this.’13 A few days later, after another little motor outing, Goebbels again bends
Hanke’s ear about his plight. ‘He proves very attentive and understanding. He then
has a very important conversation and this sets my mind very much at rest.’ Evidently
Hanke has telephoned Magda, and she ‘agrees’ to see him. ‘I am glad,’ repeats
Goebbels, ‘that I now have at least one person I can speak with. These last few weeks
I have often felt so lonesome and deserted…’14
Lida Baarova is now filming ‘The Sweetheart (Die Geliebte) with Willy Fritsch and
Grete Weiser. She confides in Grete without realising that she too is in cahoots with
the double-dealing Hanke.15 When Hanke shows Magda his dossier it contains the
names of thirty-six women and copies that he has filched of Goebbels’ correspondence
with them.16
Visiting Saarbrücken with Hitler, Goebbels phones Hanke to ask the outcome of
his visit to Magda. ‘Seems it’s all over,’ he writes afterwards, perplexed. ‘Nothing I
can do will change that. I’ve tried my utmost. But if that’s how it is, so be it. I feel
crushed.’17 Hanke reports back in person on the tenth. ‘Things seem pretty hopeless,’
decides the minister, caught up in the drama of his own situation. ‘A human
tragedy is unfurling with neither blameless nor guilty parties. Fate itself has taken a
hand and has spoken.’ Oddly, he tells his diary that Hanke has questioned ‘all’ the
parties concerned—a hint at infidelities by Magda? He asks Hanke now to report all
these facts, as a neutral chum, to the Führer.18 He can no longer keep Hitler out of it.
‘I shall neither complain nor whine,’ he writes, melodramatically. ‘I have no cause for
hatred or indignation. I await the Führer’s decision and shall obediently comply…
Things just can’t go on like this.’19
Hanke in fact sees Hitler the next day at Godesberg, and regales him with salacious
details of his own minister’s wrongdoings—like how he has kept foreign ambassadors
waiting while he entertains his female visitors within. Waiting for word from
480 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Godesberg, the craziest of notions race through Goebbels’ brain. He cruises the
streets ‘just taking in fresh air.’ At last Hanke phones: Hitler is willing to see Goebbels
soon, he says, quietly relishing the moment when, he imagines,he will step into the
disgraced minister’s shoes. ‘At any rate he knows how things stand,’ writes Goebbels,
confident that he has got in first with his version of affairs.20 After a sleepless night he
goes for another little drive, ‘to collect my thoughts.’21
FOR Goebbels the suffocating ministerial routine has resumed—the struggle to lever
out the Jews22, the Sudeten referendum, and the inauguration of the magnificent new
theatre that a grateful Hitler has donated to the Saar.23 Ignoring the sunshine outside,
he mopes for hours in his darkened ministerial chambers, snapping pencils and writing
endlessly in his diary.24 His brain gyrates pathologically around his personal miseries.
His diary reflects his pain—page of page of self-centred whining tinged with a
masochistic delight in every moment of this self-flagellation. Once Magda allows the
three older children over to him. They all cry loudly and Helga whispers sweet nothings
in his ear. Goebbels is still hungry for their childish chatter when it is time for
them to leave. He broods alone that night, crushed by his own solitude, and toying
with words. ‘Those who love me are not allowed to see me: those who can see me
don’t love me any more.‘ He puts his affairs in order and closes his diary.25
That Saturday afternoon, October 15, he tells Rach to chauffeur him out to Lanke.
He is tired of the world—he writes—and tired of life itself. He has decided to resort
to that most feminine of wiles, the feigned suicide attempt.26 He swallows two
Phanodorm sleeping tablets, washed down with alcohol, and goes to bed. He sleeps
around the clock while, he assumes, Rach and the panicking manservant Kaiser try
to arouse him. All he is aware of is a stabbing pain near his heart. He thinks he is
dying, but—he writes—Heaven is again merciful. Apart from Rach and Kaiser however
nobody pays him the slightest attention.27
His head throbbing from the barbiturates, Goebbels stays out at Lanke until Tuesday,
victim of a monster hangover. ‘In the afternoon I drive back in despair to Berlin.’
Among the films he previews that evening is ‘Prussian Love Story,’ an episode from
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 481
the life of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia. Lida Baarova plays the prince’s first true love, a
Polish-Lithuanian aristocrat, the Princess Elisa Radziwill. Two bitter-sweet hours
later the tears are streaming down Dr Goebbels’ cheeks. ‘I didn’t think it would be
so hard for me to see it,’ he confesses in the diary.28
Worse is to come, far worse: on Wednesday he learns from police chief Helldorff
the cruel, humiliating truth about Hanke’s disloyalty.29 Hanke—his old comrade in
the fight for Berlin: his protégé: his own Staatssekretär! Meanwhile Magda has taken
to Emmy Göring her plaintive tales about her husband, calling him ‘the devil in
human form.’30 Helldorff at least is a true friend, he reflects. He sends for Walter
Funk on Thursday morning, and Funk offers to see Göring. ‘Take Helldorff too,’
pleads Goebbels. ‘He knows best of all.’31
Hitler is away, triumphantly touring Bohemia, and does not return to the Berghof
until late on the twentieth.32 Meanwhile Goebbels ostracizes Hanke. ‘He is my cruellest
disappointment.’ He drives out to Carinhall at noon on October 21, and puts
his case to the field-marshal; he argues that Magda has turned frigid, and that he is
therefore entitled to graze in fresher pastures.33 Göring listens kindly, even jovially,
proposes radical solutions, and undertakes to see the Führer. In private he chortles
over Goebbels’ discomfiture; but he lectures Emmy that she’s got to see that Goebbels
does have a point.34 ‘Good ole Göring!’ dictates Goebbels. ‘I’ve really gotten to like
him. We part as true pals.’
Relieved, he takes Helldorff off to Hamburg where he is to speak. Here there is
unpleasant news indeed. Magda has got to Hitler first—she is at this moment taking
tea with Hitler up at the Kehlstein tea house, and she has sent for the oldest children
to complete the picture. ‘So things are hotting up,’ remarks Goebbels.35 His speech at
Hamburg’s Hanseatic Hall is as truculent and cynical as ever.36
No detail of the od
d events that Saturday October 22 eludes the foreign diplomats
in Hamburg. Goebbels duly attends the reception at the Opera House but is missing
from the foundation stone ceremony of the Hamburger Abendblatt, the local party
newspaper. Even the British consul-general learns that Dr Goebbels has received
‘sudden orders to attend Herr Hitler at Berchtesgaden.’37 Goebbels calls in Helldorff
482 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
and Funk, but the latter is nowhere to be found. ‘I make up my mind to fight,’ Goebbels
writes. ‘I shall defend my name.’
At the Berghof Hitler receives him at once, speaks of solidarity, raison d’état, and
the greater common cause. Helldorff, duly called upon by Goebbels to testify, backs
him up but on the main issue—evidently Goebbels proposal to that he resign, divorce
Magda, and marry Lida—Hitler will not budge. Magda herself is now called
in—the first time that Goebbels has seen his estranged wife in two months. She is at
first rather aggressive, he notes; but ultimately they both have to submit to Hitler’s
impatient dictate. He orders a moratorium, a cease-fire. For three months they are
to live together, at the end of which he will permit a divorce if both still desire.38
Hitler disapproves of Goebbels’ behaviour, but he cannot dispense with him—not
right now. ‘The Führer,’ Goebbels records afterwards, ‘detains me for a long time
alone. He confides to me his most profound and innermost secrets… He sees a
really serious conflict brewing in the none-too-distant future. Probably with Britain,
which is steadily preparing for it. We shall have to fight back, and thus will be decided
the hegemony over Europe. Everything must be geared to that moment. And
thus must take precedence over all personal hopes and desires. What we are individuals
compared with the fate of great states and nations?’39
With Speer and Eva Braun they all take the brass-walled elevator up to the lofty
Kehlstein tea house to celebrate the Goebbels’ shotgun reconciliation. Helga and
Hilde smother their father with joyful kisses. Hitler instructs a photographer to capture
the reconciliation on camera. Berlin radio broadcasts appeals for Heiner ‘Shortleg’
Kurzbein—is there to be no end of the minister’s humiliation!—to report to the
propaganda ministry immediately. As head of the photo section, his services are needed
urgently because Hitler has decreed that the Goebbels ‘family photo’ will appear in
every newspaper in Germany.40 ‘It will help to expunge a great deal of the unpleasantness,’
agrees Goebbels. But much will remain. Hitler has also bowed to Magda’s
demand that Lida Baarova withdraw from society and the film world entirely.41 Eva
Braun writes to Lida coldly severing their friendship.42
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 483
Leaving Magda behind at the Berghof, Goebbels returns by overnight train to Berlin
with Helldorff; he is frantic with fear that he may never regain his esteem in
Hitler’s eyes. In the morning—it is now October 24—he sends Helldorff over to
break the cruel news to Lida. Calling in his senior staff he strikes the same heroic
pose he has see Prince William adopt in ‘Prussian Love Story’ and declares: ‘In the
conflict between love and duty I have made the choice that men have made throughout
history when faced with their duty to the people.’43
Shortly Helldorff returns, badly shaken, with word that Lida, whom he has summoned
to police HQ, is demanding to speak with Dr Goebbels and is threatening to
kill herself; a doctor has had to sedate her in Hilde Körber’s villa with morphine.
Göring phones, invites him out to Carinhall, and promises to back him all down the
line on condition that Goebbels drop his claim to be the second personality in the
country.44 ‘On the critical issue,’ records Goebbels himself tantalizing, without being
more specific, ‘he immediately knows a way out.’45 At 9:30 P.M. he phones Hilde
from Carinhall, while Göring listens in, and asks her to put Lida on the line. ‘I’m out
at my good friend’s house,’ he says. She will know who that is. ‘He’s standing next to
me. Liduschka, keep a stiff upper lip, whatever they may do to you. Don’t be angry.
Stay the way you are.’ Distraught and her mind numbed with morphium, the actress
is unable to reply. They never speak again.46
Her torment is just beginning. She is confined to Hilde Körber’s villa with her
phone tapped and two secret police on the door.47 She is allowed out on Friday October
28 when her latest film is premièred at the Gloria Palace on Kurfürstendamm.
Goebbels notes, ‘The première of “The Gambler” went off reasonably well.’48 There
are loud sniggers from the audience at one scene when her father, reproached for
squandering their money, snarls: ‘Money? Go get more money from your Doctor!’
As Lida goes on stage at the end there are shouts: ‘Minister’s whore!’ She calls out to
the unseen hecklers, ‘How much have you been paid!’ Karl Hanke’s hired hooligans
have done their work well. There are similar scenes at the weekend performances,
and on Monday the film is withdrawn.49 Her life will become a nightmare from which
484 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
there is no reveille. Julius Schaub, Hitler’s personal adjutant, warns her not to leave
Germany—‘Something might happen to you if you try.’50
Goebbels tries to pick up the pieces of his life. He tackles the personnel problems
of the advertising council and the film industry, he stiffly discusses with Hanke the
wartime use of Germany’s radio networks, and he admonishes Helldorff and Funk to
keep still tongues in their heads. (‘We’ve got a stool-pigeon in this office,’ he writes,
‘somebody blabbing to outsiders. I’m going to smoke him out.’51)
On October 25, the three months’ probationary period begins. That evening
Goebbels collects Magda and the children at Tempelhof. He berates her until six
A.M.; she listens with set and expressionless features. ‘Ghastly things come to light,’
he wails in his notes, without saying what. He retires to bed, his fevered brain battened
down with Phanodorms, and awakes to finish off this (previously unpublished)
volume of the Diary without having written the name of Lida Baarova in it once.52
As for Hitler, the whole episode leaves him with a bitter sense of betrayal. Rosenberg,
Schacht, Hanke, and Himmler tell him of the damage that Goebbels has done by his
philandering. One French newspaper publishes a still photo from ‘The Gambler’
showing Lida Baarova fending off a dinner-jacketed villain on whose shoulders they
have imposed the Führer’s head.
Goebbels is falling from grace, head over heels, and he knows it. Sick with worry,
he begins work on a palliative, an adoring twenty-five chapter panegyric entitled
‘Hitler the Man’.53 For the next eight weeks the diary shows him dictating this book
and revising it; he even has it proof-printed, and negotiates the sale of rights with
Eher Verlag in Germany and the Hearst Corporation in the United States. Hitler
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 79
