Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death
Page 80
however, none too happy about being linked in the public eye with Goebbels, asks to
run his eye over it, and in mid-January 1939 he stops its publication ‘for the time
being.’54 The book is never seen again.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 485
1 Unpubl. diary, Oct 1, 1938.
2 Stan Czech, op.cit.
3 The late Capt. Herbert Friedrichs to the author, Apr 4, 1989.
4 Der Amüsierpöbel, der sich nachts von Bar zu Bar wälzt. Auguste Behrend, op.cit.
5 Mussolini remarks to Count Ciano that JG was in the wrong to allow his face to be
slapped. Ciano diary, Feb 13, 1939.
6 Hassell diary, Jan 22, 1939; his source was Ufa’s Dr Oswald Lehnich.
7 Rosenberg diary, Feb 6, 1939, 80f; quoting Himmler.
8 Unpubl. diary, Sep 5, 6, 1938.
9 Ibid., Sep 7, 1938.
10 Ibid., Sep 10, 1938.
11 Ibid., Sep 12, 1938.
12 Ibid., Sep 14, 25, 26, 1938.
13 Ibid., Oct 4, 1938. Of course, JG may have have known all along, and inserted this
passage to make his ultimate betrayal by Hanke sound even more horrid.
14 Ibid., Oct 9, 1938.
15 Confirmed by Baarova, interviews; and the anonymous report NOI/108, CSDIC interrogation
of her manager, ‘Mar 15, 1944,’ in MI.14 dossier on JG (PRO file WO.208/4462)
16 Other sources speak of twenty-eight names; Life, Mar 20, 1939, states that three divorce
attorneys turned her down, fearing the risk.
17 Unpubl. diary, Oct 10, 1938.
18 Ibid., Oct 11, 1938.
19 Ibid., Oct 12, 1938.
20 Ibid., Oct 13, 1938.
21 Ibid., Oct 14, 1938.
22 Ibid. Oct 12, 1938: ‘Helldorff reports the state of the anti Jewish operation in Berlin.
This is continuing to plan. And the Jews are now gradually pulling out.’
23 Ibid., Oct 7, 1938.
24 Ibid., Oct 15, 1938.
25 Ibid., Oct 15, 1938.
26 Ibid. Oct 16, 1938. Eva Braun won back Hitler by this dubious means in May 1935. She
faked a suicidal diary entry, left it lying open, and took some aspirins. See David Irving, The
War Path.
27 Diary, Oct 18, 1938. According to Max Winkler’s slightly different version of the episode,
JG sent Rach to Magda with farewell letters addressed to her and his mother. Magda
followed Rach back to Lanke, threw herself across what she took to be JG’s lifeless form,
and besought him to come back to life; JG obliged. (Interrogation, May 1, 1948, Hoover
Libr. Korf papers.)
28 Unpubl. diary, Oct 19, 1938.
29 Ibid., Oct 20, 1938.
30 Emmy, quoted by Olga Rigele, Göring’s sister (Hassell diary, Jan 26, 1939); Olga spoke
contemptuously of JG’s seduction of young actresses dependent on his ministry.
31 Unpubl. diary, Oct 21, 1938.
32 M Bormann diary, Oct 19, 20, 1938.
486 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
33 Unpubl. diary Oct 21, 1938: ‘Göring acts like a real comrade. Fair, decent, noble, cordial.’
34 Rigele.
35 Unpubl. diary, Oct 22; Bormann diary, Oct 21, 1938.
36 Ogilvie Forbes to FO, Oct 22 (PRO file FO.371/21708); reports in Hamburger
Nachrichten—its photo shows a very po-faced Goebbels—, DAZ and Börsenzeitung, Oct 22,
1938.
37 L L Robinson to Ogilvie Forbes, Oct 25 (ibid., /21665); and British embassy, Berlin, to
FO, Oct 26, 1938 (ibid., /21791).,
38 Unpubl. diary, Oct 24, 1938; and Lida Baarova, who was briefed by Helldorff on what
happened.
39 Ibid., Oct 24; Bormann diary, Oct 23, 1938 (note his exclamation mark: ‘Führer goes
up to Kehlstein house with the Goebbels Family!’)
40 This immediately became known abroad. E.g., Life, Mar 20, 1939. Different versions of
the family photo were published in e.g., VB, DAZ, Oct 25–26, 1938.—See too Werner Stephan,
Goebbels—Dämon einer Diktatur; also Stan Czech, loc.cit. Sending a copy of the photo to the
FO, the British embassy commented on Oct 26, 1938 that JG’s matrimonial affairs ‘have for
long been the subject of much delighted gossip in Berlin.’ It (and Life) reported the rumours
that Fröhlich had beaten up JG, then ‘surrendered to Himmler and [said] what about it,’ and
stated that Magda had cited ‘twenty-five’ co-respondents (PRO file FO.371/21791).
41 Helldorff told this to her: Author’s interview, Salzburg, Jul 4, 1993. JG unpubl. diary,
Oct 24, 1938.
42 I.e., withdrawing the du. MI.14 report, op.cit.
43 Stephan; Czech; well confirmed in unpubl. diary, Oct 25, 1938. Julius Schaub (MS)
claims it was he who broke the news to Lida.
44 Ogilvie-Forbes to Lord Halifax, Nov 3, 1938 (PRO file FO.371/21791); he probably
had this from Göring himself.
45 Unpubl. diary, Oct 25, 1938.
46 Author’s interview of Lida Baarova, Salzburg, Jul 4, 1993.
47 Life, Mar 20, 1939.
48 Unpubl. diary, Oct 29, 1938. He added, ‘It was uninterrupted torment.’
49 Rudolf Likus to Ribbentrop, Nov 3 (NA film T120, roll 31, 9042); Stephan wrongly
identifies the film as Preußische Liebesgeschichte.—Writing to the FO on Nov 3, 1938 Ogilvie-
Forbes stated: ‘Certain remarks [in the script] … made her an all too tempting target for
public derision and interruptions unflattering to herself and to Dr Goebbels.’ See too the
detailed account of this incident in Life, Mar 20, 1939.—Author’s interview with Baarova,
Jul 1993.
50 Baarova.—She does flee to Prague. When Hitler invades she moves to Rome. She will
make half a dozen movies there before the Allied invasion halts her career again. Hounded by
Magda Goebbels, Hanke, Himmler, the Gestapo, the American CIC and finally the Czech
communists—her 23-year-old actress sister Zola throws herself out of a window to her
death—this talented actress ekes out a postwar living in Austrian exile as a waitress in a
greasy spoon cafe.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 487
51 Unpubl. diary, Oct 26, 1938. It was perhaps Oberregierungsrat Dr Curt Thomalla, who
would be found dead in a gasfilled room with his secretary in Mar 1939. ‘He left behind
letters containing a full confession.’ (Diary, Jan 4, 1939); Revue, No.21, May 24, 1952.
52 Unpubl. diary, Oct 26, 1938. ‘Thus concludes this book. It covers the most awful period
of my life. I am still in the midst of the crisis. Shall I get over it? That’s written in the stars.’
53 Diary, Nov 2, 1938: begins work on MS; unpubl. diary, Nov 7: ‘I begin thinking about
my new book. I’ll soon begin writing it. It’s got to be really magnificent.’ Nov 10: ‘It’s real
fun.’ Nov 15, at least one worthwhile task; 21, dictates four chapters; 24, talks with Baur;
Dec 4, Hitler wants to see it when finished; 12, 100 pages finished; 14, 15, 16, completion;
16, talks with Hearst; 30, galley proofs.
54 Ibid., Jan 17, 1939. Rudolf Semler reports that there were two proof copies.
488 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Goebbels
32: Broken Glass
IT is surely against this fraught and unstable background—the marriage-war with
Magda, the sniping from his enemies—that we have to examine the historic
episode which immediately follows: Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, November
9–10, 1938.1 Whose was the evil brain behin this outrage? How far wa
s
Hitler himself involved in authorising or endorsing it? Once again the hitherto unpublished
Goebbels Diaries provide clues to what really happened—but they are
only clues, which need proper interpretation.
As the motto with which he opens the next volume of his unpublished diary shows
(‘It is suffering alone that makes men of us!’) he has spent the last week of October
1938 wallowing in self-pity, unable to sleep without sedatives, wearily reopening
the wounds of the past with Magda, talking of ‘ways out’ and flirting with thoughts of
suicide, dosing himself with narcotics, and sleeping around the clock.2 He admonishes
Helldorff once again to keep a still tongue in his head about it all, he decides to
replace yet another adjutant, Diether von Wedel (he ‘has betrayed me wherever he
could’).3 When October 29 comes, he not once but twice writes of it as ‘the saddest
birthday of my life.’4 Magda wakes him from his drugged sleep and ‘frostily’ congratulates
him; his two oldest girls recite their poems; there are artificially glowing
reports in the press and photographs of Hanke speaking the birthday eulogy in the
ministry. Not surprisingly he finds something spooky about it all. ‘What else really is
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 489
there left for me to do in this world? I can’t see any more jobs for me.’5 Regardless of
Hitler’s injunctions, Magda is still carved of ice as November begins.6 The children
neither know nor ask the reasons for the perpetual frostiness of the family meals at
Schwanenwerder.7 He loathes the whole human race and yet again tells his diary so.8
‘I am glad to get back to work,’ he writes on November 3, adding the heartfelt
sigh: ‘How I wish the past could be forgotten!’
At a beer evening at Weimar during the Book Week, Magda, wearing a fetching
strawberry-coloured dress with a generous lace decolleté, is the star of the evening
while Dr Goebbels chain-smokes endlessly and glowers into his beer.9 ‘It is still not
working out,’ he writes on the fourth after another late row with her.10
GERMAN propaganda drifted, with no firm hand on the helm. The British embassy,
trying to detect a pattern, found it aimless and inconsistent.11 Goebbels now seemed
to be trying to conjure up a British ‘bogey’—evidently an echo of Hitler’s gloomy
review of foreign policy to him while at the Berghof on October 23.
He had sidelined the party’s propaganda directorate (the Reichspropagandaleitung,
based in Munich) by setting up local offices under his direct ministerial control, and
through these channels he often dictated policy to the party itself. His direct and evil
influence as gauleiter on the Berlin police has already been noted.
Nationwide, his anti-Jewish campaign gathered momentum. Göring was already
purging the Jews from the business sector with a verve paralleled by Goebbels’ sweep
in the chamber of culture.12 Count Helldorff liaised closely with Goebbels on the
continuing and orchestrated police harassment of the Jews that had begun in June.13
Moreover Warsaw and Prague were following suit. ‘The Jews are being driven from
country to country,’ observed Goebbels, ‘reaping the fruits of their eternal intrigues,
hate campaigns, and dirty tricks.’14 Poland announced steps designed to keep the
seventy thousand Polish Jews living abroad from returning; to forestall this ban, on
October 28 the German police rounded up fifteen thousand Polish Jews and shunted
them back across the border into Poland.15
490 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
This operation indirectly triggered the events that now followed, although there is
some frail evidence that LICA, the Paris-based International League against Antisemitism
which had lurked behind the 1936 assassination of Wilhelm Gustloff, also had a hand
in them. On November 7 a seventeen year old wastrel, a penniless illegal immigrant
of Jewish-Polish extraction, pumped several bullets into a German diplomat in Paris,
and Goebbels’ life suddenly had meaning again.16 Somehow this lad, Herschel
Grynszpan, had found the money to check into an expensive hotel one block away
from LICA’s HQ and to purchase the pistol with which he gunned down the German
official, Counsellor Ernst vom Rath. Even before news of the attack leaked out,
LICA’s attorney Moro Giafferi arrived to represent him.
At first Goebbels had overlooked the news from Paris. He had risen early on November
6 at Schwanenwerder to go to Fürstenberg to visit an NSV (National Socialist
Welfare) home for mothers and infants from Berlin. ‘I think Magda’s glad to see
the back of me,’ he wrote, still licking the emotional wounds sustained in the prolonged
fray with Magda. Back in Berlin he went out with ‘some people’ to Erich
Carow’s Laugh-in, one of the premier cabarets in the city, and laughed himself sick—
according to his doubtful diary—at a sketch titled ‘Family Idyll’. There is little doubt
who was its butt.17
On November 7, as he and Helldorff took the morning train to Munich, he ordered
the Paris shooting given only two inches on the Völkischer Beobachter ’s second
page.18 Far more important was the solemn anniversary of the November 9, 1923
putsch, now a pivot of the Nazi calendar with speeches by Hitler and a midnight
swearing-in ceremony for the S.S. His diary shows him conferring on the way down
to Munich with his new chef de bureau Dr Werner Naumann (‘a decent chap’),
Minister of the Interior Dr Wilhelm Frick on Reich reform, and Wilhelm Fanderl,
editor of Berlin’s 12 Uhr Blatt. In Munich he found the public ‘very nice’ towards
them, and commented: ‘I’m now pretty well versed about such things.’ He attended
a reception given by Hess, he decided to appoint Karl Böhm to the Dresden opera
(Böhm was one of the many top Nazi musicians who would effortlessly perform the
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 491
volte face necessary to stay at the top after the coming war); and he agreed with
Forster, gauleiter of Danzig, that Poland ‘must soon relinquish the Danzig province.’
THEN however Ernst vom Rath’s condition took a turn for the worse. Hitler ordered
his promotion—an ominous sign that he was not expected to live. Hitler’s attitude
was one of laissez-faire; Goebbels however saw his chance. As surgeons battled to
save the shooting victim, he swore to take revenge. He ordered press and radio to
blame the outrage on the ‘international criminal Jewish rabble.’19 Angriff published
photographs of Frankfurter, killer of Gustloff, and Grynszpan, Vom Rath’s attacker,
with pictures of the British politicians Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, and Duff
Cooper scurrilously captioned ‘Jewish murderers and those who put them up to it.’
On the morning of November 9 the party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter published a
whole page on the Paris murder attempt. Summarizing recent days’ events, Goebbels