wrote (possibly after the news of Rath’s death) on the ninth:
The Führer’s Weimar speech [on November 6] was another powerful attack on
the warmongers in London and Paris… Churchill makes a quite stupid and unsubstantiated
response. Superannuated and useless. We’re now attacking the warmongers
without respite, to disqualify them from government…
In Paris [ON NOVEMBER 7] a Polish Jew Grynspan [sic] has shot at the German
diplomat vom Rath and seriously wounded him. Taking revenge for the Jews. But
now [NOVEMBER 8] the German press makes itself heard. And now we’re using
plain talk. Major antisemitic demonstrations in Hesse. The synagogues are burned
down. If only one could now give free rein to the public’s rage!20
On November 8 he conferred with propaganda officials. According to his diary the
topic was merely the Sudeten gau election campaign, but in the light of antisemitic
outbreaks in Hesse, Anhalt, and Saxony on that day and the next it certainly cannot
be ruled out that he discussed reprisals for the Paris outrage too. He then spent the
afternoon working on his new Hitler book. In the evening Hitler spoke in the
Bürgerbräu to the party veterans, viciously attacking Churchill, Eden, and Duff
492 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Cooper until tears of laughter streamed down every cheek. ‘He’s rendering these
three incapable of taking up government office,’ wrote Goebbels, explaining Hitler’s
intent, ‘and a good job too.’ Afterwards he invited Hitler to his regular café, the Café
Hoch on the Marienplatz, facing the city hall. Until three A.M. they talked about
horses, the Romanian monarchy, punishments for reckless driving, and their future
plans for Germany’s screen and stage. After that Goebbels carried on working back
in his hotel, tired but unable to sleep.21
The diary for the next day, the ninth, ‘a grey November day,’ opened with the
traditional march to the Feldherrnhalle watched by immense crowds. Goebbels listened
to Robert Ley griping that he now seldom got near the Führer, and to S.A.
chief Lutze moaning about the S.S., mostly out of envy: ‘What Himmler has put
together is quite something,’ recorded Goebbels appreciatively. Back at his hotel he
worked steadily through his files on speeding up the expansion of cable radio and on
theatre subsidies for the Sudetenland. ‘The condition of the diplomat Rath shot by
the Jew in Paris,’ he noted, ‘is still very grave. The German press opens up with a
will.’ Helldorff sent instructions to Berlin to disarm all the Jews. ‘They’ve got a few
things coming their way,’ commented Goebbels. He resumed work on his Hitler
manuscript, finding it a delight. More reports came in of demonstrations against the
Jews, this time in Kassel and Dessau, with synagogues being set on fire and businesses
demolished. Later that afternoon Goebbels learned that Ernst vom Rath had
died of his gunshot wounds: ‘Enough is enough,’ he wrote. At five p.M. the official
press agency released the news.22
Events that evening, November 9, are crucial to the history of what followed. As
Goebbels and Hitler set out to attend the Nazi reception in the old city hall, they
learned that the police were intervening against anti-Jewish demonstrators in Munich.
Hitler remarked that the police should not be too harsh under the circumstances.
‘Colossal activity,’ the Goebbels diary entry describes, then claims: ‘I brief
the Führer on the affair. He decides: allow the demonstrations to continue. Pull back
the police. The Jews must be given a taste of the public anger for a change.’ Deciding,
so he wrote, that this policy was right and proper, Goebbels issued his own instruc-
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 493
tions immediately to the police and party.23 The latter are confirmed by at least one
gauleiter who recalled that an urgent telegram signed by ‘Hanke’ (as Staatssekretär)
went to all forty-two of Goebbels’ local propaganda agencies24 transmitting instructions
directly, over the heads of local gauleiters, to the district (Kreis) propaganda
directors—who were party officials—to orchestrate outrages against Jewish properties
in conjunction with the local S.A. units acting in plain clothes.25 It was already
very similar to what Goebbels had organised in Berlin that summer. It is plain that he
had consulted neither the party’s gauleiters nor the S.A. chief of staff before issuing
these instructions.
Hitler subsequently left the dinner at the old city hall around nine P.M. according to
other sources.26 Gauleiter Rudolf Jordan now told Goebbels of widespread anti-
Jewish violence in Magdeburg.27 According to Bormann’s adjutant Heim, Goebbels
seemed taken aback by this: things were getting out of hand: the carefully propagated
image of German law and order was taking a battering.28 Deciding to make a
virtue out of necessity, at about nine-thirty he limped up to the podium, signalled
for silence and announced the death of the German diplomat and the anti-Jewish
incidents; he described the latter as evidence of a ‘spontaneous’ public outrage. The
local British consulate learned that he also said that Jews were now fair game, and
that ‘the S.A. could do anything to them short of looting and plundering.’29 He would
not be surprised, another witness heard him say, ‘if things got worse during the
night.’ The same witness saw Lutze however warn his old friend Goebbels that his
S.A. men would keep well out of any pogrom.30 Goebbels himself recorded that
after issuing his instructions he had made a brief speech to the Party leaders, greeted
by storms of applause: ‘Everybody makes a beeline for the telephones,’ his diary
entry reads. ‘Now the public will take action.’ Several people who heard Goebbels’
firebrand speech were uncomfortable. Karl Hederich, one of his department heads,
felt that it conflicted with the tenor of Hitler ’s speech.31
A few gau officials get cold feet [wrote Goebbels in his hitherto unpublished diary]
but I keep pulling everybody together.32 We must not allow this cowardly murder
494 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
to go unpunished. Let things run their course. The Stosstrupp ‘Hitler’ [a shocktroop
unit named after the Führer] sallies forth at once to deal with Munich. And
things happen right away. A synagogue is smashed to smithereens. I try to save it
from the flames, but fail.* Meanwhile I discuss financial issues with [the party
treasurer Franz Xaver] Schwarz, the Jewish problem with [Julius] Streicher, and
foreign policy with Ribbentrop: he too is of the opinion that we can now pull in
the rest of Czechoslovakia by neutral methods. We just have to box cunning. [Czech
foreign minister Frantioar(s,ˇ)ek] ChvalkovskO(y,´) wants it. As for the others,
we don’t know.
Over to [Munich] gau HQ with [Gauleiter Adolf] Wagner. I now issue a detailed
circular setting out what may be done [against the Jews] and what not. Wagner
gets cold feet and trembles for his [i.e. Munich’s] Jewish shops.33 But I won’t be
deterred. Meanwhile the Stosstrupp goes about its business. And with no half
measures. I direct [Werner] Wächter [director of the RPA, propaganda agency in]
B
erlin to see that the synagogue in Fasanen Strasse is smashed. He just keeps
saying, ‘Honoured to comply.’
It was by now midnight. Goebbels attended the impressive S.S. swearing-in ceremony
at the Feldherrnhalle. Hitler spoke to these new officers, then went back to
his apartment. Goebbels, leaving for his hotel, saw the skies flickering red. According
to his diary—written up next morning—he hurried over to gau HQ, where
nobody could tell him what was happening, then directed fire brigades to douse the
fires so far as necessary to protect neighbouring buildings. ‘The Stosstrupp has wrought
terrible damage,’ he wrote.
With many conflicting orders on the wires, a brutal confusion reigned all over
Germany. At 3:30 A.M. the S.A. commander of Marburg ordered his men to burn
down the local synagogue (despite Lutze’s misgivings).34 Every synagogue in
* This sentence is surely blatant window-dressing by Goebbels for posterity, given
what we know.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 495
Darmstadt was destroyed despite orders to the contrary from Mannheim’s S.A.
Gruppenführer Herbert Lust, still in Munich. The synagogues in Bayreuth, Bamberg,
and Reutlingen were also torched.
THERE seems little doubt as to Goebbels’ sole personal guilt and that he was not just
made the scapegoat for others even higher. In the subsequent internal inquiry, the
party’s Supreme Court headed by Walter Buch—admittedly no friend of his—determined
that the propaganda minister had issued ‘oral instructions’ which had ‘probably
been understood by every party official present to mean that the party was not
to appear publicly as the originator of the demonstration, but that it was in fact to
take over its organisation and execution.’35 After hearing these words, repeated at
first hand by a party official in Munich and so similar to Goebbels’ orders to Helldorff
in June, the commander of one S.A. Gruppe had telephoned orders to his HQ in
Kiel at 11:20 P.M. in the following terms: a Jew had fired the first shot; now the Jews
must pay. There were ‘totally superfluous’ Jewish shops and synagogues in
Friedrichsstadt, Kiel, and Lübeck waiting to be destroyed; the local police were to
be tipped off first. ‘There is to be no looting,’ the message continued (significantly
confirming the British consulate’s version). ‘Nobody is to be roughed up. Foreign
Jews are not to be touched. Meet any resistance with firearms. The Aktion is to be
carried out in plain clothes and must be finished by five A.M.’36 Once again the similarities
with Goebbels’ own secret narrative of his orders for the anti-Jewish outrages
in Berlin in June 1938 are worth remarking upon.
The pogrom was soon out of control. Only three of the twenty-eight S.A. Gruppen
received actual orders to stage demonstrations.37 Fired by five years of Nazi oratory
however the mob needed little encouragement. From all over the Reich the reports
began to come in: first fifty, then seventy-five synagogues on fire. By dawn on November
10, 191 of the country’s 1,400 synagogues had been destroyed; about 7,500
of the one hundred thousand Jewish shops had had their windows smashed. Thirtysix
of the country’s three hundred thousand Jews had been murdered, and hundreds
more badly beaten.38 ‘The Führer,’ claimed Goebbels in the diary, ‘has directed that
496 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
twenty or thirty thousand Jews are to be arrested immediately. That’ll do it. Let
them now see that our patience is exhausted.’
Wagner is still a bit half-hearted. But I don’t let up. Wächter reports back to
me, the order has been carried out.39 We go with [Julius] Schaub [Hitler’s personal
adjutant and crony] to the Artistes’ Club to await further bulletins. In Berlin
five synagogues are ablaze, then fifteen. Now the people’s fury is aroused. This
night it is impossible to do anything else against it. Not that I want to. Let it rip.
Schaub is on top form. His old Stosstrupp past comes flooding back.
As I drive back to the hotel there is the sound of breaking glass. Bravo! Bravo!
Like gigantic old kilns the synagogues are blazing. There is no danger to German
property.
Nothing else in particular has to be done. I try to sleep for a few hours.
As he wrote these heartless lines the next morning, the overnight reports came in.
‘As was to be expected. The entire nation is in uproar. This is one dead man who is
costing the Jews dear. Our darling Jews will think twice in future before simply
gunning down German diplomats.’ And that, he wrote, concluding this extraordinary,
unrepentant diary entry, was the object of the exercise.40
WHAT of Himmler and Hitler? Both were totally unaware of what Goebbels had done
until the synagogue next to Munich’s Four Seasons Hotel was set on fire around one
a.m. Heydrich, Himmler’s national chief of police, was relaxing down in the hotel
bar; he hurried up to Himmler’s room, then telexed instructions to all police authorities
to restore law and order, protect Jews and Jewish property, and halt any ongoing
incidents.41 The hotel management telephoned Hitler’s apartment at Prinz-
Regenten-Platz, and thus he too learned that something was going on.42 He sent for
the local police chief, Friedrich von Eberstein. Eberstein found him livid with rage.43
According to Luftwaffe adjutant Nicolaus von Below, Hitler phoned Goebbels.
‘What’s going on?’ he snapped, and: ‘Find out!’
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 497
According to Julius Schaub, the most intimate of his aides, Hitler ‘made a terrible
scene with Goebbels’ and left no doubt as to the damage done abroad to Germany’s
name. He sent Schaub and his colleagues out into the streets to stop the looting.
Philipp Bouhler, head of the Führer’s private chancellery, told one of Goebbels’ senior
officials that Hitler utterly condemned the pogrom and intended to dismiss
Goebbels.44 Fritz Wiedemann, another of Hitler’s adjutants, saw Goebbels spending
much of that night of November 9–10 ‘telephoning … to halt the most violent excesses.’
45 At 2:56 A.M. Rudolf Hess’s staff also began cabling, telephoning, and radioing
instructions to gauleiters and police authorities around the nation to halt the
madness.46 But twenty thousand Jews were already being loaded onto trucks and
transported to the concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, and Oranienburg.
Hitler made no attempt to halt this inhumanity. He stood by, and thus deserved the
odium that now befell all Germany.
Goebbels had not anticipated either Hitler’s fury or, probably, such an uncontrollable,
chaotic orgy of destruction. Not surprisingly he made no reference to this
unwelcome turn of events in his diary. But perhaps this, rather than Lida Baarova,
was the reason why he would write this mea culpa to Hitler six years later: ‘I know
that I’ve caused you many a private worry in the twenty years I’ve been with you—
particularly in 1938 and 1939.’47 Ribbentrop relates that when he tackled Hitler about
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