the damage Goebbels had done, Hitler rejoined that this was true, but he could not
let the propaganda minister go—not when he was just about to need him again.48
As more ugly bulletins rained down on him the next morning, November 10,
1938, Goebbels went to see Hitler to discuss ‘what to do next’—there is surely an
involuntary hint of apprehension in the phrase.49 Georg-Wilhelm Müller had meanwhile
reported to him about the conflagrations in Berlin. Goebbels told his diary
only, ‘A good thing too,’ but he immediately composed an ordinance calling a halt to
‘operations’ (Aktionen), and at 10 A.M. he broadcast a live appeal for order over the
Deutschlandsender. While it spoke of the ‘justifiable and comprehensible’ public indignation
at the Ernst vom Rath murder, it strictly forbade all further action against
the Jews; it was repeated at hourly intervals and printed in next day’s party newspa-
498 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
pers.50 The Jewish question, the item stated, would be resolved only by due process
of law. Later that morning he directed that press and radio were to play down the
damage—a few windows had been smashed and synagogues had spontaneously
combusted, but otherwise, the news items were to suggest, ‘the public’s understandable
indignation was its spontaneous answer to the murder of the embassy counsellor.’
51 ‘Enough is enough,’ he commented in his diary. ‘If we let it continue, there’s a
danger that the mob will take over. In the whole country the synagogues have been
burned down.’ He repeated yet again, with grim and vengeful satisfaction, ‘Jewry is
having to pay dear for this dead man.’52
He made his report (on ‘what to do next’) to Hitler in the Osteria, the Führer’s
favourite Italian restaurant, and was careful to record this—perhaps slanted—note
in his diary, which stands alone, and in direct contradiction to the evidence of Hitler’s
entire immediate entourage: ‘He is in agreement with everything. His views are
quite radical and aggressive. The Aktion itself went off without a hitch. A hundred
dead. But no German property damaged.’ Each of these five sentences was untrue, as
will be seen. Goebbels continued: ‘With minor alterations the Führer authorizes my
decree re: breaking off the Aktionen. I issue it immediately through the press. The
Führer wants to proceed to very harsh measures against the Jews. They must repair
their shops themselves. The insurance companies will pay them nothing. Then the
Führer wants Jewish businesses gradually expropriated and their owners compensated
with paper which we can [word illegible: devalue?] at any time. Meanwhile people
are starting with their own Aktionen. I issue appropriate secret decrees. We’re
waiting to see the repercussions abroad. For the time being there is silence there. But
the hullabaloo will come.’ Despite the toughing-out tone of these entries, there are
more than enough hints that Goebbels was deeply concerned by the extent of the
pogrom and its effect on foreign opinion; and that he had hastily thrown everything
into reverse. He hoped, he wrote, that the Judenaktion was over for the time being—
‘Provided there aren’t any sequels,’ he added with ill-concealed nervousness. But his
troubles were just beginning.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 499
I speak on the phone with Heyderich [sic]. The police bulletin from the entire
Reich conforms with my own information. Order has been restored everywhere.
Only in Bremen have there been ugly excesses. But they submerge from view in
the overall Aktion. I arrange with Heyderich how the party and police are to cooperate
on this.
Work on until evening. Reports come in from Berlin about really serious
antisemitic outbreaks there. The public has taken over. But now there really must
be an end to it. I have appropriate directives issued to the police and party.
Signing as the party’s national director of propaganda, Goebbels issued a confidential
‘communiqué’ to all gau propaganda officials. It specifically alluded to his earlier
orders (which are missing from the archives): ‘I refer,’ it began, ‘to my today’s announcement
re ending the anti-Jewish demos and Aktionen.’
Together with the police, all gau HQs are to take all due steps to make good the
demolished Jewish shops in the shortest possible time at the expense of their
Jewish owners.
He gave notice that an ordinance would follow voiding the liability of insurance
companies to pay out on Jewish claims. ‘Moreover a series of measures will shortly
be enacted against the Jews…’ Most significant was the document’s last paragraph:
‘The anti-Jewish Aktionen must now be called off with the same rapidity which which
they were launched. They have served their desired and anticipated purpose.’53 It is
worth remarking that Goebbels felt comfortable issuing orders to both other gauleiters
and police.54
That evening Hitler received four hundred leading pressmen in the Führer Building
and delivered an extraordinary secret speech to them. He made no mention of
the pogrom, and no secret of his admiration for Dr Goebbels’ propaganda triumphs.55
Goebbels sat up until midnight listening to Hitler debating with the journalists, then
‘had to’ leave, as he put it, for Berlin. The foreign radio stations were now full of the
pogrom. Things were getting out of hand. ‘I assume full authority for Berlin,’ he
500 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
wrote. ‘At such times of crisis, one man must take charge.’56 Hitler stayed in Munich,
perhaps keeping as much distance as possible from Dr Goebbels.
WERNER Naumann, who travelled back to Berlin with the minister, would state that
Goebbels fulminated with suppressed anger at the extent of the pogrom and issued a
public dressing down to his deputies Görlitzer (in the Berlin gau) and Wächter (in
the Reichspropagandaleitung, the party’s propaganda HQ) for the synagogue fires
when they met him on the railroad platform early on November 11.57 Given the
content of Goebbels diary—as he and Wächter knew, he himself had ordered the
synagogues destroyed—this scene displays nothing but his utter cynicism.
He drove straight out to Schwanenwerder for Magda’s birthday. The broken glass
had been swept away, the shattered store fronts were already boarded up. ‘In Berlin,’
he recorded, ‘everything has remained calm during the night.’ With further breathtaking
cynicism he took the credit with his radio broadcast. ‘The Jews,’ he added,
‘ought to be downright grateful to me.’58
Rattled by the mounting global outrage over the pogrom, he called one hundred
and fifty foreign journalists into his ministry at two-thirty P.M . The atmosphere was
icy. ‘Explained the whole thing to them,’ he told his diary; but the journalists found
him pasty, haggard, and ill at ease. ‘You can’t blame me for what happened,’ he said.
‘Why, I was in Munich…’59 He claimed that the Reich frowned upon such ‘spontaneous’
demonstrations—but that the wrath of the people this time had been too
great to contain, and that the police could scarcely open fire on crowds with whom
th
ey sympathised. Shrugging off any personal responsibility he scoffed: ‘If I, Dr
Goebbels, had organised the demonstration, the result would have been very different.’
To his listeners he seemed unconvincing, self-contradictory, and confused.60 (A
few days later the foreign press corps howled with glee when Louis Lochner told a
departing colleague, ‘I think you will agree that our efficient secretary managed to
organize a very fine spontaneous demonstration for you’.61) Still unashamed, Goebbels
drafted together with Hans Hinkel, head of the Jewish desk at his ministry, petty and
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 501
repressive ordinances denying Jews access to all places of public entertainment henceforth.
‘This takes the whole question a great step forward,’ he congratulated himself.
WHILE Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop earned grudging praise for his handling of
the protests abroad62, Dr Goebbels found himself a pariah in official Berlin. He had to
seize and suppress all the foreign newspapers for several days.63 Lutze entered in his
diary: ‘Much wailing provoked abroad, but even at home opinions sharply diverge.’64
Rosenberg, who detected Goebbels’ hand and no other behind the pogrom, shrewdly
put the cost to the German economy at roughly two years’ Winter Relief.65 Goebbels
however would brag that he had proved that the Jews could be eliminated from the
economy, whatever Funk said to the contrary.66 ‘Goebbels,’ wrote one German diplomat,
‘has seldom found less credibility than for his claim that a “spontaneous outburst
of public rage” led to the violence.’ Hess confirmed that in his view Goebbels
was alone to blame.67 He ordered the Gestapo and the party’s courts to delve into
the origins of the night’s violence and turn the culprits over to the public prosecutors.
68 A top Nazi official advised Hess that there was ‘nationwide antipathy to
Goebbels.’69 Heydrich also blamed him. Himmler was furious that Goebbels had
issued orders to his police force.70 ‘The order was given by the Propaganda Directorate
[RPL, i.e. Goebbels wearing his Party hat],’ minuted Himmler privately, ‘and I
suspect that Goebbels, in his craving for power, which I noticed long ago, and also in
his empty-headedness, started this action just at a time when the foreign political
situation is very grave… When I asked the Führer about it, I had the impression that
he did not know anything about these events.’71 Many of Goebbels’ colleagues wondered
if he were going mad. ‘Is Goebbels losing touch with reality?’ speculated one
minister.72
Rosenberg’s damage estimate, a hundred million marks, was well short of the true
cost of Goebbels’ folly. The reality was that German insurance companies would have
to pay out for the senseless damage, since most of the destroyed buildings were
German-owned; even the plundered stocks were often German-owned, and merely
sold by the Jews on commission. On November 11 Göring told all the other gauleiters
502 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
that he would not tolerate any recurrences. He praised Karl Kaufmann and the others
who had abstained from the public violence, and said he was going to insist that
Hitler get rid of Goebbels.
At a cabinet level conference held the next morning at the air ministry building,
Field Marshal Göring roared at Goebbels: ‘What the Public needs is a bit more Enlightenment!’
—an allusion to Goebbels’ full title.73 Repairing the plate-glass windows
alone would cost Germany nearly five million marks in scarce foreign currency.
74 Goebbels afterwards recorded, ‘Heated arguments about the situation. I hold
out for a radical viewpoint. Funk a bit weak and wobbly.’ They agreed to levy a
billion-mark ($250 million) collective fine on the Jewish community for Rath’s murder,
and to take the remaining steps necessary to exclude the Jews from the German
economy.75 With once again less than total honesty Goebbels’ diary continued, ‘I am
cooperating splendidly with Göring. He’s going to crack down on them too. The
radical line has won.’ After drafting a strongly worded communiqué he commented
for the nth time, ‘This is one corpse that’s going to cost the Jews a packet.’76
He was unrepentant. Interviewed by Reuter’s chief correspondent Gordon Young
that day he dismissed the pogrom as the natural symptom of an infection assailing the
body of every nation. It was Germany’s internal affair. As for the billion-mark fine,
he said that the Jews’ assets in Germany alone were eight times that figure. Future
harmony would depend on their accepting their status in the Reich—‘namely that of
a foreign race whom we recognize to be antagonistic to the German people.’ He
emphasized that the foreign Jews now unleashing a gigantic campaign against Germany
were rendering their fellow Jews in Germany a grave disservice.77
Göring’s criticism had however sunk in. In working class Wedding on the thirteenth
Goebbels warned the proletariat in stern language to abstain from further
Aktionen which would henceforth only damage their own economy.78 The wider damage
had however already been done. Washington recalled the American ambassador.79
Foreign diplomats reported that Goebbels now outranked both Ribbentrop and
Himmler in unpopularity.80 This was not his own view. After rattling a Winter Relief
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 503
collecting box outside the Hotel Adlon he recorded for posterity, ‘I am very happy
that the public loves me so much.’81
LATE on November 15, 1938 Hitler finally returned to Berlin.82 ‘He’s in fine fettle,’
found Goebbels. ‘Sharply against the Jews. Thoroughly endorses my, and our, policies.’
83 (A revealing self-correction—crossing out the original possessive adjective,
my, would have been too obvious.)
All speculation among his fellow ministers about Goebbels’ future was however
now dispelled: In a public display of support Hitler escorted him to the formal reopening
of the rebuilt Schiller Theatre that evening, invited Goebbels and Magda to
share his box, and stayed the night at Schwanenwerder with them.84 They all talked
until nearly three A.M. (Goebbels then barneyed for five more hours with Magda.)
Hitler stayed over at their villa all the next day, conferring with his generals and
ministers about the threat that Prague still posed.85
Thus the public were to believe that Goebbels still enjoyed Hitler’s favour. He
resumed work on ‘Hitler the Man,’ his doomed biography. For an hour or two Hitler
frolicked with the Goebbels children. ‘All great plans are forged in ones youth,’ he
told their chastened but grateful father before leaving for Vom Rath’s state funeral in
Düsseldorf, ‘because you still have an imagination then.’
‘I found that too,’ remarked Goebbels in his diary.86
For a while, he believed himself immortal again.
1
Goebbels himself admitted two months later that he had been on the verge of a nervous
breakdown: diary, Jan 17, 1939.
2 Unpubl. diary, Oct 27, 29, 1938. The unpubl. fragments of JG’s diary from Oct 26, 1938
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 82
