marks upon her and invites her out one day—she assumes, to a movie. His car picks
her up after dark near the Kroll opera house. Miss U. nervously has her fiancé follow,
but Goebbels’ supercharged Mercedes soon shakes him off. Rach drives them out to
Lanke. A cold buffet is waiting inside the villa. Seeing the piano, she mentions that
she can play. He says that two can play, but when it appears that he has a different
tune in mind she fends him off vigorously. Goebbels snaps: ‘You must know whom
you’re dealing with. I’m one of the dozen most important men in Europe!’ He drives
her back to Berlin in a cold fury, and instructs Rach to halt before the end of the
autobahn. ‘The lady is alighting here,’ he instructs.3 This victim immediately places
herself at Magda’s disposal.4
By early December 1938 the three-month probationary period is already forgotten.
Magda tells her father, now a wealthy industrialist in Duisburg, she has decided
to leave Goebbels for good—perhaps even to emigrate. Her father welcomes her
decision. Referring to the ‘prevailing tense circumstances,’ he assures her: ‘Given
510 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
recent events I agree more than ever with the decisions you tell me of. Be of good
heart, my child. Your father has now grown even larger and more independent and
you will always find with him, whether at home or abroad, a secure and financially
adequate refuge for yourself and your children.’5
Goebbels is almost inured to these agonies. After speaking with Magda (‘the same
old melody’) he falls seriously ill.6 Stomach X-rays reveal no organic disorder. The
doctors diagnose nervous complications. He takes to his bed, and for the first time in
fifteen years he writes no diary for two weeks.7 Professor Sauerbruch orders him
into the La Charité hospital. Suspecting him of malingering, Magda makes a beeline
for the Führer with fresh complaints about his behaviour. When she visits the hospital
it is just to bespatter him with more matrimonial bile. It is a fair assumption that
there is a link between these reproaches and the anonymous large bouquet that arrives
for him. On his discharge he spends a lonesome Christmas at his ‘citadel’; his
family are next door—they leave him lying there alone the whole evening. When
Staatssekretär Hanke visits on official business, it is a frosty affair. A sympathetic
letter from Funk cheers him up. Funk is one of the few people he can depend on.
Funk, and the Führer. Hitler invites him down to the Obersalzberg. Before leaving,
Dr Goebbels tries one more approach to Magda, but she launches into more ‘speculations,’
and he rushes off yelping. ‘I don’t know her any more,’ he laments.8
Once again he is relegated to the guest house. ‘I live here in splendid isolation,’ he
wrote, making a virtue out of his humiliation. Hitler invites him up to the Berghof
for some blunt talking. ‘I shall pass over the details here,’ writes Goebbels bleakly.
The plain speaking continues for four hours the next day. When Hitler leaves for
Berlin Goebbels stays on at the Obersalzberg to convalesce. He is at breaking point.
‘From Berlin,’—he writes Berlin but means Magda—‘I hear not a word. Not that I
want to anyway.’9 ‘It’s just that I can’t sleep at night. Then comes the anger, and the
rage, and the hate.’10
Max Amann breaks to him the bad news that Hitler has forbidden publication of
Goebbels’ biography of him. Used only to censoring others, Goebbels finds it a bitter
blow.11 Later he will concede that Hitler was right, the manuscript was just a
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 511
hasty pot-boiler.12 Returning to Berlin on Thursday, January 17, 1939 he realizes: ‘I
am on the verge of a nervous breakdown.’13 Seeing Hitler at midday he talks about
everything other than what’s really on his mind. The next afternoon he ventures out
to Schwanenwerder, ostensibly to see the children; he stays at the citadel. By the
next day he and Magda have reached an unusual agreement, brokered by Hitler.14
Goebbels will sign a document binding him to one year’s good behaviour. Magda
agrees to remain outwardly his wife meanwhile, after which she can divorce him if
she wishes. He may appear at Schwanenwerder only by prior invitation.15 (It is precisely
the kind of matrimonial truce that Goebbels himself had proposed during the
divorce-law discussions in cabinet two years before.16) Hitler offers to act as guarantor.
For two hours the two men stroll around Speer’s new Chancellery building, talking
this irksome affair over. To allow it to consume so much of his time Hitler must
have a monumental patience, or a real and enduring fondness for Magda. Her draft
of the agreement seems very business-like. Hitler runs his eye over it and suggests a
few minor changes. They all sign it at Schwanenwerder on January 22—the only
peace treaty to which Hitler will ever set his name.17 ‘The best thing will be for you
to live like a monk,’ he tells the minister. ‘And you, madam, should live like a nun.’
‘Mein Führer, I have been living like a nun for a year already,’ she retorts. Goebbels
persuades Hitler to write a certain letter to her—it has not survived—and hopes
the affair is closed.18 It has obscured his entire horizon for months.
Their strained marriage is the whisper of all Germany. Scandalized travellers say
he has twenty-three illegitimate children.19 Foreign newspapers report that he has
been dismissed, and that he is to answer charges before a Nazi tribunal about his
private life. They remark on his absence from a dinner for foreign journalists.20 ‘Aggravation
upon aggravation,’ records Goebbels. ‘And I’ve got to swallow hard.’ ‘There’s
no end to the rumours and scuttlebutt,’ he adds the next day. ‘I’m suffering agonies.’
21 An official informs Hanke that even the charwomen are talking about the
minister in the ‘most contemptuous’ terms.22 Himmler tells Rosenberg at this time
that Magda has complained of ‘dozens’ of infidelities by her husband. ‘The women
512 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
are now lining up to dictate affidavits—both for Mrs G. and for the Gestapo—on
how he coerced them,’ says Himmler. ‘I’ve handed some of these statements to the
Führer.’ Unusually well-informed, Himmler adds that in October Magda has given
her husband three months to come to heel; in January the time is up— ‘But,’ interjects
Rosenberg with heavy irony, ‘Goebbels is writing his book about the Führer!
Product of his daily eavesdropping at Hitler’s table.’23
It has taxed even Hitler’s powers of persuasion, reports one major fleeing Germany,
to British officers, to induce Magda to return to the conjugal home.24 Grimly,
she fulfils her new contractual obligations. The photographers capture pictures of
her at the press ball, sitting blank-faced and embittered at her unloved husband’s
side.25
‘GOEBBELS,’ commented Rosenberg most satisfied on February 6, ‘has no friend. Even
his hirelings curse him.’ Some Nazis felt that he had harmed their movement by his
personal behaviour and the crudity of his propaganda. One Hitler Youth leader remarked
that ‘nobody
’ approved of his anti-Jewish measures.26 He had regimented
and punished, censored and sanitized the media to the consistency of a bland brown
pudding, then criticized their lack of individuality. The newsreels were uniformly
dull, featuring their beloved Führer so often that even he complained.27 Lively, thinking
newspapers were suppressed, while Streicher’s loathsome organ Der Stürmer appeared
unmolested.28 Even popular writers like Hans Grimm were called before
him to be screamed at, for not ending letters with ‘Heil Hitler’ and for not attending
the Weimar literary convention: ‘If you don’t toe the line I’ll break you,’ shouted
Goebbels, ‘whatever the wailing from abroad. Just as I broke Furtwängler. I throw
writers like you into concentration camp for four months—and the time after that
they never get out again.’29 He censored the latest dance steps, and found nothing
absurd in erecting enamel plates in dance halls reading ‘Jazz dancing forbidden.’30
Just once he professed to see the funny side of foreign caricatures of himself.31 More
often he reacted viciously. He took the usual steps to neutralize the acid of political
satire. Oblivious of how ludicrous he seemed, he entered pompously in his diary:
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 513
‘Cranked up the prohibition machinery against the Kabarett der Komiker.’32 He expelled
five of its comedians from the chamber of culture, while announcing a joke
contest to prove that the Reich had not lost its sense of humour.33 In March he paid a
surprise visit on the cabaret, found it packed and totally non-political. ‘So it works.
You only need to a firm hand to get your own way.’34
Power had corroded his sense of proportion. He had become more corrupt than
the most gluttonous Jewish magnates of his popular invective. At taxpayer expense
he was yet again remodelling his official residence. It was scheduled for completion
by July 15, 1939. Its household staff of eighteen would be paid for from his ministry’s
secret fund.35 He had installed a private apartment in his ministry. He had the sole
use for life of the villa on the Bogensee lake at Lanke. He owned outright two luxury
properties on the exclusive Schwanenwerder lakeshore. At the nadir of his nervous
breakdown in January 1939 he still found the strength to order work to begin on a
palatial mansion on the far side of the Bogensee, fencing off a total of 3,200 hectares
(eight thousand acres) of woodland in one of Berlin’s favourite beauty spots.36 Together
with Hanke, whose sins he had evidently forgiven, Goebbels paced off the
new site and observed incongruously in his diary, ‘At least I’ll have one place to call
home.’37 His private architect Hugo Bartels promised to have this new refuge ready
for his birthday in October 1939. By May, 129 men were labouring on this new Haus
am Bogensee. Even after the war broke out construction would continue at the same
pace. A letter from Bartels hints at some of the amenities that Goebbels was installing
—including a wine cellar and unheard of luxuries like an air conditioned beer
cellar and a refrigerated pastry cooling table.38 ‘It’s going to be beautiful,’ he wrote
after working on the blueprints, ‘but unfortunately a bit expensive. It’s laid out on a
generous scale, and meant to last a lifetime.’39 The Haus am Bogensee would ultimately
have a small guest house, a private cinema and five bedrooms including separate
rooms for Goebbels and Magda. The architects had provided air conditioning, a
disappearing bar, and a large picture window which sank with a faint whir into the
floor at the touch of a brass button.40 The inventory of furnishings would fill twentyeight
pages of single-spaced typescript.
514 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
The average Berliner probably knew none of this. To ingratiate himself with them
he put on his old trenchcoat on November 28, 1938, and made heavily publicized
visits to slum-dwellings while reporters took down every word for publication in
Angriff two days later. ‘Heil Hitler Mrs B—,’ he exclaimed. ‘Might I look at your
apartment for a moment? … Why does it look so frightful here?’ ‘This man is to have
a new apartment, Wächter! Take this down…’ He allocated two million marks to
slum clearance from the fine levied on the Jews.41
In a raucous speech to Berlin propaganda workers on November 22 he claimed
proof that the Jews had planned the Gustloff and Vom Rath murders long in advance;
and as for the alleged plundering during the pogrom, the reality had been different:
Markgraf, the famous jewellers, had not been plundered at all, he said, but had concealed
its stock in a nearby hotel ‘for safety.’ (The next day he told the same to Hitler,
who laughed out loud.42) When a British member of parliament suggested resettling
Germany’s Jews in Britain, Goebbels maliciously applauded: ‘I expect it will be a
great satisfaction for the British people to assist the much respected Jews from their
tremendous financial resources.’ That was the problem, he noted: everybody wanted
to help the Jews out—but nobody wanted them.43
Goebbels repeated this cruel jibe at a secret ministerial conference a few weeks
later: ‘I am personally convinced,’ the stenographic record quotes him as saying, ‘that
the Jews are an international infection and that they will fight civilized nations until
they themselves control them. They will undermine their culture and everything
else that holds the state together, and they will gnaw at its economy as long as it’s in
the hands of nationalists.’
Obviously [he continued] the danger is less in normal times than in abnormal;
and the most abnormal time in the life of a people is war. Consequently I am
personally convinced that one must not allow the Jews to continue to exist as a
source of infection. One can obviously search for a more humane solution to this
problem, and in time of war one can have recourse to a more inhumane solution;
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 515
but one thing is for sure, there can be no discussion in Germany of the need to get
rid of the Jews as a source of infection.…
It is immaterial how the Jewish problem is actually solved, perhaps by denoting
some global territory later on for the creation of a Jewish state. But it is remarkable
that the states whose public opinion is in favour of the Jews all refuse to
accept our Jews from us. They say they are magnificent pioneers of culture, and
geniuses in economics, diplomacy, philosophy, and poetry, yet the moment we
try to press one of these geniuses upon them, they clamp down their frontiers:
‘No, no! We don’t want them!’ I think it must be unique in the history of the
world, people turning down geniuses.44
Goebbels set up an institute to research the Jewish problem and flood the media
with pseudo-scientific articles.45 ‘We’re gradually crowding the Jews together,’ he
recorded. ‘This will release space for the German workers.’46
LENI Riefenstahl, returning from Hollywood, confirmed that the Jews were everywhere
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 84
