there.47 Although he secretly enjoyed watching American movies like Walt
Disney’s ‘Snow White’ with his family, he forbade their general release both to save
foreign currency and to get his own back for the American Jewish boycott on Germany’s
films.48 He assiduously pandered to Hitler’s lowbrow film tastes, giving him
eighteen Mickey Mouse cartoons for Christmas 1937.49 Hitler’s demanded a copy of
the Sherlock Holmes thriller ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ as a permanent loan to
his film library.50 Hitler’s obiter dicta on films had the force of law even for Goebbels.
‘Tarzan’ was bad, ‘Woman at the Wheel’ was very bad; and he walked right out of
‘Madame Dubarry.’51 Goebbels intervened at every level of film production, personally
editing ‘In the name of the People’ and the latest Veit Harlan movie ‘Immortal
Heart’, and ordering key scenes of ‘Hotel Sacher’ shot again.52 He put sound financial
brains in charge of the major studios, with capable artistic directors like Emil Jannings
at Ufa, Demandowsky at Tobis, Hans Schweikart at Bavaria, Karl Hartl at Tobis-Sascha,
516 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
and Alfred Greven, a world war fighter pilot, at Terra.53 (It was around Greven that
his next major personal crisis would revolve.)
UPSET by the estrangement from Magda and preoccupied with the financial crisis that
he has inflicted on himself by his extravagant new plans for Lanke, Goebbels broods
far into the spring of 1939.
Max Amann has invited him to write an article each week for the Völkischer Beobachter.
Putting on his eye-glasses, he dictates an effortless diatribe against the United States.54
Brilliantly composed and elegantly argued these articles would flow like a river of
strychnine over the next five years. Usually he hit upon their titles before actually
writing the contents.55 The articles betrayed his new-found mistrust of the British, in
line with Hitler’s reluctant acceptance that war with Britain was now inevitable. He
had never liked Eden or Churchill; when King George VI spoke in Parliament, the
flawless orator Goebbels mocked the monarch’s stutter and ordered his specialists to
scour the murkier annals of the British empire for material.56 He attacked London’s
unhelpful role in Spain and he painted a vicious picture of Britain’s morality.57 He did
not doubt, he wrote, that the British would defend their way of life to the utmost—
they would fight to the last Frenchman, the last Russian, and the last American. if
need be.58 He predicted that a time would come when, throwing objectivity to the
winds, the BBC would rake together all the old atrocity stories and serve them up
again against Nazi Germany.59
NEITHER he nor Hitler knew for sure what to do next. Opening the Sudeten election
campaign at Reichenberg on November 19 Goebbels had said, ‘When one has the
feeling that the time is ripe, that the Goddess of History is descending on Earth, and
that the hem of her mantle is touching mankind, then responsible men must have the
courage to grasp the hem and not let go.‘60 For a few days the possibility of regaining
Memel, Germany’s ancient port on the Baltic, from Lithuanian control again surfaced.
61 Goebbels damped down speculation.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 517
At the end of January Hitler spoke to the Reichstag and warned the international
Jewish community against provoking a new world war.62 He told Goebbels that he
planned to think over his next moves at the Berghof. ‘Perhaps,’ speculated Goebbels,
‘it’s the Czechs’ turn again.’63 Going for the Ukraine next would require Polish complicity.
At lunch two days later Hitler was still preoccupied with foreign policy decisions.
‘He is hatching new plans again,’ observed Goebbels. ‘A real Napoleon!’64
Goebbels headlined his next article, ‘Is war in sight?’ In it he fulminated against the
British News Chronicle—he shortly expelled its Berlin correspondent Ian Colvin. He
railed at the communists in New York, at the Times correspondent in Washington, at
President Roosevelt, and at the BBC’s German service. Germany, he insisted, desired
nothing but peace.65 The Völkischer Beobachter article appeared on February 25,
the Nazi party’s anniversary. In Munich for the celebrations, he rasped at the two
henpecking wives of other ministers, ‘There’s so much talk about me… But people
are going to have to let me live my life my own way. Perhaps the Führer might have
considered that back in 1924, and I’d have picked a different party then!’66
‘Until 1933,’ decided Rosenberg, ‘he spattered his venom all over Isidor Weiss.
With him gone the squirting began to besmirch our own clean vests.’ Goebbels tried
hard to restore his dented image over the coming year. On the other side of town,
Magda let down her hair, modernized her hairstyle, wore make-up, partied, and
drank.67 Goebbels importuned her by phone to join him at the occasional official
function, but she rarely did. Early in March he noted without comment that she busy
getting ready for a trip to Italy.68 Albert Speer had invited her, travelling under an
assumed name, to join several other couples including Hitler’s surgeon Karl Brandt
touring southern Italy and Sicily, and they left Berlin on the evening of March 9.
THE very next day the Nazis’ months of subversion in Slovakia paid off. For weeks
since Munich Hitler’s agents had been fomenting discord there. Slovakia declared
herself independent from Prague. On the tenth Prague sent in troops to arrest the
Slovak prime minister. This was the opportunity Hitler wanted, to ‘solve the problem
we left half-solved in October,’ as Goebbels put it. Hitler sprang into action and
518 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
sent for Goebbels at midday followed by Ribbentrop and Keitel soon after. The decision
was to march in on Wednesday the fifteenth, smash the whole hybrid Czech
state, and seize Prague. ‘Our frontier must extend to the Carpathians,’ Goebbels
penned into his (hitherto unpublished) diaries: ‘The Ides of March.’
We fix all the details already. We are after all well versed in this now. I recall
Berndt and Böhmer [domestic and foreign press department heads] from leave…
We’re all very pleased, even Ribbentrop. The Führer shouts with joy. This is going
to be a pushover. We’ll start broadcasting Slovakian bulletins from our [black]
Vienna transmitter. I’ll turn the volume up over the next three days full blast…
In the afternoon I work out the battle plan on my own. I think it’s going to be
another masterpiece of strategy and diplomacy.
Late in the afternoon over to the Führer again. We infer from one report that
before its arrest the Tiso regime appealed in despair to the German government.
The actual text can always be obtained later. The Führer says, and rightly so, that
you can’t make history with lawyers. You’ve got to have heart, head, and courage
—just what lawyers lack. In the evening, at my suggestion, the Führer visits
the People’s Theatre to put up a facade.
Afterwards he sat sipping tea with Hitler until four A.M. in the artistes’ club—‘We
have our alibi,’ wrote Goebbels, ignoring the wor
d’s criminal connotations. Upsetting
Hitler’s cynical plot, the Slovak leader Father Tiso refused to sign the appeal for
German help that Hitler had sent him. The steam was going out of the plan. ‘We’re
going to have to help it along a bit,’ observed Goebbels. ‘The balloon’s got to go up.
We’ll find a cause.’69 Next day, March 11, began with bad news—that Prague had
restored Tiso to office; this proved wrong, and Goebbels sighed with relief. ‘Our
operation is running according to timetable,’ noted Goebbels. ‘Abroad, nobody’s
spotted anything.’ Berndt reported in, and Goebbels jokingly appointed the thickset,
burly Nazi propagandist his ‘Reich Rumourmonger.’ It was the Sudeten crisis all over
again.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 519
Directives to the press: stir things up, but don’t let the cat right out of the bag…
Lunch with the Führer. We talk things over. Everything still pretty confused. Clashes
are being provoked. If Germans are mixed up in them we’ll raise merry hell. Otherwise
keep everything simmering. On Monday and Tuesday full blast. Then on Wednesday
the balloon can go up.
That evening he viewed several films, including ‘The Sweetheart,’ starring Lida
Baarova, a ‘wonderful, poetic and moving love story’ which deeply upset him; he
drove out to Lanke to sleep it off amidst the snow and ice of a winter that had suddenly
arrived.70 (He had not seen Lida since, allegedly, she had suddenly materialized
before him, mischievously disguised in a wig, at a Winter Relief collection.71) The
news during the night from Bratislava, Slovakia’s capital, was distressingly calm. With
the activists in jail, the momentum had gone. ‘The attempt to whip things up with
our S.S. has only partly succeeded. It looks as if Slovakia’s not playing along,’ noted
Goebbels in disappointment. Moreover Prague too was refusing to be provoked this
time. ‘So we’re going to make history there ourselves,’ noted Goebbels. ‘But that
will be very difficult. And we’ve got to have it all ready by Wednesday.’ He discussed
the psychological aspects with Hitler at midday on the twelfth; they decided to keep
the crisis out of the editorials, the press must wear an impenetrable mask until Wednesday,
the day itself. ‘If only we had a permit,’ lamented Goebbels, ‘i.e. an appeal for aid
or military intervention. That would make it all so simple.’ All day long the messengers
scurried between his ministry and Hitler’s chancellery, while the Berlin public
had not an inkling of what was brewing.72
After another ‘alibi’ visit to an operetta, Goebbels and Hitler stayed up until three
A.M. talking foreign policy with Ribbentrop:
He takes the view [recorded Goebbels a few hours later, referring to Ribbentrop] that
there’s bound to be a conflict with Britain later. The Führer is preparing for it, but
he does not consider it inevitable. Ribbentrop displays no tactical flexibility over
520 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
this. He is intransigent and to that extent he lies rather athwart our lines. But the
Führer corrects him. There is a heated argument…73
Still the foreign press acted as though nothing was happening. Early next morning,
Tuesday March 13, Hitler sent for Goebbels to agree leaflets for the invasion. While
Goebbels, back at his ministry, drafted the wording —‘any resistance will be bloodily
put down’—his children came for half an hour to roister around, an idyll on the
irony of which he himself commented. That afternoon Germany’s newspapers suddenly
opened fire, roaring with one voice a broadside of rage at Prague. ‘Berndt … is
the best man for such jobs,’ Goebbels recognized. ‘Now the cat is out of the bag.’
London and Paris expressed themselves disinterested.
Over to the Führer in the evening. He has received Tiso. Explained to him that
Slovakia’s historic hour has come. If they don’t act they’ll be swallowed up by
Hungary. He is to think it over and go back to Bratislava. No revolutions, it must
all be constitutional and above board. Not that we expect very much from him.
But that doesn’t matter now.
The Führer goes over his plan once more. Within five days the whole operation
will be over. On the first day we’ll already be in Prague. Our planes within two
hours in fact. I think we’ll pull it off without significant bloodshed. And then the
Führer intends to take a lengthy political breather. Amen! I can’t believe it, it’s
too good to be true.74
The next morning, March 14, brought what Goebbels called ‘a long day of heated
fighting.’ Tiso persuaded his Slovak parliament to declare independence from Prague,
but ‘not, as at first reported, with an appeal to Berlin for aid.’ The Slovaks wanted no
German troops. Hungary began to retrieve frontier villages she has lost in 1919.
’Our press,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘rampages just like last September.’ London and Paris
still kept well out: ‘Once bitten, twice shy!’ was Goebbels’ assessment. He had printed
twenty-five million leaflets overnight, and now briefed the press on what was coming.
At midday Hitler discussed with him the new statute for Bohemia and Moravia,
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 521
as Prague’s territories would be styled. (‘We order that the name Czechoslovakia is
not to be used any more,’ noted Goebbels, ordering swift research conducted into
Germany’s historic claim to these regions. ‘We shall speak of Bohemia and Moravia
as ancient German territories.’)
They would be left largely to govern themselves. ‘The Czechs will not be germanized,
but will enjoy the protection of the Reich’s military, foreign, and economic
policies.’ Hitler told him the Wehrmacht would cross the frontier at six A.M. No
sooner had Goebbels predicted that the Czechs would come cap in hand, than they
did just that. Emil Hacha, Benes’ successor, arranged to come by special train to
Berlin immediately. ‘Meanwhile we have the first troops move into Czech territory.
So Hacha can see what’s what.’ S.S. units stealthily crossed into Moravian Ostrau and
Witkowitz, to prevent the Poles seizing the steel mills there; resistance in two places
was quickly broken. Goebbels found Hitler in a state of calm exhilaration, and determined
to gain a lengthy respite after this new Aktion. Hacha arrived with his foreign
minister from Prague the evening. ‘The Führer,’ recorded his admiring propaganda
minister, ‘has them wait until midnight, slowly and surely wearing them out. That’s
what they did with us at Versailles. The tried and tested methods of political tactics.’
The tension mounts as we all wait for the outcome of their talks… Once Hacha
collapses in a faint, then they surrender all down the line. They accept more than
we ever dreamed possible. And unconditionally. Order their own troops not to
offer any resistance.
Hitler dictated a proclamation, which Goebbels himself read out over the microphones
to a sleeping Germany at six A.M.75 When he awoke three hours later Hitler
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