Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death
Page 90
or his wife.8
Intensifying his propaganda attack on Britain, he ordered editors not to pull their
punches: for example, they must harp on the August 1915 incident when the British
warship Baralong had sunk the Kaiser’s submarine U–27, then murdered its survivors
one by one.9
Analysis of these secret directives shows that the propaganda attack on Poland was
still developing in carefully planned stages. On August 1 the national press was ordered
to display reserve in discussing the Polish army officers infiltrated into Danzig
disguised as customs officials.10 Only on the seventh did the Germany press agency
DNB issue a full statement.11 Commenting on the jitters spreading abroad, Goebbels
congratulated his editors.12 His propaganda weapon was now an integral part of Hitler’s
military build-up. He told economics minister Walter Funk, who had been badgering
Hitler to reduce the foreign currency allocated to Goebbels, to leave the sum
unchanged.13
HITLER had gone down to the Berghof after Bayreuth, and Goebbels attended none of
his historic conferences during August. He spent the second week of August in Venice
with Magda and several colleagues, returning a visit made by his Italian counter-
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 547
part Dino Alfieri.14 There survives a letter from Magda’s secretary, her childhood
friend Wilma Freybe, to Goebbels’ adjutant: the Frau Reichsminister had received
an invitation to the coming Nuremberg party rally, her first in two years. Did the
minister want her to accept?15 With Alfieri, he worked on an agreement on collaboration
between their two countries’ media, as well as film and radio.16
Clad in summer whites, he and Magda lazed around in gondolas, scudded across
the Adriatic in torpedo boats, visited art galleries, inspected a Venetian glass factory,
sunned themselves on the beaches, and generally acted as man and wife again—
‘How long it is since I last had that!’17 Overwhelmed by the Arabian Nights atmosphere
of Venice, he took little note of the developing crisis, except for an insolent
speech on Danzig by the Polish president (‘so it will soon be time.’)18 He learned that
Ciano was bound for the Berghof (‘but it’s not time yet.’)19
On August 8 he ordered Polish terror incidents still relegated to Page Two, with
Polish threats against Germany promoted to Page One.20 When Kurier Polski declaimed
‘Germany must be destroyed,’ the ministry ordered editors to headline this quotation
on their front page.21 On the eleventh Hitler ordered the volume of the anti-
Polish propaganda turned up to eighty percent.22 That day Goebbels ordered Polish
terrorist incidents moved onto Page One. ‘The display is not as yet to exceed two
columns however… Newspapers must take care,’ he defined, explaining the precise
propaganda dosage, ‘not to exhaust all their arguments and vocabulary prematurely.’23
Nobody was to mention territorial claims.24 On the fifteenth they flew back to Berlin,
picking up the foreign newspapers in Munich on the way. He observed with
satisfaction that the British and French were in disarray and relieved by rumours of
German peace initiatives.25 ‘It’s now time,’ he dictated the next day, ‘for the German
press to abandon its previous reserve.’26 News items about Polish terror acts were to
be well displayed but not splashed so sensationally that people ‘might conclude that a
decisive event is imminent.’27
At six P.M. on August 15 he and his family moved back into his expensively (3·2
million marks, or three-quarters of a million dollars) rebuilt official residence. The
old palace had been demolished in June 1938. To the 164 workmen gathered at the
548 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
topping-out ceremony in January 1939 his office chief, the blindly submissive Werner
Naumann, had explained that the ‘leading men and ministers from around the world’
would be coming to this official residence, hence the luxurious appointments: there
was a marble-galleried banqueting hall at ground level; all the rooms, except for the
marbled bathrooms, were panelled in costly walnut, mahogany, rosewood, and cherry.
Cost-cutting was confined to the servants’ quarters, where the eighteen household
staff were allowed three primitive Volksempfänger radio sets and one bath-tub between
them.28 It was not yet ready, but it was home. Goebbels grimly prayed that the
house would bring them both more happiness than over the last year.
After supper he inspected the house, and found a lot to curse his architect Paul
Baumgarten for. A stickler for detail, he dictated five pages of complaints: a picture
of a church in his study was to be replaced by one of the Führer; and the up-market
interior decorators United Workshops were to remake his desk, chair, and upholstery
in a red that would match the curtains and carpet.29 He was moreover having
serious problems financing the luxurious new mansion taking shape on the other
side of the lake at Lanke.30 Discussing his personal finances with Dr Karl Ott, his
chief of administration, he admitted that they were catastrophic: ‘I’ve got to find
some way out.’31
‘The war,’ he wrote on August 17, ‘is now expected with a degree of fatalism. It
would almost take a miracle to avoid it.’ Hitler was lurking down at the Berghof, but
had evidently not yet notified Goebbels because although he wrote that day ‘The air
is full of tension. One spark and the powder keg goes sky-high,’ the next day he
began drafting his speeches for the Nuremberg party rally still scheduled to be held
in September.32
On August 18 the ministry instructed editors to adopt a typical Goebbels device,
namely to personalize their attack; in this case they were to blame the Polish governor
of eastern upper Silesia personally for the ‘barbaric terror’ wave.33 While newspapers
were encouraged to carry interviews with German refugees even these were
to be ‘deliberately understated’.34 The war of nerves had begun for him quite literally;
he spent that night and all next day doubled up in bed with painful stomach
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 549
cramps (perhaps of emotional origin?) as he brooded on his own financial crisis and
his country slithering toward war.35 During the day a phone call from the Berghof
instructed him to turn up the propaganda volume to full blast by Tuesday the twentysecond.
‘So the balloon can go up then,’ concluded Goebbels, not liking it at all.36
The very regimentation of this press coverage produced a ghastly sense of déja vu
in foreign diplomats as no doubt Hitler intended. The astute American military attaché
observed on the twenty-first that with German blood now flowing, German refugees
fleeing, and German families being attacked by brutish Polish mobs, Goebbels
had reached the same stage as in the last week of September 1938: only the place
names and the enemy were different.37
ALL of Goebbels’ previous problems paled beside the psychological problem of presenting
to his public the totally unexpected news that Hitler and Stalin were doing a
deal.
Previous indicators during July had been so minute that a seismograph would not
have detected them. On July 8 Hitler had told Goebbels that he no longer expected
London and Moscow to reach an agreement. ‘That leaves the way open for us,’
Goebbels had deduced. ‘Stalin doesn’t want either a won or a lost war. In either case
he’d be history.’38 He asked editors not to express glee at the stalling of the Anglo-
French negotiations in Moscow39; not to comment on differences emerging between
Moscow and Tokyo40; and not to pick up foreign press reports that Poland was making
airfields available to the Soviet airforce.41 Newspapers were told to ignore the
German–Soviet trade talks.42 Totally unexpectedly the news came on August 20 that
Berlin had signed a new trade agreement with Moscow: ‘How times change,’ was
Goebbels’ only comment, cautious enough; he instructed editors to restrict the news
to one column on Page One, with commentaries only of an economic nature.43
At the government press conference on August 21, he proudly noted, he ‘poured
oil on the flames. But still kept some in reserve.’ General Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the
High Command, told him that militarily everything was ready for the attack on Poland.
The Germans had almost 1·5 million men under arms. It would take a miracle
550 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
to avoid war, decided Goebbels. Overwhelmed by his own preparations, he had no
time to start constructing his speech for Nuremberg. Studying the wiretap intercepts,
he concluded that blind panic was spreading in the enemy camp.44 That evening
Goebbels heard the news of the Nazi-Soviet pact, and that his arch rival Ribbentrop,
triumphant, would be signing the historic document two days later, August 23, in
Moscow. ‘That really is something!’ gasped Goebbels. ‘That creates a whole new
situation. We’re home and dry. Now we can sleep a bit more peacefully again.’45
The news made headlines around the world. Goebbels was in a daze; it was like
living in an eternal kaleidoscope: no sooner did he think he had seen it all, than there
was a totally new constellation. War still seemed likely, but with Poland’s only viable
ally now gone the conclusion seemed foregone. Goebbels and his staff threw themselves
into the final war preparations. His first press directive the next morning spoke
of a ‘sensational turning point’ in their relations with Russia; then caution prevailed
and his next directive, while allowing editors to remark upon the ideological differences
separating Berlin and Moscow, forbade them to quote even foreign commentaries
on the probable consequences. ‘Any observations must be sober and objective
in tenor,’ his third directive that day added, ‘devoid of either triumph or
Schadenfreude.’46
The next telephone intercepts revealed ‘utter despair’ in the enemy camp.47 Out in
Lanke, where he and Magda were inspecting building operations, he received a phone
call from Hitler in euphoric mood. Goebbels congratulated him on his master stroke.48
That day Hitler had summoned his generals in mufti to the Berghof to hear his plan
to attack Poland in four days’ time, and the astonishing news of the coming nonaggression
pact with Russia.49
Early the next day, August 23, 1939, before flying down to the Berghof, Goebbels
addressed the seemingly impossible problem of justifying Hitler’s new move. Editors
were reminded that their readers would not understand it if they suddenly
sprouted ‘flowery and jubilant articles’ about German-Soviet friendship. Journalists
should gradually warm to the pact to camouflage its opportunistic nature.50
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 551
The Führer [Goebbels told his diary] is in conference with [Sir Nevile]
Henderson. He has brought back a letter from Chamberlain: if Poland is attacked,
this says, Britain will go to war. The Führer gives Henderson a robust response.
Henderson is quite shattered. The Führer dictates a letter of reply to Chamberlain:
if London mobilises, then Germany’s mobilisation will ensue. A stop will be
put to the Polish provocations. This letter’s tone is quite adamant…
The Führer greets me very cordially. He wants me to be with him over the next
few days. In the afternoon he gives me a broad overview of the situation: Poland’s
plight is desperate. We shall attack her at the first possible opportunity. The Polish
state must be smashed just like the Czech. It won’t take much effort. More difficult
is the question whether the west will intervene. At present one can’t say. It depends.
London is talking tougher than in September 1938. So we’re going to have
to box cunning. At present Britain probably doesn’t want war. But she can’t lose
face…
Paris is holding back more and dodging the issue. But there too we can’t say
anything hard and fast…
Italy isn’t keen but she’ll probably go along with us. She’s hardly got any choice.
Japan has missed the bus. How often the Führer has urged them to join the military
alliance, even telling them he’d have to join forces with Moscow otherwise…
Now Japan is pretty isolated.
Hitler described to Goebbels the letters he had exchanged with Stalin, and the
resulting deal on eastern Europe, with the Baltic states and Poland being split between
Berlin and Moscow.51 ‘The question of bolshevism,’ noted Goebbels, ‘is for the
time being of lesser importance.’ It was a throwaway line of breathtaking brevity
considering all that he had fought against for fifteen years. As they waited for word
from Ribbentrop in Moscow, Hitler speculated that Chamberlain might even resign.
By phone, Ribbentrop asked if the Russians might have the ports of Libau and Windau:
‘The Führer approves this,’ observed Goebbels. They whiled away the hours watch-
552 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
ing a movie, until the communiqué finally came through from Moscow. At one A.M.
Poland’s fate was sealed. They sat up until four A.M. examining the implications.
It was dawn when Goebbels returned to his quarters—still in the humble guesthouse
to which Hitler had relegated him.52 Probably Hitler had by now told him that
he had confidently scheduled the attack on Poland to begin at dawn on Saturday the
twenty-sixth.
On the twenty-fourth (Thursday) both men agreed that it was surprising that there
had been so little echo from the world’s press to the Moscow signing. Goebbels lifted
the ban on editors speculating on what the new pact would mean for Poland: ‘You
can indicate that the purpose of this pact is to enable Germany and Russia alone to
settle all outstanding problems in the Lebensraum between them, i.e., in eastern
Europe.’53 A second directive that day probably reflected Hitler’s decision to strike in
two days’ time. Editors were now invited to comment on the speed with which the
Moscow pact had been signed. ‘Newspapers are permitted to display a degree of
Schadenfreude, though not in their editorial columns.’54 Editors were still not to go
into specifics; reports about Polish mobilisation and atrocities, and about Danzig,