Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death
Page 115
see NYT, Jan 11, 18 (magazine), 23, and Apr 12, 1942.
8 Ursula Backe diary, Dec 29, 1941, recording a phone call from Berndt to Backe.
9 Diary, Dec 12, 1941, Jan 21, 1942.
10 Ibid., Dec 19, 1941.
11 Schirmeister interrogation, May 6, 1946 (NA film M.1270, roll 19); and letter to G
Moltmann, 1959, VfZ, 1964, 13ff.
12 MinConf., Dec 12, 1941.
13 Diary, Jan 23, 1942.—Most of the women vanished into Russian captivity in 1945 and
were not seen again. For the diary of one unnamed 19 year old RMVP secretary from Jan 28,
1942 to 1944 see BA file Kl.Erw.716.
14 Statistics until Jan 20 in MinConf., Feb 4, 1942.
15 JG, ‘Das neue Jahr,’ Das Reich, Jan 4, 1942; cf. Das eherne Herz. Reden und Aufsätze (Munich
1943), 168, and NYT, Jan 3, 1942.
16 Heinrich Heim, table talk, Jan 18–19, 1941 (Genoud papers).
17 Partly unpubl. diary, Jan 20, 1942.
18 Unpubl. diary Jan 21, 21, 1942 (NA film T84, roll 260).
19 Behrend, op. cit., No.21, May 24, 1952.—Schirmeister returned from the eastern
front to RMVP Jan 20; see unpubl. diary, Jan 21, 1942.
20 Diary, Jan 20, 1942.
21 Memorandum on the [Wannsee] conference of Jan 20, 1942 in files of Abt. Inland II,
geh. (Pol. Archiv AA, Final Solution of the Jewish Problem, Serial 1513; NA film T120, roll
780, 372024ff.) Those present included Gauleiter Meyer, Stuckart, Freisler, Bühler, Klopfer,
Kritzinger, ‘Gestapo’-Müller, and Eichmann.
22 Heydrich to Luther et al., Nov 29, 1941 (ibid., 372043; ND: 709–PS).—Author’s
interview of Gutterer, Sep 13, 1992.
23 Hans Frank diary, Dec 16, 1941.
24 Kempner, 185.
25 VB, Munich, Feb 1, 1942.
26 Diary, Jan 21, 1942: the Jews were getting insolent again, particularly in Berlin public
transport. ‘They’ll have to be reined in again; I’m already onto it.’
27 RMVP—ministry of justice correspondence about Schönwald, Dec 1941 (Yivo, G–
72).
28 MinConf., Mar 10, 1942; ordinance of Berlin Jewish Cultural Association on the ban,
with effect from May 1, 1942 (Yivo, G–16).
29 Reich chamber of the press, ordinance of Feb 17, 1942 (Yivo, G–57).
30 W Diewerge, report, Feb 11, 1942 (BA file R.55/39)
31 Unpubl. diary, Feb 18, 1942 (NA film T84, roll 260).
702 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
32 Eichmann papers, 1956 (in the author’s collection).
33 Unpubl. diary, Mar 6, 1942, p.16 (NA film T84, roll 260).
34 Diary, Mar 6, 1942.
35 Because when Heydrich sent the Wannsee conference minutes to Luther at the foreign
ministry on Feb 26, it was date-stamped Mar 2, 1942 (Pol. Archiv AA, Serial 1513; NA film
T120, roll 780, 372023).
36 Diary, Mar 7, 1942, pp.17f.
37 Minutes of conference at RSHA, Mar 6, 1942, on final solution of the Jewish Problem
(Pol. Archiv AA, Serial 1513; NA film T120, roll 780, 371962).— Carstensen was killed as
a fighter pilot at the end of the year (diary, Dec 15, 1942: NA film T84, roll 262)
38 Interrogations of the Reich chancellery’s Gottfried Boley, Sep 14, 15, 1945 (NA film
M.1270, roll 2) and Jun 10, 1947 (M.1019, roll 8); and of the Party Chancellery’s Edinger
Ancker, Jun 11, 1947 (M.1019, roll 3).
39 Staatssekretär Schlegelberger sent his representative’s report to Lammers of the Reich
Chancellery on Mar 12, and described the decisions taken there as ‘for the most part totally
impracticable’ (ND: 4055–PS; USA Exhibit 923; BA file R.22/52).
40 Interrogation of Reich Chancellery’s Dr Hans Ficker, Jun 11, 1947 (NA film M.1019,
roll 17).
41 Schlegelberger’s undated (but spring 1942) minute on Lammer’s reference to Hitler’s
ruling is in BA file R.22/52; although listed in their Staff Evidence Analysis sheet, this page
was removed by American officials at Nuremberg from the exhibit cited above.) —And see
Ficker.—At about the same time JG noted that Hitler was relentless on the Jewish question:
‘The Jews must get out of Europe, if necessary by applying the most brutal means’ (unpubl.
diary, Mar 20, 1942, NA film T84, roll 261.)
42 Diary, Mar 16, 1942, p.5.
43 See Globocnik to Himmler, top secret, Jun 3 (NA film T175, roll 122, 7904) on anti-
Jewish operations in Lublin; and Brack to Himmler, Jun 23, 1942 (ND: NO–205), reporting
that on Bouhler’s instructions he had made men available for ‘special duties’ and that
pursuant to a further request from Globocnik he had detached still more men to the task.
‘Brigadeführer Globocnik holds the view that the entire Jew-Aktion should be executed as
fast as humanly possible in case it runs into a snag half-way through.’ Brack himself argued
for keeping back two or three million able-bodied Jews from the ten millions involved.—
On Globocnik’s relationship with Eichmann see Wisliceny (IfZ, F71/8).
44 Diary, Mar 27, 1942, pp.19–22 (BA file NL.118/42) There is no doubt as to these
pages’ authenticity: the originals are in the Hoover archives’ Goebbels collection; the
microfilm of them (now NA film T84, roll 261) was made in New York in 1947, and the
author also checked the microfiche copy made by the Nazis in 1944, in the Moscow archives
where the microfiches have languished since 1945.
45 Ibid.
46 Tiessler, note dated Mar 28, 1942 (NA film T81, roll 676, 5707)
47 Oven, 48.
48 Unpubl. diary, Jan 22, Feb 21, 1942 (NA film T84, roll 260).
49 Ibid., Jan 31, Feb 1, 8, 1942.
50 Ibid., Feb 1, 1942.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 703
51 Ibid., Feb 2, 3, 5, 8, 1942.
52 Ibid., Apr 30, May 1, 5, 8, 17, 1942.
53 Ibid., May 21, 1942 (NA film T84, roll 262). Oswald, age 33, was killed at Cholm in Feb
1942. Annette Castendyk (daughter of Anka Stalherm), interview, Nov 10, 1991, and letter,
May 20, 1993.
54 MinConf., Jan 29, 1942.
55 Diary, Jan 27; the High Command listed 4,119 cases of typhus in the eastern armies,
causing 685 fatalities (MinConf., Feb 5); the typhus epidemic worsened, with 2,301 new
cases in the first ten days of May (unpubl. diary, May 28, 1942).
56 MinConf., Jan 26, 1942; unpubl. diary, Nov 28, 1941.
57 Diary, Feb 11, 1941.
58 MinConf., Apr 24; he wrote similarly in Das Reich, May 4, 1941.
59 Diary, May 26, 1941.
60 Das Reich, May 4, 1941.
61 Phyllis Moir, I was Winston Churchill’s Private Secretary (New York & Toronto, 1941); diary,
May 3, 1941.
62 MinConf., Feb 19, 1942.
63 Diary, May 7, Jun 13, 1941.
64 Ibid., Jun 18, 1941.
65 Ibid., May 8, 1941.
66 Ibid., May 9, 1941; cf. unpubl. diary, Jan 28, 1942: Churchill was a ‘first-class go-forbroke
gambler,’ the gravedigger of the empire.
67 Diary, Jan 30, 1942.
68 MinConf., Feb 13, 26, 27, 1942.
69 Diary, Feb 13, 1942
70 Unpubl. diary, Feb 14 (NA film T84, roll 267); MinConf., Feb 13, 1942.
71 Ibid., Feb 14, 1942.
72 Diary, Feb 16; MinConf., Feb 16, 1942.
73 Thus OSS-director William B Donovan put it in a memo for Roosevelt, Apr 25, 1942
(FDR Libr., PSF box 165, ‘OSS Reports’).
74 Diary, Mar 20; Bormann diary, Mar 19, 1942.
; 75 Unpubl. diary, Mar 21, 26, 1942.
76 NS-Parteikorrespondenz, Aug 25, 1942 (BDC file, Bömer).
77 Ciano diary, Mar 19, 1942.
78 Diary, Mar 20, 1942.
79 Gutterer, MS (1985) in Lower Saxony provincial archives, Wolfenbüttel, Gutterer papers
(250 N 317), 98f; and interview, Jun 30, 1993. Speer first heard of the Nazi atomic
bomb project at a conference in the Harnack House in June: see Otto Hahn diary, Jun 4;
Milch diary, Jun 5, 1942 (both in the author’s collection); Prof Werner Heisenberg, in
Naturwissenschaften, vol.33, (1947), 325; and interviews of Heisenberg and Karl-Otto Saur.—
See too David Irving, The German Atomic Bomb and The Virus House (London, 1965); superseded
by Thomas Power’s excellent study, Heisenberg’s War (London, 1993).
80 Diary, Mar 21, 1942, p.25f.
81 Speer’s conference with Hitler on Jun 23, 1942 is recorded in IWM file FD.3353/45.
704 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
82 MinConf., Mar 30; diary, Mar 31, 1942.
83 Diary, Mar 20, 1942.
84 Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol.460, 109ff; diary, Apr 27, 1942.
85 Borresholm, 159ff.
86 Kempner, 185.
87 Diary, Apr 27, 1942 (NA film T84, roll 262).
88 Unpubl. diary, Mar 29, 1942 (NA film T84, roll 261).
89 Diary, May 11, 17, 1942.
90 Unpubl. diary, Apr 19, 1942 (NA film T84, roll 262).
91 Killed on Apr 30 at Gusevo. Rehbein cavalry brigade to SS cavalry brigade Warsaw, Apr
30, 1942 (BDC file, SS Untersturmführer A Tonak).
92 Unpubl. diary, Apr 29, 1942, p.10.
93 Diary, May 27, 1942.
94 Unpubl. diary, May 15, 1942.
95 Diary, Jan 24, 1942.—ZStA Potsdam, Rep.50.01, RMVP, vol.713, 977–993 and 1008,
and Heiber’s study in VfZ, 1957, 134ff.
96 Diary, Apr 3, 5, 14; JG’s correspondence with Schlegelberger, Apr 10–15, 1942 (ND:
NG.973, NG.1028).
97 Gutterer statements Sep 29 and Nov 2, 1953 (IfZ, ZS.490); Otto Abetz, memo on a talk
between Hewel and Bormann, Apr 18, 1942 (ND: NG.179); JG diary, May 14, 1942.—See
Weizsäcker’s file on France, vol.11 (Pol. Archiv AA Serial 110; NA film T120, roll 112,
115113–583).
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 705
Goebbels
45: At any Price
TOURING Austria’s principal cities in 1942 to celebrate the fourth anniversary
of the Anschluss Goebbels launched a new slogan, ‘Victory at any Price.’1 A
quarter of a million troops had already died in Barbarossa. British air raids and reduced
food rations were eroding public morale.2 Goebbels ordered propaganda onslaughts
on the enemies within: he listed black marketeering, excessive paperwork,
and—an eternal quest—the surliness of public servants like waiters, transport workers,
and post office clerks.3 Oblivious of the double-standards involved, he persuaded
Hitler and Bormann to crack down on the sybaritic lifestyle of top Nazis.4 He then
privately authorised the party’s acquisition and total renovation of a château in his
native Rheydt for his exclusive use.5 He generously started public collections of textiles
and mosquito nets for the eastern front.6 To the former he contributed a suit,
Magda her riding breeches—Hanke had now gallopped out of her life—and Harald
his Hitler Youth uniform; they also gave raincoats, trenchcoats, and gabardine coats,
as well as two silk dresses, a long evening dress, and a nurse’s cloak.7
Hitler had repeatedly ordered the church problem postponed, like the Jewish problem,
until the war was over. Disregarding him, the party’s ‘radicalinskis,’ as Goebbels
called them, confiscated several church buildings in Berlin.8 Hitler reassured him
that once this war was over he too would give no quarter to the clergy who were
acting in such a ‘vile’ way while their soldiers were fighting for their lives. The moment
his hands were free who would settle this mutinous clergy’s hash, once and for
706 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
all. Goebbels looked forward to this new battle as one of the great ideological conflicts
of all time.9
Death and destruction continued to come from the heavens over Germany. Goebbels
had believed that the Lübeck raid was just a fluke, but he was mistaken. After a puny
raid on Cologne led him to remark that that was all the British were now capable of,
on April 23 they began a series of four fire raids on Rostock.10 It seemed that shutting
down their evening broadcast had not hampered the British navigators at all. Even so
Goebbels was unwilling to resume broadcasts, fearing that Göring would make him
a scapegoat for the next catastrophe.11 Hitler told him that he was ordering reprisal
raids against historic British towns like Bath. Goebbels hoped for propaganda profit
from wiping out these ‘cultural centres, watering holes, and middle-class towns,’ or
as he called it, ‘Answering terror with terror.’12
Sensing that these fire raids had inclined Hitler toward radical solutions, Goebbels
felt it a propitious moment to mention the Berlin Jews again. Hitler reiterated his
stand-point. ‘He wants to force the Jews right out of Europe,’ dictated Goebbels.
‘The Jews have inflicted such suffering on our continent that the harshest punishment
… is still too mild.’13
FOR most of May 1942 he lingered out at Lanke fighting his eczema. Gutterer chaired
the ministerial conferences in his absence. Returning with his affliction still uncured
he heard that unknown assassins had maimed Heydrich in Prague. This episode triggered
further antisemitic impulses in Goebbels, who was already concerned for his
own security (he had years before remarked to journalists that if there was one word
they had to shun as the Devil shunned Holy Water it was surely ‘assassination.’) It
cheered him when his old comrade Kurt Daluege, standing in for the mortally
wounded Heydrich in Prague, had a thousand intellectuals shot. ‘Assassinations can
set a bad example if we don’t act ruthlessly against them,’ noted Goebbels, and he
took harsh action against the remaining Jews in Berlin, ordering the arrest of five
hundred and notifying their community that he would have one hundred shot for
every Jewish act of sabotage or murder, though his authority to do this seems ob-
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 707
scure.14 ‘I have no desire,’ he explained in his diary, ‘to have a bullet pumped into my
belly by some twenty-two year old yid from the east. Give me ten Jews in a concentration
camp, or under the sod, to one at large any day.’15
The fate awaiting the deportees was evidently deadly and swift. Only nine days
after one round-up, that on May 27, the Berlin Gestapo was already writing to the
tax authorities attaching a list of ‘those who have since died’ and the assets they had