30 Klimonski (?) to JG, Apr 10, 1943 (NA film T81, roll 671, 9447f)
31 Note that Otto Dietrich claimed ignorance of the transportation (interrogation, Oct 1,
1947. NA film M.1019, roll 13).
32 Himmler to Müller, Nov 30, 1942 (NA film T175, roll 68, 4325).
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 731
33 The Times, Nov 24, Dec 4, 7, 21, 1942; SS Sturmbannführer Brandt to Kaltenbrunner,
Feb 22, 1943 and shorthand note (NA film T175, roll 68, 4398; and roll 18, 1550).
34 RMVP radio monitoring service, summary on Allied agitation on the Jewish problem in
Germany, Dec 18, 1942 (BA file R.55/1270).
35 Unpubl. diary, Dec 17, 19, 1942 (NA film T84, roll 262).
36 RMVP radio monitoring service, summary on Allied ‘crusade’ to save the Jews, Dec 22,
1942 (BA file R.55/1270).
37 Unpubl. diary, Dec 17, 1942.
38 Diary, Dec 8, 1942.
39 On the fight between JG and Dietrich, see CSDIC(WEA) BAOR Report PIR.8, Sep 10,
1945, Otto Dietrich (NA file RG.219, IRR, file XE, 003812); the numerous interrogations
of Dietrich in StA Nuremberg, Rep.502, D36 and lawyer Dr Friedrich Bergold’s files (Rep
501, LV G B.—Kurt Dittmar, interrogation, Nurember Oct 14, 1947 (NA file RG.260, box
15); Heinz Lorenz, ND: NG.4331; Hans Fritzsche stated in interrogation, StA Nuremberg,
Sep 27, 1946, F86, that he quit because of Dietrich’s dishonest reporting in Oct 1942 and
went to the front.
40 Interrogations of Sündermann, NA film M.1019, roll 72; and Nov 10, 1947 (IfZ, ZS.747);
Max Amann, testimony of Dec 18, 1947 (IfZ, ZS.809); interrogations of Gutterer on Oct
24 ajnd Dec 12, 1947 (NA film 1019, roll 23); and of Paul K Schmidt, Oct 28, and Nov 4,
12, and 14, 1947 (NA film M.1019/64).
41 Hitler’s 13-point decree was dated Aug 23, 1942. Longerich, 114.
42 MinConf., Sep 18, 1942.
43 Ibid., Sep 21, 1942.
44 Unpubl. diary, Sep 23, 1942 (DI film ; original in IfZ).
45 Ibid., Sep 27, 1942.
Goebbels
46 Ibid.
47 See the PWE report of Oct 1 on Hitler’s and JG’s speeches of Sep 30 (PRO file FO.371/
30928) and FO telegram No.5908 to Washington, Oct 2 (ibid) and analysis of Oct 19, 1942
(/30927); also the NYT report of Oct 1, and the comment by A O McCormick, ibid., Oct
19, 1942.
48 Unpubl. diary, Sep 29, 1942.
49 Ibid., Sep 28, 1942.
50 Semler, ‘diary, Mar 25, 1941.’—Dr Rudolf Semler, born in Ulm on Dec 31, 1913,
replaced Hallensleben as JG’s press officer in Jan 1941 (JG diary, Dec 22, 1940, Jan 5,
1941); according to Semler’s ‘diary,’ he was presented to JG on Dec 31, and started work
two days later. During 1942 he served in the army, and returned from the Stalingrad front to
JG’s staff in Nov 1942. He went missing in 1945. Dr Helge Knudsen of Berlingske Tidende,
Copenhagen, obtained the mansucript from Semler’s wife and brought it to London where
it was published as Rudolf Semmler [sic], Goebbels—The Man Next to Hitler (Westhouse, London,
May 1947). In correspondence with this author Knudsen has insisted on the diary’s
authenticity; many misdated entries suggest however that the source should be used with
caution. E.g. the diary describes JG with his children on ‘Mar 25, 1941’: but they had been
evacuated to Austria months before (cf JG diary, Mar 23: ‘All I miss now is the children.’) On
‘Apr 1, 1941’ Semler records Stalin’s embrace of Krebs, which occurred however on Apr 12
732 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
(cf. JG diary, Apr 14). On ‘Aug 28’ Semler refers to a meeting ‘yesterday’ with Hitler which
in fact occurred in Aug 18, 1941; Semler puts Mussolini’s overthrow on ‘Jul 21, 1943,’
instead of Jul 25; JG’s trip to HQ on Jul 27 instead of Jul 26; the air raid on Berlin on Nov
21, instead of Nov 22, 1943. He describes JG’s ‘Apr 1944’ foreign policy memo to Hitler,
which is however none other than JG’s memo of Sep 22, 1944 (BA file NL.118/106); he
puts the false start of the V–1 attack on London on ‘Jun 9, 1944’, instead of Jun 12/16. I
believe that the diary was compiled probably in 1945 from notes or memory.
51 In BA file NL.118/106. See the cartoon series in NYT, Oct 25, and the report in NYT,
Oct 30, 1942.
52 A copy of the film by the Deutsche Wochenschau Gesellschaft is in the author’s possession.
53 Behrend, op. cit., No.8, Feb 23, 1952.
54 See the private letter by Col. Helmuth Groscurth, Oct 4, 1942.
55 The SD reported on Oct 26, 1942 (NA film T175, roll 24, 7888f) that a majority of
Germans favoured doing a deal with the Soviet Union.
56 Martin, 34.
57 Fritzsche interrogation, Nov 13, 1947 (StA Nuremberg, F86).
58 In Jan 1944 the OSS threw these words back at him in a leaflet addressed to German
troops (USAMHI, Donovan papers, box 37a).
59 Das Reich, Oct 25; see the SD report on this, Oct 29, 1942 (NA film T175, roll 264,
7919).
60 MinConf., Oct 24; the first meeting of this Arbeitsstab für Rüstungspropaganda was on
Nov 5, 1942 (Boelcke, 296).
61 MinConf., Nov 6, 1942.
62 The Italian losses were 90 dead and 23,000 missing (mostly prisoners). JG ordered the
German press to ignore the figures (diary, Dec 11, 1942).
63 Borresholm, 167ff.
64 On Oct 31 the naval staff war diary quoted an Abwehr agent report that the Allies were
about to land in north western France. On Nov 7 and 8, 1942 the same diary commented on
the Abwehr’s failure.
65 Stephan, 287.
66 Diary, Nov 9, 1942.
67 MinConf., Nov 10, 1942.
68 Ibid., Nov 11, 1942.
69 Ibid., Nov 12, 1942.
70 Ibid., Oct 2, 1942.
71 Ibid., Sep 16, 1942.
72 Ibid., Oct 22, 1942.
73 Ibid., Nov 20; SD report, Aug 13, 1942, on JG’s visits to Cologne and Düsseldorf (NA
film T175, roll 263, 7352ff).
74 PWE discussed JG’s Wuppertal speech of Nov 17 in German propaganda analysis dated
Nov 20 (PRO file FO.371/30927); cf. NYT, Nov 19, 1942.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 733
Goebbels
47: Things have not Panned out
HOW much longer,’ Dr Goebbels challenged his loyal press officer Schirmeister
that autumn, ‘do you think this war’s going to last?’
‘If it goes on like this,’ hedged Schirmeister, ‘we might end it next year.’
Goebbels looked at him expressionlessly. ‘I don’t know,’ he murmured.1
As Germany’s fortunes declined, his own would improve. The more the skies darkened,
the more the people needed reminding that the darkest hour comes before the
dawn; the more Hitler immured himself in his remote HQ, the more somebody else
had to take control at the centre. From December 1942 Goebbels started to cultivate
his fellow gauleiters, inviting them round to his ministry.2 Many of them were
veterans of the earliest days of the party. He saw in them an elite upon whom to fall
back when the going got tougher. He was apprehensive lest any gauleiter suspect he
might be trying to usurp Hitler’s powers, let alone those of the roughneck Martin
Bormann, their titular head; Bormann took pains to hold Goebbels and all others of
superior intelligence at arm’s length from his Führer.
/> Writing in Das Reich Goebbels had defined, ‘Nations and mankind alike are at their
strongest when fighting for survival.’3 It was to this survival instinct in the Germans
that he now appealed. The British recognized the magnetism of his ‘Strength through
Fear’ propaganda and tried to undermine it by attacking him, calling him the biggest,
most ridiculous, and most contemptible of liars. ‘Even so,’ one British commentator
conceded, ‘he’s the best political brain of the whole Nazi bunch. That’s why he’s got
to be watched.’4 To defeat him they resorted to innuendos broadcast by their
734 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
‘Soldatensender Calais’ transmitter. They broadcast a lurid and wholly fictitious account
of Goebbels’ Christmas Eve to blacken his name.‘The chief,’ noted one of
Sefton Delmer’s experts afterwards, ‘has been at the height of his form over the
Christmas season.’5
That autumn there was a genuine attempt on his life. In November a Dr Hans
Kummerow, a technician with the Löwe radio company in Berlin, confessed to plotting
to blow him up with a remote-controlled bomb which he would plant, disguised
as an angler, beneath a bridge on Schwanenwerder. Schirmeister attended the trial;
he told Goebbels that it had revealed a picture of a ‘totally degenerate’ intelligentsia.
From now on four detectives and a police car escorted Goebbels wherever he went.
At Lanke machine-gun nests were emplaced around the house.6 As a surprise Christmas
gift Hitler sent over an armour-plated Mercedes. Goebbels called it an ‘armoured
coffin’ but Hitler gave him no choice but to use it.7
That Christmas was overshadowed by renewed problems with Magda’s health. After
another minor heart attack she was again hospitalized at the West End sanatorium.
Two blood transfusions led to complications, and Goebbels recorded what
were possibly genuine concerns for her life. Surrounded by their children they celebrated
a cheerless wedding anniversary at her bedside. He lamented in his diary,
‘It’s a shame that I so seldom get to see the children.’ She struggled out to Lanke for
New Year’s Eve and Helga and Heide were allowed to stay up chattering until midnight
as a treat.8 Then it was back to bed for their mother. Belatedly thanking police
general Kurt Daluege in January 1943 for the gift of a pheasant, Magda apologized,
‘I have been in a sanatorium for some weeks after a heart attack and I’m going to
have to stay in for some time.’9
The plight of the Sixth Army in Stalingrad worsened beyond relief. Broadcasting
his usual New Year’s message Goebbels suggested however that his listeners compare
their situation with that in December 1941 when the entire army, struggling at Moscow,
had been saved by their Führer’s sheer willpower alone. ‘A battle without a
crisis,’ he said, ‘is not a battle but a skirmish.’ They had confounded every prediction
that their enemies had made for 1942. The Germans had conquered that summer an
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 735
area twice that of the British Isles rich in raw materials, in grain, and in industry.
‘Now we’ve got the upper hand,’ he suggested. A world war was however once again
upon them. ‘Across all the seven seas rages the termagant of destruction,’ he said, ‘a
vengeful goddess of history, raising her arm to smite the Anglo-Saxon powers whose
ministers so frivolously and needlessly unleashed this war.’ Hinting once again at the
coming of a more total warfare he sprinkled his oratorical glitter across the entire
German people—across the workers toiling for twelve or fourteen hours at the
factory bench or tilling the field, across the intellectuals, the doctors, the teachers,
the civil servants, and even the journalists. ‘The continents tremble from the roar of
our weaponry.’ Nobody knew how long this war would last, he allowed. It might
well end as suddenly as it had begun. ‘Yonder,’ he promised, as the last hours of the
old year slipped away, ‘we can already see the light.’10
He had repeatedly forbidden editors to predict that the Soviets were at their last
gasp.11 ‘It is not known to us,’ his ministry cautioned, ‘how far the Soviet resources
are already exhausted.’12 Nothing could conceal however that Nazi propaganda was
now on the defensive. He forbade editors to adopt phrases coined by the enemy like
‘United Nations’ or even ‘Allied,’ since these were throwbacks to the previous world
war and designed to remind the Germans subliminally that they had lost that one
too.13 Made-in-USA phrases like ‘Liberty ships’ and ‘Flying Fortresses’ were also
banned, as was the phrase ‘Fortress Europe.’14 The latter invoked, he said, the picture
of a fortress under siege, complete with the inference that sooner or later it would
be overrun.15 All of which did not prevent him, from time to time, using the phrase
‘Fortress Europe’ himself.16
He was not yet worried by the Americans as such. Before returning to Rommel’s
staff in May 1942 Berndt had suggested they use the occult in their propaganda to
the Americans; Goebbels had agreed that they were just about dumb enough to fall
for it. ‘Time for Nostradamus once again,’ he noted.17 Baron Ulrich von Gienanth,
his former press attaché in Washington, watched some interrogations of American
bomber crews and told Goebbels that they were very inexperienced and in a state of
shock, weeping with home-sickness and ‘ready to carry out any unpatriotic act.’ The
736 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
British were tougher, he said, but equally devoid of political ideals. ‘Nearly all of
them voice antisemitic remarks,’ noted Goebbels optimistically, ‘but more from instinct
than insight.’18
ATTEMPTS at supplying the Sixth Army by air were failing. By December 1942 rumours
of a Stalingrad crisis were sweeping the country. ‘Things have not panned out
as we expected,’ Goebbels dictated to his diary on the eighteenth. ‘It doesn’t seem to
be as easy to force open the enemy ring round Stalingrad as some of us had thought.’19
The High Command ordered a news blackout. The army ordered its radio commentator
to purvey only optimism.20
Some fundamental decisions were called for. Hitler’s HQ slowly bestirred itself.
On December 28 Martin Bormann finally visited Dr Goebbels to canvass his ideas
on total war. Goebbels had been developing these ideas for over a year. He had published
an article about ‘total war’ for Das ReichÊ on February 17, 1941. ‘The German
people,’ he had written in his diary six months later, ‘has a right to a socialist war.’21 A
year later he was convinced that Stalin was squeezing more than Hitler out of his
people. ‘A nation that endeavours to fight such a total war,’ he had dictated in September
1942, ‘has exceptionally dangerous powers of resistance.’22 Reporting back
from the eastern front later that month his friend and adviser Major Titel spoke of
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 120
