plane as Britain’s expulsion from Europe at Dunkirk. ‘For years,’ he scoffed,
the Allies have committed their entire armed might—to capture what is in effect
just barren desert.’ ‘We have suffered a setback at the periphery,’ he conceded, ‘but
the centre of our war effort remains totally undamaged.’60
This was an unfortunate turn of phrase, as Mr Churchill was now raining explosives
and fire bombs on Hitler’s cities night after night. Goebbels pronounced once
more that it was the British who had started this bombing of civilians. It was casuistry
—true or false, it hardly mattered. Essen, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, and Duisburg
were ravaged within days. Sometimes a handful of Mosquito bombers, each armed
with a one-ton sting, left a trail of sirens across Germany that drove twenty-five
million Germans into their wet and stinking air raid shelters.61 In one daring lowlevel
raid the heavy bombers breached several Ruhr dams.62 The deluge drowned
seven hundred people. Goebbels learned that the British were saying that a Jewish
emigré had master-minded this raid.63 On the evening of May 21 Speer, Ley, and
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 773
Funk came to see him. They all agreed that the country was in the grip of a ‘Göring
crisis’—an implicit criticism of Hitler too for tolerating the indolent Reichsmarschall.
In Das Reich on May 30 he lectured his readers on ‘The Nature of Crises.’ Was it not
Schlieffen, he asked, who had remarked that a battle without a crisis was just a skirmish?
Just as a man who survived an illness felt a new urge to live, a nation too must
sense ‘the healing power of crisis.’64 And so his silver prose ran on—column after
column of clever dialectics. But he could not fool everybody all the time. Still resting
at the Berghof, Hitler checked the speech which Goebbels proposed to deliver on
June 5. Where the minister had written when victory is ours, Hitler crossed it out and
inked in instead, ‘When this struggle is over.’65
THE speech, to Berlin munitions workers, was his first devoted to the enemy raids.
‘There is only one thought in the mind of the entire German people,’ he said, ‘and
that is to repay the enemy in his own coin.’ He spoke of his tour of the Ruhr cities:
2,450 people had been burned alive in Wuppertal on May 29. ‘One day,’ he promised,
‘the hour of retribution will come.’ He then launched into a fresh diatribe against
the Jews. ‘The complete elimination of the Jew from Europe is a question not of
morality,’ he shrilled, ‘but of the security of the state.’66
Compounding his problems, both he and Magda were ill. Magda had spent several
weeks in hospitals undergoing a painful operation ; her trigeminal nerve was playing
up.67 The surgeon had botched the operation, and the minister sent her off to the
White Hart clinic in Dresden to recuperate.
Infuriatingly, his own eczema had returned. Professor Morell’s assistant Dr Weber
treated Goebbels with multivitamins, the muscle tonics Tonophosphan and Cortiron,
and injections of Morell’s proprietary liver extract; the latter gave the minister three
days of excruciating headaches. ‘The Reich minister now has so many pockmarks
and scars,’ Weber advised Morell, ‘that injections are virtually impossible.’ In mid-
July Dr Weber reverted to his own Homoseran injections. Finally cured, Goebbels
gave him two thousand marks, a radio set, and a signed photograph as a reward.68
774 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Magda stayed in Dresden until August. Goebbels sent his young and personable
chief aide Dr Werner Naumann, who had just turned thirty-four, to join her there on
sick-leave.69 Leaving Hadamowsky or Fritzsche to run the ministerial conferences—
the participants hung around outside swapping blasphemous jokes about Hitler and
their minister—Goebbels spent Whitsun out at Lanke alone, recovering from the
eczema.70 With Magda away, some things had not changed. One evening a sentry
detected a pretty girl cycling inside the perimeter fence and apprehended her: at
which an angry figure limped out of the trees ahead. Volubly cursing the soldier,
Goebbels took charge of his young female guest, an actress whom he had invited
round for the evening.71
As Düsseldorf, Bochum, Oberhausen, Cologne, and Krefeld were devastated by
two-thousand ton raids during June, Goebbels ordered newsreel teams to capture
the harrowing scenes for the archives. Dr Gutterer thoughtlessly included some of
the footage in one week’s newsreel. The screen images of mangled, headless infants
and bulldozers tipping bodies into pits were so terrifying that Magda and the children
burst into tears at the preview. ‘If these pictures have this effect on my national
socialist family,’ shrieked Goebbels at his next conference, ‘just imagine the utter
panic in the public!’ ‘Whoever let that through understands as much about propaganda
as a cow about the quantum theory!’72 Colonel Martin asked Magda about her
husband’s callous behaviour toward his staff. ‘If he talks with the children for longer
than a couple of minutes,’ she replied with a sigh, ‘you can be sure that eventually
they will all be in tears. They just can’t take his brand of mordent sarcasm.’73
Guided by increasingly accurate radar, the enemy’s bombers were pulverising the
Ruhr. Goebbels followed them around, speaking in city after city in an undeclared
personal campaign for Hitler’s succession. He ordered cities to evacuate all nonessential
personnel —old people’s homes into ancient castles and monasteries, entire
schools to provinces remote from the enemy’s airfields.74 Over the next months
he issued 157 civil defence circulars covering every aspect of the new warfare from
the procurement of excavators for digging mass graves, the escorting or burial of
enemy bomber crews, and the use of subway systems for fleeing through firestorms—
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 775
a new phenomenon in war—to the recovery of the air raid dead.75 He ordered static
water tanks to be built everywhere. ‘In the big conflagrations,’ Berndt explained to
the gauleiters, ‘many people have died even after the All Clear was sounded because
they lacked the water to soak their clothing and face-cloths to enable them them to
breathe.’76 Speaking that day at the mass funeral of the Wuppertal air raid victims
Goebbels swore vengeance in their name, and at another rally in the Westphalia Hall
at Dortmund, as the wind blew the acrid smell of a burned-out city through the
building’s windowless sockets, he confided to twenty thousand Ruhr workers that
their scientists were working on that revenge even now.77
In Stalingrad, he told his staff the next day, wedging his knees nonchalantly against
his desk, a quarter of a million soldiers had suffered. But in the Ruhr seven or eight
million ordinary people were facing sudden death each night. ‘Hats off to them all,’
he said. ‘Magnificent!’ And he snapped a flawless imaginary salute to the unseen
heroes.78
JUNE 1943 was nearly over. Hitler was about to return to the Wolf’s Lair in East
Prussia for Citadel, his tank battle against the Russians at Kursk. Before leaving he
<
br /> called Goebbels down to the Berghof. Comfortably surrounded by his friends and
his favourite oil paintings he listened sympathetically to Goebbels’ nightmarish descriptions
of the air raids and assured him that he was going to speak his mind to the
Reichsmarschall the next day. The damage that mattered, he continued, was that to
the arms factories; the human casualties were regrettable, but inevitable. He actually
welcomed the destruction of the cities; after the war Germany would have fifteen
million motor cars, most of them the new Volkswagens, and the fusty and ill-bricked
cities of old would never sustain the load.79 He spoke to Goebbels of their coming
‘revenge weapons’—mysterious missiles which would soon rain down on London.
He admitted that their U-boats had been thwarted, but soon they would return to
their hunting grounds, equipped with noise-making decoys and top-secret torpedoes.
80
776 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Turning to the eastern front Hitler told him he was going to make ‘a few necessary
adjustments’ to the line which might well cost the Russians several armies. Stalin had
nothing to match the new Panther and Tiger tanks. But, he admitted, he had been
forced by the winter disasters to abandon his old plans to occupy the Caucasus and
march into the Middle East. If the Italians deserted the Axis, Germany would fight
on alone—on Italian soil. ‘He no longer trusts them out of his sight,’ commented
Goebbels afterwards. It was because of the Italian factor that he was determined not
to get too embroiled at Kursk. After supper that evening he found Hitler quiet and
pensive as they chatted around the open fire. Bormann’s teleprinter network reported
that the British had delivered another raid on Wuppertal—2,750 more people
had been burned alive.
‘When I see the Führer in the middle of the night on the Obersalzberg,’ dictated
Goebbels to his faithful scribe Otte, ‘bowed down by all his cares, my love and veneration
of him just grow stronger.’
1 See unpubl. diary, Apr 3, 1943: ‘Both antisemitism and anti-bolshevism are currently our
best propaganda weapons.’ (NA film T84, roll 265).
2 Fritzsche interrogation, Sep 29, 1947 (StA Nuremberg, F86).
3 Diary, Feb 17, 1943.
4 Ibid., Mar 1, 3–6, 20, Apr 1, 1943; for further sources see David Irving, Accident. The
Death of General Sikorski (London, 1967), which draws on the Polish records of the Sikorski
Institute in London.
5 Diary, Apr 9, 1943 (from French files, on NA film T84, roll 272).
6 Tel from Smolensk to RSHA dept III C, Apr 4, 1943; forwarded to Gutterer (BA file
R.55/115).
7 Ibid., Apr 16, 1943; the former NKVD officer Petr Soprunenko, who signed the Katyn
death warrant, lives in Moscow as an old age pensioner (1994).
8 MinConf., Apr 8, 1943 (B file R.55/115).
9 Diary, Apr 14; Semer, ‘Apr 12, 1943’. For MinConf’s and further RMVP documents on
Katyn see BA file R.55/115.
10 Unpubl. diary, Apr 16, 1943.
11 Ibid., Apr 17, 1943. On the Soviets’ insistence Katyn was added into the indictment at
the Nuremberg trials and they executed several German officers after a trial in Leningrad in
1945.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 777
12 Ibid., Apr 17, 28; Dittmar records on Apr 19, 1943 a ‘very good Goebbels speech’ on
Katyn at a conference in the ministry.
13 Unpubl. diary, Apr 9, 1943.
14 Dittmar entered in his Jul 5, 1943 diary: ‘To the propaganda ministry. Big event of the
day: Polish emigré leader Sikorski killed at Gibraltar—by [British] Secret Service?’ (Author’s
film DI–60).
15 SD report No.377, Apr 19, 1943.
16 JG ordered it kept secret (diary, May 8, 1943).
17 SD report, Jul 26, 1943 (NA film T175, roll 265, 9996ff.)
18 Schmidt-Leonhardt report, Nov 11, 1942 (Yivo, Occ E2-107); the draft of an agreement
between JG and Frank was ready on Jan 25, 1943.—Report to JG, Apr 10, 1943 (NA
film T81, roll 671, 9447ff).
19 Diary, May 10; Hans Junge diary and Bormann diary, May 9, and note of May 11 (BA,
Schumacher collection, 371).
20 Diary, May 22.—Himmler to Frank, May 26 (NA film T175, roll 128, 4157ff); see
Himmler note, Jun 19 (NA film T175, roll 94, 0506f), and the final report of the SS and
police chief (HSSuPf) in Galicia, Jun 30, 1943 (Hoover Libr., MS DS.135 G2G37).
21 Unpubl. diary, Jun 25, 1943 (Author’s film DI–52; IfZ).
22 Ibid., Apr 15, 17, 1943.
23 For the statistics on Jews in the Russian communist party see Korherr to Himmler, Apr
28, 1943 (NA film T175, roll 54, 6439).
24 JG, ‘Der Krieg und die Juden,’ in Das Reich, May 9, previewed in Frankfurter Zeitung and
other journals on May 8, issued by the RPL to all party orators and propagandists on May 4,
and as a special edition by the AO, the party’s overseas organisation, in Jun 1943 (NA film
T81, roll 134, 8933a).—See Berndt’s Propaganda Parole on this, Apr 30, 1943 (NA film
T81, roll 672, 0754ff).
25 Diary, May 8; Times, May 8, and NYT, May 9, 1943.
26 Semler, ‘Jan 10, 1944.’
27 Bormann circular No.33/43, Jul 11, 1943 (BDC file 238/II); it is pertinent to note that
this was classified only geheim (secret), not gRs (top state secret).
28 Actually: 31,283. See the table in Kempner, 186.
29 Heinz Lorenz interrogation, Dec 3, 1947 (IfZ, ZS.266)
30 Fritzsche interrogation, Nov 1, 1946 (StA Nuremberg, F86).
31 See unpubl. diary, Sep 27, 1942; and the JG/Rosenberg correspondence, Feb 1943–Feb
1944 (Yivo, Occ E.19).
32 Diary, Apr 6, 16, May 19, 20, 1943.
33 Ibid., Jan 14, 21, Feb 10, 14, 16, Mar 2, 8, 9, and passim, 1943.
34 Ibid., Feb 10, 1943.
35 Ibid., Jan 7, Mar 2, Apr 16, 1943.
36 E.g., ibid.Jan 21, 1943.
37 Correspondence in Yivo file Occ E.12.
38 JG submission to Hitler, May 22 ‘1942’ (read: 1943) (Yivo, Occ E.18–19).
39 Naumann to Bormann, Jun 12, 1943 (Yivo, Occ E.12).
778 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
40 Unpubl. diary, Jun 25; Führer decree of Aug 15 (Yivo, Occ E.19; BA file R.55/799);
and see Taubert (Leiter Ost), proposal for erection of propaganda apparatus in the eastern
region on the basis of the Führer’s decision, Auf 21, 1943 (Hoover Libr., Fritzsche papers.)
41 Taubert report (Yivo, G–PA–14).
42 Diary, Feb 5, 1944.
43 Himmler to Stuckart, Jul 16, 1943 (NA film T175, roll 33, 2113).
44 Führer conf. with Keitel and Zeitzler, Jun 8 (stenogramm on NA film T78, roll 788,
ND: 1384–PS); and see Heinz Danko-Herre (Foreign Armies East) diary (IfZ, ZS.406), and
Etzdorf to German foreign ministry, Jun 17, 1943 (Pol.Archiv des AA, Etzdorf papers.)
45 Himmler to Gunter d’Alquèn, Jul 11, 1943 (BDC file, d’Alquèn).
46 On this committee see Gutterer’s files in ZStA Potsdam, Rep.50.01, vol.799 and Yivo
files Occ E FD.1 and 4.
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 127
