Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death
Page 136
Hitler revealed that the two V-weapons were ready to open fire, beginning with a
salvo of three or four hundred flying bombs against London. Goebbels suggested
launching them during London’s rush-hour for maximum effect.
Hitler too feigned indifference about the fall of Rome. ‘The real decision will come
in the west,’ he said. He blamed their setbacks in Italy on the Allies’ air supremacy,
but claimed there was little he could do about Reichsmarschall Göring without damaging
the authority of the Reich and party. It was the old story. ‘I’m afraid,’ dictated
Goebbels to Otte afterwards, ‘that when the enemy attempt their invasion in the
west, their air force may give us precisely the same headaches as we’ve had in Italy.’
Then blind, unreal optimism took over. ‘Let’s hope the enemy launch their invasion
soon, so that we’re able to turn the whole war around in the west.’8
Thus the eve of the historic Allied invasion of Normandy passed in idle gossip at
the Berghof.9 They talked about Schopenhauer and how to write. Goebbels asked, in
vain, for the replacement of General Paul von Hase as commandant of Berlin; they
had crossed swords recently.10 He also spoke out for Colonel Martin who had been
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 827
arrested in a minor corruption scandal. Hitler revealed that he was now toying with
suddenly allowing the Russians into Romania, to bring the western powers to their
senses. ‘He considers Britain done for,’ noted Goebbels, ‘and is resolved to give her
the coup de grâce at the slightest opportunity.’ He could not resist adding, ‘As yet, I
cannot quite see how, precisely, he’s going to do that.’ If he were foreign minister, he
knew precisely what he would do to play their enemies off against each other. Hitler
still clung to Ribbentrop, however, calling him an ice-cool tactician however inflexible.
When Goebbels criticized Ribbentrop’s bloated ministerial apparatus, Hitler replied
that he was reluctant to ask the minister to scale it down in case he resigned—a
laissez-faire attitude which Goebbels felt disastrous under the circumstances. Strolling
back from the tea-house Hitler admitted that he had considered replacing
Ribbentrop. Surely aware that Goebbels coveted the job for himself, Hitler mentioned
however that Rosenberg, of all people, seemed the only possible successor.
Goebbels choked. ‘That would be out of the frying pan and into the fire!’ he exclaimed
to Otte, and resigned himself to letting the matter ride.
Resting down in Berchtesgaden at ten P.M. he received the first indication, based
on radio intercepts, that the Allied invasion was beginning.11 He did not take it seriously
at first. Dining at the Berghof later with Hitler and Speer there was still no
sense of urgency.12 They chatted with Eva Braun about theatre and film—her favourite
hobbies—then talked round the Berghof fireside of happier times. Goebbels sensed
that Hitler was drawing closer to him again. It felt just like the good old days. With an
unseasonal thunderstorm lashing the windows, Hitler retired at two A.M. and Goebbels
went over to the Bormann’s for a while. At two-thirty Goebbels phoned Semler, his
press officer, to bring any telegrams up to his bedroom at nine o’clock; but at 4:04
a.m. Semler suddenly phoned to say that they were now getting reports of airborne
landings on the Cherbough peninsula, and an invasion fleet approaching Normandy.
‘Thank God, at last!’ said Goebbels. ‘This is the final round.’13
HIS news agencies broke the news to the world before Reuter’s, the British agency,
could do so at nine-thirty that morning Churchill, ‘unable to hold his water,’ as
828 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Goebbels put it, announced to the House of Commons that four thousand ships and
eleven thousand planes were taking part: so this clearly was the big one. Hitler was
euphoric. ‘The invasion is happening just where we expected and with exactly the
means and methods we’ve been preparing for,’ commented Goebbels. ‘It will be the
giddy limit if we can’t see them off.’
At Schloss Klessheim, Goebbels found Ribbentrop in confident mood; Göring
smiling broadly—General Korten, chief of the air staff, was stripping the Reich of
fighter squadrons in a long-prepared operation to switch to the invasion front14;
Himmler was also smiling behind his wire-rimmed glasses, sure that his S.S. divisions
would acquit themselves well. Two first-class Panzer divisions were already
rolling into action, and they were expected to be within range by six P.M. Goebbels
noticed that General Jodl was reserved in his judgement, and decided to speak in
their first communiqués only of a grave and historic struggle. As they left for Berlin
at eight P.M., Lieutenant von Oven noticed that his chief was quite thoughtful.
Goebbels telephoned the Berghof once during the initial invasion battle. The news
was not what he had expected. The panzer divisions had not been able to counterattack
and the enemy beachhead north of Caën was already fifteen miles long and
three miles deep.15 Within a few days the false euphoria at Hitler’s HQ was dissipated
as the enemy battleships brought their firepower to bear on the defensive positions
far inland. Unable to conceal the breaching of Rommel’s ‘impregnable’ Atlantic Wall,
Goebbels dug out a December 1941 speech in which Hitler had scoffed at British
plans to launch a big offensive somewhere. ‘I only wish,’ Hitler had then said, ‘that
they would let me know about it beforehand; I would have the area in question
evacuated and very gladly save them the difficulty of landing.’16 His next Das Reich
article developed the theme that Stalin alone would profit from the invasion battle,
as his enemies tore each other to pieces in France.17
Morale at home faltered. The public was puzzled that the submarines and Luftwaffe
were failing to crush the invasion.18 In a cold fury Goebbels watched the first newsreel
takes from Normandy. The telephoto lenses lingered on beaches where Eisenhower’s
landing craft seemed to block the entire water line, gunwale to gunwale.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 829
Mist-shrouded silhouettes of battleships and cruisers crowded the horizon. Not a
German plane was to be seen, and scarcely a flicker of gunfire. In the reflected glow
of a table lamp Goebbels clenched his knuckles until they were white. ‘Mein Gott,’
he exclaimed. ‘How can the Führer watch such scenes without sending for the culprits
and throttling them with his own bare hands?’19
Worse followed. The New York newspapers began to jeer at the conspicuous absence
of the Nazis’ vaunted secret weapons.20 Late on Monday June 12 Naumann
burst in, flushed with excitement. The Berghof had just confirmed that the Vergeltung
had begun. Goebbels ordered a press clampdown—a prudent measure as the High
Command shortly admitted that only ten flying bombs had actually been launched
(four of these had crashed on take-off and the ‘bombardment’ had been halted.) On
Thursday night however the operation resumed in earnest. Two hundred and fortyfour
of the pilotless missiles were catapulted, each cruising noisily across southern
Eng
land with a one ton warhead aimed at London. This author willingly concedes
that nobody who heard the droning approach of those weapons would gainsay their
ability to terrify.
At Schwarz van Berk’s suggestion Goebbels called it the ‘V–1’. It conveyed a hint
of more to follow.21 Although Hitler wanted fanfares, Goebbels allowed only a onesentence
reference in the next communiqué.
That Saturday afternoon however the Berliner Nachtausgabe ran a banner headline
announcing THE DAY FOR WHICH EIGHTY MILLION GERMANS HAVE LONGED IS HERE. Otto
Dietrich had done it again. In a blind fury, Goebbels heard that people were laying
odds that the war would be over in a week. He limped up and down clutching the
newspaper, scored through and through with his ministerial green pencil.22 Forced
to reverse his policy, he directed Fritzsche to broadcast that evening about the Vweapons;
that night his radio stations transmitted eye-witness accounts and recordings
of the terrifying organ-like roar as the missiles started out from their bases for
central London.23
ON June 19, 1944 a Major Otto-Ernst Remer, the tall, lean new commander of the
830 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Berlin guards battalion reported to him. A brand-new Oak Leaves cluster won on
the eastern front distinguished his medal bar. They saluted and shook hands—a partnership
thus beginning that was to change the course of history one month later. That
day the chief editor of the Völkischer Beobachter reported back from the western front.
The generals in Normandy, he told Goebbels, had warned him to stand by for disagreeable
surprises.24
In Goebbels’ view a serious crisis was looming. Speaking with him some days earlier
General Schmundt had already spoken of the Allied beachhead, though still contained,
as swelling like a malignant tumour. The time had come, agreed Goebbels,
for ‘exceptional measures,’ which he defined once again as bringing in ‘real total
war.’ Schmundt begged him to make that point at the Berghof.25 He then persuaded
Hitler to agree to discuss this issue with Goebbels.26 To start the ball rolling the
minister drafted a significant article entitled ‘Are we Waging Total War?’ Departing
from his previous theme that all Germans must participate, this urged that power be
given in a total war to ‘the fanatics.’27
Determined to pull no punches, he arrived at the Berghof early on a rainy, grey
June 21, 1944. It was not a propitious moment. First, the American army had just
cut off the Cherbourg peninsula. Second, only that morning Speer had warned that
the air attack on their oil refineries was choking off their oil. Third, General Dietl,
also present, now warned that Finland was about to pull out of the war. Fourth, even
as they spoke 1,311 American heavy bombers, carrying two thousand tons of bombs
and escorted by 1,190 fighter planes, were thundering toward Berlin.28 Fifth, Hitler
told him that he was convinced that a major Soviet offensive was to begin the next
day, the anniversary of Barbarossa.
As they talked, the phones rang constantly, and message slips were handed in:
Berlin was again blazing. Alone with Hitler after lunch, Goebbels launched into a
three-hour debate, pleading for control over Total War. They needed a Gneisenau or
a Scharnhorst now, he said, not worthless time-serving soldiers like Field Marshal
Keitel and General Fromm (both of whom he mentioned by name). Handled properly,
the Wehrmacht could squeeze a million extra combat troops out of its bloated
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 831
‘tail.’ Hitler however called Fromm an irreplaceable specialist, and he defended Keitel
with much the same stubbornness; true, he heaped contumely on Göring for surrounding
himself with sycophants and refusing to hear home truths; but still he would
not hear of getting rid of him. As for letting Goebbels take charge of Total War, he
rejected it outright. This was still not the right time. He proposed to muddle through
as before. He comforted Goebbels with the meagre promise that if, but only if,
things got out of hand he would send for him: but not until then.
Thwarted, Goebbels broached the topic of foreign policy. But Hitler was less inclined
than ever to hope for a deal with Britain. ‘Britain will be totally destroyed in
this war,’ he again predicted. ‘They’ve had it coming to them.’29
Goebbels left at seven P.M. as Berlin, a sea of flames, needed him; he realised that he
had got nowhere. Even as he dictated into his diary the next morning, on June 22,
the loyal commentary that ‘so far’ Hitler’s instinct as to timing had always proven
right, the Soviet summer offensive was beginning—precisely when and where Hitler,
against all the sober counsels of his general staff, had predicted. Goebbels watched
with impotent anger as Stalin put total war to work. He had mobilized an entire
nation, while the luxury-loving Germans were still spared, at their Führer’s incomprehensible
behest.30
Within days this Soviet offensive had demolished the German army group Centre.
Naumann returned from a three-day tour of the sector; one glance at his map told
Goebbels that their eastern front could not fall back much further. ‘Bold as brass,’ he
grimly noted, ‘the Soviets are saying that their push is aimed at Berlin.’31
Ministering to the needs of posterity, he ordered the miles of horrific air-raid newsreel
footage transferred to a secure location.32 A rash of suicides broke out among the
Nazi generals. Even Rommel was in difficulties—‘He has not quite come up to our
expectations,’ recorded Goebbels on July 4. In the privacy of his bedroom he began
smoking cigarettes again; he needed tablets to sleep as well.33
WITH Berlin sweltering in a heatwave he took a train through the bomb-flattened
south-eastern suburbs to speak in Breslau on July 7. Magda was already in the Silesian
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capital recovering from the operation on her jaw. Hanke, the gauleiter, met Goebbels
at the station. Both men had matured in the furnace of war, and put their differences
over Magda behind them.34 Hanke was about to marry the high-society divorcee
who had borne him a daughter in December 1943 and Magda had developed a romantic
interest in Werner Naumann.35 Goebbels visited her at the clinic; Professor
Stocker had succeeded in extracting the painful nerve without leaving a scar. Husband
and wife exchanged a few stiff pleasantries.36
Speaking to fifty-three thousand people gathered in and around Breslau’s Century
Hall Goebbels warned that for Germany it was now or never. There would be no
‘next time,’ he said. ‘If we do not throw them back now, our adversaries will erase
Germany and everything German from the face of the globe.’ The Allies, he continued,
had reduced cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Mannheim, Kassel, Frankfurt, Cologne,
and Essen to smoking ruins (Breslau was still out of their range); but they had
failed to break the people’s morale.37 He took much the same line in his next article