B006OAL1QM EBOK (13 page)

Der Angriff
in effect became Goebbels' platform now his voice was all but silenced. It was primarily directed at the working class of Berlin, and its writing was angry and waspish. Yet it proved uphill work to sell it, and it was not popular with Hitler or Strasser. It reflected Goebbels' politics rather than Hitler's in its attacks on the capitalists. It was also violently anti-Communist and anti-Semitic. Goebbels always regarded his critics in the press as Jewish-inspired; he represented himself and the Party as persecuted by the Jews, the Communists and the police, led by the Jewish villain of the piece, ‘Isidor’ Weiss. As for the prohibition on the Party and its meetings, Goebbels invented his own rhyming slogan:

Trotz Verbot
Nick tot!

In spite of the Ban
We're not dead!

In
The Battle of Berlin
Goebbels tells the tragic story of the summer of 1927. The circulation of
Der Angriff
was small. There were constant lawsuits to be faced. With no public meetings there was no gate-money for the Party. No one but himself seemed to know how to write. Inexperienced speakers had to be trained against the day when the ban would be removed. It was a matter of ceaseless improvisation and pioneering. The peak event of the year was the Party Congress held in Nuremberg at the end of August. Here the fact that most of the Berlin Party members and Storm Troopers were unemployed men just keeping alive on the meagre official dole made it possible for this event to be supported in full strength. The men marched to Nuremberg—a great propaganda procession and demonstration of comradely solidarity, which took in all some three weeks. Goebbels also describes in
The Battle of Berlin
how he arranged for four private trains to take and bring back those Party members who could afford the special reduced fare of twenty-five marks. At Nuremberg the great rally with its singing, its banners, its speech-making and torch-light processions was beginning to be developed as the highlight among the Party's annual demonstrations. Hitler and the Party leaders took the salute at the march-past. The seed had been sown and the plant was sinking its roots deep into the community. Only too soon now Nuremberg would be the display centre where the Nazis would demonstrate then-massive power to the nation and to the world. The Congress of 1927 was a dress rehearsal.

But the police ban on Party meetings in Berlin was maintained throughout the summer, and Goebbels had to go elsewhere to speak. At a congress in the Ruhr held in 1927 he spoke on the value to the Nazis of these large-scale public demonstrations:

Whoever can conquer the street will conquer the State one day, for every form of power politics and any dictatorially run State has its roots in the street. We cannot have enough of public demonstrations, for that is far and away the most emphatic way of demonstrating one's will to govern. It means a darned sight more than election statistics. When we can see our men, thousands of them, marching up and down the streets, that is nothing short of mobilisation for power.
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With
Der Angriff
as his chief outlet in Berlin, Goebbels used every means he could devise to increase its sale. It appeared weekly and every Party member was under orders to buy it and increase its distribution. But the sales remained obstinately at a low level of about 2,000. There was little justification for publishing it at all since Strasser's daily paper was already there to serve the interests of the Party. But
Der Angriff
existed to minister to Goebbels' personal prestige, and he would not let it die.

The next stage in the campaign amounted to a press war. Goebbels ordered his Storm Troopers to make life uncomfortable for the Strassers' news-vendors. He imagined he could do this with impunity because the Strassers would be unwilling to take legal action in their own defence and so reveal a split in the Party at this vital stage in the fight for power. All the Strassers in fact could do was appeal to Hitler to intervene, and in the autumn of 1927 he came to Berlin to investigate the matter. Otto Strasser recalls what happened. Hitler came into his office in the Nümberger Strasse and said that this strife must stop.

“Why don't you say that to Goebbels?” Otto replied.

Hitler hedged and said that what really worried him was that if this recrimination went on a party of Storm Troopers might arrive one day and raid the Strassers' office.

“Then what would you do?” he asked.

“Then I'd shoot, Herr Hitler, and you would lose some of your Storm Troopers,” replied Otto, and opened his desk drawer to show Hitler the revolver he kept there. He knew this was the only way to talk to Hitler.

“But surely you wouldn't do that? Not kill my Storm Troopers?” said Hitler, astonished.

“Well, if they
are
your Storm Troopers,” said Otto, “just tell them not to come!”

After this Goebbels was less active against the Strassers, and Hitler decided to centralise the policy of the Party newspapers. Otto went to Munich to discuss this and saw for the first time the Party Secretariat at the famous Brown House. A gigantic swastika decorated the front of the building. Inside the main entrance a staff of twenty or so worked at tables behind a long counter; there was the clatter of typewriters and the hurrying of messengers. To get to the rooms of the Secretariat, which was controlled by Hess, and to Hitler's own office it was necessary to go through this hall and across a courtyard. Hitler's room was elegantly furnished and thickly carpeted; in addition to the huge desk there was a round table with a group of leather arm-chairs for small conferences. Hitler normally wore his brown shirt and high boots, and at this stage in his political career carried a riding-whip; with this he gave added emphasis to his remarks by slapping it against his boots or striking it across the desk or table. On this occasion he wanted to buy up the Strassers' newspapers in the north for himself, and when they refused to sell he became angry. Otto claims that he created a scene by saying that Hitler was wrong. Hitler struck the table with his whip and shouted back: “I am never wrong. Every word of mine is of historic importance.” Otto left, leaving Gregor to carry on the conversation at Hitler's request. Hitler knew the value of the Strassers and did not yet want to lose their support; he reverted to his charm in order to placate Gregor.

The luxury of the Munich headquarters was in pointed contrast to conditions in Berlin, where the tramway or Underground was the normal means of transport, not a Mercedes. The Strassers and Goebbels never wore uniform. The absence of money and status rankled with Goebbels, and it was this more than enthusiasm for the Party which drove him on to seek personal power and prestige by whatever means he could—which in the end led him back to his own personality and talents as propagandist, orator and writer.

The celebration of his thirtieth birthday and of his first year in Berlin were almost coincident. The Party members surprised him, he claims, by making a collection which raised 2,000 marks to help the Party finances and producing the names of some 2,500 new subscribers. They also gave him an envelope containing some cancelled I.O.U.s which had involved his personal commitment for money loaned to start
Der Angriff
. But the best present of all came from the police. They raised the ban on his public speaking, provided he obtained permission in advance for each meeting he proposed to address.

1928 was to be an important year for Goebbels. With an intuitive sense of dedication to the future he gave a speech on perception and propaganda early in January. In the course of this he emphasised first that propaganda should use any means to achieve its ends and that the creation of propaganda is not a matter for talent alone, but for the kind of genius that inspired the great religious teachers. Propaganda, he pointed out, has always been promoted most effectively not by writing but by word of mouth, where the personality of the speaker achieves its own mastery of the audience:

There is no theoretical way of determining what kind of propaganda is more effective and what kind is less effective. The propaganda which produces the desired results is good and all other propaganda is bad, no matter how entertaining it may be, because it is not the task of propaganda to entertain but to produce results…. Therefore, it is beside the point to say your propaganda is too crude, too mean, or too brutal, or too unfair, for all this does not matter…. The moment I have recognised some truth or other and begin to speak about it in the tram—I am making propaganda. This is the moment when I begin to search for others who, like myself, have recognised the same truth. Thus, propaganda is nothing but the predecessor of an organisation. Once there is an organisation, it becomes the predecessor of the State. Propaganda is always a means to an end…. You are either a propagandist, or you are not. Propaganda is an art which can be taught to the average person, like playing the violin. But then there comes a point when you say: “This is where you stop. What remains to be learned can only be achieved by a genius….” If they say, “But you are only propagandists,” you should answer them: “And what else was Jesus Christ? Did he not make propaganda? Did he write books or did he preach? And what about Mohammed? Did he write sophisticated essays or did he go out to the people and tell them what he wanted? Were not Buddha and Zoroaster propagandists?… Look at our own century. Was Mussolini a scribbler, or was he a great speaker? When Lenin went from Zürich to St. Petersburg, did he rush from the station into his study to write a book, or did he speak before a multitude?” Only the great speakers, the great creators of words have made Bolshevism and Fascism. There is no difference between the speaker and the politician….
¹⁶

At the end of March it was announced that there would be an election for the Reichstag on 20th May. Simultaneously the ban on the Nazi Party was raised by the Prussian Government. Goebbels' platform was free again. Now was his chance.

Goebbels, who had formerly been hostile to the Party involving itself in the Reichstag since attack seemed to come better from without, now changed his mind. The Reichstag would provide a prominent centre from which to work to bring the Party to power. Goebbels applied his phenomenal, dedicated energy to winning votes for the Party at the election. He made his attitude quite clear:

We will move into the Reichstag to supply ourselves at the arsenal of Democracy with its own weapons. We will become deputies of the Reichstag to paralyse the Weimar way of thinking with the support of Weimar …. If we succeed in planting in parliament sixty or seventy of our own agitators and organisers, then the State itself will equip and pay for our fighting machine. Whoever is elected to parliament is finished, but only if he plans to become a parliamentarian. But if, with his inborn recklessness, he continues his merciless fight against the increasing scoundrelisation of our public life, then he will not become a parliamentarian but he will remain what he is: a revolutionary. Mussolini also was a member of parliament. In spite of that, not long afterwards, he marched on Rome with his Blackshirts …. The agitators of our Party are spending between six hundred and eight hundred marks a month on train fares in order to overthrow the Republic. Is it then not just and fair that the Republic should reimburse their travelling expenses by giving them free railway passes? … Is that the beginning of a compromise? Do you believe that we would lay down our arms for free railway passes? We, who have stood in front of you a hundred and a thousand times in order to bring you faith in a new Germany? … We do not beg for votes. We demand conviction, devotion, passion. The vote is only an expedient, for ourselves as well as for you …. We do not care a damn about co-operation for building up a stinking dung-heap. We come to clean out the dung…. We do not come as friends or as neutrals. We come as enemies.
¹⁷

The Nazis were still too young and too suspect a party to win any substantial backing from the German public. Their supporters were almost entirely confined to the Party membership, and they polled in 1928 only 800,000 votes. Nevertheless, this entitled them to twelve seats in the Reichstag, and the indefatigable Goebbels was allocated one of these seats. Within three years of his appointment as Gregor Strasser's secretary he had risen by his own energy, invention and sheer insolence to becoming a member of the House of Government. Whether they liked him or not, the Nazi leaders had to admit he was one of the best and most active men in the Party. And he evidently enjoyed the special favour and protection of Hitler. Goebbels celebrated his election by writing a broadside against the dignity of office in the Reichstag:

Maybe the representatives of the other parties regard themselves as representatives; I am not a member of the Reichstag. I am an I.D.I, and I.D.F.—
Inhaber der Immunität
(possessor of parliamentary immunity) and
Inhaber der Freifahrkarte
(possessor of a free railway pass)…. The I.D.I. is a man who may speak the truth from time to time even in this democratic Republic. He distinguishes himself from other mortals by being permitted to think aloud. He can call a dung-heap a dung-heap and needn't beat about the bush by calling it a State…. This is but a prelude. You're going to have a lot of fun with us. The show can begin.
¹⁸