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Hitler's faith in Goebbels was confirmed later in the year when he appointed him in November as Head of Party Propaganda. Strasser, who had formerly held this office, was still close to Hitler at the top of the hierarchy, and had been placed in charge of the Party organisation.

Goebbels now had national status both inside and outside the Party, and he proceeded to use it. Throughout the country in the next four years he was to concentrate on political meetings, demonstrations and ceremonies. For at all the principal meetings ceremony, with its emotional stimulus through singing and the parades of flags and banners, always prepared the audience to receive the spoken word. It was in this manner that Goebbels presented Hitler at a great gathering in the vast auditorium of the Berlin Sportpalast in September 1928. The Sportpalast and the Stadium at Nuremberg were to become the two favourite centres for massive Nazi demonstrations. On this occasion Hitler ranted for nearly three hours.

Goebbels, it must be remembered, had in 1929 neither the radio nor films at his disposal. All his propaganda had to be effected through the press and public demonstrations or meetings. Occasionally, however, he was able to take advantage of some special event to supplement the routine of his normal methods of work. Such events were the death of Horst Wessel in February 1930, which Goebbels managed to turn into a political
cause cilebre
.

Horst Wessel was a pimp who died as the result of a brawl with another pimp called Ali Hoehler. Hoehler was put up on trial and given a lengthy sentence for manslaughter. But for Goebbels Wessel had two useful claims on his attention. He had been a member of the Party (and a noted street-fighter until he took to living on the earnings of a prostitute), and his death could quite easily be developed into a political martyrdom. But in addition he had written a little political verse for
Der Angriff
which happened to go well with the tune of a song popular among the Communist youth. This became the famous Horst Wessel Lied. Goebbels took the story of this young reprobate's death and built it up through
Der Angriff
into a major tragedy; Wessel's funeral ceremony was taken over by the Party and Goebbels himself gave the customary oration. Indeed, he was to become a master in the exploitation of funerals. The Lied was sung for the first time in public and formally adopted as the Nazi anthem. Wessel himself was sanctified as the warrior crowned in death. The tune, with its hymn-like sentiment, was undoubtedly effective, and Goebbels' instinct for the religious saw that it would both dignify and hallow Nazi ceremonial in the future. In fact it became the theme-song of the movement and lasted as long as the regime itself.

In 1930 the old trouble between the Strassers and Hitler was revived. It is wrong to imply that Hitler's brand of National Socialism was right-wing and the Strassers' left-wing. Hitler's politics were wholly in terms of power not policy, and he had found that the men on the Right—the aristocracy and the industrialists—had the money and the influence he needed. He had found out that it would pay to work along wholly constitutional lines, and to play down any references to a social revolution. The Strassers, on the other hand, looked mainly to the workers and the unemployed, and their politics were accordingly left-wing and pseudo-revolutionary in approach. With Gregor working now in Munich, Otto developed a strongly radical line in the northern Party press that he controlled, including support for a strike that occurred in Saxony and which Hitler, under pressure from the industrialists, ordered all Party members to boycott. Otto and Hitler met in Berlin to hammer out their differences. Hitler remained adamant in seeking power the way he chose, which meant adopting legal and constitutional means to increase the Party's stake in the Government and, when expedient, full collaboration with the Right. No agreement was reached, and when Hitler returned south he ordered Goebbels, who had not been present at these conversations, to expel Otto and his supporters from Party membership. While Gregor for the time being sided with Hitler, Otto set up his own break-away party called the Black Front.

This happened in June. The following September there were fresh elections for the Reichstag and it was now that Hitler's stand for right-wing National Socialism scored its astonishing victory. The Nazi propaganda machine developed so well now by Goebbels went into full swing with its tub-thumping nationalism and its particular brand of middle-class revolution which managed to secure the capitalist while at the same time satisfying the impoverished imagination of the bourgeois artisan and working-class voter. The economic crisis through which Germany was about to pass played into his hands. What the Nazis did was put on a show and make an energetic jingoistic noise rather than debate serious politics. Hitler found scapegoats for the wounded pride of Germany—the rich Jews, the Allies, the Treaty of Versailles, the big trusts and monopolies, the Communists. With the Nazis yelling at them from every possible platform, with bands and processions and marching men, the 1930 elections were swung violently in Hitler's favour. The widespread and growing unemployment played directly into his hands. The Nazi vote leaped up to some 6,400,000, and the Party's seats in the Reichstag from 12 to 107. The Nazis rose to prominence overnight as the second party in the State; the bit was between their teeth in the race for ultimate power. They were now important people who could throw their weight around in the Reichstag. Goebbels, of course, retained his seat in the House.

But the Party still had to reckon with the dissident element. The Storm Troopers had mainly been recruited from the unemployed and unemployable. They enjoyed their violence, their street-fights and the fun of being feared, and they began to resent bitterly the lack of any reward from Hitler for their loyal gangsterism. They received no formal payment; all they had were frequent rounds of free beer and sausages. In September, about the time of the elections, they raided Goebbels' office in Berlin. He had to call in his old enemies, the police, to restore some order, and Hitler had to intervene in person to clear the matter up. He held out to them the hope that they might one day be rewarded for their services as the result of a levy on all Party members; he made himself their supreme Commander and appointed Rohm as Chief of Staff. Order was thus restored for a while. But suspicion was still alive that neither bread nor circuses were on the way. What the S.A. really wanted was fun and games at the expense of the community now that their party was so near the top. They could not understand that the last thing Hitler wished for was street-battles and the scandal of beatings-up, and that he must retain his reputation for ‘legitimacy’ in order to bring off his final ascent to power. What the S.A. enjoyed was the kind of organised hooliganism that Goebbels devised to secure a ban on the screening of the film
All Quiet on the Western Front
that had been adapted from the German novel by Erich Maria Remarque. Goebbels distributed to members of the S.A. a considerable number of tickets for the theatre where the film was playing. The Nazis crowded into the place on the second day of the projection, armed with white mice in cages and an arsenal of stink-bombs. The mice were released in the darkness and the stink-bombs set off. The police were called but by that time could trace no obvious culprits. Everyone present merely stated that he wanted to see the film. But the following day
Der Angriff
was full of the story, and the Government banned the film as likely to be the cause of more rioting.

Goebbels had since 1928 enjoyed immunity from police interference and prosecution as a Reichstag deputy. On 13th October, when the Nazi deputies in the new House took their seats for the first time, he arranged for Storm Troopers in civilian clothes to smash the windows of Jewish-owned shops in Berlin. This was to be a sign of the wrath to come. But Goebbels lost his immunity the following February when the Nazi deputies marched out of the Reichstag in a body; at once he became subject to prosecution. He was accused of being responsible for the window-smashing campaign the previous October. In court he refused to testify and adopted the tactics of raving at the judge and the prosecution. It is typical of the fear the Nazis were beginning to inspire in the hearts of law-abiding democrats that he was merely fined 200 marks for this flagrant case of contempt of court.

The trouble with the S.A. flared up again. On 20th February Hitler formally prohibited the Storm Troopers from taking part in street-fights and so lowering the tone of the Party. Meanwhile the leader of the S.A. for northern Germany, Captain Walter Stennes, in association with Otto Strasser's Black Front, was planning an organised revolt in the hope that a major demonstration by the radical wing of the Party with its discontented and neglected forces might swing Hitler round to the Left. Otto Strasser mentions that Goebbels knew in advance of this action which was planned to take place during the Easter period of 1931, and deliberately went south to Munich in order to leave the field clear. Had Stennes succeeded he would probably have supported him when it came to an argument with Hitler. Stennes, however, delayed his action and merely effected a token occupation of the Berlin Party offices. According to Strasser, when Goebbels saw that Stennes was unlikely to be successful he supported Hitler's action in dismissing him from the Party.

Goebbels had by now been Gauleiter of Berlin for four and a half years, a Reichstag deputy for almost three years, and Head of Party Propaganda for two and a half years. He was only thirty-three, but he was consolidating in these days of success the special character he had developed during earlier and harder times. He never lost his need to assert himself, to compensate for his lack of strength and stature and for the rejection of his talents when he was young. He practised his violence and his sarcasm on everyone, whether opponent or assistant. A portrait of him in action at this period has been given by Erich Maria Berger, a member of the staff of
Der Angriff,
whose offices Goebbels visited weekly, where he liked to direct policy and make his presence felt both as their master and their superior in talent and professional insight.
¹⁹
Goebbels would sit in the Editor's chair, displacing the Editor, Dr. Julius Lippert, who had to stand around with the rest of his editorial staff. Goebbels would habitually take off his wrist-watch and place it on the desk in front of him, saying that he could only spare seven or perhaps eight minutes. Berger remembers him taking a crumpled page from the previous day's paper out of his pocket and starting to speak in his maddeningly polite but venomous way. “Herr Lippert, you are the Editor of this paper, are you not? Well, if you want me to believe that this piece here is what you call journalism, I am very much afraid that it shows a degree of naïveté which is almost criminal—or would you prefer me to say insane?” Then, while Lippert blushed at being so criticised before his own subordinates, Goebbels would trounce the subject and presentation of the article with slow and deliberate sarcasm—once even insinuating, Berger remembers, by making a pun out of the word
Wirtschaft
(which has the unfortunate double meaning of economics and a tavern) that the Editor understood drinking better than the economic situation. After this had been done to his satisfaction, he would glance again at his watch. The seven—or was it eight?—minutes were exhausted. He would get up to go.

Once, after one of these embarrassing conferences, he limped quietly out to his car, calling Berger to come with him because he had to speak at a funeral but still wanted to deal with some further editorial matter. On the way to the cemetery Goebbels explained certain other points which were wrong and demanded improvements. Then he went into typographical details. His instructions continued in a whisper as he and Berger walked past the columns of Storm Troopers on parade for the funeral. Then, the open grave before him, he launched into an apparently emotional oration on behalf of the dead comrade. The moment they were back in the car, Goebbels resumed his typographical discussion like an actor who had just come off the stage. He even went so far as to admit he had forgotten who the man was whose virtues he had extolled.

One might say that Goebbels never, in fact, left the stage. Even though he was as professional at his work as any man has ever been, he still had to play the part of being the great professional as well, in order to assuage his unending vanity.

Of his relations with women at this time little is known. Otto Strasser asserts that Frau Steiger, at whose house Goebbels stayed when he first came to work in Berlin, complained that her Savonarola had seduced the prettier one of her two maids. However that may be, in December 1931 Goebbels married Magda Quandt, a woman who had divorced her husband, a wealthy industrialist, in 1929. She already had a son by her former marriage, Harald Quandt, a boy ten years old.

Magda Goebbels had for some while been doing voluntary work for the Party at the Berlin office, and Goebbels, attracted by her wealth, her social position and her outstanding blonde beauty, had given her special work which involved handling his more secret files. Magda was fascinated by the dynamic qualities of National Socialism as represented by the charming, smiling Joseph Goebbels, and she fell in love with him.

Goebbels himself by now was far better placed financially than in his earlier days with the Party. He earned 400 marks a month as Gauleiter, and a further 500 marks a month as a member of the Reichstag. He was comfortably housed in a two-roomed flat in Steglitz, but Magda, who had a lavish allowance from Quandt of 4,000 marks a month, had a luxurious apartment which she rented in one of the best residential quarters of Berlin.

Magda was impulsive and emotional, a simple-minded rather than a sophisticated woman. But she was used to luxury and she liked it. Her mother, who was also strikingly good-looking, had been three times married: first to Magda's father, a diplomat called Rietschel, secondly to a Jewish business-man called Friedlaender, and thirdly to a man called Behrendt. Magda, born in 1901, had been educated first in a Belgian Catholic convent, and later in Berlin. She had married in 1921 her first husband, Günther Quandt, against everyone's advice, for he was in his forties and had already had two sons by his first wife, while Magda was only nineteen. The marriage had failed largely through the disparity of years, and Magda, after using a little moral blackmail, had secured for herself the handsome allowance of 4,000 marks a month so long as she did not remarry. She was known to have been in love with a young student, but the attraction of Goebbels was too much for her, and she gave up her lover for the man whose personality and political views she found so fascinating.