B006OAL1QM EBOK (21 page)

His mission accomplished, Hitler and his men flew at once to Berlin. Gisevius, the member of the German underground who gave evidence at the Nuremberg Trials, was among those at the airport who saw Hitler arrive out of a blood-red sky— “a piece of theatricality”, as Gisevius observes, “that no one had staged”. A guard of honour presented arms. Hitler stepped out of the plane. Gisevius observed that “he wore no hat; his face was pale, unshaven, sleepless, at once gaunt and puffed”. There was silence as Hitler shook hands with Göring, Himmler, Frick and others waiting to receive him; during the ominous moments the only sign of activity was the “monotonous sound of clicking heels”. The others had by now come out of the plane, and last of all “a diabolic, grinning caricature of a face appeared —Goebbels”. Gisevius saw “a long, tattered list” in Himmler's hand, which Hitler took from him. There was incessant whispering as Hitler, Göring and Himmler went through it. Then Hitler tossed his head in anger, and went off to the line of cars waiting to take him from the airport.
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Gregor Strasser was kidnapped and shot in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse prison in Berlin—it was given out he had committed suicide, though he had in fact received a bullet in his main artery which in bursting gushed blood on to the cell wall and gave the S.S. a showpiece that lasted for weeks. Von Schleicher and his wife were surprised and shot in their flat one after the other in the presence of their maid, who escaped by a miracle to tell the story. Von Papen barely escaped with his life, and several of his staff were killed. Hitler admitted to fifty-eight executions that week-end, but the number of influential members of the S.A., the Catholic leaders and others against whom the Nazis had worked up a case amounted to not less than four hundred and was probably far more. Karl Ernst, and certain of the men who had assisted him with the Reichstag fire, were assassinated. Men were shot in their houses; others were killed and their bodies left in swamps and woodlands. Many were said to have committed suicide. Any official documents there were connected with the purge were ordered to be destroyed, and Goebbels prohibited the press from referring to any of those who had been executed or had disappeared. A few bare announcements were made on Hitler's authority. It was six weeks before Hitler himself came forward with his official account of the purge, by which time Germany was seething with rumour. Hitler declared: “Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.”
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Less than three weeks later Hindenburg was dead; his death came on 2nd August 1934. Hitler immediately assumed the office of President whilst remaining Chancellor and so fulfilled the next stage in his ambition by becoming Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Reich. The regular Army was paraded forthwith to take the oath of allegiance to Hitler's person. Goebbels in a suitably sad voice announced Hindenburg's death over the radio. This was followed by half an hour's silence. Then Goebbels spoke again announcing the unification of the offices of President and Chancellor under the title of Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor.

In the following month, September, Goebbels paid his first visit to Switzerland as official representative from Germany to the League of Nations in Geneva, where the Disarmament Conference was in seemingly interminable session. Wherever Goebbels went, either sightseeing or in conference, he took along a bodyguard of Storm Troopers whose presence created a bad impression. Hitler some months before had made a brilliant speech in the Reichstag in which he had expressed his dislike of war, but nevertheless had demanded for Germany equality in the right to bear arms since the other nations, and notably France, showed no willingness to disarm themselves. In October, after Goebbels' return from his brief visit to the Conference, Hitler used France's continued refusal to disarm as his excuse to withdraw (regretfully, of course) from the Disarmament Conference and also from the League of Nations itself. Germany became the lone wolf of Europe.

It was now simply a matter of timing the ascent to greater power and independence for himself and for Germany. The story is well known; it is written into many of our own lives. In July 1934 Hitler made a first trial of his strength in the abortive uprising in Austria which failed after the assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss. In Germany Hitler instituted the system of organised plebiscites in order to demonstrate to the world the apparently unanimous backing of the German people for his party. In 1935 came victory in the Saar plebiscite, the re-adoption of conscription in Germany in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, and the enactment of anti-Jewish laws making the persecution of Jews legal. In 1936 came the re-occupation of the Rhineland in violation of the treaty of Locarno, and the start of the Spanish Civil War with the backing of both Germany and Italy. In 1938 the year began with a second purge, this time of the Army generals who were against Hitler's policy, this was followed by the occupation and annexation of Austria, and the organised intimidation of Czechoslovakia which led to the Munich agreement in October and the ceding of the Sudetenland to Germany. In 1939 followed the occupation of Czechoslovakia, the annexation of Memel, the campaign against Poland over Danzig, the occupation of Danzig by an influx of Storm Troopers disguised as tourists, the pact with Soviet Russia, the invasion of Poland, and the declaration of war on Germany by Britain and France.

These crowded years meant for Goebbels the stage management of Nazi public relations and propaganda as well as the establishment through his ministry of controls over all means of expression inside Germany. He also had to learn the attributes of power, and how to play the part of a Reich Minister in the particular circumstances created by Hitler which were never easy because, as we have seen, he permitted no one to share his full confidence; nor did anyone, including Goebbels, quite know where he stood either with Hitler or with the others who were more likely than not colleagues only in name. Goebbels was perhaps as secure as any of the Nazi leaders, but even he had periods when he was out of favour with Hitler and received his instructions at second hand.

The Ministry, however, was his pride, and he was determined to make it a model of efficiency staffed by able men devoted to the Nazi cause. At the same time he made his first attempts to deal personally with men of stature in the arts and in journalism and to bring them into the orbit of National Socialism. In this he was far less successful, for he had now for the first time to deal directly with men of the highest talent who knew that both Germany and the world were watching them to see what they would do to defend the basic rights of liberty of expression and freedom in the arts.

An example of this failure was his dealings with Fritz Lang, who was one of the most famous of the German film directors and Jewish on his mother's side. Lang has revealed how, immediately after the Nazis came to power, Goebbels summoned him to the new Ministry.
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Lang had never met Goebbels before. “He told me,” wrote Lang subsequently, “that, many years before, he and the Führer had seen my picture
Metropolis
in a small town, and Hitler had said at that time that he wanted me to make the Nazi pictures.” He did not mention the fact, however, that he had just banned Lang's most recent film
Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse,
a horror-fantasy of a paranoiac who aspires to world domination which Lang later claimed to have some symbolic references to Hitler. In spite of this ban, which remained un-mentioned, Goebbels exuded charm and offered him a prominent position in film production. Lang pointed out that he had Jewish blood in his veins. Goebbels said he was prepared to overlook this in view of Lang's distinguished service in the First World War. Lang could not understand why an exception was being made in his case; he knew of only too many Jews who were losing their jobs. He asked for twenty-four hours to think the matter over. He returned home, asked a friend to book him a sleeper on the night-train to Paris (but not, of course, in Lang's name), and fled the country, leaving his fine house and his art collection to be taken care of by the Nazis. An uncut French version of
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse,
made at the same time as the German original, was smuggled into France and edited there. Lang never returned to Germany under Hitler's rule.

Typical of Goebbels' consistently ruthless methods was his handling of Ehm Welk, editor of
Grüne Post,
the Ullsteins' most profitable weekly journal. Goebbels used a trivial incident to imprison the editor and to ban the paper indefinitely. The real reason behind this action was his desire to expropriate the Ullstein chain of publications and printing plants, which was the largest and wealthiest combine of its kind in Germany. This expropriation figure was fixed at twelve million marks, though the organisation was worth some hundreds of millions. Even the twelve million marks were finally confiscated when the Ullstein family was broken up and the older members forced to emigrate.
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Meanwhile those Jewish artists, writers and intellectuals who were able to do so were leaving Germany, taking with them what possessions they could or abandoning their property altogether in a precipitate rush to quit their country overnight in the face of real or imagined threats to their personal safety. The case of Fritz Lang was typical. Goebbels' ruthless anti-Semitism denuded Germany of much of her creative talent.

These individual torments were the direct result of Goebbels' ministry with its specialised departments created to supervise each branch of German art and culture and with its rules and orders and directives which gradually blocked up the loopholes of free expression and confined the spirit of Germany in a vacuum. The following departments of the Ministry were set up:

DIVISION I. Legislation and Legal Problems; Budget, Finances, and Accounting; Personnel Administration; Ministerial Library; National Chamber of Culture; Council of Commercial Advertising; Fairs and Exhibitions.

DIVISION II. Co-ordination of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment; Regional Agencies of the Ministry; German Academy
(Hochschule)
of Politics; Official Ceremonies and Demonstrations; National Emblems; Racial Questions; Treaty of Versailles; Youth Organisation; Business and Social Politics; Public Health and Athletics; Eastern and Border Questions; National Travel Committee.

DIVISION III. Radio; National Broadcasting Company
(Reichs-rundfunk-Gesellschafi m.b.H.)

DIVISION IV. National and Foreign Press; Journalism; Press Archives; News Service; National Association of the German Press.

DIVISION V. Cinema; Moving Picture Industry; Cinema Censorship; Youth Literature Censorship.

DIVISION VI. Theatre, Music and Art; Theatre Management; Stage Direction; Design; Folk Art.

DIVISION VII. Protection against Counter-Propaganda at Home and Abroad.
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At the head of this initial system of departmental controls sat Goebbels, neatly dressed and meticulous, a martinet of the new bureaucracy. He hand-picked his relatively small staff, for he always claimed that he did not want to set up a large organisation. In fact, even as his ministry grew in later years, his headquarters staff is said never to have exceeded a thousand, though it probably did. He gave his departmental chiefs a fair degree of independence, and he expected them to show initiative of the right sort. He dispensed charm or rage as seemed to him most appropriate, disciplining his subordinates or encouraging in them the will to work his way.

In his office routine he became pedantically tidy. When he arrived in the morning he expected his desk to be laid out to perfection with its battery of coloured pencils placed at the ready for work. He reserved for himself the use of green ink or pencil, and he employed this colour to make his derogatory remarks on the work submitted to him for comment. In his personal working habits he showed an uncommon gift for concentrating on the particular job in hand. He would keep his secretaries busy while he rapidly dictated thousands of words. Then he might relax for the few minutes that remained free before moving off quickly to keep an appointment to speak before a large audience. His vanity demanded that he should always act his own undoubted efficiency in order to keep his staff in a state of perpetual admiration.

As the need arose, Goebbels issued decrees and orders to assist the work of his ministry. These were all of a kind calculated to seal the arteries of creative work in Germany, and there are only too many examples which may be quoted. In September 1933 Goebbels sponsored the Law which created a Reich Chamber of Culture to work alongside his ministry. He was President of this organisation and it was decreed that every worker in the cultural field had to belong to his appropriate section of it. There were seven of these sections, or sub-chambers; the Chambers of Broadcasting, Press, Literature, Fine Arts, Theatre, Music and Film. Membership included not only the creative cultural workers such as writers, broadcasters, actors and musicians, but also those whose function was to equip or to present the arts, such as publishers, radio manufacturers and musical instrument-makers. The Chamber also engulfed other cultural organisations— such as libraries, choirs, orchestras, and acting schools.

In the following month, October 1933, came the Journalists' Law, which made all journalists into State servants who had to be in possession of a licence issued by Goebbels. This followed the expropriation of the left-wing and Communist press—with its printing plants and capital assets—during the previous spring and summer. Jews were debarred (with certain rare exceptions) from any form of journalism, and only those who could prove they had pure Aryan descent (this had to go back to 1800) and had married a person of equal purity could own or be concerned in the ownership of a newspaper. In April 1934 Hess (not Goebbels in this instance) decreed that an Examining Committee for the Protection of National Socialist Literature should be established to censor books.