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Authors: Heinrich Fraenkel,Roger Manvell

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Göring:
Very well, then, let's give the Jews a certain part of certain woods of their own, and Alpers can see to it that certain animals are settled there too—I mean animals who look like Jews, I am thinking of elks who have that sort of a hooked nose, haven't they?
63

Later in the same Cabinet meeting it was decided to make the Jews pay for the damage done to their property—which was already regarded as belonging to the State. A collective fine of a thousand million marks was imposed on the Jewish community as a whole, and a time-limit set for its delivery.

As the Chief of Propaganda in Germany, Goebbels reserved the right to himself to be the spokesman on the platform or over the air on every important occasion in these historic years for Germany. It was he who announced the death of Hindenburg and then, after a suitable interval of silence, the combination of the offices of President and Chancellor in the person of the Fuhrer. (The French Ambassador and others believed that Goebbels had re-drafted the late President's testament, which was not published for several days and contained much uncharacteristic phrasing in a style more suitable to an experienced Nazi writer.) It was Goebbels who on 13th March 1939 made the official broadcast announcement of the annexation of Austria and launched the campaign that “Hitler wants peace”. And it was Goebbels who made two fighting speeches in Danzig in June 1939 claiming, as usual, that German nationals were being persecuted and that the Free City should come back to Germany.

Goebbels himself wrote constantly, directing various campaigns of propaganda against those who opposed the current development of the Reich. He initiated successive campaigns against Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Britain. His articles had all the old, fighting virulence of the days when he was campaigning for the Reichstag elections or shouting down the Communists in Red Berlin.

The whole social pattern of life for Goebbels changed when he became Reich Minister. In the first place he became a relatively wealthy man. Among the papers that survived the holocaust of Berlin was a mass of documents relating to Goebbels' private accounts. These reveal that only a month before Hitler became Chancellor Goebbels owed an embarrassing amount of income tax. A handwritten record of his normal income from 1933 to 1937 also survives, and is listed as follows:

1933        34,376 marks          1935      62,190 marks

1934       134,423 marks          1936      63,654 marks

1937         66,905 marks
64

These figures, however, do not seem to take any account of his income from the Eher Verlag, the Central Publishing Company of the National Socialist Party, except possibly those for 1934. Between December 1935 and December 1936 he drew advances of 290,000 marks on account of future royalties, whereas the actual earnings of his books during that year were 63,416 marks.

Goebbels was meticulous over money, carefully compiling his expense accounts even at the height of his power. He demanded the same punctiliousness in his staff, while many other Nazi leaders gloried in their extravagance. In spite of his radicalism he must have shared his father's desire to make good in the most bourgeois sense of the term, and in any case his highly developed æsthetic sense demanded lavish interior decoration and furnishings once he had the means to acquire them. Nevertheless, he had to watch his reputation with the working classes of Germany. Once he made the mistake of letting a newsreel about his family be released in which his young children were shown with their ponies and grooms. Conscious that both his new position and his personal taste demanded an entirely new standard of living, he tried to cover up any suspicion that he really liked luxury. At a press reception Louis Lochner heard one of Goebbels' representatives explaining carefully to a group of German provincial newsmen that the Reich Minister was really an extremely modest man who put up with the inconvenience of living on a grand scale because of the needs of his official position. This turned out to be ‘inspired’, for other ministry officials were saying precisely the same thing to other provincial newsmen!
65

Apart from his official residence in Berlin, Goebbels acquired two fine properties for himself—Schwanenwerder on an island in the Wannsee and Lanke on the Bogensee, both estates on lakes a short distance from the capital. Schwanenwerder had belonged to a Jewish millionaire who had been expropriated, and Goebbels bought it relatively cheaply. Documents survive to show that he raised a mortgage of 100,000 marks towards its cost.
66
The price of this property, which he acquired around 1934, was 350,000 marks, or about ,£17,500. Goebbels subsequently told one of his war-time secretaries, von Oven, how he had just received 100,000 marks from the Nazi Publishing House as an advance on his diary
Vom Kaiserhofzur Reichskanzlei
. Even with the help of the mortgage and his own savings, Goebbels was still some 70,000 marks short of the price. When Hitler heard of this he said he would make his minister a present of the money out of the royalties he had just drawn from the sales of
Mein Kampf
. A day or two later Hitler asked Goebbels to wait a moment after a meeting. He then reappeared carrying two parcels, which turned out to contain 70,000 marks made up in fifty-mark notes. This, Hitler explained, was in order to keep the amount from being entered in the books!
67

Lanke was an even more beautiful lakeside estate which lay some forty miles east of Berlin, and Goebbels first sought to acquire it about 1939. But he miscalculated the cost of his substantial building projects; his original estimate of half a million marks fell short of the real cost, which reached some two million. He landed himself into serious financial difficulties, and in the end he had to appeal to Dr. Winckler, the Nazis' financial adviser and negotiator, to get him out of them.
68
Winckler supplied a little money unofficially, but this was useless, and the President of the Deutsche Bank himself intervened. Winckler, most unhappy at being involved, was again summoned by Goebbels who was in a desperate position by now. Winckler suggested Hitler might help. Goebbels rejected this at once; Hitler had already rebuked him for extravagance. Winckler then suggested Göring; this was also impossible, since Göring and Goebbels were scarcely on speaking terms. Eventually, however, Goebbels consented to let the matter be put to Göring. Winckler with some difficulty managed to persuade Göring to let the property be considered an official residence to be paid for by the film industry and “on loan” to Goebbels for the period he was in charge of the German cinema. Winckler came back in triumph; Goebbels' original 500,000 went back into his pocket, while Winckler himself took over the management of the property on the Reich Minister's behalf.

Goebbels placed a very high value on his literary work. He exacted 4,000 marks from
Das Reich
for each of his regular weekly articles, and later on, during the war, he refused an offer from the Party Press of three million marks for the right to publish all his diaries after the war should be over.
69
He looked on these records of his as the only authentic and properly maintained account there was of the history of Nazi Germany, and he felt they were worth far more than the sum offered.

Lavish though he was in matters of property and clothes (he possessed an enormous wardrobe which grew to some hundreds of suits), he was frugality itself at table. His guests always came away complaining of their hunger. He frequently invited people from the film world to lunch or dine with him, and it became customary for those who knew how little was in store for them to go to a restaurant independently before or after visiting the Reich Minister. When full-scale rationing was introduced in war-time, Goebbels insisted that his guests brought their ration books with them, and a silver salver was passed round the table for the coupons.

Goebbels opposed the lavish meals in which the other Nazi leaders indulged, more especially Göring, whose famous parties he refused to publicise. He deliberately played down the gala reception at the Opera which Göring staged in April 1935 when he married the actress, Emmy Sonnemann. When Göring held a luxurious ball in January the following year, Goebbels censored the pictures and refused to pass for publication those of which he disapproved. On very rare occasions, however, he was capable of giving parties on the grand scale. In July 1936 he sponsored a ‘Venetian night’ on an island in the Wannsee for three thousand guests with a sumptuous dinner and a vast bar. There was dancing in the open air and the performances of a ballet. This was an international occasion, however, for the delegates attending the International Chamber of Commerce. But he also saw to it that little enough got into the press. Another magnificent occasion the same year was Goebbels' garden party on his new estate at Schwanenwerder to celebrate the Olympic Games which were being held that year in Germany. This party, at which certain guests got drunk and misbehaved with some young actresses from the film studios, became a minor scandal which had to be hushed up. Soon after Göring gave a huge party, a
Bierabend,
which was a model of respectability by way of studied contrast. But the fact remains that Goebbels cared little, if anything, for either food or drink and was determined to make a virtue out of this Lenten attitude in order to repress other more hungry people than himself.

Otto Dietrich has given an extraordinary description of Hitler's social life before the war, a life in which both Goebbels and his wife were continually involved. Hitler's glaring prominence in world politics could have made him host to innumerable people of importance from many countries who, whether they admired him or not, would have welcomed the chance to meet and talk with him. But Hitler, who could not brook either argument about his opinions or any form of challenge to them, preferred to spend his leisure time with the same small, commonplace circle of admiring friends that included the wives of certain of his ministers and always involved his favourite, Magda Goebbels. Hitler's intimate friends had to be prepared for the constant summons which at the shortest notice would require their presence at his table either in Berlin or Berchtesgaden; after a meal they would listen to his endless reminiscences that usually lasted until the small hours, because the Führer could not bear to be left alone. At the more formal luncheons and dinner parties at the Chancellery when distinguished guests had to be entertained, Goebbels did his best to lighten the atmosphere when the visitors fell silent, turned into glum auditors because of Hitler's endless monologues. Dietrich, who was often present on these occasions, describes Goebbels' assiduous social efforts:

The visitors let Hitler talk; they themselves contributed nothing. The exception was Goebbels … he would toss cues to Hitler during the conversation, would take up Hitler's ideas, carry them still further, and take advantage of the opportunity to obtain oral decisions from Hitler on the most diverse matters. If Hitler did not speak and Goebbels did not put in his oar, there were often prolonged, embarrassed silences which the host expected to be broken by the interjection of jokes…. Goebbels would repeat the latest political witticisms in Berlin jargon —though he made a point of picking only the innocuous stories and those that were about Göring and not himself.
70

Hitler greatly enjoyed the company of actresses, and Goebbels was always prepared to introduce them to the Führer.

The need in Goebbels for both the company and the sexual intimacy of women was very great indeed. His vanity demanded that he should be loved and courted by women, and the incessant irritation caused him by the physical inferiority of his stature and by his limp was compensated as far as ever possible by the satisfactions of his bed. He needed a succession of love affairs to guarantee his superiority as a man of artistry and culture, and he took care to see that no one, not even his wife, deprived him of this right. It was early in September 1938 that Schacht spoke of the matter to von Hassell, who recorded it in his diary:

He also told me that Goebbels was pretty much in disfavour because of his affairs with actresses and other women who are dependent upon the Propaganda Ministry for jobs. This was getting to be too much of a scandal. Hitler was in a rage, also, because he wanted to divorce his wife. Goebbels, knowing the mood of the people, was opposed to the rash war policy.
71

There was always a spoilt and frustrated child dodging in the shadows of Goebbels' nature with its greedy hands held out for the sweetmeats. The devouring of women was part of his childish passion for repletion and the mastery of sex. Goebbels, however, was intelligent and tasteful enough to realise that women should be wooed and flattered even if they offered themselves readily to his advances. He knew how to talk to women, how to kiss their hands, how to send flowers and give little presents, how to prepare a rendezvous in the night, and how to use gentleness and good manners in bed. When he wanted to impress a woman he gave her little personal gifts and nosegays of flowers which she knew he had selected himself and not ordered by telephone through a secretary. Above all, he gave her his time; the minute by minute rush of the day was abandoned for the timeless concentration of eroticism. Certain women, proud that they had been among those who had attracted these attentions from a man in Goebbels' privileged position and with his great taste in matters of love, have admitted privately their enjoyment of their passing relations with him.

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