Goebbels: A Biography (17 page)

Credit 6.1

The Prussian police and judiciary were far from passive observers of the continual provocations from the Berlin Gauleiter. The constant interrogations, court cases, and convictions visibly affected Goebbels. This picture shows him shortly before being found guilty on account of an article in
Der Angriff
that was judged to be insulting to the Reich president, May 31, 1930.

From spring 1929 onward, Goebbels observed with some suspicion the closer collaboration Hitler was developing with two nationalist groups: a veterans’ organization called the Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet) and the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People’s Party, DNVP). Central to this cooperation was the Stahlhelm proposal to form a united front of the nationalist right and to organize a plebiscite to bring about fundamental changes in the constitution: The powers of Parliament were to be devolved to the president of the Reich and the Weimar democracy turned into an authoritarian state.
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Goebbels was afraid that if Hitler fell for the blandishments of the Stahlhelm and supported what he, Goebbels, regarded as a “pointless referendum,” then the Führer would become too deeply embroiled in a right-wing opposition front, and the NSDAP’s scope for action would be significantly curtailed.
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On March 24 Goebbels wrote in his diary: “I’m scared of a rerun of November 9 [19]23. Nothing connects us either with the right or with the left. Ultimately, we stand absolutely alone. And that is good. We must not forfeit our own preeminence in opposition.” One thing that particularly worried him was that “the boss doesn’t reply to any inquiries.” But at the end of the month he noted with relief that Hess had assured him on Hitler’s behalf that there would be nothing more than “friendly relations” between the Party and the Stahlhelm, and there was “no question of going along with the mad policy of the alliance. Especially not the plebiscite.”
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But just a few days later his anxiety returned, above all because of the very receptive attitude shown by the
Völkischer Beobachter
to the Stahlhelm. Commenting on a conversation with Horst Wessel, he wrote: “The Munich circle is intolerable at times. I’m not prepared to go along with a bad compromise […]. I have my doubts about Hitler sometimes. Why doesn’t he speak out?”
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On his next visit to Berlin, Hitler was able to reassure him: “He too rejects the plebiscite in the sharpest terms, and has even written a cutting critique of it. There can be no question whatsoever of collaborating.”
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Goebbels thought a “fairly crude letter” written by Hitler
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to the head of the Stahlhelm, Franz Seldte, was not quite adequate: “Our intention is to be, and remain, revolutionaries.”
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In May he ostentatiously published two editorials pillorying “the reactionaries.”
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In May, finally, Hitler attacked the plebiscite plan in a memorandum “which was refreshingly direct about the bourgeois party rabble.”
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For the moment, Goebbels was satisfied.

He went on polemicizing against the “united front of Dawes patriots,”
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an allusion to the fact that in 1924 some members of the DNVP parliamentary party had voted in favor of the Dawes Plan, the first international agreement to restructure reparation payments. He also declined to take part in a large-scale event staged by the nationalist right on the grounds that he did not want to collaborate with “parties and men who have said ‘yes’ to Versailles or Dawes, since this means they have accepted the war-guilt lie and appear unfit to conduct an
honest campaign against it.”
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But in the meantime a new plebiscitary movement was being launched by the nationalist right, calling for a petition for a referendum on the Young Plan, accepted by the Reich government on July 21, which was designed to make German reparations payments somewhat more manageable but which, according to the nationalists, would actually serve to guarantee the delivery of payments and cement reparations in place.

At the beginning of July Hitler spoke to a rally of National Socialist students in Berlin; during this visit he stated his intention “to go in with the German nationalists” on the plebiscite against Versailles and Young.
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A terse diary entry for that day concealed a resounding defeat for Goebbels: Although the terms of the proposed petition had been altered, the NSDAP was nonetheless allying itself with the “reactionaries” he disliked so much. He was suspiciously quick to spot a positive side to this setback, however: “But we’ll take control and rip the mask away from the D.N.V.P. We’re strong enough to dominate any alliance.”

On July 9, 1929, Alfred Hugenberg, head of the DNVP, Seldte of the Stahlhelm, Hitler, and Privy Councilor Heinrich Class, the leader of the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League), set up a “Reich Committee for the German People’s Petition,” actually a comprehensive organization with an administrative network covering the Reich, a common platform for agitation for the whole of the united nationalist right.
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Goebbels—whose
Angriff
did not deign to notice the setting up of the committee—was less than enthusiastic. “Our job now is to see we’re not swindled and to make sure we’re in charge of the whole caboodle, with the others behind us.”
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Goebbels’s indecent haste, for all his objections, to join the “united front of Dawes patriots” was mainly due to the fact that Hitler had given him to understand that he, Goebbels, was destined to play the part of his closest collaborator and confidant. It flattered Goebbels, too, that Hitler took him into his confidence concerning his plans for the future: On July 5 they had a long discussion “about the coming constitution.” Goebbels’s diary notes for this day are among the rare documents from before 1933 that record Hitler expressing himself on the subject of his plans to structure the state after the proposed “seizure of power.” In general he avoided being prematurely tied down in this respect by public or internal Party pronouncements. What Hitler wanted, according to Goebbels, was a “tripartite” structure:
first, an elected parliament that would debate but not make decisions; second, a “senate of about 60–70 members […] to be augmented by co-opting,” where “after clarification in the course of discussion, experts” would make decisions “on their own responsibility”; third, a “corporative parliament for economic questions.” By and large, Goebbels agreed with these plans, although he did have some doubts: “Is the political parliament necessary, should there be general elections to it, won’t the senate eventually become rigid and bloodless?”
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Ultimately, Goebbels’s revised attitude to Hitler’s alliance policy may well have been due to the prospect of becoming head of propaganda for the Reich based in Munich, which Hitler had held out to him around the end of May and again at the beginning of July. It was an appointment about which he had speculated since at least April.

Goebbels’s skepticism about the line the Party leadership was taking made it seem expedient in spring 1929 to repair fences with Strasser and the “left” wing of the Party. At the beginning of March he agreed with Strasser that Hitler must be more decisive in his dealings with the SA.
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Moreover, Goebbels criticized Hitler’s leadership style to Party friends and called for the appointment of a deputy as well as other “representatives” of the Party leader who would take some of the burden off his shoulders. In this connection he also gave a glimpse of the way he saw his future in the Party leadership: “My job is propaganda and information. The area of culture and education. That is something which suits me and which I enjoy.”
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At the end of April, on a return trip together by train from Berlin to Dresden, Gregor Strasser and Goebbels took advantage of the opportunity—now in an entirely “friendly” atmosphere—to have a long talk. They came to an understanding on a whole series of political questions, among them the topic of propaganda: “There’s got to be a new appointment in Reich headquarters. I’m the only possible candidate.”
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Strasser’s agreement on this point was particularly important, since the Lower Bavarian National Socialist leader had been responsible for Reich propaganda until the end of 1927, after which he had become chief Party organizer for the Reich. In order to document
the rapprochement publicly, Goebbels contributed an article to the
Nationalsozialistische Briefe
with the title “From Chaos to Form.” He confidently announced in the publication, for which he had not written since 1927, when he was relieved of the editorship: “We are giving the century a meaningful shape.”
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The idea of putting Goebbels in charge of propaganda for the Reich, conceived during the rail trip to Dresden, was adopted by Hitler in the following months as his own. Twice, at the end of May and the beginning of July, he offered to make Goebbels director of propaganda. This offer was linked to the assumption that Goebbels would spend a good deal of his time in Munich, with a second base there. Instead of accepting immediately, though, Goebbels asked for time to think about it.
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By the end of July, however, he was assuming he would in fact be taking over as director of propaganda by September.
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He had also begun to step up the propaganda effort of his own Gau, and in June he created an appropriate local department under Georg Stark.
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During the Weimar Party rally, which stretched across the end of July and the beginning of August, he found that rumors were circulating to the effect that he was going to move to Munich, thus relinquishing his office in Berlin. He immediately suspected that this canard was a ploy on the part of Otto Strasser, who was aiming to disempower him in Berlin. Was it possible that Hitler was behind the maneuver? If so—which he thought unlikely, however—then he was ready to drop “the whole business.”
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But Hitler succeeded in calming him down: There was no question of him giving up his Berlin position. He was eventually placated by an “excellent summary” of his propaganda expertise from the mouth of the Führer. Goebbels, seeing himself already as the “boss” of Party propaganda, conducted himself accordingly at the propagandists’ conference.
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In the same month he wrote a report on the reorganization of the Party’s propaganda apparatus; with regard to the final “decision about Reich propaganda and Berlin,” he expressed himself quite emphatically in writing to Hitler himself.
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However, it was not until October that he reached an agreement with headquarters over the conditions applying to his takeover of the Reich propaganda machine: “The Party are giving me an apartment there, I’ll be going every 2 weeks to Munich, staying for 3 days, and setting up a perfectly functioning office; all propaganda will be centralized and will have a unified style. I’ll then
be giving a few more talks in Bavaria. They can do with it. Berlin remains unchanged.”
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In November 1929, Goebbels sat down with Heinrich Himmler, nominally deputy director of Reich propaganda but in practice the acting officeholder, to work out the further details of his future work.
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But his appointment had still not been announced.

After the break in summer 1929, Goebbels had resumed his fight for domination of the streets. The SA was again in the news with its violence-prone marches.
Der Angriff
, feeling that the “final desperate battle” with the communists had arrived,
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declared the working-class districts of Wedding, Neukölln, Friedrichshain, Lichtenberg, and Prenzlauer Berg “main combat zones.”
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On September 7 the SA marched through Schöneberg and Wilmersdorf; during the closing ceremony Goebbels talked himself “hoarse once more.”
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On September 15 there was a propaganda march through Charlottenburg and Moabit, once again capped by a Goebbels speech, this time in the Savignyplatz.
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The following Sunday, September 22, three standards of the SA marched through Kreuzberg and Neukölln. As Goebbels was inspecting the marchers in front of Görlitz Station he was attacked and only just managed to escape to his car; his driver was injured. In an editorial in
Der Angriff
entitled “On the Front Line,” Goebbels supplied his readers with a dramatic account of this assault.
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And the local news in
Der Angriff
during those weeks did in fact read like reports from the front. Covering a “large-scale battle on the foremost front line,” for example, its reporter wrote: “If the Fischerkiez [district] can be taken, it will mean that the backbone of the Red Terror in the central area has been broken.”
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A few weeks later the paper published “front-line accounts” from this disputed territory, while it said of Schöneberg that here “the lowest form of sub-humanity […] was hunting down National Socialist workers.”
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In October the Berlin NSDAP planned to hold a grand-scale “Hitler Week” with many meetings and propaganda marches. However, the high point, a big SA parade, was banned on short notice by the
police.
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There had been no plans for Hitler to appear at this event: The Party leader appeared only once in public in Berlin during 1929, at the student rally in July mentioned earlier.

Even if Hitler was rarely present in Berlin and the person of the Party leader did not feature prominently in the day-to-day propaganda work of the NSDAP, Goebbels was nonetheless highly dependent on Hitler—and not just in political terms, either, as shown by the following episode in September 1929. Goebbels happened to be in Breslau when, just before he was due to give a speech that evening, he received a telegram signed by Alfred Rosenberg: Hitler had suffered a fatal accident. “I feel completely numb. I am shaken by paroxysms of weeping. I see chaos ahead of me. I’m standing all alone among strangers. Groping my way in endless loneliness.” A telephone call to Munich established that Hitler was alive and well and that the telegram was a fake.

Goebbels returned to the rally and gave a two-hour speech: “Suffering dreadfully! My greatest feat of oratory yet. Despite my depression, concentration beyond belief.” Then he collapsed, exhausted: “I don’t sleep all night. Only now do I realize what Hitler means to me and the movement. Everything! Everything!”
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The enormous tension took its toll; he was ill for the next three days.
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