Goebbels: A Biography (30 page)

Later in March Goebbels took further preliminary steps as propaganda minister. He appeared at a series of press conferences, always presenting different angles: On the one hand he left no doubt about the Nazis’ claim to power, not stopping at open threats; but on the other hand, by his apparent openness to unconventional ideas, he gave the impression that he was opposed to a stupid media dictatorship.

On March 25 he addressed three hundred broadcasting employees and then the directors of radio: “Some of them have got to go,” was his diary comment on his audience.
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Presenting himself as a “passionate lover of radio,” he told the assembled mass media employees that their main task in future would be “intellectual mobilization.” “The first rule” of their work must be “not to become boring.” Radio must be close to the people, he said, and as an example of a successful
impact on the people Goebbels “Potsdam Day.” In short, those in charge of radio had to occupy “the same ideological ground” as the government.
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At an evening event he spoke to representatives of the film industry. Contrary to what is recorded in the diary, the text of his speech shows that he did not “develop a program” on this occasion. He did no more than issue a series of hints, warnings, and exhortations to the “film creators” concerning their future work.

Once again Goebbels introduced himself as someone who was “passionate”—this time about the cinematic arts. He himself had sat “with the Reich chancellor on many an evening in the cinema during the recent days of enervating struggle and found relaxation there.” The present crisis of the cinema, said Goebbels, was an “intellectual one”; it could be overcome only by a “root and branch reform of German film.” The film industry had better get used to the idea that the reign of the present rulers will be a good deal longer than those of the Weimar governments, because “we’re here to stay!”

Goebbels then talked about some films that had made an “indelible impression” on him. The first movie mentioned was Sergei Eisenstein’s revolutionary classic
Battleship Potemkin:
“Anyone without a solid ideology might be converted to Bolshevism by this film.” Secondly, he praised Garbo’s
Anna Karenina
as an example of “distinctly cinematic art.” He moved on to Fritz Lang’s
Die Nibelungen
, which was so “modern, so contemporary, so topical” that it had “profoundly moved those fighting for the National Socialist movement.” Another positive example was Luis Trenker’s film
The Rebel
. On the other hand, he criticized “colorless and shapeless works,” and he wanted German film to have stronger “
völkisch
outlines.” At the moment it lacked realism, it had “no connection with what was actually going on among the people.” But dealing artistically with the current upheavals would only work if “you have put down roots in National Socialist soil.”

An unambiguous warning followed: “We have absolutely no intention of allowing ideas that have been totally eradicated from the new Germany to be reintroduced by film, whether openly or in disguise.” But he rejected “doctrinaire authoritarianism.” And Goebbels acknowledged that there would still be room for pure entertainment in film: “Neither do we want to stop anyone […] from making even
the slightest little divertissement. You shouldn’t live your principles from morning till night.”
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Just a few hours before this meeting Goebbels had in fact made an example of the Fritz Lang film
Dr. Mabuse the Gambler
, banning it because, he said, it was a “practical guide to committing crime.”
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But his intention was not to exclude the director from making films; on the contrary, he picked him to make a film along lines laid down by himself.
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However, Lang declined the offer, preferring instead to leave Germany. He did not do so instantly, as the director later claimed, but only after a few months. Lang may have heightened the drama in his encounter with Goebbels and the immediate aftermath, but the original version of the Goebbels diary does at least prove the meeting actually took place, something film historians have long doubted. It also shows that Goebbels was very accommodating toward the director. His Jewish origins were either unknown to Goebbels, or else Goebbels was prepared to turn a blind eye. In October, when Goebbels again refused to release a Lang film,
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
, it was not because of reservations about Lang himself but on the grounds that this was another “guide to crime.”
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Goebbels simply disliked crime films.

On March 29 he held a reception for newspaper publishers and representatives of the German Press Association. In his address to them he declared that the press should “not only inform but also instruct.” In particular, the “explicitly nationalist press” should surely “perceive that it was an ideal state of affairs” if “the press […] is like a piano in the hands of the government, on which the government can play.”
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On April 6 Goebbels appeared with Hitler before the Berlin correspondents of the German press. On this occasion Goebbels gave a talk on the topic of “The Press and National Discipline,” which many have seen as the final swan song of press freedom. He stressed that “public opinion is made, and those who work at forming public opinion take upon themselves an enormous responsibility before the nation and the whole people.” From this responsibility there arose for the press the requirement that any criticism should be kept “within the framework of a general intellectual national discipline.”

And he threatened that those who set their minds against this requirement could expect “to be excluded from the community of
those forces prepared to do the work of construction and to be considered unworthy to collaborate in forming the public opinion of the German people.” Goebbels also announced there would be a new press law and came up with the motto that the future would be about “uniformity […] of principles but multiformity […] of nuances.”
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Between his two speeches to the press, the new propaganda minister was preoccupied mainly with the growing criticism from abroad, where there was concern about the increasing violence of the Nazis and signs of lawlessness under the new regime. The regime in its turn blamed international Jewish circles. It was not long after the election that Nazi activists in many towns were calling for a boycott of Jewish businesses. What was really happening was that potential customers were being deterred from entering Jewish shops by the threat of violence. Until the opening of the Reichstag, the regime had kept this wave of anti-Semitism under control. But now it seemed opportune to the Party leadership, backed by an anti-Semitic campaign authorized from “above,” to let the Party’s activist wing have its head, at the same time subjecting German Jews to great intimidation, with a view to silencing international Jewry’s propaganda campaign against German “atrocities.”

Thus the Jews became the target of a further “action” staged by the regime designed to consolidate its hold on power. It was one in which Goebbels figured prominently. On March 26, after visiting Hitler in Berchtesgaden, he was set on drawing up a proclamation calling for a boycott of German Jews.
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At the same time Party headquarters formed a “central committee” to organize the boycott. Its membership included Robert Ley, Heinrich Himmler, and Hans Frank but no government representative: Nuremberg Gauleiter Julius Streicher presided. On March 29 the committee published in the
Völkischer Beobachter
a text composed by Goebbels
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and explicitly authorized by Hitler.
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From April 1 the population was urged to boycott all Jewish shops, doctors, and lawyers and all goods marketed by Jews.

The proclamation immediately had the desired effect: Various Jewish organizations issued declarations of loyalty to the regime and tried to exert a moderating influence on international criticism of the
new government. On March 31, the eve of the action, after consulting Hitler and Göring, Goebbels called a press conference to announce that the measures would be confined to Saturday, April 1, and would only be resumed on the following Wednesday if the “atrocity propaganda abroad has not ceased completely.”
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This time limit was in deference to the reservations of their conservative coalition partners, who feared that the boycott would bring economic sanctions down upon Germany and have negative foreign policy repercussions. In addition, the deadline gave the Party leadership an early opportunity to declare the action an overwhelming success, which they duly did on the evening of April 3.
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Thus confined to a single day, the action—the first centrally directed anti-Semitic campaign under the new government—produced an unusual sight on German streets: In front of shop windows covered in anti-Semitic slogans stood SA and SS men on guard, preventing passersby from entering the shops.
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On April 1 Goebbels checked out the effect of these measures for himself.
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That evening he delivered a speech at a mass Nazi rally at the Berlin Lustgarten, in which he made it clear that the boycott could be resumed at any time.
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Shortly after the boycott—which was followed a few days later by the first special anti-Semitic legislation, including banning Jews from holding civil service positions—Goebbels addressed the subject of the future of Jewish artists in German cultural life. The occasion was provided by a letter from the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler protesting the ousting of Jewish artists from German musical life and the disruption by Nazi activists of concerts under Jewish conductors such as Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer. Goebbels sent a reply in which he suggested to Furtwängler that he should publish the correspondence in the press, which the conductor proceeded to do.

In his response, Goebbels said he could not follow Furtwängler’s argument that he was only prepared to make one “distinction,” that between good art and bad art. Goebbels retorted that only “art that drew fully upon
Volkstum
[the spirit of the people] could be good art and mean something to the
Volk
for whom it is created.” The kind of “art in an absolute sense” that “liberal democracy” believed in did not exist. In this letter Goebbels also solemnly announced that there would be support for artists “of real ability whose activities outside their art do not offend against the basic norms of the state, politics, and society.”

Furtwängler (whom Goebbels, shortly before the correspondence was published, made a point of visiting backstage on April 10 during a concert intermission) may have read this sentence as a guarantee that Jewish musicians could continue to perform. But such a guarantee was far from Goebbels’s mind: He had no intention of letting Jewish artists continue appearing with German orchestras. For Goebbels, however, the correspondence was a great success. After all–coming as it did only a few days after the anti-Jewish boycott and the passage of the bill excluding Jews from the civil service–it gave him a welcome chance to demonstrate his generous approach to cultural policy. “That worked well,” he noted in his diary.
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By April the regime seemed to be so firmly in the saddle that Goebbels could afford to relax somewhat and bask in his newfound fame. To add to his sense of well-being, his relationship to Hitler, after the irksome early phase of the “seizure of power,” was now fully restored. Whenever Hitler was in Berlin—and that was where he most often was during these months—Goebbels saw the leader almost daily, whether on official business or privately, with or without Magda.

In mid-April he permitted himself an “Easter trip.” On Good Friday he flew from Berlin to Cologne, meeting Magda there. They went on to Koblenz, where they had a serious heart-to-heart talk. His diary shows that yet again they had differences to settle: “We felt that something wasn’t quite right. The air needed to be cleared. Everything is straightened out now.”
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The next day they traveled to Freiburg via Heidelberg—towns that, of course, held many memories for Goebbels. Mentally at this time he was on an Anka nostalgia trip. So they continued via Konstanz, where he had spent time with Anka in 1918, to Meersburg, Lindau, Innsbruck, St. Johann, Bad Reichenhall, and finally to Berchtesgaden. “With Hitler by 9o’c. Like being at home.”
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Goebbels and Magda stayed at Hitler’s residence on the Obersalzberg, the Berghof, overnight. The next day Goebbels set out for Berlin with Hitler. Hitler was detained in Traunstein to pay his respects to a dying Party comrade, so Goebbels continued on his own to Munich,
catching the night train to Berlin.
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On April 19 he was surprised to find that Hitler had not yet returned to Berlin. In fact, he was spending his birthday on April 20 in seclusion on the Tegernsee, while, in his honor, meetings, torchlight processions, and marches were taking place throughout the Reich.
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He was not back in Berlin until April 21.
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Magda, who had remained on the Obersalzberg, traveled directly from there to the Rhineland, where Goebbels indulged in one of the greatest triumphs of his life so far: an official reception for this great son of Rheydt, recognized at last by his hometown.
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He saw this well-prepared visit as a “pure triumphal procession.” The townsfolk lined the street—now, of course, renamed in his honor—where his parental house stood, and as his motorcade swept into sight “the cheering became tempestuous,” as the report in the
Rheydter Zeitung
had it. His status as local hero was definitively confirmed when he announced the next day in front of the Town Hall that the incorporation of Rheydt into the neighboring town of Mönchengladbach in 1929, which had been an extremely painful blow to local pride, was about to be reversed. Joy was unconfined; Party formations staged a two-hour torchlight procession in honor of the minister, and the National Socialist council showed its gratitude by bestowing on him the Freedom of the City. Back in Berlin, he gloated over the fact that the “Rheydt press was madly enthusiastic.”
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When the law restoring the independence of Rheydt was proclaimed on June 24, Goebbels was back in the market square of his hometown basking in the applause of the population, which did not deter him from expressing his private aloofness from this small-town population: “The petit bourgeois are going wild,” he remarked in his diary.
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