Goebbels: A Biography (36 page)

From the beginning of 1934, Goebbels made considerable efforts to consolidate and extend his control of propaganda and cultural areas, both at the state level and within the Party. Early in the year he started restructuring the Party propaganda office to align it more with the ministry.
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Goebbels also took care to ensure that the newly created—on April 1—regional branches of his ministry, called
Landestellen
(federal state offices), known from 1937 onward as
Reichspropagandaämter
(Reich propaganda offices), were staffed by personnel who covered the same duties in the Gau propaganda departments. However, the Gau propaganda directors, now also working for the central state propaganda office, were in practice much closer to their individual Gauleiters than to Goebbels, so that he could not afford to rely on them as thoroughly as his own lieutenants.
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In 1934 Goebbels was at great pains to underline his central role in cultural politics. Among the steps he took to achieve this was the creation of national book and film prizes. In Hitler’s presence, on
May 1, 1934, at a gala event of the Reich Culture Chamber in the Berlin State Opera House, Goebbels presented prizes to the Nazi writer Richard Euringer and to Gustav Ucicky for his anti-Soviet film
Flüchtlinge
(Refugees).

What Goebbels was counting on above all, however, was the reform of the Reich Hitler had repeatedly promised. With the federal states abolished, all cultural affairs would fall to him.
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But at the end of 1933, this move had come up against fierce opposition from Göring, whose relations with Goebbels at that moment happened to be at their lowest ebb.
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Even a visit shortly before Christmas by Goebbels and his wife to Göring’s private apartment (for Goebbels, its opulent style made it a “chamber of horrors”), although it passed off in friendly enough fashion, had not solved the problem.
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When in 1934 the Prussian minister of culture, Bernhard Rust, was appointed to head a Reich ministry for science, education, and popular information,
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Goebbels thought that he could take his place in Prussia. He arranged with Göring that he would be joining the Prussian cabinet, taking over the running of Prussian cultural affairs from Rust. Eventually, Goebbels decided to rename the sphere over which he would thus preside the “Culture Ministry” (it was to have been the “Reich and Prussian Culture Ministry”).
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But he still ran into difficulties with the name, and a few days later he thought he could win support for the designation “Ministry for Culture and Popular Enlightenment.”
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He had a mandate to this effect drafted and sent to Lammers on May 8.
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But Hitler was opposed to the new name. He did not want Goebbels acquiring ministerial rank in Prussia, and he decided that Göring should simply hand over authority to Goebbels without further change.
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What Goebbels actually did acquire, after lengthy negotiations,
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was what had long been his heart’s desire—authority over the Prussian theaters, which the “theater pasha” Göring
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had hitherto treated mainly as a prize possession enhancing his status-conscious lifestyle. Even after the new arrangements were in place, Goebbels agreed to leave Göring a few crown jewels, in the form of responsibility for the state theaters in Berlin (the Playhouse on the Gendarmenmarkt and the State Opera), in Kassel, and (albeit temporarily) in Wiesbaden. But in all other German theaters—including the non-Prussian states—Goebbels had ultimate control over all important appointments and could intervene in the repertoires of individual theaters.
What is more, the Propaganda Ministry provided the theaters with annual subsidies that increased every year, which further increased their dependence on Berlin.
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While most theaters were owned by local authorities or individual Länder (states), the propaganda minister had direct responsibility for several playhouses, called “Reich theaters”: These venues could always expect special attention from the propaganda minister.

The German theaters were now under the direction of the drama department of the Propaganda Ministry, initially headed by Otto Laubinger. After his death, he was replaced in October by Rainer Schlösser, who acted at the same time as Reich dramaturge, the person responsible for repertoires. With the annual Reich Theater Festival Week instituted in 1934, moreover, the Propaganda Ministry had given itself a regular opportunity to set the signals in the German theater landscape through programmatic speeches and productions.
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However, Goebbels was not to succeed in taking the German museums into his empire. “Reform of the Reich at a snail’s pace,” he sighed in June.
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Thus his ministry continued to be saddled with the old title he so disliked, “Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda.” The exasperation this caused him revealed itself in May, when he told the German press not to keep referring to “the Reich Culture Ministry and Culture Minister Rust,” since the area of culture was divided among three authorities, those being Rust; the Ministry of the Interior, responsible for religious matters; and finally Goebbels himself, responsible for questions of art, among other topics.
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But it was not only in the state sector that Goebbels found his claim to a role in cultural life endangered in 1934.

On January 24 Hitler had entrusted to Rosenberg—at Ley’s suggestion—the “supervision of the whole intellectual and ideological training and education” of the National Socialist movement.
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By thus commissioning Rosenberg, Hitler reinforced his position within Nazi cultural politics along with that of the dogmatically
völkisch
line he represented. Goebbels stood for a more flexible cultural-political course, not necessarily excluding elements of artistic modernism—after all, in the 1920s he had been an enthusiast for van Gogh, Nolde, and Barlach. Now, fearing that Rosenberg wanted to “erect a control organization over me,” he complained to Hitler accordingly. He demanded that Rosenberg’s Combat League for German Culture be
dissolved. Early in March he had a discussion with Rosenberg and Hess, at which—according to Goebbels’s notes—Rosenberg agreed to disband the Combat League.
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In reality Rosenberg had no intention of abolishing the League. Instead he contacted Robert Ley, chief organizer of the NSDAP in the Reich and head of the German Labor Front; merged the Combat League and the Deutsche Bühne (German Stage), responsible for organizing theater visits—also part of his purview—into a single “National Socialist Cultural Community”; and incorporated this new organization in its entirety into the Kraft durch Freude organization, which was run by Ley. In addition he tried to persuade Ley to integrate the federal state leaders of the Combat League as “ideological commissioners” into the headquarters of each Gau, thereby rendering redundant the Gau branches of the Reich Culture Chamber instigated by Goebbels.
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Furthermore, Rosenberg ensured that Goebbels relieved Hans Weidemann, responsible in the Propaganda Ministry for matters to do with fine art, of his second position as head of the KdF culture office (since his agreement with Ley the previous autumn, the office had been under Goebbels’s patronage).
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Weidemann, a painter, had strongly advocated a symbiosis of National Socialism and modern art, especially Expressionism, something Goebbels had explicitly warned him not to do in February 1934.
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Goebbels now started gradually removing Weidemann from cultural politics entirely.
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But for Goebbels the real confrontation with Rosenberg was not to come until the second half of 1934. Having blocked the “revolutionary forces” within the cultural activities of the Nazi movement, Rosenberg thought that the moment had come to set in motion a broad campaign against all aspects of cultural modernism within the NSDAP.

The fundamental conflict between the National Socialist Party leadership and that of the SA, which had erupted spectacularly before 1933 in the two “Stennes revolts,” had not disappeared with the “seizure of power” but in fact had become more critical. The SA had increased its numbers by massive recruiting as well as by incorporating
other, “coordinated” paramilitary units: Its membership, 500,000 in 1933, had risen to four and a half million by the summer of 1934. With this mighty, miscellaneous, somewhat unruly force behind him, Röhm as SA chief of staff now tried to anchor the whole organization securely within the new National Socialist state.

With the help of SA commissioners, Röhm attempted to assert his influence on the state administration and to build up the SA into a people’s militia in competition with the Reichswehr as a homeland defense force. But by spring 1934 at the latest, these efforts had plainly foundered. The fact was that Hitler’s rearmament plans were based firmly on the Reichswehr. However, Röhm, showing no sign of giving up on his ambitions for his defense force, continued his efforts to militarize the SA and to arm at least some of his troops. It is true that there is no evidence that he was planning an armed insurrection, but within the top echelons of the regime and in Reichswehr circles, Röhm’s self-confident pursuit of power was being followed with great anxiety.

Alongside the thwarted ambitions of the SA leadership, the millions of SA members represented a hotbed of growing unrest. The “veterans,” often occupying a lower social status and still without jobs, saw themselves being cheated of their reward for years of tireless activism on behalf of the Party. New members could not fail to notice that their commitment was not being repaid. The SA leadership was increasingly subject to criticism by the mass of brownshirts and, with its repeated demand for a “second revolution,” tried to create a kind of safety valve for this pent-up dissatisfaction. The frustration of the SA men was expressed from time to time in a spate of attacks and violent outbursts, often aimed—since the completion of the “seizure of power”—at the general population.
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The conflict between the Party and the SA was duly reflected in Goebbels’s diary. In February 1934 he criticized the overblown ambitions of the SA, which was extending its grip at the expense of the Party.
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In the weeks that followed, he noted repeatedly that there were “complaints” and “concerns” about the SA; the Reich governors were also expressing annoyance about it to Hitler.
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When Hitler complained in private to Goebbels in May about Röhm’s appointments policy, all Goebbels noted was: “§175. Revolting!”
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Both Hitler and Goebbels increasingly distrusted the SA leadership, for example the head of the Berlin-Brandenburg SA Karl Ernst, and in
June Hitler observed that Röhm was “a captive of the people around him.”
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On the other hand, Goebbels had not by any means broken with Röhm and the SA leadership. For example, he praised a speech by Röhm to the assembled diplomatic corps and foreign press in 1934 (part of the self-confident Röhm’s drive to establish independent international contacts) and forced the press to feature it prominently. His praise was all the more noteworthy given that Röhm’s talk had somewhat overshadowed his own speech to the same audience.
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When Goebbels watched an hour-long military review by the SA in Dresden at the end of May, he found it simply “magnificent.”
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During the first half of 1934, the confrontation between the Party and the SA developed into a comprehensive domestic political conflict. Hitler’s conservative coalition partners, who had continuously lost ground since the start of 1933, thought they saw in the conflict a chance for themselves. In these circles there was a widespread notion that they might be able to use the increasing difficulties within the Nazi movement to strengthen their own position and perhaps even restore the monarchy as a stabilizing element. Thus Goebbels wrote in January that among his intimate circle Hitler had held forth about the “spread of monarchist propaganda”:
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The vice chancellor, von Papen, was now increasingly putting himself forward as the spokesman for the idea of a restoration. In the diary there are various complaints about the “reactionaries” and the “parsons.” After the intensive criticism he had faced from bourgeois quarters about his press control system, the campaign against “grumblers and faultfinders” started by Goebbels in May had been aimed precisely at “reactionary” and “ecclesiastical” circles.
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A further irritant was the news von Papen broke in the middle of May, when he informed Hitler that Hindenburg had drawn up a political testament based on suggestions from him, von Papen. The contents of this document were unknown, but it was feared that it expressed the president’s wish that the monarchy should be restored after his death.
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However, it was Blomberg who was the source of the rumor that von Papen himself wished to succeed Hindenburg.
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The situation became more critical on June 17 when von Papen gave a speech at the University of Marburg in which he mounted a fierce attack on the despotic nature and terrorist tactics of Nazi rule.
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On Hitler’s orders, Goebbels banned the entire press from publishing
the speech,
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and von Papen reacted by offering his resignation to the president. Goebbels’s relationship with the vice chancellor deteriorated still further in the days that followed: “Papen is sabotaging [us].”
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At the end of June Goebbels gave talks in several major cities, stoking up animosity toward von Papen.
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He flew from Essen to Hamburg to watch the Great Derby horse race, where the public was, he said, “completely on his side” and openly gave von Papen, who was also present, a hostile reception. Goebbels had no doubt about who would win in the imminent domestic political confrontation: “I pity the poor Gentlemen’s Club
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once things come to a head.”

Rudolf Hess played on the same theme in a speech on June 25 in Cologne with a warning against provoking a “second revolution.”
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According to Goebbels, the situation was becoming more serious all the time: “The Führer must act. Otherwise the reactionaries will get the better of us.” Back in Berlin, on the morning of June 29 he received a call from Hitler asking him to fly to Bad Godesberg immediately. The reason for the meeting was clear to Goebbels: “So it’s starting.”
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At Hangelar Airport near Bonn he was met by the Cologne Gauleiter Josef Grohé. Later that afternoon, toward four o’clock, Hitler arrived from Essen and told him about the latest developments: “He’s going to take action on Saturday. Against Röhm and his rebels. With blood. Got to know that price of rebellion is one’s head.” Allegedly, Hitler went on, there was evidence that Röhm had conspired with the French ambassador, André François-Poncet, together with Schleicher and Strasser. Goebbels immediately declared that he welcomed the forthcoming action wholeheartedly.

So it must have come as an almost total surprise to learn that the blow he was expecting was aimed at the SA and not at the forces of “reaction.” His diary entries show that up to this point he had been expecting a reckoning with von Papen and his supporters, not an action against Röhm. But that was indeed what the Gestapo, the SS, and the army had been preparing intensively over the previous few days. Significantly, as late as June 20, Goebbels—who since the beginning of his time in Berlin had always set great stock in his good contacts with the SA and its leadership—had received the Silesian SA
leader Edmund Heines, who was within a few days to fall victim to the murderous action of June 30.
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Goebbels had failed to grasp the complexity of the domestic political crisis, and—as in so many other instances—he was left out of the decision-making process leading up to the dramatic events of June 30. The dubious privilege he now enjoyed, of being as surprised by the attack on the SA leadership as they were, was no doubt meant as a salutary lesson for him: Hitler made sure he was present at the “action” against Röhm’s group in Bavaria. A second reason for ordering him to Bavaria was, however, that Hitler obviously wanted to keep him away from the secondary scene of the action: It was Göring who was to take charge in Berlin during the following days—a striking defeat for Goebbels. When it came to real questions of power politics, Hitler trusted another.

For the time being, however, Hitler carried out his program as normal in Bad Godesberg. In the evening they both attended the Labor Front military ceremony, while Goebbels unobtrusively made sure that his wife and children were moved from Kladow to Berlin and into police protection.
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Goebbels flew overnight with Hitler from Bonn to Munich. Here Hitler learned that during the night members of an SA standard, about three thousand men, had been alerted and had gone on a noisy rampage through the streets. It is possible that they had gotten wind of the preparations for the anti-SA action.

Hitler now decided to speed up the pace of the planned action. He did not wait for SS reinforcements from Berlin and Dachau but moved with Goebbels, the SA leader Viktor Lutze, and a contingent of SS men to Bad Wiessee, Röhm’s vacation resort, to which, on Hitler’s instructions, he had summoned SA leaders for a conference to be held in the morning. The evening before there had been heavy drinking, and they were still sleeping it off when Hitler’s motorcade drove into Bad Wiessee. Goebbels was now an eyewitness as Hitler had the members of the completely unsuspecting SA leadership arrested. Heines, to whom he had promised assistance just a few days before, he now thought “pitiful,” especially as he had been discovered together with a “catamite,” whereas Röhm, he judged, had maintained his dignity.

They returned to Munich, where the news of the action in Berlin was trickling through: “Strasser dead, Schleicher dead, Bose dead,
Clausener
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[properly Klausener] dead. Munich 7 SA leaders shot.” Back in Berlin he heard from Göring, who had led the butchery in the capital, that everything had gone according to plan. The only “slip” was that “Frau Schleicher died too”: “Pity, but that’s how it is.”

The next day Goebbels joined Hitler, who had meanwhile arrived in Berlin.
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After a report from Göring, Hitler decided on several further executions that he still deemed “necessary”—thereby downgrading his Berlin Gauleiter to a mere witness of these murderous resolutions. Goebbels estimated that about sixty “death sentences” in all had been handed down. Actually the number of murders was rather higher, somewhere between 150 and 200, and the action eliminated not only SA leaders but “reactionaries,” known opponents of Nazism, and assorted enemies of Hitler. Röhm was finally numbered among the victims, shot in his prison cell when he failed to commit suicide as commanded.
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On the evening of July 1 Goebbels gave an eyewitness account on the radio of the events of the previous few days. He described in detail for his listeners the journey to Bavaria and the arrests in Bad Wiessee, hypocritically asking them to spare him from having to “describe the revolting, almost stomach-churning scenes” he had witnessed there.
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He justified the murders by recapitulating the accusations Hitler had made against Röhm and his associates in a speech
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to leading Party comrades in Munich. They were guilty of conspiring with a foreign power, “debauched living,” and “ostentation and gluttony.” They threatened to give the whole leadership of the Party a reputation for “disgraceful and disgusting sexual abnormality,” and their entire activity had been dictated by a personal lust for power.

Goebbels’s broadcast ended with one of his most florid hymns of praise to Hitler, one that contained a warning at the same time: “What the Führer does, he does completely. The same with this business. Nothing by halves. […] But anyone who consciously and systematically rebels against the Führer and his movement should be in no doubt that he is playing a risky game with his own life.”

For Goebbels, the next few days were filled with the direct repercussions of the purge: The impact abroad was disastrous, but the reaction of the German population was restrained. Relieved, Goebbels
noted that Hindenburg had provided a convenient screen for the proceedings. Finally, he heard that Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorf had taken control of the Berlin SA again, in place of Karl Ernst, another victim of the purge. Goebbels had not been consulted about this appointment.

At the first cabinet meeting after the murders, on July 3, Hitler was giving a detailed report when von Papen suddenly appeared, looking “completely broken.” To Goebbels, von Papen’s resignation now seemed inevitable, given that many supporters of his were among the victims, such as Edgar Julius Jung, who had organized von Papen’s address in Marburg, and von Papen’s adviser Herbert Bose. Even Goebbels found it sheer mockery when the cabinet continued with “business as usual” in these circumstances, passing thirty-two new laws.
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