Goebbels: A Biography (41 page)

When Marshal Józef Piłsudski—the man whose authoritarian regime had ruled Poland since 1926 and who was responsible for the rapprochement with Nazi Germany since 1934—died on May 12, 1935, Goebbels was highly alarmed: “Poland is losing its best man, and we’re losing the most important figure in the great game.”
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On May 13 he talked to Hitler about the situation arising from Piłsudski’s death,
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and the two men continued the debate the next day, this time accompanied by Göring and by Hitler’s foreign policy adviser Joachim von Ribbentrop (whom Goebbels did not rate highly):
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“Poland decisive. Year 1936 and especially 1937 dangerous. We prepare for all eventualities. For most extreme possibility, too. Rearm, rearm!”
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These remarks show how unstable Germany’s foreign policy situation seemed to the leading figures of the regime in spring 1935. They were somewhat reassured when Göring returned from the funeral ceremony in Warsaw to report that Józef Beck, now securely ensconced in office, had promised him that “Poland would stand by its treaty with us.”
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There was another glimmer of hope, too, as Goebbels discovered from a conversation with Hitler on May 14: “Mussolini seems to be getting entangled in Abyssinia. […] Looking to us for friendship again.”
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Mussolini’s unmistakable preparations for war against Abyssinia led to increasing friction abroad and, eventually, to a huge international crisis in the summer.
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The Nazi regime, of course, wanted to exploit the situation to break out of the foreign policy isolation of the Third Reich: To this end, the German press was repeatedly warned as early as February 1935 not to criticize Italy’s Abyssinian policy.
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Noting the increasing divisions between Italy and the two other big European powers, Hitler decided in May to take the foreign policy initiative. On May 21 he gave a speech in the Reichstag that German propaganda represented as a “speech for peace.”
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A significant point in the address was Hitler’s promise to preserve the territorial integrity of Austria, which the Italians had long angled for. Mussolini was quick to respond in a friendly manner to this gesture, broaching with the German ambassador the possibility of a German-Italian understanding.
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On May 25 Goebbels directed the press “in future and in all areas to avoid any kind of friction with Italy.”
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Aside from this, Hitler’s speech contained in particular an offer to Britain to negotiate. Among other things, Hitler declared that Germany would agree to limit its naval tonnage to 35 percent of British capacity. At the same time, Hitler used the speech to launch an attack on France, openly stating that his western neighbor was endangering the future of the Locarno Treaties by its military alliance with the Soviet Union. Furthermore, he did not hold back when questioning the demilitarization of the Rhineland. The “speech for peace” was therefore in reality an obvious attempt at splitting the “Stresa Front.” Among the audience, Reichstag member Joseph Goebbels listened
reverently to the words of his leader: “Our national destiny rests in good hands.”

Goebbels’s diary also establishes that he was not involved in preparations for the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, signed on June 18. On June 4, the day when Hitler’s newly appointed ambassador-at-large, Joachim von Ribbentrop, opened the negotiations in London, there is a first, very brief mention of the pact.
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However, in the preceding weeks, when Hitler frequently discussed the foreign affairs situation with him, and in particular Germany’s relationship with Britain, he does not seem to have raised the naval question in his presence.
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Hitler did not touch on the subject until the negotiations were completed: “As I arrive at the Führer’s office, Naval Agreement just signed in London. Führer very happy. Big success for Ribbentrop and all of us.”
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When Goebbels writes triumphantly about this conversation, “We move closer to the goal: friendship with England,” he reveals a basic misreading on the part of the German leadership of the British negotiators’ motives for signing the agreement. The goal of achieving a close bilateral alliance with Hitler’s partner of choice, Great Britain, was in fact not any nearer. The British side saw the treaty with Germany not as a move away from a multilateral system of security but as a first step toward tying Germany once more into a collective European security nexus. Dividing the spheres of interest into a colonial British empire, on the one hand, and German hegemony over the European continent on the other, was not on the agenda as far as the British were concerned. Hitler was as deeply mired in this misconception as his ambassador-at-large and his propaganda minister, and they never tired of compounding one another’s errors in this regard. “Within 5 years,” held Goebbels with respect to Anglo-German relations, “an alliance must be in place.”
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At the beginning of June, the Goebbels family left for a vacation, once more in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm.
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The break gave Goebbels the rare opportunity to become more intensively involved in
Helga’s education as a father. When she occasionally became cheeky, he applied what he thought was the best possible corrective: “Sometimes she gets a spanking. But then she behaves herself again.”
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A few weeks later he records that after a few “strokes” Helga was “a model of charm and friendliness.”
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Early in July he returned to Heiligendamm. Magda came a good two weeks later, but only for a three-day visit, after which she went back to Berlin.
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Before Magda arrived he was twice visited by the actress Luise Ullrich; he had long been a fan of hers,
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and he now discussed “film questions” with her. On her second visit she stayed for four days by the Baltic,
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and toward the end of his vacation she visited Goebbels once more in Heiligendamm.
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When he finally returned to Berlin at the beginning of August, there was an awkward confrontation with his wife: “Magda gives me a grilling.” But after a few days came the obligatory reconciliation.
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Hitler, too, made a surprise appearance in Heiligendamm. They talked over various issues of cultural and domestic politics, and otherwise Goebbels tried to make the visit as pleasant as possible for his leader: “Eating together. Then walks and a boat trip by moonlight. Wonderful atmosphere. I steer. Back and forth across the Baltic. Führer very happy.”
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But the moonlit idyll did not last. Back in Berlin, Jews were being subjected to violent attacks, actions for which Goebbels had prepared the ground and for which he had given the order—but not before securing Hitler’s backing.

The so-called Kurfürstendamm riots had a long prehistory. Since the Christmas shopping season of 1934, Nazi activists had organized further boycotts of Jewish businesses and carried out excesses against Jews. Along with the SA, as in previous years the NS-Hago, the Nationalsozialistische Handelsorganisation (National Socialist Trade Organization) played a leading role. This new anti-Semitic wave continued after the turn of the year 1934–35 and gathered momentum from February 1935 onward—following the successful Saarland plebiscite—with the Nazi press and regional Party leaders playing a central part. Aside from the exclusion of Jews from business, Party activists were demanding above all an end to “racial disgrace”—that is, intimate relations between Jews and non-Jews.

However, since the end of April the Party leaders had started trying to curb anti-Semitic excesses. A decisive factor in this was the precarious international situation of the Reich, which led to a fear of
sanctions, while there was some hope that negotiating a naval treaty with Britain represented the seed of Germany’s eventual emergence from international isolation. With some difficulty, the Berlin Party leadership had largely succeeded, by June, in putting a stop to anti-Semitic disturbances.
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But Goebbels foresaw that this could only be a temporary halt to the “actions.” He took every opportunity in conversation with Hitler to secure his agreement to “proceed more radically on the Jewish question,” and he was determined to “sort things out” in Berlin before too long.
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It seemed to him that intensifying attacks on Jews was the best way of diverting attention from the critical political situation at home and of sending a signal to Party activists that the regime was serious about fulfilling the core ideological demands of the National Socialist program. Not least, he wanted to be seen as taking the lead on this; in fact, his plan was to set an example in Berlin of what a thoroughgoing anti-Semitic policy ought to look like. The radicalism on which he prided himself was now concentrated entirely on “the Jews.” He had given up his “revolutionary” rhetoric in the middle of 1933; the “reactionaries” had been much weakened since June 30, 1934, and were no longer a particularly worthwhile target, and the regime had become relatively cautious about confronting the churches. With his ruthless move against the Jews in Berlin, so Goebbels thought, he had instinctively grasped the main trend to which the Party’s policy would be reverting in the next few months.

After the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement on June 18, disturbances did in fact flare up again in many places across the Reich. Once again, Berlin was one of the main sites for these activities: Since the beginning of June, members of the Hitler Youth had been loitering outside Jewish shops and obstructing their trade. As Gauleiter of Berlin, Goebbels fueled this pogrom atmosphere in his speech to the Gau Party rally on June 30, objecting that “Jewry is once more trying to assert itself today on every street.”

On July 13 news reached Goebbels, vacationing in Heiligendamm, of a Jewish “demonstration” in Berlin: A Swedish film with anti-Semitic tendencies had allegedly been hissed at and jeered at by Jews in the audience, and this had been interpreted by the Party press as a deliberate provocation. Goebbels used the opportunity to enlist his guest, Hitler, against his adversary, Magnus von Levetzow. The Führer immediately assured him that the Berlin chief of police would be removed
from his position (an idea Goebbels had been pursuing since the year before):
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“We’re getting there at last.”
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In Berlin the Party organized a “counterdemonstration,” in which
Der Angriff
of July 15 openly invited readers to participate. The desired reaction soon followed: By the same evening “outraged national comrades” were terrorizing Jewish fellow-citizens on the Kurfürstendamm, which led to sharp clashes between Party comrades and the police, who were uncertain how to deal with this outburst of “popular anger.” These events were reported in the international press as “the Kurfürstendamm riots.”

Goebbels noted two days later: “Riot on Kurfürstendamm. Jews beaten up. Foreign press screaming ‘pogrom.’ ” Just as he had hoped, the Berlin police chief, Levetzow, was blamed for the affair and replaced by Goebbels’s friend Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorf, who had visited him in Heiligendamm just a week before the riots.
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On July 19 Lippert, Görlitzer, and the head of the Berlin SA, Ludwig Uhland, arrived for discussions in Heiligendamm.
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Their conclusions were reported in
Der Angriff
the same day: “Berlin to be cleansed of communists, reactionaries and Jews. Dr. Goebbels tidies up in his Gau.” Goebbels was reaping praise for redeeming a precarious situation which his own behavior had, in fact, deplorably done so much to escalate.

In mid-August he went to Nuremberg to join Hitler in putting the finishing touches on preparations for the Party rally. The event was to be used this year above all to make clear who the main enemies of the regime were. To this end, the 1935 Party rally was held under an “Anti-Comintern” slogan. By contrast, Hitler wanted to “make his peace” with the churches (in July he had appointed Hanns Kerrl as minister for churches in an attempt to place the regime’s relationship to the churches on a new footing); the Stahlhelm movement was to be disbanded, but he seems to have said nothing further about his next steps regarding the “Jewish question.” Subsequently he and Goebbels went on to Munich, where they inspected the Party premises that were being built on the Königsplatz.
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During Goebbels’s stay in Upper Bavaria—visiting NSDAP Reich leader Franz Schwarz by the Tegernsee—there was a dramatic news flash. Everything indicated that an attack by Italy on the Abyssinian Empire was imminent. This development suited Hitler perfectly, as
the forthcoming war fit well into his foreign policy plans. The dictator immediately gave his listeners an account of what these plans were: “Permanent alliance [with] England. Good relations Poland. Limited number of colonies. But expansion to east. Baltic area belongs to us. Dominate Baltic Sea. Conflicts Italy-Abyssinia-England, then Japan-Russia around the corner. That’s to say maybe in a few years’ time. Then our great historic hour will come.”
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The Party rally in Nuremberg was opened on September 10. The thrust of the mass event was made apparent by Hitler’s “proclamation,” which was read out by Hess and enthusiastically followed by Goebbels: “Three enemies of the state, Marxists, clericalists, and reactionaries. Implacable war without compromise. Anti-Bolshevist and anti-Jewish. My course justified a thousand times over.”
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But during the rally one particular enemy of National Socialism was to emerge as a clear priority.

Goebbels gave his speech on the third day, and naturally, as he noted, it was a “tremendous success.” As instructed by Hitler, his leitmotif was anti-Bolshevism. Germany, he explained, was fulfilling a “global mission” by leading “all like-minded groups” in the “struggle against the international Bolshevizing of the world.” On the successful accomplishment of this mission depended “the fate of all civilized nations.”
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Late on the evening of the next day, Hitler called him in: Together with Frick and Hess they considered several proposed legislative bills. The first concerned making the swastika the sole national flag. This innovation was prompted by an incident in New York in which demonstrators protesting Nazi policies had torn down the swastika flag on a German ship. This led Hitler to summon, on short notice, a special session of the Reichstag in Nuremberg to pass an act elevating the status of the Nazi symbol. At the same time, the new law was clearly aimed at the “reactionaries,” as it now outlawed the displaying—hitherto favored by nationalists—of the old black, white, and red imperial flag as the national flag alongside the swastika.
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That evening, September 14, they also gave intensive consideration to two anti-Jewish laws, which ministry officials had prepared months before, but which now, on a spontaneous decision of Hitler’s, were to be passed by the Reichstag, and change the direction of the whole event. First, a new citizenship law was to deprive the Jews of
their status as German citizens on equal terms with others. And second, what was later called the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor (Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre) proscribed marriage or sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews. Hitler’s political calculation was evident: Since radical action on the confrontation with the “reactionaries” and on the church question was ruled out for the time being, the “Jewish question” would have to satisfy the radical mood that had been whipped up among the Party comrades over the previous few months.
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The Reichstag session began on Sunday evening at nine o’clock. In a short statement Hitler explained the new laws, which were then read out by Göring, who also supplied the reasoning behind them.
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Goebbels found his speech almost “unbearable,” however—the diary does not reveal why—and so he had the radio broadcast interrupted at this point.
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When Hitler addressed the Gauleiters again at the end of the rally, specifically forbidding any further excesses in connection with the “Jewish question,” Goebbels doubted whether the appeal would work.
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But it was genuinely the case that, in view of the coming Olympic year, the regime had no desire for its international reputation to suffer further damage from anti-Jewish brutality. For the same reason, after the Nuremberg rally Goebbels’s propaganda became more restrained where the “Jewish question” was concerned: For the time being, it was no longer a topic for discussion.