Goebbels: A Biography (43 page)

In March Magda and Joseph Goebbels planned to buy the summer residence they had been renting in Kladow. Goebbels turned to Hitler, who promised to speak to Amann about the funds they needed (and also to raise Goebbels’s salary). Goebbels said of his private situation: “We have so many other worries that we can’t sustain such money worries as well.”
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In the end an alternative presented itself: Their eye fell upon a “summer house” in one of the most exclusive Berlin locales, on the island of Schwanenwerder in the Wannsee.
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Some days later, in connection with a private invitation, Hitler gave Goebbels the agreeable news that he was going to raise his expenses allowance to 4,000 Reichsmarks. “It’s a weight off all our minds. We’re very happy. The Führer is so noble and generous.”
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He proceeded to buy the house the very next day, in the full expectation that Hitler would cover the
funding gap by “arranging for an advance from Amann,” and indeed Hitler called from Munich a few days later: “Money for Schwanenwerder secured. Amann was generous again. I’m so grateful to the Führer.”
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In the next few days Magda and Joseph wondered how they might recompense Hitler for his support: “If we could just create a little home for him here!”
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As always in his diary when Goebbels was describing intimate moments with his idol, he lapsed into a fervent and quite maudlin tone. For Hitler’s birthday, April 20, Magda did in fact prepare for him a little guesthouse on the grounds of the property. When the Führer paid a visit to Schwanenwerder on the eve of his birthday, he was “absolutely thrilled” with the place and promised to “come and visit often.”
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Later in the evening there was a chance for Goebbels to have a long private conversation with Hitler: “He is very happy that we are happy.”
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Magda, Hitler assured him some months later, was “charming, the best wife I could have found,”
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and he loved their daughter Helga “like his own child.”
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The moment the water sports season began, Goebbels acquired a new boat—the third since taking office—which he proudly showed off to Hitler at the beginning of May. They went on boat trips together again, and the opportunity of spending the early summer days in the company of his Führer helped Goebbels to forget his “money worries about the boat.”
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In July, he generously bought another, smaller motorboat for his wife and children, but it appealed to him so much that he commandeered it for outings himself.
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In the summer he also indulged in a new car, a “5.4 l Mercedes sportscar,”
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and a few weeks later he ordered in addition a “limusine [
sic
] for the winter,” a vehicle that he liked for one particular reason above all: “One like the Führer’s got.”
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All of this of course consumed a large amount of money, but in autumn 1936 Goebbels was for the time being able to put his financial affairs on an even keel. He managed to sell his diaries on quite sensational terms to Max Amann, head of the Party’s publishing house, the Eher Verlag: “To be published 20 years after my death. 250,000 marks now and 100,000 per year. That’s very generous.”
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It is hardly conceivable that this extraordinary transaction could have taken place without Hitler’s consent.

It might be thought that Goebbels would have been more than satisfied with his extremely comfortable home life, but the opposite
was the case. His relationship with Magda was constantly marred by intense arguments, as for example in May 1936, when after a daylong argument Goebbels was contemplating moving out of the villa on Schwanenwerder, which Magda had just finished lavishly decorating.
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Goebbels often noted long discussions with Magda in his diary but rarely conveyed anything about their content—in striking contrast to other entries, which largely consisted of records of conversations. While he often testified to her exemplary conduct of household affairs and social obligations, the unavoidable evening chats with her seem to have bored him.

A few weeks later, on June 2, 1936, Goebbels had a fateful encounter. During an evening walk on Schwanenwerder he met Lida Baarová, the Czech actress. She was the girlfriend of the actor Gustav Fröhlich, who had recently moved into a house very near to Goebbels. Since the previous year, Baarová, then just twenty-one, had been cast by the Berlin film company Ufa to play seductive “vamp” parts, roles that the prim and proper German film industry under the Nazis preferred to fill with foreign actresses. On that July evening, Goebbels fell into a conversation with the actress, and at his request she showed him the house she and Fröhlich were living in.
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A few weeks later, as Baarová reports in her memoirs, Goebbels invited her, along with Fröhlich and some other guests, for a trip in his boat. When Fröhlich had to go back to the studio for some evening filming, Goebbels insisted that she should stay on board with his other guests; it then turned into quite a late night.
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Around this time, in August 1936, it was from Rosenberg of all people that Goebbels learned of an “unpleasant business with Lüdecke.” Quite evidently this was one of Magda’s affairs, which she initially denied and then confessed to him.
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Admittedly, this faux pas on Magda’s part lay some time back in the past. Kurt Lüdecke had been an active Hitler supporter before 1933 but had then fled Germany in 1934 as an opponent of Nazism. It was in these circumstances that Goebbels arranged a further meeting with Baarová, to take place during the Nuremberg rally in September. He had taken care that her latest film,
Traitor
, a movie that glorified the work of military counterespionage and that the propaganda minister was sponsoring, should be premiered at the Nuremberg rally—in the presence, moreover, of Himmler, Justice Minister Franz Gürtner, and counterintelligence chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.
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Goebbels was
able to persuade Baarová to stay on and have a look around at the rally, and the next day, sharing a meal with Ufa personnel, the two became rather closer to each other: “A miracle has occurred,” wrote Goebbels in his diary.
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Back in Berlin, at the end of September he invited Fröhlich and his girlfriend to his box at the opera, and a few days later he asked them over to his house on Schwanenwerder for a screening of Fröhlich’s latest film.
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After that he met the Czech film star not only in company
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but more often alone, preferably at his house in Lanke. And at some point in the following winter, as she recalls, their relationship became intimate.

There was a major confrontation when, on a winter’s day on Schwanenwerder, Fröhlich thought he had caught his girlfriend and the minister in a compromising situation.
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The rumor—which was unfounded—that he slapped Goebbels’s face during this showdown seems to have spread like wildfire. It is not surprising that after this Goebbels’s attitude to the actor became less than positive.
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During the war Fröhlich was one of the few top German actors to be called up for military service—if only temporarily.

For all the attraction Goebbels felt to fascist Italy and however much he admired Mussolini’s risky war-making in Africa,
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he agreed with Hitler that Mussolini’s Abyssinian adventure and the resulting Italian-British conflict ought first and foremost to improve the chances of an Anglo-German rapprochement. “Eventually there will be an alliance of the two Germanic peoples,” was Goebbels’s summary of Hitler’s views in May 1936.
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This hope seemed to be reinforced when Mussolini annexed Abyssinia in May and proclaimed the Italian king emperor of Ethiopia: “The Führer’s alliance with England will now be almost automatic.”
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For Goebbels’s benefit, at the end of May Hitler put a name to the prospect he visualized coming out of an alliance of this kind: the “United States of Europe under German leadership. That would be the solution.”
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For his part, during the Abyssianian conflict Mussolini found it politic to try to improve his relations with Germany. A decisive factor was the need to remove the tensions that had arisen between the two
states after the 1934 Nazi putsch attempt in Austria. Correspondingly, Mussolini let Hitler know in January 1936 that he would have no objection if Austria, while remaining formally an independent state, in fact became a satellite of the German Reich. At the end of May, via Ambassador Bernardo Attolico, Mussolini asked Goebbels whether “the German press could play down the English-Italian rift somewhat. I’m doing the same, because we’ve got to keep some irons in the fire.”
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In June the Italian foreign minister, Suvich, who favored an understanding with France and Britain, was replaced by Mussolini’s son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano. Ciano’s successor as propaganda minister was Dino Alfieri; this was a changeover that Goebbels accurately assessed as favorable to Germany. It was a fortunate turn of events that Countess Ciano, Mussolini’s daughter Edda, happened to be in Berlin while this reshuffle was taking place, and that the Goebbelses were able to give her a good deal of attention.
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Weakened by the withdrawal of Mussolini’s support, Chancellor Schuschnigg was forced to settle with Nazi Germany.
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In what was called the July Agreement, there were negotiations, among other things, over improving press relations, to which both countries had assented by August 1935 in an exchange of communiqués.
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Goebbels, whose area of responsibility involved many parts of the July Agreement, had been following the negotiations conducted by Ambassador von Papen in Vienna
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from the sidelines with a degree of skepticism, but he had no part in the final formulation of the accord.
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Nonetheless, he could not refrain from announcing the communiqué of July 11 to the regular press briefing as a “big sensation.”
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Naturally, as Goebbels and Hitler agreed, the accord should above all be a platform from which further to undermine the authority of the Austrian government. At the beginning of May Hitler had left with him the memorable sentiment: “We must maintain tension in Austria and Czechoslovakia. Never let things settle down.”
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On July 19 Goebbels once again went to Bayreuth for the Wagner Festival. While he was following the performances (mainly with enthusiasm), taking an interest in the personal details of top artists, and chatting for hours with Hitler about this and that, the latter—without bringing Goebbels into the actual decision-making process—was initiating a momentous change of direction in German foreign policy.
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For on July 25 Hitler granted an audience to an envoy from
General Francisco Franco, the leader of an officers’ plot against the left-wing government in Madrid. Soon after that he gave orders to support the putsch, so that the revolt, based in Spanish North Africa, could be successfully transferred to metropolitan Spain.
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This significant foreign relations decision sprang from a mixture of ideological, strategic, anticommunist, and military-industrial motives and was highly significant in paving the way for the subsequent German-Italian alliance. Nonetheless, it was a decision that passed Goebbels by, even though he was on hand in Bayreuth at the time, preoccupied with a performance of
Siegfried
. It was not until the next day that Hitler and Göring informed him of the decision made the previous night, to which Goebbels pointedly attributed only minor significance in his diary entry: “So we’re getting a bit involved in Spain. Planes etc. Not obvious. Who knows what the point is.”
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All the same, Goebbels followed the developments in and around Spain very closely in the following weeks and months.
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While the Luftwaffe continued to increase its covert support for the rebels, Hitler pursued far-reaching deceptive tactics at the diplomatic level. In August Germany joined an arms embargo initiated by France and starting in September took part in meetings of an international non-intervention committee.
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In line with this new foreign policy orientation, the topic of “anti-Bolshevism” became more central to German propaganda in the months to come.

When Goebbels returned from Bayreuth to Berlin at the end of July, he discovered a “proper festival city,”
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abundantly decorated and comprehensively geared up for the imminent Olympics.
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In the next two weeks he plunged completely into the Olympic proceedings, attending numerous sports events, taking an active part in the accompanying social and cultural program, and using the opportunity to mingle with high-ranking foreign guests such as the Bulgarian Tsar Boris III, the Italian crown prince, Dino Alfieri (Goebbels’s Italian counterpart), and Sir Robert Vansittart, the longstanding undersecretary of state at the British Foreign Office. He registered German sporting successes as “the outcome of reawakened national ambition.”
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But it stuck in his craw that so many medals were won for the
United States “by negroes”: “It’s a disgrace. The white race should be ashamed of itself.”
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At the end of the Games, Goebbels organized on the Pfaueninsel (“Peacock Island,” on the River Havel) a magnificent party for some three thousand guests, meant to outshine all the other festivities and celebrations during the Berlin Olympics. Goebbels welcomed the Bulgarian tsar, the whole of the diplomatic corps, numerous representatives of the Reich government, and many Gauleiters and NSDAP Reich leaders. The Wehrmacht Pioneer Corps had erected a pontoon bridge—hung with festive lanterns and with the Berlin regional orchestra playing on it—across to the island for the occasion. Three more dance bands and the German Opera House Ballet provided the entertainment, and the midnight fireworks display was so colossal that it reminded the U.S. ambassador, William Dodd, of a battle scene.
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On August 16 Goebbels took part in the closing ceremony in the Berlin Olympic stadium, summing up: “With 33 gold medals, Germany easily tops the table. The leading sports nation. That’s glorious.”
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By summer 1935, Hitler had commissioned Leni Riefenstahl to make a permanent film record of the Olympics, a project Goebbels was happy to pursue and of which he was the official promoter.
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In October 1935 the Propaganda Ministry awarded the project 1.5 million Reichsmarks, a fund to be administered by a specially created company, Olympia Film Ltd.
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Riefenstahl’s energetic working style and her unstoppable determination led to unpleasant scenes here and there in sporting arenas with the supervisory staff. Goebbels found himself forced to intervene in one of these confrontations: “I chew Riefenstahl out. Her behavior is impossible. A hysterical woman. She’s just not a man!”
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As a result of the enormous film footage, which Riefenstahl with her characteristic perfectionism finally assembled into two feature-length movies, completing the film cost a considerable amount of time and money. Accusations of profligate spending and negligent use of funding—Goebbels referred to “complete financial chaos”
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—were later withdrawn.
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Despite resistance from Goebbels, in a personal audience with Hitler in November 1937 Riefenstahl succeeded in securing extra funding for the film. The Propaganda Ministry had to supply a further
300,000 marks.
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Meanwhile, Goebbels was obliged to put out a press statement denying reports in the foreign press of a shouting match between Riefenstahl and himself at a social event. Hitler and Goebbels then visited Riefenstahl in her villa in Dahlem; the German press published photos of their visit.
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In November 1937 Goebbels had a chance to see some parts of Riefenstahl’s opus—and he was utterly captivated.
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The gala premiere planned by Hitler and Goebbels for both parts of the film,
Festival of Nations
and
Festival of Beauty
, finally took place—after many postponements
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—on April 20, 1936, Hitler’s forty-ninth birthday, in the presence of the entire Nazi elite.
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On May 1, 1938, Leni Riefenstahl once again received the National Film Prize, from Goebbels himself.
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