Goebbels: A Biography (53 page)

But for the moment all efforts were bent toward resolving the conflict by a combination of diplomatic maneuvering and political pressure. The opening move was the meeting with Chamberlain, for which Hitler, Goebbels, and Göring traveled to Bad Godesberg together overnight from September 21 to 22.

At his first encounter with Chamberlain in the Dreesen Hotel, Hitler surprised the British prime minister, who thought he had come to work out the details of a referendum in the Sudeten territories, with an ultimatum demanding that Czech troops vacate the disputed territories. Hitler also announced that the Wehrmacht would move in there on October 1.
¹⁶³
A memorandum in which these demands were only slightly modified was handed to Chamberlain for transmission to Prague.
¹⁶⁴

On September 24 Hitler and Goebbels flew back to Berlin together. Goebbels could not quite gauge the mood in the city: “Half war fever, half determination. Not really definable. But everybody thinks something is about to happen soon.”
¹⁶⁵
While the Godesberg talks were under way, the press had been told to hold back the speculation but
to make even more of the atrocity stories from the disputed territories.
¹⁶⁶
But Goebbels was still reluctant to switch his propaganda effort to an open and unrestrained pro-war message. He continued to put his faith in a resolution of the crisis through political pressure rather than war.

On September 25, according to Goebbels a “glorious Sunday” which “doesn’t look at all like war,” he conferred at length with Hitler: “Big question: Will Benesch give in? The Führer says no, I say yes.”
¹⁶⁷
They took a walk, and Hitler explained his strategy to him: The deployment plans allowed only a few days’ breathing room. “Führer is a divinatory genius.”

The next day Horace Wilson, Chamberlain’s closest adviser, brought the news that the Prague government had rejected the ultimatum. Hitler abruptly turned down Chamberlain’s proposal of further talks with Prague.
¹⁶⁸
On September 26, Hitler spoke in the Berlin Sportpalast. “I have prepared the meeting down to the last detail,” boasted Goebbels. “I just want the audience to represent the nation.”
¹⁶⁹
He issued a call to Berliners: “If there isn’t room for you in the Sportpalast, then line the route so that the Führer is greeted by vast numbers as he drives to and from the Sportpalast, to convey to him the feelings this historic hour is stirring in all of us.”
¹⁷⁰
In his speech, Hitler insisted that the Sudeten problem must be solved but also promised that “this is the last territorial demand I have to make in Europe.”
¹⁷¹
The press was now under orders to mount a sharp and personal attack on Edvard Beneš. The aim was “to sow discord between Benesch and his people.”
¹⁷²

On the following day, September 27, Wilson brought further news from Chamberlain: France would honor its pledge of support for Czechoslovakia, and Great Britain would stand by France. Hitler remained completely unimpressed.
¹⁷³
The same afternoon, he ordered a motorized division to parade through Berlin.
¹⁷⁴
All extant reports of this demonstration of military strength convey the same impression: The reaction of the Berlin population was subdued rather than enthusiastic.
¹⁷⁵
Nicolaus von Below, Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant, wrote in his memoirs that Goebbels could have “done more to organize the cheering.”
¹⁷⁶
Remarkably, the next day at Hitler’s lunch table, Goebbels observed—“loudly to the Führer, across all those present,” as State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker noted—that the population was not in favor of war.
¹⁷⁷
Goebbels himself noted meaningfully in
his diary that the division’s military review had “left the most profound impression everywhere.”
¹⁷⁸
This entry suggests that von Below was right: The noticeable lack of enthusiasm for war was due to the fact that on this occasion Goebbels had not switched on the “
Volk-
machine”—suggesting that this was a successful tactic.

For Hitler now adjusted his attitude, showing himself willing to negotiate.
¹⁷⁹
On September 28, when Chamberlain asked Mussolini to mediate, in the course of the same day the heads of government in Britain, France, Italy, and Germany agreed to a four-power conference to resolve the problem. This meant, in Goebbels’s summary of the situation, that “there was no jumping-off point for war,” since you cannot really go to war over mere “modalities.”

The following day, Chamberlain, Daladier, Mussolini, and Hitler agreed in Munich on a plan set out by Mussolini, according to which the Wehrmacht would march into the disputed territories within ten days. In other respects, Czechoslovakia would receive a guarantee of its integrity from Britain and France.
¹⁸⁰

During the Munich conference, Goebbels remained in Berlin. The day before the meeting, September 28, he organized throughout the Reich a wave of events under the watchword “An end to Benesch.” At the central rally in the Berlin Lustgarten, Goebbels himself addressed a crowd of five hundred thousand. Unfortunately, he wrote in his diary, he could not yet say anything publicly about the Munich conference, because “the reactions would otherwise have been too positive.” In other words, Goebbels wanted to avoid giving Berliners another chance to demonstrate publicly their aversion to war.
¹⁸¹

On the day after the Munich Agreement, Goebbels noted: “Everybody is relieved that this great, dangerous crisis is over. We’ve all been crossing a dizzying abyss on a thin high-wire…. Now we really are a world power once again. Now the motto is: Arm, arm, arm! It was a victory achieved by pressure, nerves, and the press.”
¹⁸²

Goebbels saw the Munich Agreement as a confirmation of his stance. On October 1, preparing the usual bombastic reception for Hitler in the city,
¹⁸³
he wrote of the festive mood: “Everybody is delighted that peace has been preserved. We must be clear that this applies to us too. That’s how it is throughout the world. The nations do not want another world war.”
¹⁸⁴
In this light, he ascribed the success very largely to himself, for he was the one who “in the hour of decision had presented the situation to the Führer as it really was.”
The military review of the motorized division had shed light on the mood of the population. “And it was not for war.”

He spent the evening with Hitler on October 2: “His determination eventually to destroy Czechoslovakia is implacable. […] This dead, amorphous state formation must go. He stresses again that if it had come to the crunch, London and Paris would not have acted.” Goebbels did not entirely share this opinion: “Without really wanting to, both countries could have slipped into the thing.” And almost defiantly he added, “And I’m sticking to this opinion.”
¹⁸⁵

Credit 18.1

The official photo for the German press announcing the continuation of the marriage of Joseph and Magda Goebbels, October 1938.

In the summer of 1938, Goebbels seems to have made a serious effort with Magda to find a solution to their chronic marital problems. He gave her a “beautiful ring,” and his diary entries indicate that they came to a carefully considered agreement.
¹

Goebbels’s lover Lida Baarová described this arrangement in her memoirs: Over a weekend on Schwanenwerder to which she was invited
along with other guests, Magda and Joseph Goebbels had tried to persuade her to enter into a ménage à trois. Magda was willing to go on playing the part of the resident matriarch at Schwanenwerder and to tolerate Baarová as her husband’s official mistress.
²

But right after this weekend, when everything seemed settled, Goebbels was to discover that Magda was not in the least prepared to share him with another woman. For on the evening of August 15 Magda had a long heart-to-heart with Hitler, who then summoned his propaganda minister to him. There developed “a very long and serious discussion” that “shook [Goebbels] to the core.” Hitler demanded nothing less than a break with Baarová, and Goebbels promised to fulfill his leader’s wish. “I come to very difficult decisions. But they are final. I drive around in the car for an hour. Quite a long way, without going anywhere in particular. I’m living almost as though in a dream. Life is so hard and cruel. […] But duty comes before everything else.”

He then had, as he wrote self-pityingly, “a very long and very sad telephone conversation” with his mistress. “But I remain firm, even though my heart threatens to break. And now a new life is beginning. A hard, tough life, dedicated to nothing but duty. My youth is over.”
³
Goebbels had miscalculated Hitler’s willingness to give up the arrangement he had entered into with the Goebbels couple in 1931. Hitler had become a kind of family member, and in particular it was only possible to maintain his close relationship with Magda as long as her reputation was protected by her marriage to Goebbels. But Goebbels had also underestimated how vital this agreement was to his special place in Hitler’s court—and the extent to which his attempt to dissolve the 1931 arrangement placed a question mark over his position and his career.

Over the next few days, Goebbels, for whom this was “the hardest time in my life,” had further discussions with Magda, whose behavior he found “hard and cruel.”
⁴
He found solace with his mother, who was staying in Berlin at the time.
⁵
Finally, Magda and Joseph concluded a “truce” until the end of September.
⁶
In the following days Magda made a point of appearing at her husband’s side on official occasions; they actually did seem to have arrived at some kind of ceasefire.
⁷

When the armistice ran out at the end of September, at the height of the Sudeten crisis, Goebbels took his state secretary, Karl Hanke,
into his confidence and asked him to mediate. Goebbels was glad that “at least now I’ve got someone I can talk to.”
⁸
But the discussion with Magda on his behalf went badly: “It seems it’s all over.” Hanke spoke with Baarová too. Eventually, Goebbels asked him to put the matter to Hitler again: “After that everything depends on his decision.”
⁹

On October 12, Hanke did have a word with Hitler; the latter sent a message that he would come to a final decision after a personal discussion with Goebbels.
¹⁰
Goebbels meanwhile saw “only one way out, and I’m prepared to take it.”
¹¹
What he meant was obviously a separation from Magda. How would Hitler react to this unwelcome request? Goebbels knew from previous discussions that although the Führer was basically “modern and broad-minded” when it came to a marriage breakup, he took a highly critical view of a certain “divorce mania” in the ranks of the leadership.
¹²

His uncertainty about Hitler’s decision, upon which the future of his family and his career depended, plunged him into a profound personal crisis.
¹³
A couple of days later his chauffeur, Alfred Rach, drove him in the direction of Stettin until Goebbels made him turn around and stop at the Bogensee. He took to his bed with a high temperature, using alcohol to help him sleep. He did not come around again for twenty-four hours; his worried colleagues, taking care of him in his refuge, could not wake him any sooner. He developed “terrible heart pains” and thought his end was near. But somehow he got back on his feet, and came—once more!—to “a firm decision. This state of affairs must end, come what may. Otherwise it’s going to destroy me.”
¹⁴

Desperate, he drove back to Berlin, where he saw the film
Preussische Liebesgeschichte
(Prussian Love Story), Baarová’s latest movie, which was emotionally deeply painful for him. Eventually he confided in his old friend Helldorf, the Berlin chief of police. Helldorf conveyed to him some “terrible revelations,” which profoundly shocked him; the diaries do not go into detail.
¹⁵
The next day he took Walther Funk into his confidence, giving him “a frank account of my situation”; Funk eventually arranged for him to have a talk with Göring. Funk, Helldorf, and he then sat together for a long time, a “real trio of friends.”
¹⁶
The next day Göring received him at his house in Schorfheide. “He is deeply moved by it and touchingly human. I’ll never forget this. He suggests radical solutions. He now wants to go
to the Führer and tell him the plain truth. […] We part as true friends.”
¹⁷

By this point, he had not a good word to say about Hanke, whom he had first drawn into his confidence as a mediator: “He is a dreadful disappointment to me.” Was it the information from Helldorf that led to the break with Hanke?
¹⁸
It appears that he had traded upon his position of mediator to offer more than kind words of comfort. Several months later Magda was to confess to her husband that she had had an affair with Hanke.
¹⁹

Goebbels’s behavior during this crisis is barely comprehensible. He, who had systematically kept his private life free of friendly relationships and devoted himself to his career, now initiated Hanke, Funk, Helldorf, and Göring into his most intimate problems without a thought to the fact that he was giving this circle of people deep insights into his personal affairs. At this juncture he was instantly willing to embrace as a friend anyone who would listen to him. The need for consolation was paramount, displacing all other considerations.

On Sunday, October 23, at Hitler’s invitation,
²⁰
he arrived with Helldorf on the Obersalzberg to discuss the future of his family. “I put forward my standpoint, upholding my view vigorously and logically, until the Führer starts pleading solidarity, the state, and the great cause we share. I cannot and will not resist that appeal.”
²¹

Then Helldorf joined in, representing Goebbels’s position with “great and impressive firmness,” but without managing to talk Hitler around. Finally Magda was called in: “At first she’s quite aggressive, but then we both have to submit to the Führer’s wish. He puts it forward in such a decent, kind way that there is no choice. The matter is postponed for 3 months, and thus consigned to the future.” Goebbels’s “very firm decisions” of a few days earlier were rendered null and void by this conversation. Given Goebbels’s fixation on Hitler, now vital to him in every sense, it was not for a moment conceivable that he would evade Hitler’s “wish,” insist on a divorce, and thus inevitably bring an end to his career. Or, in other words, there was no escaping the arrangement he had entered into with Magda and Hitler in 1931—marriage to Magda coupled with toleration of Hitler’s special relationship with his wife, from which the two men in turn had evolved a special kind of closeness. The realization that his dependence on Hitler was total, leaving him no room to set an independent
course in his private life, must have been as depressing for him at the time as the loss of his mistress.

Having gotten his way, Hitler used his old trick on Goebbels, confiding to him in a long conversation his “deepest and most human secrets.” Needless to say, Goebbels took these confessions at face value: “His devotion to me is heartwarming.” Hitler then treated him—at least, this is how Goebbels saw it—to a deep insight into his political and strategic thinking: “In the near future he foresees a very grave conflict. Probably with England, which is seriously preparing for it. We must face up to it, to decide the matter of European hegemony. […] And in view of that, there is no place for any personal hopes or desires. What are we individuals compared to the great destiny of the state and the nation?”
²²
Goebbels was only too willing to see the frustration of his private hopes justified in the name of service to a greater cause.

At Hitler’s specific request, a few press photos were then taken, showing Hitler with the whole Goebbels family, to put this reconciliation on record.
²³
Back in Berlin, Helldorf reported to him that he had carried out “the difficult task” Goebbels had requested him to undertake, “with distressing results.” For the nature of Helldorf’s mission we can turn once again to Lida Baarová’s memoirs: He had called her in to tell her that she would no longer be allowed to perform.
²⁴
Baarová had no choice but to accept the end of both her relationship and her career.

Goebbels spent the evening with Göring, to whom he could “pour out his whole heart.”
²⁵
The next day Goebbels set about “liquidating” the case, as he put it. Helldorf and Funk were under orders never to mention the business again.
²⁶
On Schwanenwerder there followed a long discussion with Magda, stretching into the early hours. In the process, “terrible things came out,” and only by dint of “enormous nervous strength” had he been able to keep going with the conversation.
²⁷
In spite of much further discussion, in the next few weeks there was no improvement in his relationship with Magda.
²⁸
Her constant reproaches got on his nerves: “No dog could live thus anymore!”
*
^,
29
On October 29 he spent the “saddest birthday of my life.”
³⁰
Not only did Magda give him a “very frosty” birthday greeting that
morning; Hitler was also very cool, sending him just a “short, frosty telegram.” He did, however, derive some comfort from Göring’s “extraordinarily kind and comradely telegram.”

He noted with some relief at this time that the premiere of Baarová’s film
Der Spieler
(The Gambler) “went off not too badly.” In the preceding days he had thought about having the film withdrawn, then decided to let the screening go ahead; he had found the whole thing a “constant torment to his nerves.” His affair with Baarová had become such common knowledge by then that he was afraid the premiere might be subject to disturbance by some elements wanting to cause him public humiliation.
³¹