Goebbels: A Biography (66 page)

Despite his doubts, Goebbels saw his main task as being to go on making “careful preparations.” He prided himself on the fact that he had “flooded the world with so many rumors that one hardly knows what to make of it oneself. Between peace and war there is a huge range of options from which everyone can choose what they want.”
¹
A few days before the start of the attack he ordered the production of
two hundred thousand leaflets for the troops. The workers involved were simply confined to the print works under Gestapo supervision.
²
Goebbels was convinced: “The whole thing has been marvelously prepared. We shall have a good start.”
³

On the eve of the attack on the Soviet Union, Goebbels received an Italian delegation led, as had happened before the start of the war in the west the previous year, by his Italian counterpart, Pavolini. There was a “naive, unsuspecting atmosphere”; they watched
Gone with the Wind
. Goebbels, who was continually called out to answer the telephone, finally left his guests in order to go to the Reich Chancellery. There he and Hitler made final changes to the proclamations that the latter intended to make to the German people and to the Wehrmacht on the following day. Hitler gave Goebbels further details of the impending invasion. At 4:30
A.M
. 160 divisions were going to attack on a front nearly two thousand miles long.

Goebbels left at 2:30
A.M
. and returned to his ministry, where the most important members of his staff, whom he had instructed to be present during the night, were awaiting him. And now he put them in the picture: “Everyone was absolutely astonished, even though most had guessed half of what was going on, some all of it. Feverish activity begins. Radio, press, and newsreels are mobilized.” In the early morning his reading of Hitler’s proclamation to the German people was carried by all radio stations to the sound of the fanfare from
Les Préludes
, the symphonic poem by Franz Liszt, which he and Hitler had chosen to accompany special announcements concerning the new theater of war.
⁴

During the following days Goebbels noted the first promising reports of military successes
⁵
and the reactions of enemy and neutral states, which above all indicated their astonishment. To his surprise the anticipated increase in British air raids did not occur.
⁶
He had sent his children to the Salzkammergut until a “large bunker” in the Göringstrasse could be completed in August.
⁷

At his propaganda briefing on June 23 Goebbels gave his staff three reasons for the war against the Soviet Union, which should figure prominently in propaganda. These were, first, the fact that “the possibility of mounting a major attack on England […] did not exist so long as Russia remained a potential enemy” because they had to keep a large proportion of their own military potential on the Eastern Front in order to have a counterweight to the Soviet military machine.
Second, the attack would provide an enormous “increase in gasoline, petroleum, and grain supplies,” an argument that, however, because of its utilitarian bluntness, was more appropriate for person-to-person propaganda than for the media. Third, the “conflict with Russia” was basically unavoidable—that is to say, “For Europe to remain at peace for several decades Bolshevism and National Socialism could not exist side by side.” In short: “It’s better for the conflict to happen now than when Russia has got its act together internally and has rearmed.”
⁸

On June 24 he noted in his diary: “Once again we are setting the anti-Bolshevist propaganda steamroller in motion,” but gradually, in order not to make the transition appear too obvious. He outlined what the new propaganda line should be in an editorial in the
Völkischer Beobachter
of June 26. He called it “the old line of attack” and referred to the “plutocratic-Bolshevist plot,” the “united front of capitalism and Bolshevism, which is so familiar to us and which has now reemerged in terms of foreign policy.”
⁹

At the start of the war, however, Goebbels the propagandist found himself in a serious dilemma: The German people had been completely unprepared for the outbreak of war. Moreover, German propaganda suffered above all from the fact that, for reasons of security, during the first days of the war the report from the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) did not provide concrete details about military events.
¹⁰
Thus Goebbels was concerned about the German people’s response. While he characterized the nation’s mood at the start of the war as “slightly depressed” (people, he wrote, “want peace”),
¹¹
soon “illusions” started spreading about the course of the war. It was only after strong pressure from Goebbels that Hitler finally agreed to end the silence about the military situation.
¹²
In the meantime Goebbels had decided to write an editorial explaining the cautious news policy.
¹³

On Sunday, June 29, in other words a week after the outbreak of war, Hitler ordered a string of special radio announcements to be broadcast. Thus, among other things, the German public learned that, after a series of victorious frontier battles, the Wehrmacht was pushing forward toward Lemberg [Lviv] and Minsk.
¹⁴
The effect, however, did not meet expectations: “People can see through our news policy too easily. The intention behind it was too obvious. I gave due warning but in vain.”
¹⁵

At the start of the war Goebbels placed great hopes in three secret radio stations aimed at the Soviet Union: “the first Trotskyist, the second separatist, and the third Russian nationalist. All strongly opposed to the Stalin regime.”
¹⁶
He ordered that the aim of the secret and other radio stations and the other propaganda material targeted at the Soviet Union, such as leaflets, should be to spread defeatism and panic.
¹⁷

On July 5, after having given appropriate instructions to his staff,
¹⁸
Goebbels gave the press the “starting signal for a really major campaign.” Now “the main focus must […] be on denouncing the criminal, Jewish, Bolshevik regime.” German propaganda appeared to have found its theme for the coming weeks. This major campaign against “Jewish Bolshevism” had been prompted by a massacre of political prisoners and Ukrainian rebels carried out by the Soviets in the prison in Lemberg prior to their departure. According to the press instructions, “Lemberg is more or less the Jewish-Bolshevist norm, which proves the bloodthirstiness of the Jewish-Soviet rulers.”
¹⁹
And in their reporting of these events in the Ukraine the Party press placed particular emphasis on the alleged guilt of “the Jews.”
²⁰
On July 7, in a commentary in the
Völkischer Beobachter
entitled “The Mask Has Dropped,” Goebbels set the tone in which the campaign was to be conducted. He foretold “a terrible end for the Jewish-terrorist Bolshevik leadership.”
²¹

It was only in July, after he had been clearly instructed by Hitler to do so, that Goebbels adopted the latter’s propaganda line that the invasion had been a preventive action necessary to forestall an imminent attack by Stalin. During the weeks before the invasion and in the first days of the war, as we have seen, Goebbels concentrated on emphasizing the advantages of the German attack for the future conduct of the war without referring to an alleged impending attack by the Red Army. Goebbels adopted this U-turn in his argumentation even though the major military successes during the early days by no means justified the thesis of an impending Soviet attack. They had met an opponent who was not remotely anticipating the imminent outbreak of war and was not yet prepared for it.
²²

On July 8, for the first time since the beginning of the war, Goebbels had the chance of a tête-à-tête with Hitler on the occasion of a visit to headquarters, when the latter made a “really optimistic and confident impression” on him. Hitler instructed him to continue to
conduct the anti-Bolshevist struggle with increased force. Goebbels noted with satisfaction that the “policy of reconciliation with the Kremlin” that had been launched in autumn 1939 had “not even penetrated our people’s skin.” The attack on the Soviet Union, for which there had been no “propaganda or psychological preparations whatever, had for a short time produced a certain shock effect on the German population,” but this inadequate preparation of the nation had had to be accepted in view of the need for military surprise.

“Nothing must be left of Bolshevism. The Führer intends to have cities like Moscow and Leningrad wiped off the map.” Hitler also said that he was “completely convinced” that Japan would join in the war with the Soviet Union. Whether or not Britain would succeed in dragging the United States into the war would depend in the first instance on the way in which the Soviet Union was defeated. He predicted “England’s fall […] with the confidence of a sleepwalker.” “The empire is a pyramid that stands on its apex.” Goebbels summed up the lesson of his visit as “the war in the East has basically been won. […] We must continue to expose the cooperation between Bolshevism and plutocracy and increasingly emphasize the Jewish character of this combination.”

At his ministerial briefing on July 9 Goebbels ordered that the sentence “the Jews are to blame” should be the main theme of the German press.
²³
In response to instructions,
²⁴
during the following days the whole of the German press
²⁵
and the newsreels
²⁶
produced a flood of anti-Semitic tirades. In accordance with Hitler’s comments to Goebbels, the alleged symbiosis between Bolshevism and the Jews was a prominent theme, as well as the claim that western capitalism and the governments in London and Washington were puppets of the Jewish world conspiracy.
²⁷
Goebbels himself made a personal contribution to this campaign. On July 20 his article entitled “Mimicry” appeared in
Das Reich
, in which he threatened the Jews with “punitive justice,” which would be “fearful”: “The enemy of the world shall fall, and Europe shall have peace.”
²⁸

In his propaganda Goebbels endeavored as much as possible to avoid another ideological motif. When, at the end of June, the Reich press chief, Otto Dietrich, issued the slogan “Crusade against Bolshevism” to the press, Goebbels successfully opposed using this Christian motif in German propaganda. In his view, the use of religious symbols represented an unnecessary gesture of respect to the Christian
churches, which were systematically to be ignored during the war in the east and their importance reduced.
²⁹

In the meantime the Wehrmacht had been achieving major successes, which were communicated to an anxiously waiting public in the form of individual announcements. On July 22 German propaganda announced that for the first time the “Stalin line” had been breached and that they were now just outside Kiev.
³⁰
Goebbels hoped that this would produce a “noticeable improvement in the popular mood.”
³¹
A few days later German propaganda could report the taking of the city of Smolensk after a hard fight.
³²

In view of the improvement in the news situation, Goebbels considered the mood in July to be relatively balanced and “calm.”
³³
Among the problem areas were certain difficulties in the provision of food supplies,
³⁴
the British air raids on west German cities,
³⁵
the “vacation evacuees” (better-off people who were escaping from the cities to vacation resorts)
³⁶
as well as, on occasion, the behavior of the Catholic Church.
³⁷

Toward the end of the month, however, Goebbels, regarding the situation as “rather tense,” attempted to adopt a “tougher” line in propaganda.
³⁸
He was clear about the reasons for this, concluding, “Any information policy that is too optimistic in tone will in the end lead to disappointment.” “The advantages of being optimistic are outweighed by the disadvantages that arise when the optimism proves false. Moreover, the nation is generally used to having to bite the bullet. It does not shrink from the truth and simply becomes grumpy if it gains the impression that promises cannot be kept.”
³⁹
Assessing the mood initially as “calm and composed,”
⁴⁰
two days later, on July 29, he was referring to a “crisis” as far as the “psychological situation” was concerned because the enemy propaganda had moved onto the offensive.
⁴¹
At the beginning of August the SD report on the nation’s morale also referred to a “certain pessimism”;
⁴²
Goebbels even claimed to perceive a “depression.”
⁴³
Apart from the existing negative factors affecting morale, now it was above all the growing concern of churchgoers about the arbitrary confiscation of church property
⁴⁴
that was
having a negative impact on morale, as well as the spreading of information and rumors about the “euthanasia” program.
⁴⁵

At the beginning of August, however, German propaganda completely dispensed with the reserve that had governed its reporting of the military situation during the previous weeks. On August 6 the radio broadcast a series of dramatic special announcements concerning the situation on the Eastern Front, which, taken together, provided a very optimistic picture.
⁴⁶
In this way the German public learned that the Wehrmacht had taken almost nine hundred thousand prisoners, the Stalin line had been overrun, and the Battle of Smolensk had been comprehensively won. After these fanfares, Goebbels, who now requested the propaganda services “to be very bold and brazen,” considered the mood to be “extremely stable.”
⁴⁷
Thus, by releasing positive news about the military situation in stages, Goebbels was able to respond to the public mood as it appeared in the official reports: Each positive report produced the reflex of an improvement in morale on the home front.

At the end of August Goebbels took the opportunity to visit one of the numerous camps in which the Soviet prisoners of war, whom his propaganda had written off as “sub-humans,”
⁴⁸
were interned. For this purpose he went to Zeithaim, near Riesa. Evidently impressed, he wrote that “the camp looks awful. Some of the Bolsheviks have to sleep on the bare earth. It was pouring rain. Some of them have no roof over their heads and, insofar as they have one, the sides of the huts are not yet covered. In short, it’s not a very pretty picture. Some of the types are not as bad as I had imagined. Among the Bolsheviks there are quite a few fresh, good-natured peasant boys.” In talking to them he got the impression that the prisoners were “not as dull and animal-like as one would assume from the pictures in the newsreels.” Furthermore, he notes in a remarkably humane manner: “We trudge through this camp for a few hours in the pouring rain and see around thirty prisoners standing behind barbed wire in a cage. They have done something wrong and are being brought to their senses through harsher punishment. Visiting such a POW camp can give one very odd ideas about human dignity in war.”
⁴⁹
Following the visit and evidently still somewhat affected by it, he told a small group that the war must not become “the normal state of affairs.” He could not agree with the view that peace serves only to prepare for war but rather
believed that war was justified only if it “later on secures a long period of peace.”
⁵⁰
His direct contact with Soviet POWs—during the following months the majority were to succumb to the appalling conditions in the camps—appears momentarily once again to have aroused in Goebbels reservations about war and fear of its horrors, which he had expressed in particular in 1938–39 but had then carefully suppressed.