Goebbels: A Biography (74 page)

In the summer and autumn of 1942 Goebbels once again found himself involved in struggles with his main rivals for control over the conduct of propaganda. As in previous years, in these conflicts Goebbels was less concerned with pushing through a particular propaganda line than with asserting or enforcing his claim to direct propaganda. All these conflicts were inextricably linked with personal feuds with his opponents within the leadership of the regime.

Various entries in his diaries show that the appointment of Propaganda Ministry press officers in German foreign missions that had been planned in the agreement with the Foreign Ministry of October 1941 was not going at all smoothly.
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Moreover, a further argument with the Foreign Ministry occurred in summer 1942. Goebbels wanted to introduce censorship for foreign correspondents
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after Scandinavian correspondents in Berlin had reported peace overtures from the German government.
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In view of the doubts expressed by the Foreign
Ministry,
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a series of measures imposing substantial restrictions on the work of correspondents was finally agreed upon without, however, introducing a general censorship.
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In July Goebbels also tried to gain ground in his permanent conflict with Dietrich. At the beginning of July he gave instructions to his staff that in the future they should “coolly reject” requests from Führer’s headquarters to issue special announcements over the radio on short notice. This was a measure clearly aimed at Dietrich, whom Goebbels still blamed for the premature announcement of victory in the east the previous autumn. Goebbels told his staff that generally “in such cases the Führer headquarters was not identical with the Führer.”
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Goebbels was, however, completely surprised by Dietrich’s announcement that Helmut Sündermann, his “chief of staff” in his Party role as Reich press chief, would in the future also act as his deputy in his state role as Reich press chief.
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Goebbels, who suspected that Dietrich wanted to establish an independent press ministry, protested to Hitler about this high-handed decision,
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whereupon the Führer issued a “Basic Instruction for Securing Cooperation between the Reich propaganda minister and the Reich press chief.”
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Goebbels then entered negotiations with Dietrich, which produced a formal “Working Agreement” containing thirteen points and defining responsibilities in detail.
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At the same time that he was fixing the boundaries of his turf with respect to Dietrich, Goebbels brought back the former head of the ministry’s press department, Hans Fritzsche, who, no doubt worn out by the continuing disagreements between his two bosses, had applied to join the army in the spring of 1942.
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Goebbels wanted to remove Fritzsche from the “endless personal arguments in the press department” and assign him a new task: overseeing radio news. In reality, however, this only opened up a new front in the war with Dietrich, as the latter was claiming responsibility for the radio’s news agency, the Wireless Service.
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At the ministry briefing of September 27, prompted by a conversation with Fritzsche the previous day, Goebbels complained that the day-to-day propaganda often used trite jargon and a clichéd style, which “was getting on the nerves” of the German public, while in the neutral countries it was considered “boring and stupid.”
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Goebbels resolved “fundamentally to change the whole tone of our public announcements”
during the coming weeks.
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Fritzsche was to be mainly responsible for pushing through this change. At the beginning of October, Goebbels decided to transfer not only the radio news service to him but also the whole of the radio department, whose responsibilities he had substantially increased in February 1942 at the expense of the Reich Radio Corporation,
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thereby facilitating effective control over programming. This increase in Fritzsche’s responsibilities found expression in his appointment as “the official responsible for the Political and Propaganda Direction of Radio.”
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After the winter crisis of 1941–42 Goebbels had become convinced that it was necessary to “reorient our policies and propaganda” with respect to the occupied territories in the east. In agreement with numerous experts, he had identified the following points as important: an announcement that
kolkhoz
(collective farm) land would be distributed to farmers; religious tolerance; elevation in the “cultural level”; improvement in social conditions (at least “here and there”), as well as—and here he had strong reservations—the appointment of “pseudo-governments” composed of indigenous personnel.
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He had naturally concluded that the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories was the most important opponent of such a pragmatic policy.
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In May, however, he saw Rosenberg adopt a “new course.”
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For during that month Hitler and Rosenberg decided to grant religious toleration in the occupied eastern territories,
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and in the same month Hitler ordered that in future, if Soviet commissars switched sides, they were no longer to be executed.
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Although Goebbels saw “signs of a general change of course as regards the Russian mentality,”
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in neither case was Hitler prepared to make much of the change of direction in propaganda terms, as he was afraid of the threat posed to the authority of German rule in the east.
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Thus Goebbels had every reason to go on complaining in July about the propaganda situation in the occupied eastern territories and to accuse the Ministry for the East of failure.
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A lengthy study trip to the east by a delegation of propaganda experts from his ministry gave him additional material with which to make his point.
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Goebbels concluded from this assessment that he needed to establish his own propaganda apparatus in the east independent of the Ministry for the East (Goebbels referred to it as the “ministry of chaos”)
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and against the will of Rosenberg.
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At the end of October 1942 negotiations began between the two ministries concerning this issue, without them coming to an
agreement.
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To put Rosenberg under pressure, Goebbels demanded—along the same lines as ideas being proposed within the general staff—that Hitler issue a “Proclamation to the East” containing promises of a better future for the indigenous population.
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In January 1943 Hitler did indeed order Goebbels to prepare a draft of such a proclamation.
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However, in view of the relaxation in the war situation in spring 1943, Hitler considered that the timing was no longer suitable for such a declaration. Goebbels naturally blamed Rosenberg for the proclamation’s never being issued.
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As far as the Reich’s cultural propaganda was concerned, from 1941 onward Goebbels carried on a vigorous feud with the Gauleiter of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach. Having at first welcomed his appointment in 1940,
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Goebbels now accused him of pursuing an active cultural policy in Vienna and so of trying to usurp Berlin’s leading role. Thus, during the years 1941–42 Goebbels increasingly determined to place Berlin more at the forefront of the cultural life of the nation and to systematically marginalize Vienna.
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Goebbels began his demonstrative punishment of Vienna at the end of 1942. Although he traveled to the Austrian capital in December to attend the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Mozart’s death and gave a speech there,
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the following day at the official state ceremony “the whole affair” seemed to him “so stupid that I considered it better to have my wreath placed by an adjutant.”
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Schirach’s cultural policy was “pubescent, Hitler Youth culture completely unsuitable for the Reich.”
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Shortly afterward he was annoyed that in a speech in December 1941 Schirach had adopted “to some extent the Viennese population’s objections to the old [i.e., pre-1938] Reich and above all to the north Germans.”
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In January 1942 he noted that after “a long struggle” he had at last succeeded in securing the production of propaganda films of Berlin so that “a true and effective propaganda for Berlin can counterbalance the excessive glorification of Vienna, which happens in the production of feature films as well.”
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During his next trip to Vienna in March 1942, while impressed by the cultural life of the city,
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he was strengthened in his view that, as the capital of the Reich, Berlin must continue “to fulfill its cultural mission.”
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In May 1942 he ordered the press “to play down Vienna’s cultural ambitions somewhat.”
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He was encouraged in his efforts by the fact that Hitler kept emphasizing to him the need to marginalize Vienna culturally.
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That
Hitler had his own axe to grind emerged very clearly during these conversations when he justified his antipathy to Vienna by saying that the city had neglected its great artists so much that they had been forced to live in poverty.
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During these conversations Hitler kept returning to his far-reaching plans for Linz,
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which was to replace Budapest as the most beautiful city on the Danube
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and so “be a major competitor” to Vienna.
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Goebbels’s plan to establish a center near Linz to foster the works of Hitler’s favorite composer, Bruckner, including the formation of a first-class orchestra, held particular appeal for the dictator.
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During his conversations about Hitler’s favorite topic of Linz versus Vienna, Goebbels attempted to systematically undermine Schirach’s reputation with the Führer.
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“His attitude toward Vienna,” he noted in November 1941, “is particularly useful to me in my current dispute with von Schirach about cultural policy.”
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And in August 1942 he was content to note that Hitler now “recognizes the problems that have developed because of Schirach’s intellectual failure in dealing with Viennese artistic and cultural affairs and is going to give me substantial support in coping with these problems.”
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Thus Goebbels understood how to exploit for his own purposes these nighttime chats with the dictator in which, exhausted by his efforts in running the war, Hitler fantasized about his cultural plans for the postwar era.

Credit 25.1

Following Goebbels’s instructions, the Sportpalast, the Nazi movement’s “battleground” as he called it, is filled with “true old Party comrades” during a “plebiscite” for total war there, February 18, 1943.

During Goebbels’s visit to Führer headquarters on August 19, 1942, Hitler appeared extremely optimistic: He not only wanted to advance as far as Krasny and Baku during the summer and autumn in order to secure German oil supplies, but in addition he intended “to push forward to the Near East, occupy Asia Minor, take Iraq, Iran, Palestine by surprise and thereby, given the loss of its East Asian sources, cut off Britain’s remaining oil supply.” Meanwhile, he already envisaged Rommel “advancing to Cairo.” On this occasion he also opposed taking any propaganda initiatives “to counter the increasing optimism of the German people,” which had been disturbing Goebbels
for some weeks.
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Contrary to Goebbels, Hitler took the view that “it will balance itself out on its own.” During the coming weeks this differing assessment of the situation was to cause considerable irritation for those in charge of propaganda.

The Battle of Stalingrad began at the end of August 1942. German forces reached the outskirts of Stalingrad and during the following weeks fought their way street by street and house by house toward the Volga, where by the end the Red Army held only a small strip of land.
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Goebbels was clear about the fact that “to a large extent the fate of this year’s summer and autumn offensive” depended on the city.
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In this critical situation Goebbels was concerned above all to pursue a course whereby excessive expectations of victory were avoided and the population was gradually geared to accepting another winter at war.

In the middle of September it looked as though the fall of Stalingrad was imminent. At the ministerial briefing on September 15, as a precaution, Goebbels was already issuing instructions on how the special announcements about the capture of the city were to be delivered.
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At the same time, Dietrich went one step further: Evidently caught up in the very optimistic mood at Führer headquarters, he issued an announcement that the “struggle for Stalingrad” was nearing “its successful conclusion.” “Important announcements by OKW” on this were to be expected on the same day or the day after. The press was advised to prepare special editions, a recommendation that some papers did indeed follow.
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On the same day, however, Goebbels advised Führer’s headquarters not to make such a premature announcement,
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and on the following day the press was informed that several “limited operations” had to be carried out before the final announcement of victory could be made.
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During the following days Goebbels kept warning those attending the ministerial briefing to be cautious in their comments on the topic of Stalingrad.
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Thus, on September 26 he referred once again to Dietrich’s premature announcement, which he called “incredible and stupid.”
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On the same day he took Dietrich to task, criticizing his “incompetent news policy” while at the same time complaining to the Wehrmacht High Command about the, in his view, inappropriate way they were releasing information.
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Evidently he used the incident to put Dietrich, whose self-confidence had considerably
increased as a result of their agreement, in his place.
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For this reason, a few days later he brought the dispute to the attention of Hitler, who agreed with him, albeit in general terms, that “it was inconceivable to have a Propaganda Ministry without uniform control of the press.”
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