Goebbels: A Biography (82 page)

That Goebbels could now make a reputation for himself in the field of civil defense meant that his already minimal interest in the work of the Committee of Three now more or less disappeared completely. On June 24 he once again took part in a meeting of the committee on the Obersalzberg. Goebbels considered the tasks of the committee as essentially concluded: “I don’t care at all about whether or not a regional post office headquarters in Kassel or Potsdam should be closed down or who should then move into the vacated building.” On the other hand, in recent months nearly a million soldiers had been mobilized: “Total war, which involved such a fight, has achieved its goal.”
⁸⁹

After the meeting he met with Hitler. The core of the conversation this time was a discussion of various aspects of the air war. He discovered that Hitler did not consider the effects of the air raids particularly dramatic. It was naturally “terrible to think that artworks that we can’t replace are being destroyed in the west. […] That churches are being wrecked is not so bad. Insofar as they have cultural value
they can be rebuilt, and if they don’t we shall have to do without them. Apart from that, the majority of industrial cities are badly planned, fusty, and wretchedly built. Thanks to the British air raids we shall get some space.”

As was usual in such conversations, apart from surveying the military situation, they discussed some personnel matters. Once again
⁹⁰
Hitler expressed very negative opinions about Interior Minister Frick, whom he had not dismissed only because he could not think of a suitable replacement. Goebbels shared Hitler’s poor opinion of Frick, but, as he had noted a few weeks earlier, he was pleased that the Interior Ministry had such a weak occupant, since as a result Frick was not standing in the way of his political ambitions.
⁹¹

Among the questions Goebbels discussed with Hitler on June 24 was the troublesome issue of responsibilities for “eastern propaganda.” As a result of the discussions concerning the Eastern Proclamation that had taken place in February 1943 the conflict with Rosenberg over the responsibility for “eastern propaganda” had broken out again with great intensity. Since then Rosenberg and Goebbels had carried on a bitter dispute without managing to clarify the situation.
⁹²
Now Goebbels saw the opportunity for a fait accompli. When Hitler made negative comments about Rosenberg’s leadership qualities as Reich minister for the occupied eastern territories, Goebbels brought up the question of eastern propaganda. Hitler supported him 100 percent and promised that he would issue a Führer edict along the lines he wanted.
⁹³
But Goebbels’s attempt to force Hitler’s hand on this issue was in the end unsuccessful. For as became clear during the following days Goebbels and Rosenberg could not agree on the text of a Führer edict. Once again the matter had to be brought before Hitler for his decision.
⁹⁴

When, during the course of the day, Hitler received the chief of the general staff, Kurt Zeitzler, for a briefing, Goebbels used the opportunity to have a long talk with Eva Braun, Hitler’s mistress. “She makes a very positive impression on me, is very well read, exceptionally clear and mature in her judgments on artistic matters and will certainly be a valuable support for the Führer.” They talked mainly about literature, and Goebbels was able greatly to impress Eva Braun with an account of his meeting with Knut Hamsun, of whom she turned out to be a great admirer.

At the end of the day Goebbels sat with Hitler and other guests for
the usual evening chat. During the course of the evening an incident occurred for which Goebbels shared some of the blame. One of Hitler’s favorite topics on such evenings was Vienna. His dislike of Vienna and his attempts to reduce the city’s status in the cultural life of the Reich had in recent months acquired a particular target: It increasingly took the form of criticism of the Vienna Gauleiter, Baldur von Schirach.
⁹⁵
Thus a few months earlier Hitler had shut down an exhibition of “Young Art” put on by Schirach in Vienna.
⁹⁶

During the following weeks Hitler had repeatedly commented in negative terms about the cultural policy in Vienna and had repeatedly singled Schirach out for criticism,
⁹⁷
complaining that the latter had “gone native” in Vienna
(verwienert)
.
⁹⁸
On the evening of June 24 Schirach, who was also staying on the Obersalzberg, found himself the target of a tirade. Among other things Hitler claimed that Vienna’s reputation as a cultural metropolis was partly undeserved, its population treated “great achievements very unfairly,” in the past it had tried to overshadow the provinces, and so on. By contrast, Goebbels was delighted to note, “Berliners were most suited […] to populating the capital of the Reich.” Hitler wanted, Goebbels noted, “one day to make Berlin if not the biggest then the most beautiful city in the world. He will not tolerate any substantial building work in Vienna that might once again put it in competition with Berlin.”

According to Goebbels, Schirach and his wife had then tried to claim that Vienna was “very enthusiastic about Nazism” but had met with a brick wall as far as Hitler was concerned. In the course of the evening Hitler became more and more annoyed with the Schirachs. Evidently Hitler was giving full expression to his feelings of resentment about the failure of his artistic career, which he blamed on Vienna. Finally, the situation escalated, and Frau Schirach requested that Hitler allow her and her husband to leave Vienna, which he brusquely refused. According to Goebbels the dispute continued into the small hours.

In his memoirs Schirach described the episode rather differently. He attributed the escalation of the situation to clever interventions by Goebbels, who had egged Hitler on to his tirade against Vienna. This seems entirely plausible. Goebbels also mentions in his diary his “witty remarks,” with which he allegedly tried to rescue the situation. In any event the banning of the Schirachs from Hitler’s court was not inopportune for Goebbels.
⁹⁹
He now knew, as is clear from his diary
entries during the following months, that he was in full agreement with Hitler that Schirach would have to be replaced in Vienna.
¹⁰⁰

Schirach, however, remained in Vienna, which also suited Goebbels, since he now found it easy to outdo the discredited Gauleiter in what he called the “cultural competition” with Vienna.
¹⁰¹
When, for example, in June 1944 Hitler once again criticized Schirach, Goebbels noted: “I shall exploit this criticism of Schirach by the Führer to impose various conditions on him in relation to Viennese cultural policy.”
¹⁰²

The meeting of June 24 demonstrates that Goebbels’s visits to Hitler’s headquarters enabled him not only to acquaint himself with the general political line that was being taken (as well as numerous nuances) but also to exploit them in order to find out, either through tête-à-têtes or in social conversation, who was rising or falling in the Führer’s favor, to hinder opponents and to launch intrigues. Goebbels was fully aware that when practical issues were being dealt with at Hitler’s court, they were always simultaneously treated as personnel matters.

On the following day, on June 25, Göring requested an interview with Goebbels. He found the Reich marshal less resigned than at the previous meeting, and he appeared “much fresher and more flexible in terms of his health.” Göring complained bitterly to Goebbels about the many unjustified complaints being made against him. It was true that the Luftwaffe had made many mistakes in the past, but people ought to recognize its current achievements.

According to Goebbels, during the course of the conversation Göring had been “exceptionally intimate, warm, and friendly to me.” If it were possible, he conjectured, “to get the Führer on the same wavelength as me and Göring, it would be the saving of German politics and of the conduct of the war.” But he realized that he was a long way off from realizing this idea, which he had already been contemplating in the spring. Göring’s lethargy was standing in the way.
¹⁰³

As in the previous year, in 1943 the German leadership once more planned to win back the initiative in the eastern theater of war. On July 5 “Operation Citadel” was launched. Two German armies with a
total of 1.3 million men and over three thousand tanks endeavored to cut off the bulge in the Soviet front in the Kursk area through attacks launched from both north and south.

Goebbels began his diary entries dealing with the matter on July 6, a day after the beginning of the battle. Writing on July 7 that the “offensive in the Bjelgorod-Orel-Kursk region came as great surprise to the enemy,” he was evidently not aware that the Red Army (having been forewarned of the German battle plan), through the use of well-prepared defensive measures, had inflicted heavy losses on the attackers. Thus, although the two Wehrmacht spearheads had penetrated deep into the Soviet defenses, they were too far apart to join together in an encirclement and, on July 9, the German attack stalled.
¹⁰⁴

In the meantime, Goebbels was on the move. After visiting badly damaged Cologne he traveled to Heidelberg where, on July 9, a reception mainly intended to celebrate the renewal of his doctoral diploma was held at the university. Afterward he met some students, went sightseeing around the city, ate lunch in the student dining hall, and reminisced about his old student days.
¹⁰⁵
In the afternoon he spoke in the city hall to an audience of academics and students at a large rally; the speech was broadcast on the radio. In his speech he addressed a topic that he often dealt with during these months, criticizing “intellectualism” as “a symptom of the degeneration of healthy common sense” and attempting in this way to attribute discontent and criticism among the population to a small minority who were separating themselves off from the “national community.”
¹⁰⁶
“Intellectual life,” Goebbels insisted, “also has its roots among the people.” He declared himself in favor of freedom of research and of the traditions of the German university system and explained—in Heidelberg, of all places—why the old student fraternities, which the regime had abolished in the 1930s, were no longer in keeping with the times. His statement that he had never participated in the “superficialities” of the old student life was an opportunistic lie that must have surprised his old comrades in the Unitas Sigfrida fraternity. Finally, Goebbels referred to the wartime tasks facing academics and in his conclusion tried to sum up the intellectual heroism that was required through a quotation from Nietzsche’s
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
.
¹⁰⁷

Back in Berlin he had to devote himself once again to the less agreeable realities of the war. “At last the invasion that has long been awaited and often talked about has happened,” wrote Goebbels on
July 11, 1943, in his diary. He was referring to the landing of Allied troops in Sicily, Operation Husky, which had occurred the day before. In fact during the following days the troops managed to consolidate their bridgeheads and push back the Italian and German troops on Sicily relatively quickly.
¹⁰⁸
By July 15 Goebbels was noting pessimistically that “in the long run” they were “in no position to stop” the enemy.
¹⁰⁹
On July 13, faced with the landing in Sicily and the strengthening of Soviet resistance—on July 12 the Red Army had begun an offensive north of Kursk
¹¹⁰
—Hitler made the decision to break off the Kursk battle.
¹¹¹
Goebbels was not informed of this decision. It was only on July 15 that he noted in his diary the deteriorating military situation in the Kursk area and for the first time contemplated the possibility that they might have to abandon the operation. But by then the decision had long been made.

On July 17 he noted: “The question increasingly arises of how on earth we are supposed to cope with a two-front war,” particularly as such a constellation had always “been Germany’s misfortune.” There was “nothing for it but to try to use political means to achieve a certain amelioration.” The diary entry is a remarkable indication that Goebbels was coming to the conclusion that the war was lost and recognizing the need to begin seeking alternative solutions.

After breaking off the Kursk battle, the German army in the east was increasingly forced onto the defensive. Goebbels was compelled to recognize that the “situation [is] becoming critical” because “for the first time since the beginning of the war our summer offensive has not only not achieved any successes but we are having to fight tooth and nail to prevent the enemy from achieving its objectives.”
¹¹²
He was already seeing the impending military reverse as a “second Stalingrad.” He noted that people in “leading circles, particularly in the military, are beginning to ask whether the Soviet Union can be beaten militarily at all.”
¹¹³

The situation was looking no better in the southern theater. Under the impression of the military situation in Sicily Goebbels was confronted with suggestions, particularly from General Alfred Jodl and the Reich press chief, Dietrich, for “propaganda gradually to prepare the population for a withdrawal from Sicily,” an idea that Goebbels considered “completely stupid and short-sighted.” Thus he opposed a pessimistic statement by Dietrich along those lines and substituted it with an optimistic portrayal of events.
¹¹⁴

On July 18 Hitler traveled to Italy to meet Mussolini near the town of Feltre in the Veneto in order to give him “a blood transfusion,” as Goebbels put it.
¹¹⁵
While Hitler spoke to an exhausted Mussolini for hours on end in order to persuade him of the future viability of the Axis, the Allies bombed Rome for the first time, a clear warning of the sacrifices that the Italian people would have to suffer if the war continued.
¹¹⁶
Goebbels was convinced of the success of this visit: “So long as this man has the Italian tiller in his hand, we need have no concerns about Italy’s solidarity.”
¹¹⁷

On July 24, however, Goebbels received “confidential news […] that change is in the offing in Italian domestic politics.” Under the leadership of Roberto Farinacci the old Fascists had requested “Il Duce to summon a meeting of the Grand Fascist Council” in order to get him “to pursue a more energetic policy.” They wanted to persuade Mussolini to “free himself from being overburdened by his offices in order once again to have the initiative and energy for directing overall policy and the conduct of the war.” Goebbels was in favor of the move, for Farinacci was “an energetic man” and a “definite friend of Germany.”
¹¹⁸

In fact the meeting of the Grand Council took place on the evening of the same day. After a long and lively debate Dino Grandi, the chairman of the Chamber of Corporations, the Italian pseudoparliament, pushed through a resolution in which the king was requested once more to take over the supreme command of the Italian armed forces in place of Mussolini. On the following day the king received Mussolini to dismiss him as head of the government and appoint Marshal Pietro Badoglio as his replacement. On leaving the palace Mussolini was arrested and taken to a closely guarded location.
¹¹⁹

To begin with, Goebbels was unaware of these dramatic events, although since November 1942 he had possessed information indicating that a plot was brewing in Italy.
¹²⁰
On July 25 in a phone call from Führer’s headquarters he heard only that “Il Duce [has] resigned” and that Badoglio had taken over the government. Goebbels assumed, however, that the “Roman camarilla intends to find some elegant means of wriggling out of the war.”
¹²¹

Early the following day he flew to East Prussia to discuss the situation with Hitler’s innermost circle.
¹²²
At first, still not having any concrete information, he went over with Bormann and Himmler all the
possible permutations that might lie behind the change of regime in Italy. Goebbels already understood that Farinacci’s criticism of Mussolini had been used by the group around Badoglio in order to force through a real regime change. He brooded to himself: “It’s really shocking to think that a revolution that has after all been in power for 21 years can be liquidated in such a way.”

At ten o’clock, together with Göring, he had a first meeting with Hitler, which Ribbentrop joined half an hour later. In the meantime, Hitler too had reached the conclusion that Mussolini had probably not resigned voluntarily. Hitler believed that “Italian freemasonry” was “behind the whole thing,” for although it had been banned he claimed it was still active. He also announced his intention of “carrying out a great coup,” namely to use a parachute division to surround Rome, take control of the city, and arrest “the king together with his family, as well as Badoglio and comrades” and then bring them to Germany. Ribbentrop and Goebbels had difficulty persuading him not to use the opportunity to occupy the Vatican.

At midday, as Goebbels had anticipated, the first news came in that “the mob is beginning to make itself felt.” Fascist symbols were being removed from public view and streets renamed. Goebbels welcomed the development: “The more things in Italy go topsy-turvy, the better for the measures we’re planning.” Experienced in staging “spontaneous demonstrations” himself, he noted: “That there are demonstrations in favor of Badolgio is a sign that they were probably staged by him.”

During the course of the day Farinacci appeared at Führer’s headquarters. He made an extremely unfavorable impression on Hitler and Goebbels, as he made it clear that he did not support Mussolini. Goebbels concluded that “we can hardly make much use of Farinacci.”
¹²³

The situation was made more difficult for Goebbels by the fact that he could not explain to the German people the background to the changes in Italy, although he could already see the danger that in Germany too “some subversive elements” believed that “they could bring about the same thing here that Badoglio and his comrades engineered in Rome.”
¹²⁴
In terms of propaganda Goebbels was confronted with a real dilemma. He had had to abandon the anti-Semitic campaign in June; the anticipated military successes on the Eastern Front had not occurred; in July he had had to play down the theme of
retaliation. Initially the regime was at a loss as to how to respond to the new situation in Italy. They could see from correspondence that the population was feeling the lack of a speech by Hitler to clarify the situation. “We can’t neglect the nation for too long,” noted Goebbels. But then in this already difficult situation a new catastrophe occurred.