Goebbels: A Biography (86 page)

In the middle of February Goebbels carried out one of his inspection tours of the city and convinced himself, as always, that the Party was engaged in dealing with all the trouble spots. “What would happen to the population of a bombed city,” he pondered, “if we didn’t have a Party!”
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In view of the very precarious general situation, Goebbels considered the Party to be the decisive instrument for stabilizing the Reich’s internal position. In order to counteract the population’s low morale,
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at the beginning of 1944 the Party’s Reich propaganda directorate began a new campaign to “mobilize the Party,” which after careful preparation culminated in a whole series of public meetings.
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The aim was to raise the Party’s public profile in order to demonstrate that the population was solidly behind the regime.

The Allied bombing campaign was also at the top of the agenda of a meeting of Gauleiters that took place on February 23 and 24 in Munich. After various contributions by, among others, Ley, Grohé, Backe, and Jodl, the first day concluded with a two-hour speech by Goebbels. According to him, its “middle and concluding passages were positively dramatic,” listened to “with rapt attention,” received with “huge applause,” and celebrated as “the sensation” of the meeting; there were spontaneous calls for its publication.
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On the afternoon of the following day in the Hofbräuhaus there was the usual celebration of the founding of the Party, suffused with the “old Munich atmosphere,” which “we Berliners don’t have much taste for but is nevertheless full of good cheer.” Hitler then spoke to the “Old Fighters.” He concentrated above all on the vital task of trying to convey confidence in victory. Goebbels noted down one of the key sentences in the speech: “Our enemies are now going to have to face everything that we went through in the struggle for power, but, the Führer emphasized, the Jews in Britain and America are still going to have to face what the Jews in Germany have already been through.”

Originally Hitler wanted his speech to be broadcast but then, after some hesitation, recognized that “because of an array of psychological issues”—his way of making light of them—it was not suitable for a general audience. Two months later Hitler admitted to Goebbels that “because of his health he does not feel he is up to speaking at a rally. He is afraid that in certain circumstances he might not be able to get through it and that would be a big risk.”
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Goebbels had to put up with the fact that the Nazi Party’s main rhetorical weapon was out of action. During 1944, apart from his addresses on January 30 and after the July 20 assassination attempt, Hitler made no speeches that were broadcast and did not speak at any major events.
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Goebbels was thus faced with the increasingly urgent problem of trying to compensate for the loss of the Führer’s authority with a substantial change in the public portrayal of the regime. It was now necessary to raise the profile of other figures engaged in public affairs without damaging the position of the Führer.

Goebbels was already thinking of several suitable people. After the Munich meeting he invited Himmler to give a talk on the “Internal Security Situation” at a meeting of the heads of the Party’s Reich propaganda offices. He considered Himmler one of the “strong personalities involved in the conduct of the war.”
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Goebbels found the talk very informative: “The concentration camp inmates are treated pretty roughly. They are all deployed in war production.” The production of the new A4, or V-2, rockets had been largely transferred underground, and Himmler was trying to do the same with aircraft production.

Afterward he joined the Reichsführer for “a cup of tea” and discovered that “Himmler has a very clear and penetrating sense of judgment.” Goebbels noted that he had an “excellent personal and comradely relationship” with Himmler.
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He was, however, forced to agree with Bormann, who had often complained to him that Himmler was “taking over too many things.” According to Goebbels, it was “not good if one of the NS leaders gets too big; then the others must make sure that he is brought back into line.”
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In the meantime Goebbels had developed a “good personal and businesslike relationship” with Bormann; he respected him above all because “he has been extremely useful in dealing with a whole number of things through his direct contact with the Führer.”
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Despite the rivalry between them, as representatives of the Party organization and the SS, Himmler and
Bormann seemed to him to be important potential allies within the power structure.
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Goebbels envisaged a new coalition emerging with which he could attempt to transform the domestic conduct of the war. This would also include Speer, with whom he was in regular contact during these months,
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as well as the Gauleiters, in whom he placed great hopes following the Munich meeting, whereas in the meantime he had written off Robert Ley, whom he had regarded as an ally in his attempts to introduce “total war” during 1943, as well as Funk.
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Between autumn 1943 and spring 1944, while the air war was raging over Berlin, Goebbels’s disputes with his main competitors in the field of propaganda were continuing with undiminished ferocity. Thus, despite the continually shrinking area of the occupied eastern territories, neither he nor Rosenberg saw any reason to moderate their conflict over the responsibility for “eastern propaganda.” Goebbels had been extremely discontented with the Führer edict of August 15, 1943, which regulated the dispute between him and Rosenberg over the responsibility for “eastern propaganda.” The edict decreed that the minister for the east should issue the “political guidelines,” while the actual propaganda would be carried out by the Propaganda Ministry with the aid of its own offices in the east.
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Goebbels considered the guidelines for eastern propaganda, which he eventually received from the Ministry for the East after a long delay,
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to be basically “anachronistic.”
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Goebbels once again contacted Hitler, who was very unsympathetic, insisting that the two ministers should sort the matter out themselves; he no longer wished to be consulted on the matter.
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Finally, in December 1943, after laborious negotiations,
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the two ministries reached an agreement.
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On the basis of this, during 1944 the Propaganda Ministry could establish its own offices in the eastern territories insofar as these were still occupied.
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Apart from the dispute with Rosenberg, there was the ongoing conflict with Dietrich. In September 1943 Goebbels had attempted to integrate the press offices Dietrich had established in the various occupied territories into his propaganda apparatus. However, although
Hitler had agreed to this in principle and he thought he had Dietrich’s approval, Goebbels’s initiative came to nothing.
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When, in February and March 1944, Goebbels tried to transfer the press offices in Kraków and The Hague to his own organization, Dietrich (described by Goebbels as “a little man suffering from an inferiority complex”) dug in his heels and blocked the move.
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In autumn 1943 Goebbels renewed his attempt to get Hitler to agree to transfer Wehrmacht propaganda to his ministry. He had first tried in May 1943 and had been supported by Speer.
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Hitler had promised to do this on several occasions but had never fulfilled the promise.
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In October 1943 Goebbels broached the subject once more with Hitler, who replied that he “still believed” that the transfer “should happen as soon as possible,” but he did not want “to pick up this hot potato while there is a crisis in the east,” a reply that evidently satisfied Goebbels.
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There continued to be violent disputes with the Foreign Ministry. Apart from various other matters,
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the main focus was on propaganda in occupied France. Goebbels intervened after the Wehrmacht High Command had ordered the transfer of a substantial number of responsibilities of the Wehrmacht’s propaganda department in France to the Foreign Ministry in November 1943. He sent the former Reich broadcasting chief, Glasmeier, to Paris as his special representative, who managed for the time being to prevent the transfer from happening.
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After Hitler had told Goebbels that he wanted to transfer propaganda in France to the Foreign Ministry, in November 1943 Goebbels protested vigorously “against the destruction of a proven instrument of propaganda” and naturally also against Ribbentrop’s action in approaching Hitler without previously informing him.
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Goebbels noted in his diary that Hitler had been “absolutely furious” with Ribbentrop and had forbidden similar interventions by his foreign minister in the future.
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According to the evidence, however, the question of which department was responsible for propaganda in occupied France remained unresolved until the Allied landings.

Thus Goebbels failed to secure Hitler’s actual support in any of the disputes in which he was engaged, even though in two of them (with Dietrich and with the Wehrmacht) he had explicitly—so Goebbels in any case believed—promised it. Not being able to rely on Hitler’s promises was, however, by no means a new experience for Goebbels.
He had had numerous similar disappointments since he had committed himself to his Führer in the mid-1920s. But his loyalty to his idol still appeared to be unshaken.

In 1944 Goebbels instituted several changes of personnel within the Propaganda Ministry. These were prompted not least by the need to counter his rivals in the field of propaganda. He replaced his state secretary, Gutterer, with whose performance he had been unsatisfied for some time,
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with his old office chief, Naumann, who returned to the ministry from service in the Wehrmacht. He compensated Gutterer by appointing him director general of Ufa with “a huge salary.”
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In September Naumann also became chief of staff of the Party’s Reich propaganda directorate; his predecessor Hadamovsky joined the Wehrmacht.
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In fact for a long time Goebbels had been accusing Hadamovsky of neglecting his work in the Reich propaganda directorate in favor of his literary ambitions.
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In June Draeger took over the foreign department in place of Heinrich Hunke. At his induction to the position Goebbels informed him that the “Foreign Ministry” was at the moment “in rather a weak position” and that he must try to make use of this.
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In June Goebbels also had to dismiss Berndt as head of the propaganda department because he had spoken in public about the defensive preparations in the west.
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At the end of 1943 the question of the political leadership in Berlin, which had been open for so long, required a decision. In December Hitler asked Goebbels to take on the office of city president (which Oberbürgermeister Ludwig Steeg had provisionally taken over in 1940) “at least during the war and preferably in peacetime as well,” which Goebbels agreed to do.
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“In this way I have direct control of the municipal authorities, which I have lacked in terms of my control of the Reich capital.” The new regime meant that the offices of city president and Oberbürgermeister, which since the Berlin law of 1936 had been united in one person, were now separated, and the office of city president was now made dominant. Typically, during the coming months Goebbels resisted transferring the full powers of his office as Oberbürgermeister to Steeg, who had only been appointed acting Oberbürgermeister in 1940.
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When Steeg was “finally” appointed at the beginning of 1945 Goebbels managed to ensure that the appointment was not for a fixed term of twelve years but for an indefinite period, because he considered the position of
Oberbürgermeister of Berlin to be “a political office whose incumbent can be replaced as required.”
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Goebbels aimed to reduce the staff of the city president’s office from 250 to 50 and with the help of this small leadership cadre to exercise “real control over Berlin’s municipal affairs.”
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In the medium term he intended to expand the position to that of a Reich governor.
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Part of this arrangement involved the dismissal of Görlitzer, whom he had long wanted to get rid of, as deputy Gauleiter, among other things because he suspected Görlitzer of wanting to replace him as Gauleiter. Görlitzer was replaced by Gerhard Schach, a long-term colleague in the Berlin Gau headquarters.
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Hitler formally appointed Goebbels as city president only at the beginning of April 1944.
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During the first days Goebbels was preoccupied with reorganizing the office;
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he had the ambition of creating “an urban leadership cadre that could be a model for other cities and Gaus.”
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In fact Goebbels interpreted the term
leadership
to mean a situation in which neither at the municipal nor at the Gau level was there anybody who could form a counterweight to his autocratic exercise of power. The position of city president was thus a de facto extension of the power of the Gauleiter, who during the final phase of the regime found it all the more easy to intervene in the administration of Berlin at will. It does not, however, appear as if during the year that remained Goebbels did in fact use the office of city president in this way. In his diary, in any case, he barely mentions the office. But Goebbels advocated making the combination of the offices of Gauleiter and city president in one person permanent by law.
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During the first months of 1944 the Reich was threatened not just from the air. The Battle of Monte Cassino had begun in the middle of January 1944; the Allied offensive was supported by a landing behind the German front at Anzio. This landing, only twenty-five miles from Rome, came as a complete surprise to the Germans, a fact that Goebbels found difficult to grasp: “We should have known that two to three enemy divisions were embarking in Sicily.”
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But Italy was more of a sideshow. The German leadership was most concerned about the increasingly desperate situation on the
Eastern Front. In the meantime it had developed in such a dramatic way that the Germans began to become anxious about the loyalty of their allies.

Since February Goebbels had been carefully watching the attempt by the Finnish government to explore the conditions for a possible ceasefire.
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On March 3 he discussed the matter with Hitler. Following Hitler’s instructions, he drafted a “statement” publicly exposing the Finnish maneuvers and threatening them with what might happen “in the event that they change sides, in frank terms as far as the Bolsheviks are concerned and somewhat obliquely as far as we are concerned.” Hitler looked through the text again and instructed Goebbels to begin by publishing articles in the
Völkischer Beobachter
and the
Berliner Börsenzeitung
on the same theme.
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Hitler had told Goebbels in connection with the Finnish activities that he was now “absolutely determined to deal with the Hungarian question.” This was prompted by the fact that Horthy, whom Hitler and Goebbels had long distrusted,
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had announced the withdrawal of the Hungarian troops remaining on the Eastern Front. According to Hitler, the Hungarians were “continually committing treason,” so he wanted to depose the government, take Horthy into custody, and attempt to install a regime under Béla Imrédy. Once he had disarmed the army, he could also “come to grips with the question of the Hungarian aristocracy and above all with Budapest Jewry.” So long as “the Jews are sitting in Budapest we can’t do anything with this city, nor with the country, in particular with its public opinion.” They could use the Hungarian army’s weapons, as well as Hungary’s oil supplies, “quite apart from the food reserves.”

During another conversation on March 14 Hitler returned to the question of the two unwilling allies. Were the Finns to “break away” from the alliance, he would withdraw German troops from the current front line to north Finland.
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However, this did not yet happen, because in April the Finnish-Soviet negotiations collapsed because the Soviet conditions for ending the war appeared unacceptable to the Finns. Meanwhile, Goebbels was carefully following the individual stages of this intermezzo.
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In the meantime, during the spring of 1944, a catastrophic situation was increasingly developing on the Eastern Front. In March the 1st Panzer Army, encircled around Kamenez-Podolsk, succeeded in
escaping destruction only through a daring breakout,
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while in April the besieged garrison of the “fortress” of Tarnopol was almost completely wiped out.
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In addition, Odessa had to be evacuated on April 9.
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Under the impression of these developments Hitler had told Goebbels during their conversation on March 14 that he was bringing forward the action against Hungary (“because the Hungarians had smelled a rat”); it was to begin in a few days’ time. “Hungary has 700,000 Jews; we shall make sure that they don’t slip through our fingers.”
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On March 18 Goebbels heard about the conference, which had taken place on the same day at Schloss Klessheim. Hitler had given Horthy a dressing-down, informing him of the occupation of his country, which had already begun the night before. Horthy finally gave way, promising not to resist. In view of this “amicable” solution Goebbels was obliged to withdraw leaflets that had already been printed and that “had used quite tough language.”
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He anxiously followed the occupation of the country, which in fact went off smoothly, and also the measures that were taken there during the following days: the appointment of Edmund Veesenmayer as the new ambassador and plenipotentiary of the Greater German Reich in Hungary, in other words as German governor, and the establishment of a new Hungarian government under the Hungarian ambassador in Berlin, Döme Sztójay.
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During the next few weeks Goebbels’s diaries reflect the German government’s attempts to get the Hungarian government to introduce tougher measures against the indigenous Jews.
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Goebbels and Hitler saw the new Hungarian government’s treatment of the Jews, namely the degree of its radicalism, as an indicator of its loyalty.
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By the end of April Hitler had achieved his goal. Horthy had not only fulfilled the German demands, but he was now “absolutely furious with the Jews and has no objections whatever to our using them as hostages; he has even proposed it himself.” Through its involvement in Germany’s Jewish policy the Hungarian government had compromised itself to such an extent that it could not escape the alliance. “In any case the Hungarians will not be able to escape from the rhythm of the Jewish question,” went Goebbels’s summary of Hitler’s comments. “Anyone who says A must say B, and now that the Hungarians
have begun implementing our Jewish policy they can no longer back out of it. After a certain point the Jewish policy gains its own momentum.”
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In the middle of April the Hungarian Jews had begun to be concentrated in camps in the provinces and on May 3 the SS began deporting them to Auschwitz. Up to the time the deportations were stopped at the beginning of July, a total of 437,000 people were deported to the extermination camps, where the overwhelming majority were murdered immediately after their arrival. But even after this point Goebbels regarded any sign of a concession by the Hungarian government toward the surviving Jews as an indication of possible disloyalty toward the alliance with Germany.
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During 1944, as in Hungary, the Nazi regime tried to involve the governments of its other allies in its radical Jewish policy in order to bind them to the German Reich until the bitter end. While their efforts in Romania proved unavailing, they succeeded in enforcing deportations to the death camps in both northern Italy and Slovakia.

The near-total annihilation of European Jews required, as Goebbels was soon to discover, a reorientation of German propaganda, which had hitherto focused very much on the Jews as enemies. From the summer of 1941 onward, the Third Reich had fought the war above all as a “war against the Jews,” in other words against an imaginary enemy that was allegedly holding the enemy alliance together and at the same time trying to sabotage the attempt to establish a new European regime from within. During the previous years Goebbels had orchestrated German propaganda along those lines. But now that the Third Reich had finally gone on the defensive, Hitler considered it no longer advisable to put the image of the Jews as enemies of the world at the center of propaganda. It was not by chance that Hitler introduced this change in the spring of 1944 for, in view of the impending destruction of the remaining Jewish communities in German-occupied Europe, the image of the Jews as an internal enemy that must be fought by Germany and her allies in order to create the basis for the “New Europe” had inevitably ceased to serve its purpose.

On April 26, 1944, Goebbels learned from Hitler, who had invited him to dinner, that he believed that “Stalin isn’t as popular with international Jewry as everybody thinks. In some respects he’s quite tough with the Jews.” This laconic comment by Goebbels in fact refers to a
remarkable line taken by Hitler that was to introduce a fundamental change in the direction of propaganda. While hitherto German propaganda had put forward the thesis that “the Jews,” either as plutocrats or as communists, were the “glue” holding the enemy coalition together (an assertion that Goebbels frequently made both in public and in private), now, in view of the threat of military defeat, it was necessary to emphasize the contradictions within the enemy camp. For this purpose and contrary to the previously predominant image of Jewish communists, the anticommunist theme was distinguished from the anti-Semitic propaganda line, and the notion of a Jewish “world conspiracy” was played down. Anti-Semitism continued to play a major role in German propaganda, but principally in relation to American Jews; this was juxtaposed with the threat of “Bolshevism” with all its horrors.