Goebbels: A Biography (89 page)

During the next few days the military situation became critical. By the end of July 1944, in the final phase of the major Soviet operation against Army Group Center, the Red Army had advanced to the outskirts of Warsaw and, on August 1, it succeeded in building a bridgehead on the west bank of the Vistula to the south of the city, while farther north it had arrived at the borders of East Prussia.
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Meanwhile, in the sector of Army Group Northern Ukraine the front temporarily collapsed in the area around Lemberg, which was captured by the Red Army on July 22, and it was only with difficulty that a new defensive front could be established during August.
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On July 26 the Americans launched an offensive in the west that led in August to the strategically important breakthrough near Avranches, giving the Allies the opportunity to encircle the German army in Normandy from the south. Goebbels had every reason to view the situation in the west during August as “worse than bad.”
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This was all the more reason for him to plunge into his new task on the home front. To carry it out he established a small planning staff under Naumann as well as an executive committee under the Oldenburg Gauleiter, Paul Wegener, with a proven administrator in the form of Hans Faust, a district governor, as secretary.
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On July 26 he spoke on the radio detailing the events of July 20 and emphasizing
his own role in suppressing the coup in Berlin. He then went on to outline the “conclusions” to be drawn from these events, namely the need to completely “exhaust” the huge “potential reserves of strength” that were still available. Goebbels then announced that Hitler had assigned him “comprehensive powers” to achieve this goal.
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In the evening he listened to the broadcast of his speech with Magda, who had just returned from Dresden. “I think the style and presentation were a model of how it should be done.” Of course the speech “made a very deep impression on the nation.” On the following day, he claimed that the speech had even been “the center of attention of world opinion.”
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On July 26 the press, which had been given detailed instructions on how to go about it the day before, announced his appointment, and Goebbels was pleased to note the big splash and “favorable commentaries.”
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On July 28 the Reich Plenipotentiary issued a decree concerning the “Reporting of Bogus Employment,” which, however, was so vacuous that, according to a minute by the Reich Chancellery, it was a perfect example of the truth that “overhasty legislation is a bad idea.”
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At the beginning of August Goebbels proudly presented Hitler with a final report on the work of the Reich Air War Inspectorate, of which he was in charge. All Gaus had been inspected, and Hitler’s instructions had largely been carried out. “That’s the way an assignment from the Führer should really be carried out.”
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In implementing the concept of “total war,” to which he was now enthusiastically committed, Goebbels was heavily dependent on the cooperation of the Gauleiters. Thus at a meeting of Party leaders on August 3, which was once again held in Posen, he appealed to them for support. After again describing the events of July 20, in the second section of his speech Goebbels outlined the measures that were planned for “total war.”
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He thought his speech, which he considered “exemplary in form and content,” had “convinced” the Gauleiters that “total war is now developing along the right lines and above all that total war is now in the right hands.” Sauckel was the only one who was going to “make serious difficulties.” He was “vain and stupid and is particularly annoyed that a large number of the tasks that he hasn’t completed are now being done by me.”

In August Goebbels sent the supreme Reich authorities two circulars exhorting them to adapt their operations to the seriousness of the situation. Everybody should work until their task had been completed,
at a minimum of sixty hours a week.
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Moreover, in a further circular he urged that they should cultivate a “style appropriate to wartime” that demonstrated that “we are fighting for our lives.” To achieve this, there should be no more events such as receptions, official appointment ceremonies, commemorations, and the like.
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Goebbels wanted his right to request information from the state authorities to be conferred on the Gauleiters but had to be reminded by Bormann that they already possessed this right.
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Finally, following a proposal from Bormann, a directive for the implementation of total war created Gau and district commissions to inspect public authorities and agencies to see whether they contained personnel who could be called up into the Wehrmacht. The Gauleiter was to take the chair in the Gau commissions, and he was to appoint the chairmen of the district commissions within the Gau. These commissions contained representatives of the various state authorities as well as other “suitable men from the Party and the state.”
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By the end of the year Goebbels aimed to have replaced 1.5 million of the workers in the armaments industry who had a dispensation from service in the armed forces with other personnel. To achieve this, against opposition from Sauckel, he raised the upper age limit for the conscription of women for work from forty-five to fifty;
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he set about finding alternative work for the two hundred thousand foreign women employed as maids; and, finally, he endeavored to secure men from the administration, from industries not vital to the war effort, and from the service sector by carrying out closures, cuts, and rationalization on a large scale. During the following weeks he was fully engaged in this work. Among other things he secured a reduction in postal deliveries, the simplification of ticket inspection on the railways, the closing down of newspapers and journals, the closure of technical schools, the abolition of “excessive questionnaires,” the cancelation of all congresses and conferences as well as the simplification of the tax and social security systems.
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Soon, however, Goebbels found obstacles being put in his path, which he could only partially overcome, especially since Hitler, typically, objected to measures that he considered too radical. Goebbels noted, for example, that Hitler had been “very strongly opposed” to the closure of all theaters and music halls. Once the theaters had been closed they could never be reopened during the war, and “once people had gotten used to the lack of theaters then that could become
permanent.” In the end the Führer bowed to the exigencies of “total war.” Theaters, orchestras, cabarets, and other cultural institutions were shut, “initially” for six months.
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Goebbels himself considered closing the theaters to be “the most visible measure indicating a commitment to total war,” which “for psychological reasons must be maintained at all costs,” which is why during the following weeks he fought any attempt to reopen them tooth and nail.
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Hitler succeeded in preventing Goebbels’s attempt to stop people sending packages and private telegrams.
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He also opposed stopping the production of beer and candy. Soldiers needed candy on route marches, and a ban on brewing beer would have “a bad psychological effect in Bavaria.” Goebbels went along with this reluctantly. “The Führer sees this in terms of the Bavarian mentality, which is rather a closed book to me.”
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Goebbels was also unable to prevent art journals from continuing to be published until January 1, blaming it on an intervention with Hitler by his photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann.
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And although on August 28 Hitler agreed to raise the age of female conscription yet again, to fifty-five, in fact this was never put into effect.
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Above all, Goebbels was gradually forced to recognize that his original intention of using the excuse of “total war” to introduce a broader reform of the Reich’s administrative structures (“the major reform of the Reich”) could not be carried out.
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He had already failed the previous year. Although he had succeeded in closing down the Prussian Finance Ministry, Lammers and Bormann succeeded in convincing Hitler that Goebbels’s plan to abolish the office of Prussian prime minister would constitute the removal of an indispensable part of the administration.
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He also failed in his attempt to close down the Economics Ministry and several other government bodies.
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When in October State Secretary Wilhelm Stuckart presented a memorandum on reform of the Reich administration, Goebbels described his proposals as “logical and correct” but considered them “impossible to implement at the present time.” “The Führer will never be able to bring himself to undertake such a far-reaching reform of our Reich administration and Reich government, and who knows whether that would be the right thing to do in wartime.”
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Goebbels responded to the attempt on Hitler’s life on July 20 by ordering the Party’s Reich propaganda department to organize a “series of loyal rallies” in every Gau representing “our nation’s spontaneous response to the heinous assassination attempt.” The “national comrades” were “to be invited to participate in the rallies by the Block Wardens.”
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The SD reports duly referred to the population’s rejection of the assassination attempt.
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During the following days, apart from “total war,” Goebbels spent much time discussing with Hitler the sentencing of the July 20 conspirators, as up and down the land “the people” were demanding that they be severely punished. Hitler told Goebbels that they should make a clean sweep of them at the coming trials. They should all be hanged, as “bullets would be wasted on these criminals.” The question of Rommel came up during these discussions, since according to the investigations he had known about the preparations for the assassination. Goebbels commented disparagingly on this national hero whom he had created: “He’s very useful when things are going well, but the moment there’s a serious crisis Rommel lacks any powers of resistance.”
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The first trial against eight key members of the conspiracy, which took place in the People’s Court on August 7 and 8, was discussed in detail by Hitler and Goebbels beforehand. Goebbels decided to “receive” the chairman of the judges, Roland Freisler, before the start of the trial and to “spell out in detail how the trial is to proceed.” The reckoning with the conspirators should, as Hitler instructed him, “on no account lead to attacks on the officer corps as a whole, on the generals, on the Army or on the aristocracy.” They would, however, “sort out” the aristocracy, according to Hitler “a cancerous growth on the German people,” “sometime later on.”
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The eight death sentences that had been anticipated were given much publicity and according to Goebbels had “a tremendous impact on the German people.”
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There were further trials in the People’s Court lasting until April 1945 with more than 150 people accused of participating in the conspiracy, of whom over a hundred were sentenced to death and hanged.
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At the end of July Goebbels learned from the head of the Security
Police and SD, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, that allegedly his old friend, the police president of Berlin, Count Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorf, had been involved in the coup attempt.
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By the middle of August Helldorf was standing before the People’s Court where, as it was reported to Goebbels, he had “performed reasonably well.” He had openly confessed to his participation in the affair.
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A week later, however, Goebbels saw a film of the trial in which it was clear that during the interrogation Helldorf had appeared a broken man whose responses had been “tearful.”
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Two hours after the end of the trial he and five other defendants were executed. Goebbels noted that “on Hitler’s orders” before his own execution Helldorf had been forced to watch the executions of two others. Goebbels’s summation of someone whose career he had actively sponsored from the very beginning (although he continued to spell his name incorrectly, despite having known him since 1931) showed relief but no real satisfaction: “That’s the end of the unpleasant story of Helldorff. It’s probably the worst in the history of the Berlin party.”
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On August 15 American and French forces landed in southern France.
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On August 21 in the north of France the Allies succeeded in surrounding the bulk of the German Normandy army in the Falaise pocket and subsequently destroying it. Paris was liberated on August 25, and German forces began hurriedly retreating from France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. In the central sector of the front, Allied forces had reached the borders of Germany.
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Summing up the situation at the beginning of September, Goebbels commented: “The situation on the Western Front has now become more than dramatic.” Goebbels had learned that, in view of the encroaching fronts, Speer had requested that Hitler designate the area “he could reckon on being defended at all costs for the whole length of the war in Europe.” Hitler had then described this area “as running along the Somme in the west, ending in the foothills of the Alps in the south, including parts of Hungary in the southeast and in the east running more or less along the current front line. In the north we shall hold onto southern Norway at all costs.” Goebbels responded to this piece of news by commenting that “in view of the growing crisis in the
general war situation” they must “come to terms with a reduced set of war aims” and say “goodbye to the fantasies of 1940 and 1941.” If they could succeed in holding on to the area designated by Hitler, then “we would nevertheless have achieved the greatest victory in German history.”
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On August 23 King Michael of Romania dismissed the prime minister, Ion Antonescu, and announced that he wanted to agree to an armistice with the Allies. The decision to leave the alliance with Germany was supported by a large majority of the army and the population. Goebbels’s contemptuous comment that the king had “undoubtedly” been persuaded to make this decision by his “entourage of fawning courtiers” was a complete misreading of the situation.
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When German forces then tried to occupy Bucharest and the Luftwaffe bombed the capital, Romania declared war on Germany on August 25.
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According to Goebbels the armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union at the beginning of September was “not taken too badly in Führer headquarters.” The military consequences were bearable as the German forces succeeded in pulling back to northern Norway. But he considered that politically the loss of their last ally but one was liable “to reduce our chances in the war.”
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The Goebbels family did not remain unaffected by the large German losses on all fronts. On September 9 Goebbels learned that in central Italy Magda’s son, Harald, had “been wounded and was missing in fighting on the Adriatic and there was no news yet of his having been taken prisoner.”
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He told Magda about it only a fortnight later, and she, despite her poor health, took the news “very calmly.” Perhaps, he thought, Harald had been captured by the British, but only if he had been seriously wounded. For “Harald is not a lad to let himself be taken by the enemy through cowardice.”
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Finally, in the middle of November, Goebbels received the news that Harald had been found in a North African POW camp, in recovery after having been seriously wounded. Magda was greatly relieved, and Goebbels admitted in his diary that he “had already given Harald up for dead.”
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