Goebbels: A Biography (90 page)

In the meantime Goebbels was continuing with his efforts to make the war “total.” Shortly after his appointment as Reich Plenipotentiary Goebbels had begun to address the “balance between military and civilian manpower.” He wanted to “squeeze” 1.2 million men from the civilian sector to be deployed “on the front line.” An initial quota of three hundred thousand men was established for the month of August, with each Gau being given a target to meet.
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By the beginning of September, apart from a few thousand, the August quota of three hundred thousand had allegedly been met. However, a comparison with the Wehrmacht statistics shows that once again Goebbels was giving rather an overoptimistic assessment of what he had achieved. At the end of September there was still a shortfall of around 30 percent.
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The mobilization of three hundred thousand men, mainly from the armaments industry, led almost inevitably to a conflict with Speer.
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On September 2 the two adversaries put their cases to Hitler, who, according to Goebbels, supported him and declared that it was not a question of “providing weapons or soldiers but weapons and soldiers.” It was essential to take men from the armaments industry in order to provide new divisions.
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The aim in September was to recruit 450,000 men from the civilian sector.
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A few days later, Goebbels gave a figure of only 250,000
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and for October only 240,000 men.
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Later these quotas appear to have been reduced even further.
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Goebbels has little to say in his diaries about the fulfillment of these quotas. However, there is a reference to the fact that at the beginning of October he was still pressing the Gauleiters to fulfill their September quotas.
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It is clear from a calculation at the end of the year that there was a considerable “shortfall” in the September and October quotas, which had to be “made up” during the coming year.
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According to Wehrmacht statistics, with 500,000 men having been recruited by the end of the year, the aim of securing 700,000 men during the months of August, September, and October had not been nearly reached.
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Also, the provision of substitutes, which Goebbels had wanted to achieve through various measures such as the conscription of older
women and administrative rationalization, was, according to his own figures, far less successful than he had anticipated. In the middle of September he noted that a total of 1.3 million people had signed on at the labor exchanges but only 125,000 had as yet been placed in employment.
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The recruitment of the armaments workers who had been released from their plants into the Wehrmacht was also happening slowly. Of the 300,000 released in August, only 191,000 had joined the Wehrmacht by the end of October.
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It is typical of Goebbels’s diary entries that rows of such figures can never be followed over long periods. Instead, he keeps introducing new aspects of “total war.” His notes reveal far more about his volatile work methods than about the concrete results of “total war.” They provide a good impression of how he threw himself with great enthusiasm into carrying out parts of a project, putting maximum pressure on his staff, whom he then blamed for the failure to achieve the overall goal, while he himself preened in the glory of apparent successes. Then the topic would fade into the background of his diary entries, to be replaced by a new task, to which he then devoted the same enthusiasm. In implementing “total war” Goebbels was primarily concerned to ensure that the daily life of citizens and thus the image of the Third Reich as a whole was geared to an overall goal, namely total mobilization for war. In a daily life governed by “total war” there was simply to be no place for disruptive debates about the military situation, the possibilities for peace and talk of the postwar era, discussions about who was politically responsible for the disaster, or complaints about the effects of the war. Moreover, as a result of “total war” the existing structures were being eroded and a radicalizing trend unleashed, enabling him, as the general Plenipotentiary, to intervene in almost every sphere. The more the Third Reich moved toward its downfall, the more powerful Joseph Goebbels became.

In September the bombing campaign against the Reich began again with full force, after the main raids during the previous three months had been directed at targets in France. During the four months between September and December 1944 the RAF dropped more bombs on Germany than in the years 1942 and 1943 combined, and the U.S.
Air Force exceeded its total of bombs dropped during 1943 six times over.
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The German hydrogenation plants were a key focus of the Allied bombing offensive, particularly in November, and “transportation targets” were also subjected to heavy raids, especially in the west. However, cities continued to be the main target of the raids during autumn 1944.
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On September 10 Mönchengladbach was badly affected.
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On September 11 the RAF succeeded in creating a firestorm in Darmstadt that killed 12,000 people.
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After that the raids focused particularly on Duisburg on October 14 and 15 (causing more than 2,000 deaths), on Essen between October 23 and 25 (over 1,600 victims), on Bochum and Solingen (both raids during the night of October 4–5, each causing more than 2,000 deaths). There were also 2,000 deaths in Freiburg, which was bombed on the night of November 27–28. Heilbronn was hit by a devastating raid on the night of December 4–5, during which 5,000 people died and the old part of the city was almost completely destroyed.
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During the autumn Berlin was also subjected to several daylight air raids by the Americans. By far the worst of these occurred on October 6 and December 5.
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Moreover, the western Allies were also operating close to the German border. On September 17 the largest airborne operation of the war began in the area around Arnhem, although the Germans succeeded in preventing Allied troops from seizing the bridge over the Rhine.
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However, in the meantime the Allied forces had advanced into the area around Aachen, posing a much bigger threat and forcing the partial evacuation of the city.
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Under the impression of this direct threat to the western borders of the Reich, Goebbels began advocating a “scorched earth” policy, an idea which had been mentioned in his diaries since the early summer
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and for which he now believed he was sure of Hitler’s support. For “now it’s a matter of all or nothing, and if the nation is fighting for its life, then we mustn’t shrink from the ultimate.”
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But by the following day, after a conversation with Speer, he was beginning to have second thoughts. There was no point in their letting the enemy conquer territory that had been devastated if they were planning soon to re-conquer it.
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In the meantime the reports that he was receiving described a further decline in the national mood. In his view this was due not least to people’s sense that the measures of “total war” were insufficiently
comprehensive or radical.
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He faced serious problems in writing his editorials: “I can’t deal with the issues on which I could provide interesting information, and the issues I can write about have been dealt with so often that nobody’s interested in them anymore.”
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Writing them gave him a “real headache,” but he thought he could not possibly stop doing so because for the nation waiting for his articles to be read out on the radio every Friday it was “like its daily bread ration.”
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At this point, thanks to an Allied indiscretion, he learned of the plan by the American treasury secretary, Hans Morgenthau, to deindustrialize Germany, turning it into a largely agricultural country. In this desperate situation the news came “as a godsend.”
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Goebbels gave instructions “to do everything possible to make the German people aware of this plan for our annihilation.” Accordingly, on the following day the press carried big headlines attacking “the Jewish financier Morgenthau” and his “threat of annihilation.”
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Goebbels, however, was aware that while a further intensification of “total war” might gain time, defeat could be averted only through political action. Thus his fevered search for a way out of the disastrous situation in which the Reich found itself in the late summer of 1944 focused above all on one option: the possibility of making a separate peace, an idea that he had repeatedly put to Hitler since 1943. In August he had tried to convince Bormann of his plans. They must make the attempt somehow “to get out of the two-front war,” though this would be impossible so long as the Foreign Ministry was headed by “a stubborn, obstinate boss.”
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At the beginning of September he noted that “attempts had been made from every conceivable quarter to achieve a political dialogue about the war. We are receiving news from England that influential circles would like to reach a compromise with the Reich,” since they wanted to get out of the alliance with the Soviet Union.
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On the other hand, the Japanese were trying “to get us into talks with the Soviets.” Ambassador Hiroshi Ōshima, under instructions from his government, had already approached Hitler concerning this matter; his response had been
noncommittal.
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Moreover, the Foreign Ministry had initiated contacts with “influential Soviet Russians” in Stockholm.

On September 10 Goebbels noted that “Spanish diplomatic circles are making great efforts to mediate between us and the West. On the other hand, Japan is making feverish attempts to mediate between us and the Russians. […] It looks as if the Soviets are much more open to the possibility of a separate peace than our enemies in the west.”
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A few days later he learned that the Foreign Ministry was very actively engaged in this matter.
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Goebbels did not believe that Ribbentrop was capable of conducting such a set of negotiations; they needed a new foreign minister. During this period he found himself urged from various quarters to play a leading role in foreign affairs in place of Ribbentrop. The state secretary in the Interior Ministry, Wilhelm Stuckart, wanted him to take over the Foreign Ministry; his own state secretary, Naumann, reported that Himmler, Bormann, and General Heinz Guderian were of the same opinion, while Speer believed that Hitler should grant Goebbels special powers in foreign policy in place of Ribbentrop.
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After his conversation with Naumann Goebbels thought through the whole situation and concluded that if he replaced Ribbentrop he would be able to achieve “quite a lot” as far as the “political side” of running the war was concerned, as foreign policy needed to be “in the hands of a man with intelligence, energy, and the requisite flexibility.” At the same time he was quite skeptical about the possibility that Hitler could “decide to carry out such a far-reaching reshuffle of the German government at such a critical time.”
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Goebbels paid great attention to the Quebec Conference attended by Churchill and Roosevelt on September 16. He suspected that it represented an attempt by the two western allies to improve the coordination of their positions vis-à-vis the Soviet Union that might presage the start of a serious conflict within the enemy coalition. However, he attributed reports in the neutral press, according to which the Soviet Union was planning separate peace negotiations with the Reich, to a tactical move on Russia’s part. It wanted “to put strong diplomatic pressure on the Anglo-Americans.” This was, of course, wild speculation. In fact the main issue discussed in Quebec was the future policy to be pursued in occupied Germany.
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On September 19 Goebbels passed on an important piece of information
to Himmler and Bormann so that they could give it to Hitler. He had learned from his state secretary, Naumann, that the Japanese ambassador, Ōshima, had renewed the offer of his services for negotiating a separate peace with the Soviet Union.
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But Ōshima’s initiative was not news to government circles in Berlin. Goebbels learned that Ley had spoken “to a group of intimates” maintaining that “negotiations with the Soviet Union were under way via Ōshima and that they would soon be making peace with Moscow.” Goebbels considered that this way of proceeding was “absolutely criminal,” and took Ley to task.
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In fact the incident showed that Ōshima’s initiative was hardly suitable as the basis for a secret diplomatic démarche. Indeed there is some indication that Hitler had made sure that rumors about Ōshima’s activities were spread in order to sow mistrust among the enemy coalition and to lead his own officials to believe in the prospect of a political conclusion to the war. But Goebbels, who was completely incapable of seeing through such maneuvers,
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did not give up so easily. On September 20 he prepared a memorandum for Hitler proposing that they should follow up Ōshima’s initiative and attempt to begin peace negotiations with the Soviet Union through the mediation of Japan.
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His proposal began with the point that they could “neither make peace with both sides simultaneously nor in the long term successfully make war with both sides simultaneously.” Goebbels stated bluntly that “we have never in our history won […] a two-front war and, based on the power relationships as reflected in terms of numbers, it is impossible for us to win the current war by military means either.” To win Hitler over to the idea, Goebbels made an analogy with the situation at the end of 1932. In those days they had also been confronted by an enemy coalition that they had eventually smashed by taking the initiative themselves. Goebbels then outlined to Hitler his view of the Quebec Conference and suggested that the contradictions that were allegedly emerging in the enemy coalition should be “seized on and exploited with every trick and cunning move possible.”

A separate peace with the Soviet Union, Goebbels continued, “would open up marvelous perspectives. We would have room to breathe in the west and under the impact of such events the English and Americans would hardly be in a position to continue the war in
the long term. We would not have achieved victory as we had dreamt of it in 1940, but it would nevertheless be the greatest victory in German history.”

However, he made it clear that he did not consider Ribbentrop “capable” of carrying out such a step. He must be replaced by a foreign minister with the “requisite clarity of vision and toughness combined with a high degree of intelligence and flexibility.” It was only too clear whom he envisaged for this task.

Goebbels anxiously awaited Hitler’s response. He learned via Hitler’s adjutant, Julius Schaub, that the Führer had carefully read his memorandum but had not commented on its contents.
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During this period Goebbels’s views were reinforced by reports from Britain, according to which “there is not the slightest willingness to negotiate with us. They want to carry through the experiment with Europe whatever the cost.”
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But despite waiting anxiously for a response, he was to be disappointed. As Hitler fell ill at the end of September and was out of action for a week, Goebbels did not get the chance to speak to him personally about his proposals. Even after Hitler’s recovery there are no entries in his diaries about Hitler’s response, and he does not seem to have taken any further initiatives in this direction.
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Goebbels had thrown all his political and personal weight onto the scales to persuade Hitler to undertake a peace initiative toward the Soviet Union. It appears that Hitler completely ignored his proposal. Goebbels, however, knew only too well that the continuation of the two-front war would inevitably lead to defeat. In reality he might as well have shot himself at this point.