Goebbels: A Biography (31 page)

As early as March 24—he had only just begun to construct his new ministry—Goebbels had proposed in the cabinet the introduction of three new national holidays: March 21, the “Day of the German Uprising”; May 1, “National Labor Day”; and the last Sunday in September, the “Day of National Honor.”
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The most provocative of these suggestions was of course the idea of declaring May 1, then less than six weeks away, a national holiday. Since the end of the nineteenth century the First of May had been celebrated within the international socialist movement as the “day of the working-class struggle” and was observed in many countries with demonstrations and rallies. The socialist parties in Germany, since the end of World War I, had been pressing to have the date permanently recognized as a national paid holiday. Now this new government had adopted it. The other two proposals were deferred.
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Given the shortness of time, the preparations were bound to be somewhat hectic, but the Propaganda Ministry still managed to dress up “National Labor Day” as a day of bombastic national celebration.
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On the morning of May 1 Goebbels and Hindenburg spoke in the Lustgarten, where “German youth” were drawn up. In the afternoon, according to official figures, a crowd of a million and a half assembled on Tempelhof Field, including workers’ representatives from across the Reich. Goebbels opened the rally, and then Hitler spoke. The event was broadcast on the radio, of course, and included a commentary transmitted from a zeppelin circling above the grounds.
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Immediately after these pompous festivities had paid homage to the German worker, on May 2 the regime showed the other, authentic face of its labor policy: The unions were forcibly disbanded, an action Goebbels had discussed with Hitler at Berchtesgaden in mid-April. He noted its results in his diary on May 3: “Functionaries arrested. It all goes like clockwork. With Hitler. High spirits. The revolution continues.”
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Goebbels was now making progress with constructing his ministry. The first structural features were beginning to emerge.

The directive to set up the ministry issued on March 13 had prescribed that its precise duties should be determined by the Reich chancellor, specifically including those that had previously been the responsibility of other ministries. This meant that Hitler was given carte blanche by the cabinet to reassign powers, even those central to the ministries in question; a control of controls that went far beyond
previous practice. So Goebbels found himself in a favorable negotiating position vis-à-vis other departments, but he was dependent on Hitler’s support. The new style of government was becoming apparent. Decisions geared to personalities were to replace responsibilities defined and fixed in advance.
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By March Goebbels had already taken over control of the radio from the Reich postal service and the Reich Ministry of the Interior.
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He had also secured Göring’s support for a transfer of authority over theaters to his new ministry’s jurisdiction, out of the hands of the Reich Ministry of Education.
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However, a few months later he was to find that Göring had arrogated to himself extensive powers over playhouses in Prussia.
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Early in April Goebbels procured assent in principle to the reallocating of the cultural section of the Reich Interior Ministry to his department.
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But by the end of April it transpired that he was only going to be given responsibility for art. Overcoming further difficulties, he successfully negotiated more concessions in the end.
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All in all, it is clear that his cabinet colleagues were not prepared to add to Goebbels’s portfolio without a struggle, despite Hitler’s solid support for him.

In May he succeeded against Foreign Office opposition in creating a foreign department of his own. The old press department of the Foreign Office remained in existence, but Goebbels would now take over “active propaganda” directed at foreign countries. It was a ruling that was to lead in later years to many tedious disputes between competing authorities.
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In May Goebbels took his first active steps in a variety of cultural areas. As with his speech to media representatives a few weeks earlier, on the one hand he flaunted the Nazis’ claim to power, but on the other he tried to counter the impression that an era of cultural dictatorship was about to impose its own attitudes and tastes. He often took an implicit stand against the kind of one-sided, doctrinaire,
völkisch
traditionalism characterized by the activities of the National Socialist “Combat League for German Culture” under Alfred Rosenberg. Addressing theater managers and directors in the Kaiserhof on May 8, for example, Goebbels came across as relatively restrained: “Art is a matter of ability, not of will,” he had no intention of “cramping artistic creativity.” In his speech Goebbels tried to give the assembled
theater people a little artistic orientation. He acknowledged that Expressionism had had “healthy beginnings” but had then degenerated into experimentation. But his prescription for the future direction of art was rather different: “German art in the next decade will be heroic, steely but romantic, factual without sentimentality; it will be nationalistic, with great depth of feeling; it will be binding and it will unite, or it will cease to exist.”
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His initial contribution to a new order of things in German literature was even more drastic. By way of an “intellectual” contribution to the Nazi revolution, the German Students Association decided to cleanse public libraries of “trashy and obscene” literature. The high point was a public book burning, which took place on the Opernplatz in Berlin on May 10.
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The official speaker at this barbaric event was Joseph Goebbels, who declared that the “age of pretentious Jewish intellectualism” was over. He praised the book burning as “a strong, great, and symbolic action—an action meant to put on record for the whole world the collapse of the intellectual basis of the November Republic.”
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The books burned that evening included works by Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Heinrich Mann, Erich Kästner, Sigmund Freud, Emil Ludwig Cohn, Theodor Wolff, Erich Maria Remarque, Alfred Kerr, Kurt Tucholsky, Carl von Ossietzky, and many more.
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On May 18 Goebbels spoke again, this time to members of the film industry gathered in the tennis courts in Wilmersdorf. His speech spelled out the fundamental message that “film cannot be immune to these mighty intellectual and political upheavals.” At the same time he was at pains to stress that the “tendency” called for by the new government did not imply any intention whatsoever of curbing artistic freedom.
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Goebbels also announced a new film credit bank, to be incorporated on June 1, 1933. Jointly underwritten by the Propaganda Ministry, the film industry, and several large banks, it made credit available on favorable terms. If a project passed the scrutiny of state agents, up to two thirds of production costs could be covered by this credit. By 1935 70 percent of all feature films were being subsidized by the bank. However, it was mainly the big film companies, Ufa and Tobis, who benefited from the support.
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Two weeks later the cabinet passed a law creating an interim Reich Film Chamber under the aegis of the Propaganda Ministry. From
now on, everyone involved in the film industry was obliged to join the Chamber, which was empowered to prescribe the framework for their financial operations. The Reich Film Chamber was the first step toward the “corporate” structuring of the entire cultural sector that was to make great strides in the following months.
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In the course of 1933 the Ufa and Bavaria film companies rushed out three films glorifying the Nazi “time of struggle.” These projects did not by any means find whole-hearted favor with Goebbels. The first,
Brand of the SA
, he initially found “not as bad as I feared,” but by the next day, after the premiere attended by Hitler, he changed his mind, deciding to “make massive cuts.”
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His response to
Quex of the Hitler Youth
was mixed; here, too, he seems to have intervened, because after the premiere he declared proudly: “After the changes I made, it seems almost like a different film.”
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On the other hand, he would not allow the Horst Wessel film to be distributed to cinemas. When consulted, Hitler agreed with Goebbels’s reaction. It was only after some reworking that the film was released, with the title
Hans Westmar
.
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The fact was that the brash depiction of SA fighters no longer suited the regime’s policy, which in the second half of 1933 was looking to bring the National Socialist revolution to an end. In a few public speeches, Goebbels made it clear that such films would not be welcome in future.

As minister for film, Goebbels came more and more into contact with directors and actors. Early in April he was already organizing a “film tea” at the Ministry that was attended by the most important film stars. Hitler dropped by and was delighted with the company.
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In May Goebbels had a chance to discuss “film plans” with Luis Trenker (“a wild man”).
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He personally assisted the actress Maria Paudler, who was seeking work.
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During a visit to the Ufa studios in Babelsberg he met the film star Willy Fritsch (“nice lad!”); a few weeks earlier at a party he had spent some time in the company of Hans Albers (“A good lad! Gutsy and decent.”).
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Among the “film creators,” there was one woman he was particularly taken by: The previous year Leni Riefenstahl had told him she was an ardent supporter of National Socialism, and she had now returned to Germany after a long spell of filming in Switzerland. In mid-May she reacted “enthusiastically” to his suggestion that she should make a “Hitler film,” and at the end of the month she took
part in his one-day outing to the Baltic, the diary making a laconic reference to another member of the party: “Boss with us.”
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Goebbels thought that Riefenstahl was “the only star who understands us.” After some discussion with Hitler she made an early start on the proposed film. The close contact between Goebbels and Riefenstahl was to last throughout the summer, culminating in the project of filming the Party rally.
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Meanwhile, the structure of the Propaganda Ministry was taking solid shape. At the end of June the department’s responsibilities were set out in a new decree.
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However, the desired “coordination” of radio—a key ambition of the new minister—faced an obstacle in the summer of 1933: The individual states still had a great deal of autonomy in this sphere. Göring in particular had no intention of giving up this independence for Prussia without a fight. But Goebbels managed to acquire Hitler’s consent to annulling the remaining control of the regions over broadcasting.
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Ultimately, in July Hitler instructed the Reich governors in the various states about the central role of Goebbels’s department in questions of culture and propaganda, especially with regard to broadcasting.
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In the months that followed, the states ceded their interest in regional broadcasting stations to the Propaganda Ministry; regional broadcasting companies were liquidated and turned into “Reich broadcasting stations,” all under the control of the Reich Broadcasting Corporation (Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft, RRG).
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Many staff in radio were fired from March onward,
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and in the summer some broadcasting managers from the Weimar period were arrested.
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Goebbels recorded that it was on his instructions that these “radio bigshots” had been sent to Oranienburg Concentration Camp.
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But in the subsequent legal proceedings it transpired that the charges of corruption against these former radio bosses had been trumped up.
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The new ministry now consisted of seven sections. The core of the operation was the propaganda section, led by the current staff manager Wilhelm Haegert.
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It was here that all of the planning and direction of the large-scale propaganda campaigns took place, with pride of place being taken by the desk responsible for mass rallies, managed by Leopold Gutterer,
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a former Gau head of propaganda. The know-how acquired in the past by the Party’s Reich propaganda office in organizing large-scale events and extensive campaigns was
now applied within the propaganda section to the work of the new ministry.

The press section was led by the journalist Kurt Jahncke,
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whose politics were nationalist rather than Nazi. The film section was under the command of Ernst Seeger (since 1924 head of the Board of Film Censors; Goebbels had acquired him from the Interior Ministry);
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and actor and Nazi functionary Otto Laubinger was responsible for theater. The first head of the foreign section was Hermann Demann, followed in 1935 by Franz Hasenöhrl, the exporter and former head of the China country group of the NSDAP Auslands-Organisation, (Foreign Organization).
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After the dismissal of Gustav Krukenberg, head of radio, the radio section was taken over by Horst Dressler-Andress, previously broadcasting specialist in the Party’s Reich propaganda office, and Eugen Hadamovsky (previously Gau radio supervisor in the Berlin Gau office) headed the Reich Broadcasting Corporation.
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Erich Greiner became head of the Administrative Section of the Ministry: A nationalist-conservative civil servant who never joined the NSDAP, he had been a principal officer in the Finance Ministry.
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Apart from State Secretary Walther Funk, Goebbels was assisted by his personal adviser Karl Hanke, the former organizing manager in the Berlin Gau office.

Goebbels’s choice of important collaborators was therefore marked from the beginning by a high degree of pragmatism: Apart from Party propaganda specialists and Party functionaries, there was plenty of room for administrators and experts not selected on account of their NSDAP affiliation.