Goebbels: A Biography (56 page)

Early in February Hitler told Goebbels that, as the latter recorded, he was going to “go up to the mountain and think about his next foreign policy steps. Perhaps it’ll be Czechoslovakia again. Because that problem is only half solved. But he’s not quite clear about it yet. Maybe the Ukraine, too.”
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Although Goebbels was no better informed about his master’s next foreign policy moves, he now proceeded to shift his propaganda effort entirely toward preparing for war. In the following months Goebbels was the most consistently pro-war member of the regime’s highest echelon, both within and outside its circle. Although he himself would have preferred to avoid full-scale war at this point, he did everything in his power to make up for the “failure” of his propaganda during the crisis of autumn 1938.

A first step in this direction was Goebbels’s editorial “War in Sight” in the
Völkischer Beobachter
of February 25; the title was an allusion to a newspaper article, inspired by Bismarck, of April 1875, which had triggered an international crisis. He tried to pin the responsibility for international tensions on the “string-pullers” in the background who were “well known”: “They are to be found in the circles of international Jewry, international Freemasonry, and international Marxism.” By the next day the article had caused “a great sensation” both at home and abroad. And no wonder: “It’s brilliantly written.”
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His editorials for the
Völkischer Beobachter
evolved a style quite different from that of his earlier journalistic contributions. In
Der Angriff
he would write ironically, bitingly, casually, and flippantly. Now, however, his style was serious, statesmanlike, even pompous, meant to indicate that he was viewing current affairs from a certain distance, from a higher vantage point. In his editorials for the weekly
Das Reich
, which he wrote regularly from 1940 onward, he would develop this elevated attitude even further. Part of this was his penchant for advancing his arguments as eternally valid, irrefutable truths by pointing, for example, to supposed “great historical developments,” which “followed their own laws,” or by referring to the “nature of war”
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or deploying the power of facts or incontestable life experiences. Characteristic were stiff generalizing phrases such as: “Once more we feel the need to hold up to ridicule a certain question of the day,” or: “We were obliged some days ago to deal in this publication
with the excesses of the Polish press,” or: “In this connection we have little need to refer back to the facts.”
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The “we” he liked to use in these articles denoted not only the author Goebbels but often also the Nazi leadership or simply the collective of the German “national community.” This manipulative game with the collective pronoun characterizes the leadership’s claim to identity with the nation.

In March he suffered from renal colic, which confined him to bed for several days, suffering such “savage pain” and being so incapable of working that he even put off writing his diary entries.
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After hours of agony he eventually passed the kidney stone. On the same day, Magda left for a six-week recuperative vacation in Italy, a departure he registered with evident relief: “And now a bit of peace again at last.”
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While Goebbels was recovering, he learned that Hitler had come to a decision: Czechoslovakia was in his sights. The pretext for his move against the country was the conflict in March 1939 between Prague and the government of Slovakia, which, immediately after the Munich Agreement, had succeeded in asserting its autonomy within Czechoslovakia. On March 9 the Prague government dismissed the cabinet in Bratislava as a preventive measure to stop Slovakia from giving way to German pressure and quitting the union completely.
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Goebbels noted: “Now the question we only half resolved in October can be completely resolved.”
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Around noon on March 10 he was summoned by Hitler: “Immediately afterward Ribbentrop and Keitel arrived. Decision: We go in on Wednesday March 15 and smash the whole misbegotten Czechoslovakian construct.” Goebbels immediately put his “Ministry on the alert.” The press was ordered to add fuel to the fire.
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By late afternoon he was back with Hitler. They composed a report according to which “before being arrested the Tiso government had appealed in a note to the German Reich government.” The precise content of the fictional Slovakian cry for help could be “handed in later as required.” But during the night, sitting up until the small hours, the dictator and his minister learned that Tiso was not willing to sign.
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From March 13, the Czechoslovakian crisis dominated the German press. At first Goebbels’s instruction was to “squeeze the tube a bit harder, but don’t let the cat out of the bag yet,”
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—in other words, not to deploy as yet the threat of an invasion that had already been decided upon.
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On March 13, Goebbels and Hitler collaborated on
drafting leaflets for the invasion.
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On the same day, Hitler received Slovakian Prime Minister Jozef Tiso to offer him help in forming an independent Slovakia. Should he decline, Hitler’s threat—conveyed to Goebbels that same evening—was that “they’ll be swallowed up by Hungary.” Tiso, declining to be pinned down, returned to Bratislava. “Not a revolutionary,” was Goebbels’s verdict.
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Tiso was supplied with a telegram drafted in the German Foreign Office immediately after his discussion with Hitler: It contained an appeal to the Reich for help. At the same time Ribbentrop presented Tiso with an ultimatum: He must declare his country’s autonomy by the very next day.
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Accordingly, the next day the assembly in Bratislava proclaimed an independent Slovakian state, and under German pressure
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the appeal for help was handed over on March 15. The new state was also forced to agree to a “protective treaty” formally acknowledging its dependence on the German Reich.
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Late on the evening of March 14 the Czech president, Dr. Emil Hácha, and his foreign minister, František Chvalkovský arrived in Berlin. During a nighttime session, which according to Goebbels was conducted with “brutal bitterness,” they were forced to surrender completely.
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At six the next morning, German troops began their entry into Czech territory.
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On the evening of March 15 Hitler arrived in Prague, took possession of Hradschin Castle, ancient residence of the Bohemian kings, and proclaimed from here the next day that he had formed a protectorate of the “Bohemian and Moravian lands.”
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While the Party was organizing “spontaneous rallies” throughout the Reich for March 19,
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Goebbels laid on another “triumphal reception” for Hitler in Berlin on the same day; a welcome, wrote the
Völkischer Beobachter
, such as “no head of state in world history has ever enjoyed.” The paper reported the next day that searchlights formed a “canopy of light” above the broad, flag-bedecked avenue Unter den Linden, and fireworks completed the effect of a street clad in “a magic, fairyland mantle of swastika banners, pylons, and Bengal lights.”
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Hitler’s decision to occupy the Czech territories, thereby breaking the Munich Agreement, marked a turning point in the attitude of the western powers to the Third Reich. It was all too obvious not only that Hitler had reneged on a treaty but also that what supposedly legitimated
his previous policy—bringing “home into the Reich” those Germans cut off from it by the Versailles Treaty—had now been unmasked as a duplicitous ploy. At a stroke, London and Paris realized that Hitler would not be satisfied with further concessions and that the only answer was deterrence. But as Hitler told Goebbels on his return to Berlin, he was not taking the protests from Britain and France seriously.
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Goebbels talked about “stage thunder.”
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The self-confidence of the regime is apparent from the fact that, totally unimpressed by western protests, it immediately set about its next foreign affairs “coup.” Directly after his return from Prague, Hitler began preparing to enforce a solution to the “Memel question.” The Memelland, predominantly inhabited by Germans, had been separated from the Reich by the Versailles Treaty, placed at first under French administration, then occupied in 1923 by Lithuania and subsequently administered by the Baltic State. In a directive dating from October 1938 Hitler was already calling for the early annexation of the territory by the Reich.
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On March 20, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop forced his Lithuanian counterpart, Juozas Urbšys, on a visit to Berlin, into agreeing to surrender the strip of land.
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Goebbels was triumphant: “Either-or. These little Versailles thieves have now got to disgorge their stolen goods—or else!” By March 22, Goebbels was announcing the successful completion of the latest coup while prescribing the usual celebrations.
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Following the occupation of Prague and Memelland, the question of German-Polish relations moved to the center ground of German foreign policy. Via the Polish ambassador in Berlin, Ribbentrop had called upon his opposite number in Poland, Józef Beck, to come to Berlin for talks about the prospects for a joint policy. A precondition for this, however, would be the fulfillment of the well-known German demands concerning Danzig and the Polish Corridor.

Beck did not appear; the German proposals were unequivocally rejected. The Polish government, having temporarily mobilized its military forces, instead turned to Britain for help. The appeal was received positively by Chamberlain with a statement in the House of Commons, while the Polish foreign minister firmly informed the German ambassador at the end of the month that any attempt by Germany to impose a solution of the Danzig question by force would
mean war. At the beginning of April, a visit to London by Beck, arranged on short notice, resulted in the announcement of a pact of mutual support.
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At this point, therefore, Goebbels’s attention switched to Great Britain. He started an anti-British campaign, in keeping with the old adage “attack is the best form of defense,” as he recorded on March 21. His opening salvo in the
Völkischer Beobachter
was an editorial entitled “Away with Moral Hypocrisy” in which he made short shrift of “humanity, civilization, international law, and international trust,” asserting, “Our morality lies in our rights. Anyone suppressing these rights is dealing immorally with us, even if he envelops his action in a cloud of incense and murmurs a pious prayer. We are no longer impressed by that.”
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On the same day the newspapers were instructed to attack British global policy by casting historical aspersions.
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In another editorial in the
Völkischer Beobachter
Goebbels provided a “final reckoning with British arrogance.” German actions in the past few weeks had not been taken out of overweening pride, only “because we want to live.”
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The “anti-England campaign” was short-lived; within a few days Goebbels declared it over for the time being.
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One result of the tense international situation was that Goebbels had to contend with increasing competition from ambitious rivals in the area of propaganda directed at foreign powers and, later, wartime propaganda. The outcome was that he was forced to pull in his horns, with his reputation within the Nazi leadership somewhat dented.

The previous autumn, a conflict had broken out with the Foreign Ministry. In 1933, it had relinquished to the Propaganda Ministry the press office responsible for analyzing the foreign press: Now the Foreign Office wanted to reclaim and develop it for itself. In the course of this dispute the fundamental question had arisen as to which party was responsible for dealing with the foreign press, a role claimed by both sides, each citing decisions by the Führer to back its claim.
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Goebbels and Hitler relied on a decree issued by Hitler on February 16, 1939, and orally confirmed by the Führer on February 28.
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Ribbentrop, on the other hand, likewise referring to Hitler’s intentions, gave orders in June 1939 for a foreign-language broadcasting service to be set up within the Foreign Office but could not push it
through against the propaganda minister’s opposition.
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He had equally little success in June in retrieving the press attaché bureaus assigned to German overseas representations, which had likewise been reallocated to the Propaganda Ministry in 1933.
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Rivalry and mistrust also characterized relations between Goebbels and the propaganda arm of the Wehrmacht. Since about 1935 Goebbels’s officials had been discussing with offices from the War Ministry questions of military and home-front propaganda in the case of a war;
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jointly they had begun to devise a mobilization plan to cover the full portfolio of the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda.
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During the maneuvers of autumn 1936 the Propaganda Ministry had deployed on a trial basis a “propaganda task force” consisting of civilian reporters.
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Goebbels arranged with the War Ministry in 1937 that, should war break out, units from his ministry would be put in uniform and “embedded” with the Wehrmacht. The new organizational structure was tried out in the autumn maneuvers,
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and Goebbels had the opportunity to hold a “maneuver discussion” in his ministry.
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And yet since the end of 1937 Goebbels had been pursuing the aim of disbanding the propaganda department within the Wehrmacht.
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In December he thought he had reached an understanding with Wilhelm Keitel guaranteeing his ministry command of war propaganda.
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However, in the years that followed, the military actually succeeded in strengthening the position of military propaganda. According to principles negotiated at the end of September 1938 between the Propaganda Ministry and the Wehrmacht High Command governing the control of propaganda in wartime,
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the Wehrmacht set up its own propaganda companies and by means of “general instructions” to the Propaganda Ministry was supposed to enable the ministry to coordinate the “propaganda war” with the “war of weapons.” Admittedly, the Propaganda Ministry had some influence over the appointment of specialists, and it was able to exert control of the use of propaganda material outside the military sphere. But when Goebbels in his diaries presented the propaganda companies as an extension of his ministry’s operations in the case of war, he did so in order to conceal a defeat.
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