Goebbels: A Biography (63 page)

By the end of July 1940 Hitler had already told his military commanders to prepare plans for war with the Soviet Union. This was prompted by the belief that quickly crushing the Soviet Union, whose military was generally considered to be weak, would cause Britain to lose its last potential ally on the continent and thereby be forced to make peace. These were not, however, the only strategic considerations that underpinned this decision: The “Bolshevist” Soviet Union was Hitler’s real arch-enemy; in his view the pact with the Soviet Union could not last forever. Hitler would have preferred to start the war in the autumn of 1940 but had to take account of the concerns of his military leaders and postpone it to the following spring.
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Hitler evidently did not inform his propaganda minister at all about these plans. For Goebbels, who after his conversations with Hitler always conscientiously recorded all the Führer’s comments about his foreign policy and military plans, does not report anything in his 1940 diaries about concrete plans for an attack on the Soviet Union. Rather, Goebbels’s entries in his diary for August 1940 show that Hitler intentionally left him in the dark about his war plans. Thus on August 9 their conversation touched on the “terror regime” that the Soviet occupation forces had imposed on the Baltic states. Goebbels noted: “Bolshevism is world enemy No. 1. One day we shall clash with it. The Führer thinks so too.”
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But the dictator did not initiate Goebbels into his war plans: When it came to devising strategies for the continuation of the war, he was not Hitler’s trusted adviser but his propaganda minister.

Even when some days later Goebbels learned of substantial troop deployments to the east, he did not connect them with an impending military operation: “Reason: insecurity in the west because of air raids. In reality on the principle: better to be safe than sorry.”
³³
A few
days later when he banned his department from making “any overtures to Russia” he did so knowing that conflict with the Soviet Union was inevitable, but the date for it seemed to him uncertain, a long way off: “One day we must settle accounts with Russia. When, I don’t know, but I do know it will happen.”
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Hitler’s plans for war with the Soviet Union were, however, only one of several options. At first he had, as we have seen, tried to defeat Britain militarily through massive air raids and even, conceivably, through an invasion. In September, however, this project had proved impossible for the foreseeable future. Before Hitler committed himself definitively in December 1940 to an attack on the Soviet Union, between September and December he had toyed with a third option, an alternative scenario through which to defeat Britain: This was Foreign Minister Ribbentrop’s idea of constructing a “continental bloc” against Britain—if necessary including the Soviet Union.
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The Tripartite Pact, the military alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan, initiated by Hitler and signed at the end of September, offered a basis for this. German policy initially focused on trying to reduce tensions in the Balkans and on bringing a few nations in southeastern Europe into the pact: Following the Vienna Award, which forced Romania to cede territory to Hungary at the end of August 1940, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia were admitted into the Tripartite Pact in November and, during the following months, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia were courted.

In order to expand the “bloc” still further, between September and December 1940 Hitler and his foreign minister met representatives of states that might be possible partners in the alliance against Britain: It was intended that Spain should join the Axis (and enable the Reich to conquer Gibraltar from the land side), that France should become actively involved in the war with Britain, and that arrangements would be made with their ally, Italy, as to what role the “new” partners, France and Spain, would play in the Mediterranean. Finally, the main problem facing the future “continental bloc” was the demarcation of interests with the Soviet Union.

Goebbels’s diary entries show that while during these months he was informed of particular diplomatic steps by Hitler, as far as the major lines of foreign policy were concerned he remained in the dark. He was neither given the full picture of the overall diplomatic project that lay behind the negotiations of these months, nor was he
aware that the idea of a continental bloc that was gradually taking shape was just one option that Hitler was simply trying out, whereas the fact that the continental bloc proved not to be feasible relatively quickly strengthened Hitler in his determination to seek a final showdown with the Soviet Union. Goebbels remained to a large extent unaware of Hitler’s return to his original fundamental goals.

But let us return to the late summer of 1940, in other words to the point when Hitler began his foreign policy experiment. Goebbels was informed relatively early about Italy’s plans to extend the war in the Balkans, as is shown by his diary entry for August 24: “Italy wanted to intervene in Yugoslavia and Greece,” he wrote, but Hitler “expressed the wish that they not do that. We must defeat England. That is the first and most important task.” The Italians acceded to Hitler’s wish, but only for two months.
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At the beginning of September Goebbels noted mysteriously in his diary that Hitler still had “a few irons in the fire, which at the moment cannot be spoken or written about. Herr Churchill will have a surprise.”
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But he does not appear to have been informed about what these “irons” were. Thus, he was not told about the conclusion of the Tripartite Pact, which established the “axis” uniting Germany, Italy, and Japan until September 27, the evening before it was signed.
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Goebbels did not learn any details about the conversations Hitler had with Mussolini at the Brenner Pass on October 4 apart from the fact that the result had been “good, as I was told by telephone.”
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On the other hand, since the visit of the Spanish interior minister, Ramón Serrano Suñer, in the middle of September,
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Goebbels had been informed about the German-Spanish plans for a military coup against Gibraltar on which the Wehrmacht had been working since July.
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On October 23 Hitler met the Spanish dictator at the Franco-Spanish border in Hendaye in order to negotiate the planned alliance.
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On his return Hitler told Goebbels only that he had “not formed a good opinion [of Franco]. A lot of talk, but little will. No substance.”
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On December 4 he noted that the attack was “to go ahead in about 3 weeks.”
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But three days later Franco canceled it,
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which Goebbels did not note in his diary until nearly two weeks after the fact.
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During his journey to Spain in October, Hitler had stopped off twice in the town of Montoire in southern France in order to negotiate with the French government. On October 22 he met Pierre Laval, and after his meeting with Franco on October 24 he met Pétain and
Laval.
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“This is the start of the new major development,” he commented meaningfully on the negotiations.
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He was not informed of the details of the conversations,
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but after a few days he was convinced that Vichy had “accepted”: “That means France is in the continental bloc. London is absolutely isolated.”
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In fact the results of Montoire were exceedingly meager: There could be no question of France’s having agreed to join in a war against Britain as part of a continental bloc led by Germany. That Goebbels had gained this impression shows the extent to which he was excluded from the actual diplomatic negotiations that were going on during these weeks.
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At the end of October 1940, during the return journey from the south of France Hitler had met Mussolini in Florence. During this meeting he learned that, despite his express wishes, the Italians had decided to attack Greece. As a result, the Balkans threatened to become a trouble spot directly contradicting the idea of a united continental bloc.
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The Italian action had been prompted by the fact that, responding to a Romanian request, the Germans had sent a military mission to Romania in October 1940. Their main aim had been to secure the Romanian oil fields. Feeling surprised and somewhat duped by this German action, the Italians now decided to push ahead with the Balkan plans that had long been in preparation and to attack Greece from Albania. Goebbels commented laconically on the surprising move by Il Duce: “He too is trying to get what he can.”
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The advance soon came to a halt, however, and the Italian forces had to retreat back into Albania. The German leadership now believed that they had to intervene if they were to prevent Britain from becoming involved in the conflict and establishing itself in the Balkans.
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It is clear from various entries in the diaries that from December 1940 onward Goebbels was informed about the German military intervention in Greece.
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Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov’s visit to Berlin in the middle of November represented the high point of the diplomatic negotiations in autumn 1940. Goebbels, who ensured that the visit went ahead without much participation by the Berlin population, had resolved to “keep somewhat in the background” during the visit.
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However, this unusual display of modesty on the part of the propaganda minister did not derive from his own decision to keep a low
profile; it was simply that Goebbels was excluded from the decisive conversations.

He took part only in a midday diplomatic “breakfast” in the Reich Chancellery on November 13 and used the opportunity to make some psychological observations about the Soviet visitors. Above all he noted “mutual fear and inferiority complexes”: “The GPU is keeping an eye on them.” He concluded that cooperation with Moscow must “in the future as well be [governed] solely by considerations of expediency”: “The more we move closer together politically, the more alien we shall become spiritually and ideologically. And that’s a good thing!”
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The German government was disappointed by the visit: Molotov responded to the German invitation to join the anti-British pact and to participate in the destruction of the British Empire by taking over territory in Asia by asking pointed questions and making requests concerning the future demarcation of German and Soviet interests in Europe. Hitler concluded from all of this that the German-Soviet alliance would inevitably collapse sooner or later as a result of the insuperable clash of interests and reverted to his plan for a war against the Soviet Union.
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Goebbels knew nothing about any of this. After a conversation with Hitler at the beginning of December he established that the Führer agreed with him that Russia would “never undertake anything against us”—“out of fear,” he added.
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Goebbels was, however, not aware of the consequences that Hitler was drawing from the purported Soviet weakness: Two days after this conversation with Goebbels Hitler was discussing the plans for the eastern campaign with his military leaders.
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After the victory over France, German “Jewish policy” acquired a new momentum, not least owing to Goebbels’s initiative. For Goebbels saw the opportunity at last to begin the forcible expulsion of the Jews from Berlin, a goal that he had been pursuing since 1935. Now that the Third Reich controlled most of the European continent, the time seemed ripe for the final “de-jewification”
(Entjudung)
of Berlin.
Such a radical step would have a marked effect on Jewish policy throughout the Reich. In any case Goebbels was determined to play a pioneering role in the radicalization of Jewish policy during the war as well.

On July 19, 1940, he discussed with Hitler among other things the fact that the Jews were numbered among the “habitual criminals” and that they should “make short work” of them. A few hours earlier Leopold Gutterer, a department head in the Propaganda Ministry, had reported at a ministerial meeting that on the previous day, during the ceremonial entry of the Berlin division returning from France, “the same riff raff could be seen as always strolling” along the Kurfürstendamm. Goebbels seized on this remark and announced, “Immediately after the end of the war all the 62,000 Jews still living in Berlin [are] to be deported to Poland within a time span of a maximum of eight weeks”; as long as they were still living in Berlin, they would have a negative impact on morale in the capital. Berlin, according to Goebbels, should be the first German city to be made “free of Jews”
(judenfrei)
. Hans Hinkel, the person in the ministry who was most involved with the “de-jewification” of German cultural life, was able to report that they had already worked out a “removal plan” with the police.
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Five days later Goebbels brought up the topic with Hitler, who approved his comments.
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On the following day Goebbels was already noting that he had “approved a large-scale plan for the evacuation of the Jews from Berlin. Moreover, after the war all the Jews are going to be deported to Madagascar. It will then become a German protectorate under a German police governor.”
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At the beginning of September 1940 Hinkel once again reported to the ministerial meeting on the deportation plans for the Berlin and Viennese Jews. The plan now was to send “ca. 500 Jews to the southeast” each month, immediately after the end of the war a further sixty thousand within four weeks.
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It is clear that these deportation plans were based on the Madagascar project,
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which in the meantime had begun to take on a clearer shape as a result of further planning in the Foreign Ministry and the Reich Security Main Office.

In October Gauleiters Baldur von Schirach (Vienna) and Erich Koch (East Prussia) demanded further deportations to the General
Government.
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At the beginning of November Hitler decided to deport 150,000 to 160,000 Jews and Poles from the annexed territories to the General Government in order to make room for the settlement of ethnic Germans, called
Volksdeutsche
.
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On the same day the functionaries who were affected—Gauleiters Koch and Wilhelm Forster (West Prussia) and the Governor General, Hans Frank—argued about the deportation quotas at a meeting with Hitler. “The Führer, laughing, makes peace” between them, Goebbels noted in his diary. “They all want to get rid of their rubbish into the General Government. Jews, the sick, the idle, etc. And Frank objects to this.” Poland, according to Goebbels’s report of Hitler’s statements, was to “become a big reservoir of labor: Frank doesn’t like it, but he’ll have to put up with it. And one day we’ll shove the Jews out of this area too.”

During the end of 1940 and the beginning of 1941, Hitler gave Heydrich the task of drawing up an overall plan for the deportation of all the Jews in the territories controlled by the Germans after the war, and a few weeks later Heydrich produced a plan (it has not survived), which, according to a few important pieces of evidence, envisaged ultimately deporting the Jews living in the German sphere of influence to the Soviet Union.
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In the middle of March 1941 Goebbels, who presumably had not been informed about the details of these plans, received the impression during one of his lunchtime visits to Hitler that the deportations from Berlin were about to begin.
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Adolf Eichmann, the “Jewish expert” of the Reich Security Main Office, was invited to speak at the ministerial conference about the practical problems created by the deportations and then requested to work out further details.
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Soon afterward, however, Goebbels discovered that the deportations could not be carried out quickly because the Berlin armaments industry was in urgent need of labor.
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He had to get used to the idea that a significant number of Jews would continue to live in Berlin for quite some time.

On the other hand, on the basis of reports from occupied Poland, Goebbels had acquired a very good idea of what “Jewish policy” really involved at this juncture. He knew that thousands of Polish Jews had been the victims of German murder squads. In March 1941 he felt compelled to do something to prevent the morale of his propaganda experts from being damaged: “I am forbidding our people
to view Jewish executions. The person who makes the laws and supervises their implementation should not witness them being actually carried out. That will weaken their mental powers of resistance.”
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