Goebbels: A Biography (70 page)

In the next few days Goebbels acquired a new task that was very much in line with his demand that domestic propaganda adopt a tougher approach. On December 17 Hitler made him responsible for a campaign to “collect wool clothing for the troops on the Eastern Front,” which had been requested by the Army High Command.

In view of objections from Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), which claimed that the clothing was actually available but just could not yet be transported to the front, on December 20 Goebbels secured Hitler’s agreement to announce the collection drive on the radio the very same evening.
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Goebbels used his authorization in order once again to dominate the Third Reich’s public sphere with one of his major campaigns, using all the media to project an image of the solidarity of the “national community.” “Domestic politics is completely dominated by my collection campaign. Our dramatic reporting of it has made a huge impression on the German people.”
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Moreover, in his view it offered him the opportunity to counteract what he considered the “melancholy” mood, which during the Christmas period must not be allowed to spread too far.
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Immediately after Christmas, however, there were an increasing number of negative reports from the various fronts. The British captured Benghazi and, according to Goebbels, various reports from the Eastern Front concurred in asserting that “our forces’ resistance has been reduced to an alarming extent.”
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For this reason it was excellent that “the clothing collection has started. For now at least people have a useful task, and the Party too has something to do and needn’t spend its time making clever assessments of the situation. In fact, all in all, it’s best if people get on with their daily lives and apart from that have faith in the Führer.”
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He made it clear in an article to which he gave the title “What Is a Sacrifice?” that the current “restrictions” were nothing compared with what people at the front had to put up with.
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During this period the clothing collection came up constantly in
the ministerial briefing.
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“The more people at home have to do,” Goebbels concluded, “the better their morale will be; the more people believe that they are carrying out essential war work, the more they will be committed to the war and feel responsible for ensuring its success.”
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On January 21 he announced that over fifty-six million pieces of winter and woollen clothing had been donated; the final result was sixty-seven million items. As Goebbels recorded, the whole operation had proved a “real blessing […] for our domestic situation.”
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The parallel action to collect ski equipment, however, proved to be rather a debacle.
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Pressed by the propaganda minister, hundreds of thousands of Germans delivered up their winter sports equipment, and at the same time all winter sports events were canceled.
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But when the campaign was already under way, the Wehrmacht suddenly declared that instead of a million pairs of skis it needed only four hundred thousand, considerably fewer than had been collected by that point.
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Goebbels, who found this change of plan “extremely embarrassing,” responded by ordering that the action should simply be dropped.
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Moreover, the Wehrmacht could not do much with the four hundred thousand skis it had collected because for the most part these were alpine skis designed for going downhill and not cross-country skis, which were what were required for winter warfare. In addition, the vast majority of soldiers were not able to ski and proved an easy target for enemy snipers.
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During 1942 Goebbels and the Propaganda Ministry then had to deal with the question of how, in accordance with a decision of Hitler’s, they were to return the skis that were left over to their owners.
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During the following winter months Goebbels was preoccupied above all with ensuring that, through a combination of increased efforts on the “home front” and the carefully controlled release of news, German propaganda could cope with the military crisis on the Eastern Front and in North Africa.

During the first months of 1942 Goebbels’s propaganda directives and public comments are replete with demands for greater “toughness,”
both in information policy and more generally as far as the civilian war effort was concerned: “If we really get a grip on the nation, give it jobs to do and lead it, then it will certainly be willing to follow us through thick and thin. Also, such a nation can’t be defeated,” he wrote on January 8 in connection with Hitler’s New Year message.
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As far as he was concerned, the collection of wool clothing was a successful pilot project for a “tougher” domestic war policy.
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At the end of January he published an editorial in
Das Reich
in which he noted with satisfaction that there was hardly anybody left “who within their domestic circle allowed themselves the luxury of pretending that peace was reigning, while the furies of war were rampaging over Europe.”
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He praised Hitler’s speech of January 30 not least because of its attempt to “get the nation to accept tough policies.”
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He now believed that he could sense “a general firming up of attitudes.”
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As so often, he tried to find out more about the real mood through a long conversation with his mother: “She knows the popular mood better than most experts, who judge it only from an exalted academic standpoint, whereas with her one hears the true voice of the people. Once more I can learn a lot, above all that the people are much more primitive than we imagine.” He considered his basic views confirmed: “Thus, the essence of propaganda is to keep it simple and use constant repetition.”
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Apart from his dogged attempts to force the population to make greater efforts in support of the war, in winter 1941–42 Goebbels as propaganda minister followed a kind of compensation strategy by introducing a more relaxed policy for the mass media of radio and film, which were expected to deliver more entertainment and to put people in a “good mood.” These attempts can be traced back to autumn 1941 and reached their high point in February 1942.

Since Goebbels had concluded that radio was still not broadcasting enough “good and entertaining material,”
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as early as mid-October 1941 he had assigned the desk officer responsible for matters concerning the Chamber of Culture within the ministry, Hans Hinkel, the task of “contacting our best light orchestras, our best light music conductors and light music composers” and making sure they produced “a decent evening program.”
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After Hinkel had introduced the requested reforms, which soon covered the whole of the entertainment programming,
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Goebbels noted a generally very positive response from listeners. In January,
however, he once again had some complaints about the radio programming. Hinkel was on vacation, so Goebbels mainly blamed the Reich head of broadcasting, Glasmeier, who was also head of the Reich Broadcasting Corporation.
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In February Goebbels became heavily involved in reforming the programming
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and in the end carried out a comprehensive reassignment of responsibilities.
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He gave Hinkel “overall responsibility for the artistic and entertainment programming of the Greater German Radio” and appointed Wolfgang Diewerge, who for years had been one of the most prominent propagandists in the ministry, to head its radio department and at the same time gave him “overall responsibility for the political and propaganda broadcasts of the Greater German Radio.”

Following Goebbels’s instructions Hinkel established an editorial staff consisting of ten groups, each of which was responsible for a particular branch of entertainment. Goebbels now had an organization that enabled him to issue direct instructions for the programming.
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He even made detailed comments on programming during his ministerial briefings. Thus, on March 9 he decided on the exact wording of the introduction to a Schumann Lieder recital.
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Simultaneously with the reorganization Goebbels reduced the authority of the director general of the Reich Broadcasting Corporation, restricting him to a largely administrative role.
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In an article published in the
Völkischer Beobachter
on March 1 he announced a reorganization of the radio program. While it was obvious that jazz music was unacceptable, at the same time “it was not right to insist that musical development came to an end with our grandparents’ waltzes and everything after that is bad.”
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He noted in his diary how pleased he was with the new program. It was “a pleasure to listen to a broadcast for half or quarter of an hour in the evening.”
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From autumn 1941 onward Goebbels also introduced a change in film policy;
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once again it would focus on light entertainment. “During this coming winter,” he had noted in September, “we must do all we can to keep the nation in a good mood.”
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This was “really vital for the war effort.”
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When the Rühmann film
The Gasman
was criticized by Party officials because it contained a reference to Party bigwigs, Goebbels, significantly, mocked those Gauleiters who thought that “morale would suffer because of harmless jokes, which once in a while may target state or Party institutions.”
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During the winter, cinemas were once again showing more entertainment
films, which began to replace the political propaganda ones, although at the end of the year Goebbels was still undecided what line to take: “At the moment the situation is so uncertain that one hardly knows what to show: political, military, musical, or entertainment films.” In any case, it was a good idea to provide the nation with “the relaxation it needs through art, theater, film, and radio.”
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At the beginning of 1942 the preference for entertainment films was clearly established: “What we need is a domestic form of patriotism,” he wrote in January after visiting a cinema.
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An important reason for the change was the fact that “big films” were often opulently staged epics that were simply becoming too expensive,
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and for this reason alone Goebbels preferred relatively cheap comedies staged in studios: “What we need is good quality, good value entertainment films.”
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At the end of 1942 the Propaganda Ministry issued an edict to “improve the quality” of films, which brought together the whole of the film industry in an umbrella organization. All the existing film studios were brought together in Ufa-Film GmbH, with separate companies established for the old cinemas belonging to Ufa and for film distribution. At the same time, within the management of Ufa-Film, Goebbels created the new position of director of Reich film, to which he appointed Fritz Hippler, the head of the film department, who was specifically authorized to intervene directly in film production. The edict specifically established the priority of films “with entertaining content” for the period of the war.
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The parallels with the reform of radio were clearly more control and more entertainment. On the day the edict appeared Goebbels made a speech to “film creators” in which he explained his new line: In general more films were to be produced, fewer grandiose and expensive “national-political” films, instead more “good, solid entertainment films.” The proportions of the two categories were to be around 20 to 80.
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The change produced, as Goebbels noted, “some astonishment” among his audience, indeed a certain discontent, for he was prompted to make the harsh comment: “If there’s anyone here who doesn’t want to cooperate of their own free will, he will simply have to be forced to do so.”

During 1942 Goebbels considered a whole series of films that fulfilled the criteria “cheap, entertaining, witty”—his comment on the film
Meine Frau Theresa
(My Wife Theresa)
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—as the successful resuit
of his changes.
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Summing up the reforms he had introduced at the beginning of March, he noted, “During this period of extreme tension film and radio must enable the people to relax. […] We must keep them in a good mood.”
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In February Hitler had told Goebbels in connection with the impending destruction of Bolshevism that he was determined “ruthlessly to sort out the Jews in Europe”: “The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that they are now experiencing. Along with the destruction of our enemies they will now experience their own destruction.” The gradual improvement in the military situation in the spring, in particular on the Eastern Front, offered the prospect of the realization of this aim in the very near future.

On March 1 Goebbels discussed the impending further “evacuation” of the Berlin Jews at his ministerial briefing. He gave Hinkel the task of getting in touch with the agencies responsible and in fact, at the end of March, the deportations from Berlin, which had been interrupted because of the winter weather, started again. At the same time, Goebbels had lengthy discussions with his staff about how those Jews who were capable of work could be given special permits to allow them to use Berlin streetcars. They must be prevented at all costs from “standing around in the streetcars looking for sympathy.”
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Goebbels’s particular interest in such details demonstrates how much he was concerned to make sure that the Jews still living in Germany should disappear from the Third Reich’s public sphere as much as possible.

On March 6 Goebbels read a “detailed memorandum prepared by the SD and the police about the final solution of the Jewish question.” This was clearly one of the thirty copies of the minutes of the meeting that was held on January 20 at the guest house of the SS on the Grosser Wannsee; Goebbels’s state secretary, Leopold Gutterer, had been invited to the meeting but had been prevented from going. Goebbels noted a few points that seemed to him vital: “The Jewish question must be solved in a Europe-wide context. There are still more than 11 million Jews. Later on they must first be concentrated
in the east, and then after the war they might be able to be sent to an island, possibly Madagascar. In any case, there won’t be any peace in Europe until the Jews have been excluded from European territory.” But what was to happen “with the half-Jews […] with those related to Jews, related to Jews by marriage, or married to Jews?” “In settling this problem” there would “undoubtedly be quite a lot of personal tragedies,” but this was “inevitable.” And, as if to counteract any remaining qualms raised by the consequences of the “final solution,” he continued, “Later generations won’t have the drive and the instinct for this, so it’s good that we are being radical and decisive.”
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In fact the systematic murder being carried out in occupied Poland had already begun by this point in time. At the beginning of December a base for gas vans had been established at Chelmno, in the annexed territory of the Warthegau, which was used to murder the Jews of the surrounding region. In the autumn the district SS and police leader, Odilo Globocnik, had begun to construct an extermination camp with gas chambers in Belłec, in the Lublin district of the General Government; from March 17 onward Jews from the district were being murdered there.
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Goebbels was made aware of this action, which was carried out in strict secrecy, just a few days after it had begun. On March 27 there is a detailed entry in his diary referring to it: “The Jews are now being deported to the east from the General Government, beginning with Lublin. A fairly barbaric procedure, not to be described in any detail, is being used here, and not much is left of the Jews themselves. In general it can probably be established that 60 percent of them will have to be liquidated, while only 40 percent can be put to work.” The entry continues with a justification of the program of murder; it is clear that Goebbels was indulging in these thoughts in order to overcome certain qualms: “A judgment is being carried out on the Jews that is barbaric but thoroughly deserved. The prophecy that the Führer gave them along the way for bringing about a new world war is beginning to come true in the most terrible fashion. There must be no sentimentality about these matters. If we didn’t ward them off, the Jews would annihilate us. […] No other government and no other regime could produce the strength to solve this question generally. Here too the Führer is the unswerving champion and advocate of a radical solution that the situation requires and therefore appears unavoidable.” The ghettos in the General Government that “became
free” were “filled with Jews deported from the Reich”; in this way “after a certain length of time the process will start all over again.”
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On April 26 Goebbels had the opportunity to discuss “the Jewish question in detail” with Hitler. He noted that Hitler remained “pitiless”: “He wants to force the Jews to get out of Europe completely. And that’s right. The Jews have caused so much suffering in our part of the world that the toughest punishment we can impose is still too mild for them.”
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In May 1942 a left-wing resistance group in Berlin carried out an arson attack on the propaganda exhibition “The Soviet Paradise,” which the Propaganda Ministry had organized in the Berlin Lustgarten. The police investigation into the act, which caused little damage, was completed relatively quickly. Goebbels, however, was very shocked that almost all the members of the group led by Herbert Baum were Jews or Jewish “mongrels”
(Mischlinge)
. He urged Hitler “to arrest around 500 Jewish hostages and respond to any future attacks by shooting them.” In fact on May 27 the Berlin Gestapo arrested a large number of Berlin Jews: 154 were taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and shot, together with 96 Jews who had been there for some considerable time. Moreover, a further 250 Jews were taken to Sachsenhausen and held there. The leaders of the Jewish community in Berlin were informed that these were hostages who would be shot in the event of any “further acts of sabotage.”
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Goebbels used the opportunity to press Hitler for a more rapid deportation of the Berlin Jews, as the approximately forty thousand who remained were “in reality hardened criminals who had been released” and who had “nothing more to lose”; instead of deporting them, it would be even better to “liquidate” them. When Albert Speer objected to the “evacuation” of the Jews employed in the Berlin armaments industry, Goebbels found it “funny” that “we now think we can’t do without the Jews as skilled workers, when not so long ago we were claiming that the Jews weren’t working at all and didn’t know how to work.” He does not seem to have been bothered by the fact that his comment reveals the absurdity of the regime’s anti-Semitic policies.
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