Goebbels: A Biography (76 page)

On November 22 Goebbels learned that, as a result of a Soviet pincer movement, the German troops in Stalingrad were surrounded.
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On November 24 Hitler gave the order to hold the pocket at all costs; supplies would arrive via the air.
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During the coming weeks Goebbels followed the fate of the 6th Army in Stalingrad, although to begin with his diaries give no inkling that he expected a military catastrophe.
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Shortly before Christmas, however, he came to the conclusion that the general situation in the east was “critical.”
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He considered the Christmas festivities, which encouraged reflection, to be psychologically problematic.
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During these days of Christmas sentimentality he attempted to give death at the front a kind of metaphysical significance. At the end of the year he published an article in
Das Reich
in which, as he put it in his diary, he “wanted to see the problem of our dead […] from a more profound perspective.” Thus, referring to those who had died young in the war: “At the moment when they gave up their lives, life itself surrounded them with a heroic rhythm. […] Our dead are standing on the other side of life with its light shining upon them. We are the seekers, they have found fulfillment. They have fulfilled their time early, time which still lies before us with a thousand riddles and tasks.”
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On December 28 Martin Bormann arrived in Lanke on Hitler’s behalf
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to discuss with Goebbels the planned celebration of the tenth anniversary of January 30, 1933. According to Bormann, the day should “not be used for talking about the future but rather for weighing up what has happened since then.” This was a proposal that went directly counter to Robert Ley’s plans. He had been trying to persuade Goebbels that the anniversary should be used to announce far-reaching social legislation.
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Moreover, Bormann had been told by Hitler “to discuss with me the question of total war in all its aspects.” This represented a “real triumph” for Goebbels, as it appeared that “all the ideas and wishes that I have kept putting forward for a year and a half are now suddenly going to be acted upon.”

Goebbels now energetically pursued his plans to introduce measures that would produce “total war.” His main objectives were the introduction of labor conscription for women, closing down companies
that were not essential for the war effort, and shutting down expensive restaurants and luxury shops.
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He had his ministry produce a “memorandum on the conduct of total war,” which he then sent to the head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans-Heinrich Lammers.
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After speaking to several individuals,
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preaching to those attending his ministerial briefings,
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and reassuring himself in daily entries in his diary that introducing measures for “total war” was the decisive key to victory,
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on January 8 Goebbels chaired a meeting attended by Lammers, Bormann, Keitel, Funk, Sauckel, and Speer.
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Here he demanded that “in a relatively short space of time we should place at the Führer’s disposal 500,000 people who have hitherto been excused military service”; in addition, there were another 200,000 people whom Hitler had ordered Speer to remove from the armaments industry. Sauckel made some objections on the grounds that the problem could be solved with the existing arrangements, but in the end they agreed on the text of a Führer edict that was submitted to Hitler.
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To reinforce his position Goebbels began a propaganda campaign, aiming to put pressure on colleagues who were still hesitating and to fill the propaganda vacuum that was threatening to develop in view of Hitler’s continuing silence in the face of the growing crisis. On January 17 he published an important article in
Das Reich
to which he gave the title “Total War.” His main thesis was: “The more radically and the more totally we fight the war, the quicker we shall come to a victorious conclusion.” “A certain small section of our people” did not seem to be concerned, so he duly attacked “do-nothings,” “idlers,” and “parasites.”
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The following week he kept up the pressure and made the point in another article with the title “The Appearance of War.” “Looked at from the outside, the way the war is being waged on the home front does not at first glance give one the impression that it is a matter of life or death.” So what was to be done? Naturally it was the right thing to do “to maintain our cultural life.” But shops in which there was nothing left to buy, bars, gourmet restaurants, and so on had to be shut.
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The Führer edict concerning the Comprehensive Deployment of Men and Women for Reich Defense Tasks finally signed by Hitler on January 13 envisaged, as Goebbels had wished, purging the labor market in order to free up as much labor as possible for deployment
in the armaments industry and the Wehrmacht. To achieve this, all dispensations from military service were to be reexamined, all those who were not yet at work were to be registered, and all businesses not engaged in essential war work were to be shut down.
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Hitler assigned the coordination of these measures to a “Committee of Three.” To begin with Goebbels assumed that he was going to be a member of this committee but then had to accept that Keitel would be its third member, in addition to Bormann and Lammers.
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However, the edict stated that the three should maintain “close contact” with him. Immediately after the decree had been signed, Goebbels was already noting negative reactions: “Certain circles are doing everything they can to exclude me from the inner group of advisers. […] I’m very worried that Lammers and Keitel in particular will try to water down radical decisions.”
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On January 2 a meeting of the “Committee of Four,” as Goebbels now called it, took place, to which some experts, as well as Sauckel and Funk, were also summoned. Goebbels used the opportunity to clarify his position vis-à-vis the committee: “I am seen and recognized as the driving force in the whole thing, and in any case all the proposals that I make for new decrees or alterations to old ones are accepted without demur.” At the end of the meeting, as far as labor conscription for women was concerned, he believed that he had gotten his way against “every bureaucratic obstacle and objection,” though this soon proved to be an illusion.
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The more the public mood was affected by the deteriorating military situation, the more urgent Goebbels believed it was to introduce radical measures to boost the war effort.
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Concern was focused on the situation on the Eastern Front and specifically the fate of the 6th Army. On January 16 the regime felt obliged to announce that it was surrounded in Stalingrad, but after that propaganda said remarkably little about the fate of those involved.
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Goebbels now hoped that a massive public campaign for “total war” launched in this situation would secure relief, provide a diversion and a kind of work therapy, and at the same time expand the regime’s room for maneuver. The mobilization for “total war” was intended to strengthen the authority of Party and state and increase their powers of control over the population. His model was the wool clothing collection of the previous year, but this time the campaign would be on an even larger scale.
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It was hoped that a population
that was totally involved in dealing with the harsh realities of the home front would demonstrate a firm “bearing,” rendering crises in the public “mood” of secondary significance.

“We must gradually come to terms,” Goebbels noted on January 21 in reference to Stalingrad, “with having to inform the German people about the situation there.” In reality this should have happened long before, but Hitler had always been against it. Goebbels, however, believed that by giving the people a frank account of the situation in Stalingrad, they could bind them even more closely to the regime. He wanted to use the Stalingrad defeat to push through his policy of total war.

Goebbels had the decisive conversation with Hitler on January 22, 1943, in his East Prussian headquarters, where a “somewhat depressed and extremely serious mood” prevailed.
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Before meeting Hitler Goebbels had reassured himself through various conversations that “my preparatory work on the question of the move to ‘total war’ has already struck deep roots.” Rudolf Schmundt, Hitler’s Wehrmacht adjutant, encouraged him in his intention “to be ruthless in getting everything off my chest with Hitler,” and Hitler’s adjutant, Albert Bormann, and his physician, Karl Brandt, encouraged him in this, as did the new army chief of the general staff, Kurt Zeitzler. Karl Wolff, Himmler’s liaison to Hitler, assured him of the Reichsführer’s full support.

Goebbels also used the opportunity of his visit to Führer headquarters to have a detailed discussion with Dietrich. “The press must adopt a completely different tone than hitherto […] now, instead of pursing our lips, we must start to whistle.” Dietrich took the point and immediately produced a slogan with which the press was inducted into its new tasks. The “great, moving, and heroic sacrifice that the German troops who are surrounded in Stalingrad are making for the German nation, together with the impending labor conscription for women and other drastic measures for the conduct of ‘total war’ will provide the moral incentive for a truly heroic bearing on the part of the whole of the German nation and the starting point for a new phase of a German will to victory and for mobilizing all our energies.”
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Finally, Goebbels met Hitler around midday for a tête-à-tête, having been allowed to accompany him on a walk during the morning and to listen to his worries about Stalingrad. Then, during their detailed
discussions, Hitler began by expressing his concern about the crisis in the east: Their allies had failed, and the Luftwaffe leadership had not fulfilled its promises. In the middle of the conversation, as if it had been orchestrated by Goebbels, there was a telephone call from Zeitzler reporting a major breakthrough by the Red Army into the German defenses in Stalingrad.

Goebbels exploited the situation to put his “plan for reorganizing the home front” to Hitler: the introduction of female labor conscription, the “closing of all institutions and companies not essential to the war effort,” and the “gearing of the whole of the organization of civilian life to the needs of the war.” And he was successful; indeed, he noted that Hitler “is going in some points even further than I suggested.” Hitler told Goebbels, however, that he did not want “me personally to join the Committee of Three so that I wouldn’t be burdened by the administrative work of this great program.” Instead, Goebbels should “take on the role of the continually running engine in this whole operation” and keep an eye on the work of the committee. However, in the case of one decisive point Hitler watered down his edict of January 13, a fact of which Goebbels took only marginal note: The maximum age for female labor conscription was reduced from fifty to forty-five.

After a lengthy interruption there was a final conversation, which lasted from ten o’clock at night until three-thirty in the morning. Goebbels had finally succeeded in achieving his aims: “There will be a sort of dictatorship of the four men concerned, of whom I am to be the psychological dictator and the engine driving the whole thing.” In the middle of the night Goebbels drove back to his quarters in Rastenburg: “I believe that the resolutions made on this decisive Friday may give the war a decisive change in direction.” On the following day, in order to make a record of it all, he prepared a ninety-page set of minutes of his conversations with Hitler.
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Soon, however, strong resistance to the “introduction of total war measures on the home front” began to make itself felt from various quarters, particularly in respect of both the closing down of businesses and the systematic implementation of female labor conscription.
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For example, Goebbels was surprised that Göring urgently requested that gourmet restaurants in Berlin such as Horchers and other exclusive restaurants and shops should be allowed to remain open.
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By intervening with Hitler Lammers too succeeded in ensuring
that women with children should be free from labor conscription, even if the care of their children was being provided for. Goebbels considered this “a serious breach” of the “uniform approach” that he was advocating. He began to regard Lammers as the center of opposition. He was considering “the whole thing from a bourgeois-
gemütlich
perspective.”
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The changes watering down the Führer edict of January 12, which were then contained in the decree on labor conscription issued on January 27,
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represented a clear signal to the bureaucracy that it was possible to resist Goebbels’s radicalism successfully.

On January 28 a further meeting of the Committee of Four took place, which in Goebbels’s view was “extraordinarily ill-tempered.” It concerned the planned closure of businesses. While he, Funk, and Speer demanded “radical decisions,” Lammers, who was supported by Bormann and Sauckel, tried to “torpedo” this line. What Goebbels did not mention in his diary was that in the meeting Lammers and Bormann referred to a decision by Hitler that the closing of businesses should not cause unnecessary unemployment. Despite this intervention, at the end of the meeting Goebbels believed that measures had been taken to make 300,000 people available for the armaments industry. In fact the actual results of the action were to be far more modest than expected.
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His diary entry, which provided a very shortened account of the debate, shows that he was simply unwilling to admit that, as with the case of female labor conscription, Hitler’s support for radical measures was only halfhearted. The Führer was not eager to take up a position on such matters; he certainly did not want to appear as the person behind unpopular measures.