Goebbels: A Biography (9 page)

Credit 3.1

From 1924 onward, Goebbels tried to project himself as a representative of a left-wing tendency in the NSDAP. But Hitler succeeded in splitting up the group around Gregor Strasser by means of internal Party promotions. Goebbels—shown here in hat and coat at the end of 1926, at a rally held by Gregor Strasser in Essen—was soon in conflict with his old mentor.

On October 22, 1924, the Belgian occupation authorities carried out a search of the Goebbels house in Rheydt. The next day Joseph Goebbels was interrogated by the criminal police. In the afternoon he set out to leave the occupied zone and decided to stay in Elberfeld for the time being.
¹

At the beginning of November he traveled for the first time to Berlin to hear a talk. This was at a time when discussions lasting several days were taking place in the capital among members of the Freedom Movement, who were at loggerheads: Goebbels was involved, albeit
only on the margins. Rather self-importantly, he noted: “Long negotiations with Ludendorff over the occupied territory. He agrees with me on all points. Everyone liked my speech.”

The trip to Berlin brought him once more into close contact with other important representatives of the political right: Karl Neuhaus, Reichstag deputy of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People’s Party, DNVP),
²
Ernst Graf zu Reventlow, and Albrecht von Graefe, as well as members of the
völkisch
camp such as Reinhold Wulle, deputy of the Nationalsozialistische Freiheitsbewegung (National Socialist Freedom Movement, NSFB), and Wilhelm Kube. Goebbels quickly developed distinct preferences: “Wiegershaus gets on my nerves in the long run. Uneducated. Formless. Plebeian! Ludendorff is the man for me, though.” Otherwise, “my impression of Berlin was in part very dismal. Chasing votes. It damages the idea.”
³
Conflict was building up between himself and Wiegershaus, publisher of the
Völkische Freiheit
. There were an increasing number of unfavorable comments about his employer in the diary. He was “a fat, well-favored little man, no revolutionary, feeds off my ideas”—in short, “an incompetent dolt.”
⁴

The speaking engagements that he eagerly continued in the Rhine-Ruhr area
⁵
now more frequently took Goebbels outside this sphere of operations. In November he undertook a week’s propaganda tour through Pomerania, and at the end of the month and in early December he made several appearances in Hesse.
⁶
In Elberfeld he struck up a close acquaintance with Karl Kaufmann, a former member of the Free Corps militia and a National Socialist activist. They soon became friends: “Perhaps he can replace Richard.”
⁷
He also got to know Axel Ripke, an “educated person” whom he learned to value.
⁸
Another name that appears increasingly often in the diary is that of the dentist and active Party supporter Hellmuth Elbrechter.
⁹

However, in the Reichstag elections of December 1924 the Freedom Movement did poorly, receiving only 3 percent of the vote. Goebbels called the results “disastrous.”
¹⁰
He published an article in the
Völkische Freiheit
openly admitting this defeat. “Rally!” was the slogan by which he hoped to overcome the disappointment of the result. In the article he distanced himself markedly from the
völkisch
faction, whom he held responsible for the defeat, and—falling completely into the pose of the “born revolutionary”—declared himself unambiguously in favor of “socialism.”
¹¹
Acting in accordance with
this appeal, the opposition within the Party, which included Goebbels, Kaufmann, and Ripke, set about unseating Wiegershaus. But the plot failed.
¹²

“I lack a great love in my life,” wrote Goebbels in December. “That’s why all my love goes to the great cause.”
¹³
At the end of 1924 he got to know Elisabeth Gensicke: “A bit old, but nice and affectionate. Reminds me very much of Anka.”
¹⁴
A little affair developed: “Why don’t I feel any inner conflict when I leave Elisabeth to go to Else,” he asked himself when he set off for Rheydt just before Christmas. But he quickly dispelled such pangs of conscience: “My heart is big enough to hold two women at once.”
¹⁵
So he spent Christmas and New Year’s with Else, and in between a long evening in Elberfeld with Elisabeth.
¹⁶
“Tomorrow I’m seeing little Else! Elisabeth on Friday!” he exulted. “Both are looking forward to seeing me, and I’m equally eager to see them! Am I a cheat?”
¹⁷

On December 20, 1924, Hitler was released early from his Landsberg prison. Goebbels, who in a special edition of
Völkische Freiheit
devoted to Hitler and the anniversary of the November 9 putsch had vehemently demanded Hitler’s release and declared himself a “hero-worshipper,”
¹⁸
responded enthusiastically: “Adolf Hitler is free! Now we can break away from the reactionary
völkisch
people and be true National Socialists again. Heil, Adolf Hitler!”
¹⁹
In the
Völkische Freiheit
he praised him to the skies:

There is a dull longing in us that we cannot name and cannot describe. […] In strange silence millions of the unredeemed, misled, betrayed, despairing, subjugated, the army of slaves is waiting for a word, a sound. There, rolling in the distance, dull, accusing, clearer—a drumbeat! The outcry of the masses! They call to you from the depths! Drummer, drum for German freedom! The call for salvation! Uncomprehended by all those still stuck in the old forms; meeting the deepest longings of all those who overcame the old model of mankind, who have learned to believe; who are prepared to take the path of sacrifice as if it
were a triumphal procession, the apostles, those who cry in the wilderness, who have been set free by the ultimate vision.
²⁰

The “call for salvation,” meant for Hitler’s ears, ended a painful quest stretching over many years. Goebbels had reached the culmination of a biographical development that, given the lack of balance in his personality, was in a certain sense the logical outcome. Having struggled with his Catholicism and so desperately sought “redemption,” Goebbels himself had initially slipped into the role of “redeemer”: first as a writer, then as proponent of a cultural new departure. Then, in symbiosis with his friend Flisges, he had found in the role of Michael, in “redemption” through hard work in the mines, in close connection with working people, a model—immortalized by Flisges’s death—for salvation at the national level. He had then transposed his search for a savior onto the
völkisch
movement, undersupplied as it was with leader figures, and once again—flirting with the great exemplars Schiller, Wagner, and others—had fantasized his way into this role. But he had finally reached the conclusion that it was for someone else to be the savior-leader and that his destiny was to be the latter’s first disciple.

This transfer of the role of savior to another person, somebody greater, and the desire for the most perfect possible symbiotic fusion with this idol played to Goebbels’s narcissistic disorder. He himself could feel great only if he had constant confirmation from an idol he had chosen. Hitler was to be this idol: Celebrated on the extreme right as a martyr since the days of his Landsberg incarceration, he was busy exploiting this role and, as the admired Führer, elbowing aside his remaining rivals in radical right-wing circles. It is not a matter of wild speculation to maintain that in Goebbels’s imagination Hitler played the part of the solicitous, protective, and affirming mother. Goebbels himself quite openly confessed as much in his official speech on Hitler’s forty-sixth birthday, in 1935: “But the whole nation loves him because it feels as safe in his hands as a child does in the arms of its mother.”
²¹

With Hitler’s release from imprisonment, the time had come for Goebbels not just to idolize the leader but to
declare
himself openly for him. For Hitler’s release ensured that the conflicts, so far laboriously swept under the carpet, between the
völkisch
and National
Socialist factions in the Freedom Movement once more broke out into the open. In the Rhineland, similarly, the question was whether to opt for Graefe or for Hitler. For Goebbels, then, his support of Hitler was simultaneously part of a heroic struggle concerning the future of National Socialism in general. In any case, he felt he could smell “fresh morning air”
²²
and was convinced that “Hitler would know what was right. We’ll help him with his launch.”

Goebbels’s contribution to this process of clarification was an open letter in the
Völkische Freiheit
addressed to Ernst Graf zu Reventlow, one of the leading figures of the National Socialist Freedom Movement. Goebbels attacked Reventlow for his remark that the NSDAP was not “socialist” but “social,” asserting on the contrary, “The social is a stopgap. Socialism is the ideology of the future.” In taking up the argument with Reventlow, born in 1869 and one of the figureheads of the
völkisch
movement, Goebbels was above all trying to make himself the spokesman for the “destiny-laden youth of the German future” and conjuring up the “spirit of the west,” the modern industrial regions of the Rhine and the Ruhr.
²³
His anger was also directed at Reinhold Wulle, who had been “insolent” toward National Socialism and declared that he simply could not understand “the younger generation.”
²⁴

The leading lights of the
völkisch
movement—Reventlow, Graefe, Wulle—were in fact politicians who had already been active during the
Kaiserreich
but had never progressed beyond political sectarianism. In contrast to these figures—Goebbels explicitly made an exception of Ludendorff, who understood “young people”
²⁵
—Goebbels tried to accentuate the youthfulness of the Nazi movement; by this reckoning, only men like Hitler who had previously been young soldiers at the front or members of the generation that had grown up during the war were in a position to fulfill his emotive demand for a “new man.” It is within this context of his self-projection as the epitome of youth that his advocacy of “socialist” as against mere “social” policies must be viewed.

In Elberfeld, open revolt against Wiegershaus now erupted: “We’ve got to checkmate the old, sclerotic big shots.”
²⁶
As a result of the turbulence, the
Völkische Freiheit
ceased publication in January, and Goebbels was dismissed.

The affair with Elisabeth, meanwhile, was cramping his relationship with Else. In early February he and Else had “pretty well finished
with each other,”
²⁷
but once again he had doubts at the last moment: “Now that I’ve got to leave Else, I feel I don’t love Elisabeth.”
²⁸
And in the end there was always the memory of his great love: “Anka, Else, Elisabeth! How can I reconcile you three women in my mind? Anka wronged me. The other two must suffer for that.”
²⁹
The problem was solved for him when Elisabeth left Elberfeld at the beginning of March. Since two of the women were now inaccessible, he revived his relationship with the faithful Else.
³⁰

Finally, on February 12, 1925, the heads of the Freedom movement, the “Reich leadership,” stood down, and soon afterward Hitler, confidently expecting the lifting of the ban on the Party, announced the re-founding of the Nazi Party (NSDAP).
³¹
The
völkisch
group, for their part, formed the Deutschvölkische Freiheitsbewegung
(German-Völkisch
Freedom Movement). Goebbels was already decided, but now he was exercised above all by the question whether “Hitler really would now make pure national socialism his program.”
³²

On February 16 the bans on the NSDAP and the
Völkischer Beobachter
were lifted, after Hitler agreed with the Bavarian prime minister, Heinrich Held, that he would make no more putsch attempts.
³³
A few days later Gregor Strasser, one of the leading National Socialist politicians, appeared at a rally in Hamm, where the representatives of the old NSDAP together with the National Socialist Freedom Movement from the whole of North Germany “swore their renewed undying allegiance and loyalty” to Hitler.
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A little later Goebbels learned that he had been “appointed manager of NSDAP affairs for the entire west,” with a regular salary. His Gauleiter was to be Axel Ripke,
³⁵
a “great fellow” whom he esteemed highly.
³⁶
A few days later Hitler’s long-awaited exhortation to re-found the Party arrived in Elberfeld: “Brilliant in style and content. What a man! We have new courage.”
³⁷

As business manager, Goebbels first of all set about creating designs for Nazi posters, some of which he recommended for wider distribution by local Party groups throughout the Reich. His designs depended entirely on the impact of the written word: Containing about twenty-five lines of print, they addressed passersby who could spare only a minute for a quick read. The coloring was uneven, and the swastika was only lightly indicated. The main message concerned anti-Semitism.
³⁸

In addition, Goebbels distributed information letters for the local
region (
Gau
)
³⁹
as well as his first piece of propaganda writing (
Das kleine ABC des Nationalsozialisten
, A Small ABC for the National Socialist).
⁴⁰
He continued enthusiastically with his speaking engagements: By his own account of October 1924, he had spoken on 189 occasions in the previous year.
⁴¹
Furthermore, he developed a plan for a “National Socialist Freedom League,” which would be, so to speak, the “intellectual spearhead of our movement in the west.” In line with his suggestion, active Party members were drafted into a separate organization and induced to be particularly generous in their donations.
⁴²

Hitler’s decision to back Ludendorff as a candidate in the upcoming election for president of the Reich on March 29, 1925, was at first received with skepticism by Goebbels, but after a few days he came around completely.
⁴³
However, the vote on March 29, 1925, turned out to be a fiasco for Ludendorff: The
Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei
supported the candidate of the right, the DVP politician Karl Jarres, and Ludendorff took only 1.1 percent of the vote. The result was considerably worse than that achieved by the united
völkisch
right in the Reichstag election of December 1924. As a leading figure of the extreme right, Ludendorff was totally eliminated—which was no doubt Hitler’s plan all along in supporting his candidacy. In the second vote, necessary because none of the candidates had achieved a majority, Jarres was withdrawn as the candidate of the extreme right wing, to be replaced by Paul von Hindenburg, the former field marshal under the Kaiser.

It was not long before there were disagreements between business manager Goebbels and the Gauleiter he had hitherto valued so highly.
⁴⁴
Goebbels adopted the view that Ripke’s “witty remarks” were doing little to advance the cause. Ripke was simply “not an activist”
⁴⁵
but a “bourgeois in disguise” and not “socialist” enough.
⁴⁶
Kaufmann supported Goebbels in this dispute. As Goebbels had hoped, Kaufmann was increasingly turning out to be a replacement for his lost friend Flisges.
⁴⁷
Goebbels sought to bring things to a head by indicting the Gauleiter: In the
völkisch
paper
Deutsche Wochenschau
(Weekly Review) he published a “reckoning with the German bourgeoisie,” whom he accused of allowing themselves to be reduced to “slave masters and promoters of the stock market dictatorship.”
⁴⁸
The whole thing was set out as an “open letter” addressed to a “Director General.” The “open letter” became one of Goebbels’s favorite journalistic
ploys in the mid-1920s, allowing him to instigate particularly effective polemical allusions and a good many slurs of varying severity on his political opponents, all under cover of a personal, often quite civil manner.

Meanwhile, the presidential election campaign was coming to an end. Goebbels appeared at several events, supporting Hindenburg’s candidacy. When Hindenburg won on April 26, however, Goebbels saw his success as no more than a “stage on the way to the ultimate goal.”
⁴⁹
All the same, he acquired a copy of Hindenburg’s 1920 autobiography,
Aus meinem Leben
(From My Life), and arrived at a relatively mild verdict on it: “a great, unassuming man.”
⁵⁰

After a temporary lull, the dispute with Ripke broke out again at the end of May.
⁵¹
Goebbels anticipated clarification from the party leader on the future direction of the NSDAP: “Will he be a nationalist or a socialist? Who is right, Ripke or I? That is what I have pinned my hopes on. Hitler as the leader of German socialists! The world belongs to us!”
⁵²
But Hitler’s public pronouncements on this issue were couched in such general terms that they could not be interpreted as support for either side.
⁵³

A series of articles by Goebbels appeared in the
Völkischer Beobachter
in the following weeks. On May 24 the paper published part of his attack on Reventlow from January,
⁵⁴
and in June the first of his essays, “Idea and Sacrifice,” a declaration of war on the “bourgeois,” whom he hated, as he openly conceded, not least because they displayed what “we have not yet conquered in ourselves, a touch of small-mindedness placed by Mother Nature in every German cradle.”
⁵⁵
He harped on the same subject later that month with his contribution “Sclerotic Intelligentsia,”
⁵⁶
and again in July with “National Community and Class War.”
⁵⁷
This latter article took the form of an open letter to Albrecht von Graefe, leader of the Deutschvölkische Freiheitsbewegung, in which Goebbels described the class war as the repression of the great mass of the people by a very small exploiting class. They and their bourgeois accomplices, their “shameless henchmen” (Graefe and company, in other words), were preventing the formation of a true “national community.” He also produced two further open letters in the
Völkischer Beobachter
, to Hanns Hustert, the would-be assassin of the Reich’s foreign minister, Gustav Stresemann, who was serving a sentence in military detention—although Goebbels did not mention Hustert by name.
⁵⁸