B006OAL1QM EBOK (28 page)

Goebbels as political orator and showman.
Right, above,
inciting a crowd against the Jews, 2 April 1933.
Left, above,
the resulting pogrom against Jewish-owned shops.
Below,
the burning of the books, May 1933.

From the first Goebbels seems to have realised that the war would be long and arduous. Hans Fritzsche, who at the time the war started was Head of Goebbels' Press Division, recalled what the Minister had said to him:

What the bourgeois calls the temper or the mood of the people is not a decisive factor in war-time. Enthusiasm is only like a straw bonfire, which is of no use to us, and there's no point in stoking it. After all, how long does it last? Let's have no illusions about it: this will be a long and tough war. For this war a firm determination which manifests itself in the daily fulfilment of duties is more necessary than the noisy celebration of victories.
⁵

Certain American journalists, such as Shirer, stayed in war-time Germany to report events, and to give an occasional first-hand picture of Goebbels at work. On 22nd August, a few days only before the war was declared, Shirer was amazed to open Goebbels' paper
Der Angriff
and read:

The world stands before a towering fact: two peoples have placed themselves on the basis of a common foreign policy which during a long and traditional friendship has produced a foundation for a common understanding.
⁶

This, from the conqueror of Red Berlin, was astonishing. But Goebbels' purpose was to express what must be expressed, not what he might wish to express. He had not been let into the secret of the German-Soviet pact in advance, and so had no time to prepare himself. All he could do was follow the
volte-face
of the day.

Goebbels turned his mind to many events out of which advantage might be gained. On 3rd September the
Athenia,
a British liner filled mostly with women and children on their way to America, was sunk by torpedo; Goebbels announced the news in a form of his own devising. He claimed that Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, had personally ordered the destruction of the
Athenia
in order to be able to accuse the Germans of sinking her! On another occasion he adopted the method of surprise attack; he summoned the foreign journalists to a special press conference of apparent importance on 24th September only to stalk in “snorting like a bull” (says Shirer) and deny a story published by an American journalist, Hubert R. Knickerbocker, that the top Nazi leaders had deposited gold abroad in case they lost the war!

If these were examples of misjudgment, Goebbels also had his successes. When the French capitulated it was Goebbels' idea that the
wagon-lit
coach to which the Germans had been summoned by Foch in 1918 to sign the terms of armistice, should be hauled out of its special museum in Paris and brought back to the original spot in the Forest of Compiègne so that the formal admission of the defeat of France could be staged in exactly similar circumstances. It stood there, isolated in a clearing beneath the trees, pathetic as a discarded piece of rolling-stock, and into its cramped and faded saloon the representatives of the defeated nation edged their way to face the Führer, who sat in the same seat that Foch had occupied twenty-two years before. Hitler could scarcely hide the tremors of his triumphant sensations beneath the stem expression he assumed for the cameras.

Whatever the problems or opportunities which occurred as a result of the unforeseen events of the war, Goebbels' primary duty was to supervise the behaviour of the great interlocking propaganda machine he had built up during the past ten years and expanded to meet the needs of the war. This machine was designed to interlock as between the Party and the State and as between the propagandist and his public in every department of expression at every level throughout the nation.

The main instruments of power were on the one hand the Party Propaganda Department and on the other the Ministry and the Reich Chamber of Culture. At the head of each of these—as Director, Minister and President respectively—was one man, Goebbels himself.

The Propaganda Department was a section of the National Socialist Party and therefore was directly linked to the Party political movement as a whole. In addition to Goebbels' Propaganda Department the Party had a press division under the control of Otto Dietrich and a section dealing with the business management of the press headed by Max Amann, a rapacious drunkard who amassed untold wealth and whose official duties were carried out by his tireless and efficient deputy, Fritz Reinhardt.

The Propaganda Department employed full-time paid and part-time unpaid officials whose responsibility it was to see that every aspect of propaganda worked effectively in a hundred different ways from the public use of loud-speakers and leaflets to the collection of money for this or that official fund. These officials for example and their voluntary helpers were the Party's publicists and promoters, and the highest store of all was set by the development of orators and agitators in special training centres set up in every
Gau
or Party District, of which there were forty-three in Germany. There was even a Party Speaker's Certificate available to be won by ambitious agitators. According to their skill and effectiveness speakers were graded as Reich Speakers, that is, well-known national orators, Squad Speakers good for intensive drives, and District Speakers, confined to local work. Detailed instructions as to what they must say were constantly issued to them by the Party and the Ministry. By 1940,140 full-time officials were occupied solely in routing and scheduling speakers for the Party. Other sections of the Propaganda Department were concerned with the staging of demonstrations and rallies (with their attendant publicity), the promotion of political broadcasts and the organisation of their reception nationally and locally through the system of voluntary ‘wireless wardens’, the production of short propaganda films and their exhibition by means of some 1,500 mobile film vans, and the organisation of local ‘propaganda wardens' to provide liaison between the Party and every element in the community. The propaganda wardens were particularly important in youth work and they were, among other activities, responsible for conducting Hitler Youth religious ceremonies which were Nazi adaptations from Church services complete with Gospel readings from
Mein Kampf
and the Hitler Creed.
⁷

From Goebbels' point of view it was unfortunate that Hitler let the veteran Nazi Max Amann remain in charge of the whole business side of the Party's publications. As head of the centralised printing and publishing house of the Party, the Eher Verlag, the total publishing enterprise of the Party—books, journals, pamphlets, posters as well as a vast network of Party-owned newspapers—came under his control. Similarly, Otto Dietrich, another of Hitler's friends and early associates, had control of the policy of the Party newspapers throughout the country and of the regional ‘press wardens’, the voluntary political liaison officers between the local community and the press. No fresh ‘independent’ newspapers could originate without the consent of both Amann and Dietrich. Although their departments were separate from that of Goebbels within the Party, they were supposed to co-operate closely with him in his other capacity as Minister for Propaganda. However, Dietrich had autonomy in putting out press statements, and relations were frequently strained between him and Goebbels on this account.
⁸
From their chief offices in Berlin and Munich, Amann and Dietrich kept a highly organised supervision over every Nazi-controlled newspaper and every German journalist both at home and abroad. They also organised the selection and training of young Party members who aspired to become journalists. Every
Gau
had its Party press office to deal with the Party's press relations at the regional level and under these came some 840 local press offices responsible among other duties for the proper distribution and sale of the Party's many newspapers.

As Minister of Propaganda Goebbels had seen to it that there was no such division of power as remained between himself and Dietrich in the Party propaganda machine. That he was not wholly successful in bringing every aspect of propaganda under his direct supervision we have already observed; when Ribbentrop came to power at the German Foreign Office he succeeded in regaining control of German propaganda abroad and set up rival press conferences for the foreign journalists. Both Goebbels and Ribbentrop established their own press clubs, but Goebbels went one better and secured heavy labourers' rations for the correspondents in September 1939. Shirer claimed that Goebbels thought the way to a journalist's heart was through his stomach; the concession meant that they got double rations of meat, bread and butter.
⁹
The food cards were distributed fortnightly after the regular press conferences. Correspondents were also encouraged to import food parcels from Denmark. Ribbentrop and Goebbels vied with each other in impressing those foreign journalists whose expense-accounts were less generous than the payments made to their more fortunate colleagues, and the bribery even extended to other pleasures than those of food and drink.

Very broadly speaking, while the Party propaganda machine was an executive organisation to see that the Party's policy and directives were effectively carried out, the Propaganda Ministry had a creative function. It organised and co-ordinated the Government's public relations. But Goebbels knew only too well the dangers of overlapping and did his best to interlock the two machines so that they would feed rather than frustrate each other. It also gave him the chance he wanted to tie in the ‘independents’, Amann and Dietrich. Dietrich became one of Goebbels' Under-Secretaries of State with special responsibility for the Ministry's home and foreign press divisions; Amann was one of the Vice-Presidents under Goebbels of the Reich Chamber of Culture, with special responsibility for the Press Chamber.

The Ministry itself had been enlarged to fifteen divisions; to these must be added the seven Chambers of Culture which were in turn co-ordinated with the appropriate divisions in the Ministry. One of these divisions was concerned solely with this problem of co-ordination. As in an advertising agency, it was of the greatest importance to see that every campaign was a total effort, using all the resources of each division. This Division of Co-ordination was also a planning department, staffed by experts who were authorities on all possible aspects of life and activity in Germany and abroad. For example it organised special travelling exhibitions, such as the ironic ‘Soviet Paradise’ exhibition of 1941-42, and an anti-Jewish congress in 1940 for which carefully chosen documents and pictures were assembled to expose “the rapacity, the uncontrolled sexuality and the parasitic nature of the Jews”.
¹⁰

Apart from the personnel and administrative divisions which supervised the Ministry itself, there were divisions to deal with the main forms of expression (film, theatre, music, fine arts and literature), with the press, broadcasting, traffic and tourism and with the entertainment of the fighting forces. In addition another division was concerned with propaganda abroad, working as closely as disharmony permitted with Ribbentrop's Ministry, or with Bohle, the head of the special department controlling Germans abroad. There was, for example, often considerable difference of opinion between certain ambassadors in neutral countries and the press attaches on their staffs, who were nominated by Goebbels. But, as we have seen, every German permitted to go abroad was expected to do what was required of him in the way of propaganda for his country, or he would be unlikely to get an exit permit, especially in war-time. The German-controlled news agencies continued their work on an increased scale in those areas where they remained free to operate, such as Latin America, Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal.

At home Amann and the Nazi's financial adviser, Max Winckler, had acquired as many newspapers as they could for the Party's press organisation. Having made conditions impossible for the press through various decrees (such as that of April 1935 which in order to ensure “the independence of the newspaper publishing industry”
¹¹
forbade any transfer of ownership without express permission, or the subsidising of any newspapers by organisations like religious bodies), Winckler had been instructed to move in and offer a nominal price for any publication put in difficulty. Gradually the Party acquired the greater proportion of the newspapers of Germany at comparatively little cost, and sometimes at no cost at all except some tricked-up form of compensation payable at a later date. By 1941 the circulation of German newspapers (24,600,000) represented largely that of the Party-owned press, and included sales in the occupied countries.
¹²

Conferences were held daily at the Ministry to give guidance and control to the press representatives and written directives (handed only to certain accredited delegates from each paper) gave the editors their instructions. It was Mussolini who first used the term the “orchestration of the press”; in doing so he revealed precisely what Goebbels aimed at achieving through his press conferences. “Although the German news policy still serves informational purposes, its principal design is to instruct and direct public opinion,” wrote Goebbels in an internal memorandum sent to his district offices at the beginning of the war.
¹³