Goebbels: A Biography (51 page)

By the time State Secretary Funk officially took up his new position early in February 1938, the political scene had changed completely.
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At the beginning of the year the regime suffered one of its most serious internal crises since 1934, from which, however, Hitler was to escape with a sensational personnel-management coup.

In January 1938, Reich War Minister Blomberg had married a much younger woman. “Everyone’s taken aback,” was Goebbels’s comment on the matter: He had arranged “as requested” that the newspapers should play down the wedding (at which Hitler and Göring had been witnesses).
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Just two weeks later, it emerged that Blomberg’s wife had multiple convictions for “immoral conduct” and had been registered with the Berlin police since 1937 as a prostitute.
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The matter was treated by the Nazi leadership as an affair of state: “The regime’s worst crisis since the Röhm affair,” wrote Goebbels, and—referring to Blomberg—he added: “There’s no way out of this. Nothing for it but a revolver.”
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What is more, at the end of January Göring, who fancied himself as Blomberg’s successor and was the first to inform Hitler about the scandal, presented incriminating material against the head of the army, Werner von Fritsch—his most powerful rival for the succession to Blomberg. Gestapo documents shown by Göring to Hitler led to an accusation of homosexuality against Fritsch.

Goebbels was highly alarmed, even slightly confused, despite Fritsch’s emphatic denials: “He swears on his honor that it’s not true. But who can believe it now? Did Blomberg know? About his own wife? And how can he let the Führer down like this? The honor of an officer? Where is it now? All unresolved questions.”
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Hitler summoned Fritsch to the Reich Chancellery and confronted him with the sole witness for the prosecution, a young man with convictions
for blackmailing his sexual partners. The witness claimed to identify Fritsch as a former client, which Fritsch strenuously denied. Further investigations were left to the Gestapo.
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Goebbels’s notes from that time contradict any tendency to assume that Hitler immediately welcomed the Blomberg-Fritsch affair as a great opportunity to reshape the top echelons of the army in view of the coming war. On the contrary, Hitler was “very serious and almost sad” about the affair.
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Goebbels, too, was depressed about the chaotic situation.
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On January 31 Hitler called Goebbels in for a private discussion: “He’s a bit more composed, but still very pale, gray-faced and shattered. […] Blomberg marries a hooker and sticks with her and doesn’t give a damn about the state. The Führer thinks he knew all about this beforehand.”
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Fritsch, said Hitler, had “almost been unmasked as a 175er [a homosexual].” Hitler now wanted “to take over the armed forces himself.”
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“In order to cover the whole business with a smokescreen,” Hitler continued, there should be a wholesale reorganization. “I’m hoping we’ll get off fairly lightly,” commented Goebbels. Over the following days he was obliged to look on while the crisis deepened and Hitler could not bring himself to make a decision. There was more and more speculation in the foreign press; rumors were spreading throughout the Reich.
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By February 4 Hitler had a plan: “Blomberg and Fritsch retired on ‘health’ grounds. Führer takes over command of the forces personally. Immediately beneath him Wilhelm Keitel as Supreme Commander of the armed forces with ministerial rank. Göring appointed field marshal. [Walter] Brauchitsch succeeds Fritsch.” Hitler’s foreign affairs adviser, Ribbentrop, replaced Neurath as foreign minister; Neurath was fobbed off with the presidency of a newly formed “Cabinet Privy Council,” an international policy committee to which Goebbels was also supposed to belong but which never actually met.
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Ribbentrop was appointed against Goebbels’s advice; he had openly told Hitler on January 31 that he thought he was a “flop.”
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In addition, there were far-reaching changes of personnel in the officer corps, the Foreign Office, and the Economics Ministry.
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In a single stroke, Hitler had succeeded in overcoming a grave internal crisis and turning the situation to his advantage by strengthening his own position. All the key positions that mattered for his transition to an aggressive foreign policy were now in the hands of reliable Party supporters.
The preconditions for implementing the proposed expansionist policy were all in place.

Hitler called the cabinet together on February 5 to make a statement on the affair. Goebbels’s report brings out the drama of the occasion: “As he speaks he sometimes chokes back tears. That he was too ashamed to step out onto the balcony on January 30.” Hitler said they would all have to stand by a communiqué to be compiled by Goebbels after the meeting.
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Incidentally, this was the last cabinet meeting in the history of the Third Reich.

Goebbels was told by Helldorf, who had already complained to him a week earlier about the Gestapo’s “snooping methods,” that the treatment of Fritsch had “not been very decent.”
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Fritsch’s case was tried in March before a court martial chaired by Göring. The prosecution witness was forced to admit that he had mixed the general up with somebody else and Fritsch was acquitted.
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“Very bad, especially for Himmler,” commented Goebbels. “He’s too hasty and too prejudiced. The Führer is quite angry.”
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Nazi Germany had been systematically increasing its political and economic pressure on Austria since the end of 1937. In German leadership circles, there was open talk of the imminent “annexation” of the country.
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A further press agreement negotiated by Ambassador von Papen in the summer of 1937 (once again Goebbels had been taken completely by surprise on his very own territory) had somewhat eased the way for Nazi propaganda in the country.
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It is a fair reflection of the deliberations going on at this time around Hitler that Goebbels records in December 1937 a lunchtime conversation in which von Papen mentioned a plan he had devised to bring down Schuschnigg.
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The big reshuffle of personnel in February was about to have a direct impact on the regime’s foreign policy.

On February 12, 1938, Federal Chancellor Schuschnigg was invited by Hitler to the Berghof. The dictator put immense pressure on him, threatening him with German troops marching into Austria, thus extorting from him his signature to an agreement stipulating freedom of operation for the Austrian NSDAP and the appointment
of the National Socialist Arthur Seyss-Inquart as minister of the interior.
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As so often with foreign affairs initiatives taken by Hitler, it was only after the event that Goebbels was informed about these developments. Not until February 15 did Hitler, now back in Berlin, tell him about his discussion with Schuschnigg.
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And according to Hitler, the discussion in Berchtesgaden constituted a threat of war.
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“The world press is outraged,” noted Goebbels, “talking about rape. And they’re not wrong. But no one’s lifting a finger to do anything about it.”
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Goebbels’s main preoccupation in these days was with shifting the German press, enjoined to exercise restraint over the Austrian question since the end of 1937, onto the footing of a “press feud with Austria.”
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On February 20 Hitler gave a three-hour speech to the Reichstag about the latest events. With reference to Austria and Czechoslovakia he declared, “Among the interests of the German Reich is the protection of those national comrades who […] are not in a position along our borders to ensure their right to human, political, and ideological freedom!”
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Schuschnigg replied in a speech to the Austrian Federal Parliament on February 24, where he stressed the sovereignty of his country:
“Bis in den Tod Rot-Weiss-Rot”
(red, white, red until we’re dead). He prohibited out of hand Nazi demonstrations intended as a prelude to annexation. Hitler was “furious” about Schuschnigg’s speech.
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When there was a “popular uprising” in Graz stage-managed by the Nazis and the government in Vienna sent in troops, Goebbels (who, like many, had hoped that Schuschnigg would gradually surrender power to the Austrian Nazis) dubbed the Austrian chancellor “schwarzes Schweinchen.”
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But the German press were ordered to go on observing a degree of restraint toward Schuschnigg personally.
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A new situation arose when the Austrian cabinet, prompted by Schuschnigg, decided during the night of March 8 to 9 to hold a referendum on the issue of sovereignty. Seyss-Inquart was not present when this decision was made.
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On the evening of March 9 Hitler called Goebbels in to discuss this “extremely low, sly trick” of Schuschnigg’s:
“We consider: either [Nazi] abstention from voting, or send 1,000 planes over Austria to drop leaflets, then actively intervene.” Goebbels went off to his ministry to assemble a team to work on the propaganda angles of the coup. Later that evening Hitler summoned him again, and they deliberated until early morning: “Italy and England won’t do anything. Maybe France, but probably not. Risk not as great as with the occupation of the Rhineland.”
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The next day he again discussed the situation with Hitler, who had still not ruled out Nazi participation in Schuschnigg’s referendum. The alternative was to demand a change in the terms of the plebiscite and march in if the Austrian government refused to comply. Toward midnight Goebbels was summoned once more by Hitler, who told him of his decision: The invasion would take place the day after next. Goebbels promptly busied himself making sure that from the following day onward the whole of the German press was focused on annexation.
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The next day Hitler and Goebbels worked together composing leaflets: “Terrific, inflammatory language.” But in the course of the day the text had to be altered several times to keep up with the changing situation. Under enormous pressure from German threats and ultimatums, that afternoon Schuschnigg stood down, and later the Austrian president, Wilhelm Miklas, named Seyss-Inquart as the chancellor’s successor. Although all German demands had now been met, Hitler refused to be deprived of his invasion. An Austrian “plea for help” was quickly put together: “We dictate a telegram to Seyss-Inquart
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asking the German government for help. It arrives quickly. This gives us legitimation.”
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The next day, March 12, Goebbels reveled in reports of the “revolution for Austria.” During the late morning he read out a “proclamation” from Hitler, broadcast on all stations, justifying the invasion. Three days of flag-flying were decreed for the whole Reich territory.
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The international reaction remained low-key, as Goebbels noted with some relief. Only the British government issued a sharp protest, but Goebbels thought “Chamberlain has to do that for the sake of the opposition.”

On March 14 reports arrived in rapid succession from Austria: The Seyss-Inquart government decreed “reunification” with the Reich, Federal President Miklas resigned, and the Austrian armed forces had to swear allegiance to Hitler personally. He arrived in Vienna
that evening. Goebbels had a Reich propaganda bureau set up in Vienna
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and sent Otto Dietrich to the Austrian capital armed with instructions about “the reform of the Austrian press.”
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On March 15 Hitler gave a speech in the Heldenplatz [Heroes’ Square] in which he celebrated before a crowd of 250,000 people “the greatest report of an aim accomplished” in his life: the “entry of my homeland into the German Reich.”
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In Berlin Goebbels prepared a “triumphal reception” for Hitler that was to put “all earlier events of the kind in the shade.” (The complication was that all “stocks of flags and bunting” had been lent to Austria in aid of the celebrations there.)
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In the
Völkischer Beobachter
he urged the population forcefully:

Nobody must be absent from the streets when the Führer arrives
.

Berliners! Shut the factories
,
shut the shops
.

Be in place on time
.

March along the streets as commanded by Party and German Labor Front

officials […]
.

All homes
,
buildings
,
shops to be decorated with flags and garlands.
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On the morning of March 16, he “set the
Volk-
machine in motion,” as he put it. After a telephone conversation with Hitler, he noted: “Exhilarating feeling of commanding the masses.” Hitler’s plane landed punctually at 5
P.M
. at Tempelhof, where he was greeted by Göring and Goebbels, who were allowed to accompany him on his “triumphal drive” through the city.
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On March 18, the Reichstag having been convened on short notice, Hitler announced the dissolution of Parliament and new elections.
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Goebbels commented that, with this ballot, “we’ll throw off the last bits of democratic-parliamentary eggshell.” It was definitely to be the last visit to the polls in the Third Reich, after which—as Hitler put it to his circle—there would be “unity, no more troublemaking, and no religious conflicts.”
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Goebbels’s diaries document the intensity of the regime’s preoccupation in the next few days with incorporating Austria. At the usual lunchtime session in the Reich Chancellery, there was already debate
about autobahn routing when the road system was extended to Austria: “Linz is going to be completely rebuilt.” The reconstruction of Berlin was to be speeded up considerably, “because otherwise it will fall way behind Vienna.”
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Goebbels was invited to the Reich Chancellery the next evening to meet Austrian guests and discuss the Salzburg Festival, “which we’re going to make a good deal of.”
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At Hitler’s lunch table the next day the topic was the future of Vienna: “We’ve got to push the Jews and the Czechs out of Vienna quickly and make it a purely German city. That will also help to solve the housing problem.”
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Goebbels visited Vienna at the end of March. He entered the city in a “triumphal drive”—his preferred mode of transportation—and stopped at the Imperial Hotel, from whose balcony he received “a terrific ovation,” before moving on to the Town Hall to give a “short address” to “old campaigners.” Then he spoke in the great hall of the former North West Station, naturally “on top form.”

He held talks the next day in the Hofburg with Austrian artists, among others, and attended a performance at the Burgtheater in the evening: He found it good, even if not up to “Berlin standards.”
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At a reception in the Hofburg the next day, he took the actor Attila Hörbiger “seriously to task”: He really must do something about his wife, Paula Wessely, and all her “Jewish friendships.” In other discussions, he took soundings about the future directorships of the State Opera and the Burgtheater.

The election campaign concluded on April 9 with a big showpiece event, again in Vienna. At noon precisely, Goebbels proclaimed from the balcony of the Town Hall the commencement of the “Day of the Greater German Reich”: “At a given signal flags are hoisted throughout the Reich. 30,000 homing pigeons flutter aloft. Airforce squadrons appear. Sirens howl. Then the Führer steps on to the balcony.”
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On the same day Hitler had another discussion with the Viennese Cardinal Theodor Innitzer at which he intended to speak “quite openly.” Hitler’s interest in this conversation was far-reaching, as he confided to Goebbels: “We need a prince of the church if we want to break away from Rome. And we must do so. There must be no authority outside Germany able to give orders to Germans.” A few hours later, after the discussion, Hitler told him that Innitzer was “very depressed,” but he was resolute in his “commitment to German-ness”: “That’s something to latch on to. Start a secession
movement and undo the counter-reformation. Well, we’ll see!” Goebbels’s diary shows that, if only for a brief moment, the bizarre idea was raised of a wide-ranging restructuring of church policy: the project of a German Catholic Church without the Pope.

From the balcony of the hotel Goebbels introduced Hitler’s concluding speech of the election campaign with a commentary broadcast over German radio.
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Hitler expressed his conviction that “this too was the will of God, to send a boy from here to the Reich, let him grow up, and make him leader of the nation so that he could bring his homeland into the Reich.” This self-bestowed aura of the One sent from God stirred deep emotions in Goebbels: He felt as if at a “religious service,” while the ovation concluding the event was “almost like a prayer.”
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They both left for Berlin by train. At breakfast the “Jewish question” came up: “The Führer wants to force them all out of Germany. To Madagascar or somewhere. Quite right!”
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In Berlin, where the Goebbels children greeted Hitler’s arrival by handing him bouquets, they proceeded to the Reich Chancellery, where the early election results were coming in. Goebbels himself described them as “incredible, fantastic.” In fact, with a turnout of 99.6 percent, 99 percent of valid votes were in favor.
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Studying a memorandum about the vote a few days later, he found that even to his mind they had gone a little too far this time in rigging the results. Munich had “cheated a bit,” and Gauleiter Adolf Wagner had “done it very stupidly.”
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