Goebbels: A Biography (71 page)

After the end of the winter clothing collection Goebbels looked for new topics with which the “home front” could be geared to the seriousness of the war situation and through which the “mood” could be controlled. One issue that seemed to fit the bill was a “major campaign” in January against the increasing problem of the “black market,”
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which had already been preoccupying him during the second half of 1941.
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Before this campaign could begin, however, elaborate preparations had to be made, for it became clear that it was necessary “to cleanse the Party organization from this evil,”
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and the laws dealing with this problem, which contained wide discrepancies, had to be made uniform.
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Moreover, Hitler warned him not to engage in “cold Calvinism.”
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In the following weeks he was warned not to overdo the campaign. Göring considered that they should “not be mean-spirited about this.” Hitler said that the campaign should not be allowed to descend to mere eavesdropping and snooping,
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and Bormann wanted the main emphasis placed on “educating people.”
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Although the various obstacles that Goebbels was encountering made it clear that he was stirring up a hornet’s nest, he did not allow himself to be discouraged from preparing the campaign in detail.
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It took almost three months before it could start, albeit in a considerably watered-down version. Thus the decree issued by the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich dealing with black market activities merely imposed imprisonment or a fine instead of the draconian penalty demanded by Goebbels.
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A few days earlier Hitler had signed his edict on “the lifestyle of leading personalities.”
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He announced that he had instructed Goebbels “to launch a comprehensive propaganda campaign against black marketeering.” Such a campaign could not be successful, however, without “exemplary adherence to the wartime laws and decrees by leading personalities of the state, the Party, and the Wehrmacht.” In the event of transgressions, “ruthless action would be taken irrespective of the person involved.”

While this decree was not published,
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Goebbels ordered that half a dozen of the “harshest sentences imposed on black marketeers,” in other words death sentences or long sentences of penal servitude,
should be published.
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He was well aware of the danger of creating the impression that during the war the problem had developed into “a huge epidemic.”
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To launch the campaign, on March 29 Goebbels published an article in
Das Reich
with the title “An Open Discussion,” which contained a clear declaration of war on “black marketeering.”
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Three weeks later, however, he was obliged to defend his campaign in a further article. For, as Goebbels had feared, British propaganda had used it as proof that Nazi Germany was riven with widespread corruption.
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Apart from the fight against corruption, “unnecessary private trips” were a particular target. After getting Hitler’s permission,
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he had the press publish a “sharp warning against pleasure trips”; serious cases would result in confinement in a concentration camp.
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However, this measure also provoked objections, for example from Göring and the Transport Ministry.
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Moreover, it was impossible to implement such a regulation effectively. Goebbels wanted above all to create the impression that those in public life were taking account of the seriousness of the situation. A few weeks later, however, he was complaining that once again the trains during the Easter vacation were overcrowded because the Reich railways had gone out of their way “tacitly to annul [my] decree. […] Above all, word has quickly gotten around that the sentences that I threatened were not actually being passed and this has had a negative effect.”
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Goebbels saw the appointment of the Thuringian Gauleiter, Fritz Sauckel, to the position of Reich director of labor mobilization on March 21, 1942, as at last offering the prospect that the measures required for labor mobilization would be introduced; for him this was the key problem for the home front. A few days after Sauckel’s appointment Goebbels received him with great expectations,
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and in the course of their conversation he felt “bitter satisfaction” that “all the ideas and proposals that I have been putting forward for almost a year and a half are at last going to be taken up and put into practice.”
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Sauckel, however, told him that, to begin with, he wanted “to bring as many people as at all possible from the east”; if the labor problem could not be solved in this way, then he would “take up the question of female labor conscription.” Four weeks later Goebbels read a memorandum by Sauckel from which, to his disappointment, he was forced to conclude that Sauckel had put the question of female labor service on ice.
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None of the initiatives started by Goebbels in spring 1942 to improve domestic morale—the introduction of labor conscription for women, the fight against the black market, and the threat of concentration camp for pleasure trips—met with success. Goebbels would have sensed that he might have gone somewhat too far with his continual appeals for a tougher line in domestic affairs. That would probably have been why, in April 1942, he introduced a “campaign for more politeness in public life,”
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for he had noticed that “a very boorish tone has become prevalent in the streets, on public transportation, in restaurants, and theaters, which gets on one’s nerves and which in the long run is intolerable.”
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Evidently he wanted to use this flanking initiative to demonstrate that the toughness which he was so vigorously propagating should not be confused with uncouth behavior in everyday life.

While the military situation in the east eased during the spring, the general war situation was being increasingly influenced by the major air raids on German cities that were getting under way. It was this new threat that gave Goebbels the opportunity to continue to assert his demand for greater “toughness” in the conduct of the war; in dealing with the effects of the air war, he was able to secure a new role, one that went far beyond his core duty as propagandist.

On Sunday, March 29, one of the first spring-like days of the year, Goebbels received the first reports of an “extraordinarily heavy air raid that the English have carried out on Lübeck.” In fact, the previous night the Royal Air Force had attacked the city on the Trave with over two hundred bombers and in the process had set fire to and almost completely destroyed the heavily populated old part of the city, with its intricate streets of timber-framed houses. It was the worst raid on a German city so far, causing more than three hundred deaths.
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Goebbels noted that, in view of the evident lack of support for the affected population, following a telephone conversation with Hitler the latter had removed the “responsibility for looking after areas damaged by air raids from the Interior Ministry and gave me unlimited
powers in this matter.” Goebbels immediately convened a meeting of state secretaries, in which it was decided to send large amounts of aid to Lübeck.
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However, the very generous distribution of aid within the city by the Nazi welfare organization (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, NSV) was exploited by its local functionaries to enrich themselves substantially in the process. As a result, in August 1942 three death sentences were passed, one of which was actually carried out. Goebbels, who took a great interest in the scandal, maintained that all three should have been executed.
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In April, despite the raid on Lübeck, despite the news that meat rations were about to be cut
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and all of the other concerns of the population, Goebbels claimed to note a gradual improvement in the national mood.
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He dismissed anonymous critical letters without more ado as Jewish (“one can tell from the style”) and continued to do so during the following months. In general he attributed the improvement in mood to the fact that “the line adopted in my articles has produced a new attitude toward the war on the part of our people and a realistic assessment of the overall situation.”
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Thus the mood had not improved; instead, the criteria against which it was measured had been adjusted to suit the changed circumstances.

Hitler’s fifty-third birthday was celebrated by a ceremony in the Philharmonie on April 19; he did not in fact attend. Goebbels made the speech, which had been approved by Hitler beforehand.
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In it he referred to the film
Der große König
, which had been recently finished, claiming to observe remarkable parallels between the life of the Prussian king Frederick II (Frederick the Great) and the present day.
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Goebbels praised the king as someone who “again and again under the pressure of shattering blows, which sometimes brought him to the brink of collapse, found the strength to raise himself triumphantly above trials and defeats and to provide his people, his soldiers, the doubting generals, wavering ministers, conspiring relatives, and rebellious officials with a shining example of steadfastness in adversity,” while as far as Hitler was concerned Goebbels emphasized “the heavy burden of responsibility” and spoke of a “titanic struggle” that the Führer was carrying on for “the life of our people.”

Thus the birthday speech also used the leitmotif of a tougher conduct of the war. Above all, it introduced a change in the previous Führer propaganda. Hitler’s successes were no longer at the core of
Führer admiration but rather his leadership potential. The speech was nothing more than a request for an advance of trust, although the comparison with the prematurely aged Prussian king bent under the weight of his troubles was not very flattering to Hitler.

On April 25 Hitler came to Berlin in order, after a long pause, to speak in the Reichstag. Before his speech the dictator reassured Goebbels once more, as the latter gratefully noted, that he was in favor of a “radical conduct of the war and radical policies.” In his speech the following day Hitler commented on the difficulties of the previous winter and promised to learn the lessons from these experiences for a possible second winter of war in the east. He sharply criticized sections of the civil service and demanded from the Reichstag wide-ranging powers in order to correct shortcomings in the administration and the judicial system.
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Such powers were very much along the lines of what Goebbels had already been proposing in March. The judiciary was to be effectively emasculated and irksome provisions in civil service law suspended.
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The Reichstag unanimously approved Hitler’s demands, according to which he was entitled to hold “every German,” whether officer, civil servant, judge or Party functionary, to account in the performance of his duty and, if necessary, “irrespective of any rights he might possess,” to dismiss him from his position, a clear attack by the leadership of the regime on the privileges of public officials.
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Although Goebbels heaped praise on the speech and its brilliant effect on the population, he could not ignore the fact that Hitler’s address had also provoked concern and some lack of understanding. The passage about preparations for war during the coming winter produced great disappointment, since it was interpreted as a denial of the possibility of a victory in the coming summer and questions were raised about why, in view of Hitler’s absolute authority, a further legal authorization had been necessary at all.
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The press was therefore instructed to play down the Reichstag declaration in its reporting.
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Goebbels returned to this criticism several times until well into May,
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and, somewhat irritated, he noted that the speech had “to some extent provoked uncertainty. Above all, people want to know what the Führer is intending to do in order to deal with the shortcomings that he criticized and to bring to account the people responsible.”
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Thus he was obliged to recognize that one of the central propaganda themes, the repeated emphasis on the unity of Führer and people, had lost its credibility to a significant extent and this was despite or even because of his own efforts to reinforce the Führer myth. It was an example of where his propaganda, with its attempt to create a uniform German public opinion, had run up against clear limits.

On April 23, barely four weeks after the British air raid on Lübeck, the Royal Air Force had begun bombing Rostock, a raid that involved more than one hundred bombers over four consecutive nights. Above all, during the third night they succeeded in setting fire to a large part of the old part of the city. Over six thousand dwellings were destroyed and more than two hundred people killed.
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Goebbels expressed his conviction that “we must deal the English similar blows until they see reason.”
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In conversation with Goebbels during his stay in Berlin, Hitler too was “annoyed about the recent English raid on Rostock.” He had already ordered “retaliation.” Since air raids had little impact on the enemy’s armaments industry, he had ordered that they should “now attack cultural centers, seaside resorts, and non-industrial cities, for the psychological effect would be much greater there and at the moment the psychological effect is what it’s all about.” The first raids were on Exeter (April 23 and 24) and above all Bath (April 25). When the RAF continued its raids on Rostock, the Luftwaffe attacked Bath again on April 26.
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Bath was followed by Norwich (April 27 and 29) and York (April 28) and then Exeter again (May 3). In the future British propaganda would refer to such raids, aimed primarily at targets of cultural significance, as “Baedeker” raids, an expression that was invented for the first time—“stupidly,” according to Goebbels—by a Foreign Ministry official at a press conference.
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Goebbels told his staff that they should not “boast about the destruction of cultural objects.”
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The raid on Rostock prompted Goebbels to return to the task that Hitler had given him after Lübeck. Thus, on April 28, he informed the Gauleiters (writing to them in their dual capacities as Reich governors and Reich defense commissioners) that the “Führer” had assigned him “responsibility for introducing immediate and uniform measures to aid localities suffering from bomb damage” if the damage
could not be dealt with using the Gau’s own resources. He had established a help line in his ministry for this purpose that would be permanently staffed.
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However, when Goebbels tried to turn this message into a formal instruction to be issued jointly by Frick, Göring, and Bormann he encountered opposition from several ministers.
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Nevertheless, he had succeeded in acquiring a degree of authority enabling him to intervene in the event of major raids on cities in the future. He was quite correct in assuming that repeated air raids would provoke considerable anxiety among the population and was therefore intent on acquiring control over morale through direct and rapid intervention in the cities affected by the air war.