Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity (17 page)

Hitler’s craving for opera gave him the feeling that, with the exception of when he was in his own private world, he was always on a stage, acting a part, and needing resounding alarums and startling special effects. His greatest fear was that he would bore his audience and while he could legitimately create a whole stage production around his public appearances, his need to project himself fed his own addiction to be much more than the failed artist from Linz, and it spilled over more and more into his off-stage life. The edges between fantasy and reality became increasingly blurred.

Goebbels, always working much harder than Hitler, had to squeeze in time to see more of Lída Baarová while seeing less of Magda, who enjoyed her own extramarital activities. He had become merely a visitor to the family home in Schwanenwerder, largely because of his demanding work in the Propaganda Ministry where he had a flat, which from April 1938 was virtually his permanent residence.

Goebbels and Baarová had managed to maintain their affair in relative secrecy. He sometimes attempted to provide himself with an alibi for the evenings when he wanted to be alone with Lída by inviting himself to Olga Tschechowa’s apartment, stopping off to see her briefly before going to Lída’s. Olga was expected to cover for him if anyone should ask.
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In 1938 rumours of his affair with Baarová spread when Goebbels ensured that financial support was given to a film she was making which had run into trouble. Lída’s fiancé, Gustav Fröhlich, realised the gossip was true when he discovered them in the back of Goebbels’s car parked on the road heading towards Goebbels’s villa. He berated Goebbels – some sources say he actually punched him – and broke off his engagement to Baarová.

Goebbels phoned Lída and said he wanted her and Magda to meet. When the three were together, a distraught Magda suggested to Lída that they share Goebbels, who sealed the love triangle by giving each of them gifts of jewellery. Magda told Lída, ‘I am the mother of his children; I am only interested in this house in which we live. What happens outside does not concern me. But you must promise me one thing: you must not have a child by him.’
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Goebbels moved Baarová into his villa, but Magda had a change of heart, and in August 1938 she asked Hitler to personally intercede to save her marriage. It is thought that Hitler had no idea what Goebbels had been up to, because those around him who had heard the rumours never had the courage to tell him. But Baarová later hinted that Hitler had known about the affair: ‘I remember [Goebbels] once gave me a gold bracelet for Christmas. Hitler made a huge fuss about it.’
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Eager to prevent a public scandal surrounding his Propaganda Minister, and also disapproving of Goebbels’s treatment of Magda – he was obviously unaware of her own infidelities – he took her side completely and summoned Goebbels to Berlin on 15 August. Goebbels was shocked by the summons and told Baarová, ‘My wife is the devil.’ At the meeting, Goebbels asked Hitler for permission to divorce Magda so he could marry Lída, but Hitler told him unequivocally to end his affair with the actress immediately. Goebbels may have courted Hitler’s anger less for his infidelity than for conducting it with an ‘inferior’ Slav.

The very next morning Goebbels telephoned Baarová, and through tears told her that his request for a divorce had been denied and he was forbidden from seeing her again. ‘I love you, Liduschka,’ he said. ‘I cannot live without you.’
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He obeyed his
Führer
and never contacted her again, and sank into a deep depression.

Baarová was summoned to the police station and told she was banned from appearing in films or plays and from all social functions. The Gestapo hounded her and organised hecklers to shout ‘Whore!’ when she defiantly attended the premiere of her film
Der Spieler
(
The Player –
aka
Gambler’s Story
). Her next film, already finished in 1938, was banned from being shown. She received a direct order from Hitler through his adjutant to remain in Germany. She later said of Goebbels, ‘Thanks to him I fell into the depths of hell.’
350
Thanks to Goebbels and Hitler, millions fell into the depths of hell. Unable to work, and in fear for her life, Lída fled to Prague, having no idea that Czechoslovakia would within a short time come under Hitler’s jackboot.

Goebbels’s affair with Lída Baarová was almost his downfall. Hitler’s displeasure showed no sign of abating any time soon, and with the prospect of having to face Magda’s unforgiving presence each day and night, he devoted himself solely to his duty, which was his only consolation.
351
Rumours of Goebbels’s disgrace circulated, and the British ambassador in Berlin, Nevile Henderson, reported to London on Goebbels’s ‘recent considerable loss of prestige’.
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His own propaganda machine swung into gear on his behalf, and newspapers published pictures of the Goebbels family looking happy to avoid the scandal that was threatening to engulf Hitler’s regime. But he was now seeing little of Magda, and even less of Hitler. He lived for the most part in isolation and his interest in his work waned. He was unable to concentrate on reading or music, and was so overcome by grief that he resolved never to see Magda again, or even speak to her by telephone.
353
He was only able to sleep with the help of narcotics and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, a victim of the Nazi cult of celebrity which he had helped Hitler to perpetuate.

Six months after marching into Austria, Hitler met with the Prime Ministers of Britain and France to demand that the Sudetenland be ceded to Germany. The Sudeten territory, an area in the northern, south-west and western regions of newly created Czechoslovakia, formed after the First World War when Austria-Hungary broke apart, was inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, and Hitler wanted it. Both Prime Ministers signed the agreement, and the Czechoslovak government had no choice but to abide by it. German troops marched into the Sudetenland in October 1938 and were welcomed as liberators. It was called
Blumenkrieg
, the ‘war of flowers’, because women and children threw flowers to Hitler in his car and at the troops, demonstrating to the world that Hitler had remedied an injustice without resorting to open force. What the world didn’t see was the violence practised behind the scenes as all opposition was soundly put down out of sight.

Hitler was greeted by scenes of near hysteria from the Sudeten German females of all ages. Overhead a Zeppelin flew like a giant
phallus. Hitler was the supreme star and solo act, and he knew exactly how to manipulate the masses. Overjoyed and overwhelmed young women surged forward in the faint hope of touching their idol. He stood Christ-like, as if he were showing the wounds in his hands. The tension among the huge crowd reached breaking point, and then he reached down, allowing those at the front to touch the sacred hands. The tension was released, girls cried, swooned and fainted and had to be carried away in virtual ecstasy. It was comparable to the scenes of adulation, overwhelming emotion and sexual release in the 1960s which became known as Beatlemania.

But through it all Hitler maintained an image of a monumental figure standing unmoved amid the mass hysteria. The distance he put between himself and the hysterics transformed the belief they had in him – and which he had in himself – into a religious fervour. Underlining it all was an element of eroticism which he created and manipulated, knowing it was the very thing which bonded him and his people together, hence he declared: ‘Where are the democracies of other countries? Where is it possible that the people and their leader, the nation and their government, merge into each other to such an extent and stand so close by one another’s side?’
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His shows were the greatest on earth; he was the magnificent showman. There was a vital factor to these mass encounters which went beyond mere self-gratification: they recharged his energies, which lapsed during the long days of inactivity, and he was renewed for further acts of aggression.

Towards the end of October Goebbels, unable to bear his isolation any longer, asked Göring to intercede with Hitler on his behalf, and consequently Goebbels went to see Hitler at Berchtesgaden for a long and apparently friendly talk. Magda was also summoned, and Hitler helped them agree on a truce. Despite taking the world to the brink of disaster, and with every intention of waging war, Hitler was fond enough of both Goebbels and Magda, his Holy Family, to take the time to reconcile them. When this private peace had been agreed upon, the Goebbels children were brought in, and they all posed for photos to be published in the newspapers so
that no one was in any doubt the Goebbelses epitomised the Nazi family unit.
355

As fond as Hitler was of them both, he remained irritated with Goebbels, and on Goebbels’s birthday in 1938 Hitler refrained from gracing the numerous ceremonial functions attended by colleagues, artists and party members. He sent only ‘a short, frosty telegram’ to wish him a happy birthday. ‘Can a man endure and suffer all that?’ Goebbels wondered at falling from the grace of the man he not only idolised but had helped set on his high throne. ‘I am at the end of my strength.’
356

In Munich Goebbels, still depressed, anxious and suffering from insomnia, attended the commemoration of its Putsch ‘martyrs’ on 8 November 1938, and there heard the news that a German diplomat in Paris, Ernst von Rath, had been shot by a Polish Jew. The next day, in a state of mind that was more merciless, Goebbels outlined his plan to Hitler for a violent demonstration against the Jews that very night. After the sun set on 9 November 1938, Hitler allowed Goebbels to burn down the synagogues.
Kristallnacht
! Over 1,000 synagogues were destroyed, 100 Jews killed, many more injured, and around 30,000 sent to concentration camps.

On
Kristallnacht
Leni Riefenstahl was in America as a goodwill ambassador of Germany, part way through a tour to promote
Olympia
. The film’s value as propaganda for a country that had shown its hostility was evident to many. Wilhelm Schneider, Hitler’s bodyguard, declared, ‘Miss Riefenstahl and her artistic skills were an enormous boost to German propaganda. What she achieved is indescribable.’
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While the world was introduced to her film, Jews were being attacked and killed in Germany.

To the American press she was a major celebrity, and they were more interested in knowing if she was romantically involved with Hitler than in Nazi politics. She denied it all with a smile. In Germany there were rumours that Riefenstahl and Hitler were involved. When later asked about
Kristallnacht
, she was able to say with complete honesty that she was in America at the time and knew nothing about it.

After the November pogroms the
Jüdischer Kulturbund,
the Jewish Cultural Union, was allowed to continue its activities, but the discrimination and persecution of Jews had driven many into impoverishment, and the number of members dwindled.

On 16 December Hans Hinkel, Goebbels’s state commissioner for Prussian theatre affairs, including the
Kulturbund
, declared in front of Dr Werner Levie – who was a Dutchman and therefore one of the few available members of the
Kulturbund
’s executive board not in hiding or arrested – that the existing seventy-six Jewish German publishing companies were to be shut down or sold to ‘Aryans’. The few publications which would be permitted to appear were to be directed by a publishing department within the
Kulturbund
.
358

Goebbels missed the traditional Christmas celebrations that year when he was rushed to hospital after collapsing with severe kidney pains. The New Year brought him no better fortune as he sank into a deeper depression. On 23 January 1939 he signed a nuptial contract with Magda, a formal agreement that they would both maintain the marriage, although she was now involved with one of Goebbels’s own officers, State Secretary Karl Hanke. Goebbels continued to live away from home for most of the time and saw little of his children. Hanke further betrayed Goebbels by presenting Hitler with a list of all the women from whom Goebbels demanded sexual favours.
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Goebbels’s ‘casting couch’ was no longer a secret, though it is doubtful that Hitler had been wholly unaware of it.

Goebbels had little time to devote himself to his favourite duty, managing the film industry, but his recovery from his illness was helped by working alongside Hitler on the preparation of a speech, a ‘real masterpiece’, given to the
Reichstag
on 30 January 1939 in which Hitler prophesied a European war that would bring with it ‘the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe’. Goebbels stood with Hitler to watch the torchlight parade, but his spirits were low as he thought back ‘to the time six years ago. It was good then. Everything now is awful and terrible.’
360

In January 1939, the
Kulturbund
’s book-publishing department opened in the offices formerly used by the Zionist publication
Jüdische Rundschau
, which had been one of the most popular German-Jewish weeklies from 1902 until banned in 1938. The former editor of
Jüdische Rundschau
, Erich Liepmann, managed the publishing department. The
Kulturbund
prevented a considerable amount of book stocks from other Jewish publishers from being pulped when Levie allowed Jewish publishers, now obliged to liquidate their companies, to export their book stocks until April 1939 if the respective purchasers would pay in foreign exchange to the
Reichsbank
. The
Kulturbund
’s publishing department bought the remaining book stocks from their old proprietors at a discount of 80 to 95 per cent of the original price.
361

Goebbels permitted the
Kulturbund
to continue only if it changed its statutes to the effect that Goebbels could at any time interfere in the affairs of the executive board, and even dissolve the
Kulturbund
and dispose of its assets. The new statutes came into effect on 4 March 1939; clearly Goebbels had no intention of allowing the
Kulturbund
to exist indefinitely. On 11 September 1941 the Gestapo ordered the closure of the
Kulturbund
, except for its publishing department, which was to be taken over by the
Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland
,
362
an administrative branch subject to the Reich’s government established on 4 July 1939. All persons identified as Jews were compulsorily enlisted as members.