Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity (20 page)

B
asking in the glory of his victory over France, Hitler went to the Bayreuth Festival for the final time in July 1940. He stayed for just one performance of
Götterdämmerung
, which had come to symbolise his love of destruction. Winifred Wagner’s own joy in the victory was short lived; she had lost her daughter Friedelind because of Hitler, and now she found that he had virtually no time for her; and she felt the distance growing between them.
407

On 19 July 1940, Hitler summoned the
Reichstag
and appointed Göring as
Reichsmarschall
, and created twelve new field marshals whom he put into planning Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of Britain. But he hesitated because he hoped to make peace with Britain by political means so that his forces would be free to march on Russia, which was his next target – he had never intended to go to war with Britain; he was fighting the wrong war. But Britain had been deceived and betrayed by Hitler too often to trust him again and, finally, when it was clear Churchill would not compromise, the
Luftwaffe
began bombing airfields in the south of England on 13 August. The battle for Britain was on.

While the Battle of Britain raged on, Olga Tschechowa visited a
Luftwaffe
fighter wing base in Normandy, where she was honoured with a parade led by a band. She signed autographs for the men and was photographed by the pilots of Messerschmitt 109 fighter aircraft. Because of heavy losses to the
Luftwaffe
and bad weather conditions, the Battle of Britain was brought to a close on 16 September. Admiral Raeder informed Hitler that the German navy was ready to take Britain from the sea a few days before the
Luftwaffe
withdrew, but Hitler, still uneasy, abandoned Operation Sea Lion.

In October, Olga Tschechowa played at the
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées
in Paris, attracting many German troops occupying France, and a photograph of her surrounded by soldiers appeared on the front cover of
Das Illustrierte Blatt
. She visited German army bases in Brussels, and when in Lille she was invited for a drink in a restaurant by the town commandant. A young
Luftwaffe
captain came into the restaurant and approached her, saying, ‘I knew I would meet you.’ She was immediately attracted to this young officer who was ‘tall and sure of himself, but without a trace of arrogance’.
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His name was Jep, a squadron commander in General Adolf Galland’s fighter group. He was around fifteen years her junior, but she was still very beautiful, and they became lovers. Separated by war for much of the time, most of their contact was by telephone and letter. He told her about aerial dogfights over England and the Channel, and she told him the latest studio gossip.
409

Through the war, her films became increasingly pro-Nazi – or anti-British – such as
Der Fuchs von Glenarvon
(
The Fox of Glenarvon
). Set during the First World War in Ireland, Tschechowa played an Irish patriot supporting the fight for independence. The German Propaganda Ministry graded the film ‘artistically valuable’, an attribute given to movies which fulfilled special aesthetical criteria and which allowed cinemas showing them to pay less tax. Goebbels was enthused by the film and wrote on 22 April 1940, ‘Now it’s great and very useful for our propaganda.’

She then starred in
Menschen im Sturm
(
In the Eye of the Storm
), an anti-Serbian film in which she played a woman of German origin being persecuted by Yugoslavs. While trying to escape to Germany, she is shot by them and dies a martyr with the final words, ‘We are going home.’ With her morale-boosting visits to the troops, a love affair with a
Luftwaffe
officer, and Nazi propaganda films, Tschechowa gave the strong impression that she had forsaken her love for Mother Russia and given her heart to the Fatherland. But appearances were deceiving.

In November 1940, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov arrived in Berlin with his interpreter Valentin Berezhkov, his deputy
Vladimir Dekanozov, and ‘diplomat’ Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov, who was responsible for the massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. Unknown to the
Abwehr
, Dekanozov was the head of NKVD’s Foreign Intelligence Department, assisting Merkulov ‘to assess personally the operational situation in Germany’.
410

On 13 November 1940, Molotov gave a reception in honour of his Nazi hosts at the Soviet embassy in Berlin. Hitler did not attend, but Joachim von Ribbentrop, Rudolf Hess and Hermann Göring did. So did Olga Tschechowa. She was one of the very few NKVD agents in Berlin, and during the evening she was introduced to Merkulov. Just as the gathering was raising glasses for the first toast, the sirens warned of an impending air raid by the British Royal Air Force. The Nazis evacuated the embassy to head for their shelters, but because the Soviet embassy had none, the Russian contingent and Olga remained to discuss matters freely as bombs rained down on Berlin.

It was hoped that Olga would be in a position to help Merkulov and Dekanozov, who were following Stalin’s orders to discover ‘Hitler’s source of strength’ within Germany, and to identify influential people in Germany opposed to an attack on the Soviet Union. The Russians overestimated Olga’s contacts, having assumed from a widely circulated photograph of her sitting next to Hitler at Ribbentrop’s garden party that she was a confidante of the
Führer
. She almost certainly continued her role as a ‘sleeper’ agent and was rewarded with a message from Lev reassuring her that her family in Moscow was being protected.
411
Tales had reached the Knipper family that Olga was associating with Nazi leaders and that Hitler himself had introduced Olga to Molotov as his hostess. They had no idea that between them, Olga and Lev were ensuring the family remained safe.

Goebbels had managed to regain Hitler’s confidence by indulging the
Führer
in his pet projects, such as his new vegetarian religion, and his plan to build a huge naval base at Trondheim in Norway. Hitler also planned to kill those who were mentally ill. To Hitler’s mind, when Darwin taught that only the fittest survived
in nature, he was also saying that the weakest of human beings should die in secret. By January 1941, 40,000 ‘incurably mentally ill’ adults and children were put to death, with another 60,000 awaiting their turn. Rumours of this euthanasia programme caused public unease, so Goebbels commissioned a ‘film on euthanasia’,
Ich klahe an
(
I Accuse
). Directed by Wolfgang Liebeneir, it told the story of a woman suffering from multiple sclerosis who pleads with doctors to kill her. Her husband gives her a fatal overdose and is put on trial, during which arguments are put forward that prolonging life is something contrary to nature and that death is a human right. The film culminates in the defendant reproaching his accusers’ cruelty for trying to prevent such deaths. Established within the framework of a love story and the courtroom drama, the pro-euthanasia message was subtly presented; but the weakness of the argument was that the German people were expected to assume that anyone with mental or physical disabilities wished to die.

When
Ich klahe
an
was released in cinemas in 1941, the SS reported that churches were uniformly negative about the film. Opinion among the medical profession was more positive, and the general population was supportive; it was seen by more than fifteen million Germans.
412
Like
Jud Süß, Ich klahe an
was a reflection of Hitler; in the film lies an image of a man deranged by his own genetic weaknesses, of his deluded beliefs in Wagner and his own infallibility, and of his increasing penchant for mass killing.

On 6 April 1941 Hitler launched the invasion of Yugoslavia. The Royal Yugoslav Army surrendered unconditionally on 17 April; there followed the annexation and occupation of the region by the Axis powers and the creation of the Independent State of Croatia – the
Nezavisna Država Hrvatska
, or NDH. Its new laws prohibited Jews from working. One of Croatia’s biggest film stars was Lea Deutsch, who was called the ‘Croatian Shirley Temple’. Her popularity as a child star had spread through Europe.
413

Just fourteen years of age when
Nezavisna Država Hrvatska
was created, Lea Deutsch was banned by its laws from the theatre where she performed and from the school she attended because she was Jewish. In an attempt to save the family from the horrors to come, her father converted them to Catholicism, not knowing that would not save them.

On 5 May 1941 Heinrich Himmler came to Zagreb and pressed NDH leader Ante Pavelić to round up all the Jews for deportation. Members of the national theatre intervened to try to help Lea Deutsch and her family; its famous actors, including Tito Strozzi, Vika Podgorska and Hinko Nučić, and the theatre’s director, Dušan Žanko, all attempted to save Lea’s life by organising the Deutsch family’s escape to Karlovac where they would meet up with partisans, but they failed to make contact with their rescuers, and so they had to return to Zagreb, where they hid in the lower floor of their house.

They were discovered in May 1943 and deported to Auschwitz. Out of the seventy-five people crammed into the cattle wagon for the six-day journey without food and water, twenty-five died. Lea Deutsch was one of them. She was sixteen. Her mother and brother were killed in Auschwitz, but her father survived the Holocaust and lived until 1959. In 2003, a Lauder Jewish elementary school in Zagreb was named after Lea Deutsch.

The invasion of Yugoslavia was followed quickly by the invasions of Greece and Crete in May. On 22 June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union. Initial gains were made that brought German forces within 15 miles of Moscow by 2 December. After the euphoria among the Nazi leadership over this initial success, there was the sudden rush to seek a solution to the ‘Jewish question’ because millions of Jews of the western Soviet Union were about to come under German control.
414

A few weeks after Barbarossa, Magda Goebbels invited Olga Tschechowa for a Sunday lunch at Schwanenwerder. Olga was collected by a ministry car and arrived to find more than thirty
guests including actors, diplomats and Propaganda Ministry officials. Joseph Goebbels proclaimed to them all that Moscow would fall and, turning to Olga, announced, ‘We’ve got a Russian expert here, Frau Tschechowa.’ Then he asked her whether she agreed that the war with Russia would be finished before winter and they could all celebrate Christmas in Moscow. She replied, ‘No.’

‘Why not?’ Goebbels demanded.

She reminded him of the fate that befell Napoleon, to which Goebbels replied, ‘There’s a huge difference between us and the French. We’ve come to Russia as liberators. The Bolshevik clique is going to be overthrown by the new revolution.’ Olga warned that in the face of new danger the Russians would show solidarity as never before. Goebbels asked her, ‘Does this mean that you do not believe in German military power? You are predicting a Russian victory.’

‘I am not predicting anything, Herr Minister. You just asked me whether our soldiers will be in Moscow by Christmas and I just expressed my opinion, which may prove right or wrong.’
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It may be that Goebbels made a tactical error in revealing to Tschechowa German plans to attack Moscow, and Hitler may even have let slip – presumably in one of his bragging monologues – that he was going to launch a massive armoured attack on Kursk, the site of the biggest tank battle of the war; the implication is that Olga Tschechowa warned the Kremlin.
416

Olga later claimed that this conversation resulted in her being blacklisted; Goebbels often berated anyone publicly who mentioned the possibility of defeat as cowards and traitors. But far from being blacklisted, Tschechowa went on to make another eight films before the end of the war, and continued to receive invitations from Goebbels,
417
including one to a celebration of the 500th performance of
Aimée
at his country house at Lanke. Magda and the children were away on holiday in Austria as a temporary escape from the heavy bombing raids on Berlin.

Olga asked Goebbels if he intended to extend his house, which by Nazi standards was quite small and unpretentious. He replied,
‘The land does not belong to me but to the local town, and in any case, for whom should I carry on building? If I am no longer alive, should my children take on the burden of the hatred directed at me?’ He had become extremely preoccupied by the future of his children in the event of a defeat, and to hear Goebbels even discussing the possibility of a defeat was shocking. Like Hitler, he usually insisted that the war was still theirs to win,
418
but perhaps Goebbels knew it was a fantasy and simply managed to keep up the pretence most of the time.