Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview (36 page)

Of note is a comment by Semmler about Dr. Robert Ley, leader of the German Labour Front. Semmler described Dr. Ley as one of the “worst of the many drunkards in the higher ranks of the Nazi Party.”
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Dr. Ley, one of Hitler’s closest associates, committed suicide in prison while on trial for war crimes at Nuremberg.
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In reaction to the “complete ban on the entry of Jews into theatres, concerts, cinemas, music halls, dance floors and other places of entertainment,” Goebbels commented that any

“places that allowed Jews to attend would be punished.… But the Jews who are attending them will be punished even more severely.” In defending the exclusion of Jews from all places of entertainment, Goebbels told a Berlin audience on November 13 [1938]: “It is equivalent to degradation of German art to expect a German to sit next to a Jew in a theatre or cinema. If the parasites had not been treated much too well in the past, it would not have been necessary to make such short work of them now.” The very fact that such legislation was possible, he added, “proved to the world that the Jews had been having much too good a time in Germany.”
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Goebbels was also responsible for the 1938
Kristallnacht
riots against Jews that resulted in the murder of over 90 Jews, sending thousands to concentration camps, most of whom died there, and destroying about 300 synagogues.
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Goebbels was one of the Nazi leaders most adamant on the “necessity of actually exterminating the Jews.”
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To do this, the Nazis set up concentration camps that, from the Nazis’ viewpoint, were designed to be a

microcosm of the outside world. “This idea of struggle is as old as life itself,” Hitler said in a speech as early as 1928. “In this struggle the stronger, the more able, win, while the less able, the weak, lose. Struggle is the father of all things.… It is not by principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.” This quasi-Darwinian attitude, at the vary core of Nazism, was evident throughout the administration of the concentration camps. The
Kapos
, for example, could “justly” mistreat those in their charge because they had proved themselves superior in life’s “struggle.”
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Goebbels also claimed that the mere sight of Jews

make me physically sick…I cannot even hate the Jew. I can merely despise him. He has raped our people, soiled our ideals, weakened the strength of the nation, corrupted morals. He is the poisonous eczema on the body of our sick nation. That has nothing to do with religion [but rather race]. Either he destroys us, or we destroy him.
⁴⁷

Remember, these words are from the man considered by historians as the leading Nazi intellectual. The foolishness of his claims about world Jewry being the real enemy of all humanity was elegantly expressed by historian Curt Riess as follows:

Goebbels asserted in all seriousness that the Axis and its satellites—in all about two hundred million people—were threatened in their existence by approximately fifteen million people who were widely scattered over the globe, with no state, no army, no fleet, and no air force of their own. Ridiculous as his thesis was, it must nevertheless be admitted that Goebbels presented it very adroitly and carried it through with great logic.
⁴⁸

Goebbels even thought Germany’s Axis partners were inferior to the Germans and “his inner conviction of their racial inferiority to the Germans” affected his relations with them.
⁴⁹
For example, he once said the “Italians fight tooth and nail against being regarded as racially inferior to, or even different from, ourselves”—but he believed they were racially inferior in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
⁵⁰

Of the Russians, Goebbels said,

they are not a people but a conglomeration of animals. The greatest danger…is the stolid dullness of this mass…this racial propensity of the Russian people.… The human mind cannot possibly imagine what it would be like if this opponent were to pour into western Europe like a flood.
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Statements such as this caused Manvell and Fraenkel to be amazed over the “mixture of shrewdness and sheer ignorance in a man of his intelligence.”
⁵²

Goebbels opinion of Americans was equally devastating:

American soldiers are human animal material which can in no way stand comparison with our own people. One has the impression one is dealing with a herd of savages…. They are uneducated and know nothing.
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Even the English were regarded as inferior humans. Goebbels’ list of inferior races was long and equally uninformed. No wonder he had few qualms about killing so many millions of non-Germans during the war.

DARWINISM AND WAR

Darwinism also influenced Goebbels’ enthusiastic support for war:

Another consequence of the biologically grounded racism of the Nazis was the continual underestimation by their leaders of the military capabilities of the Russians. Goebbels, for example, repeatedly wrote in his diaries that the Bolsheviks would collapse like a “house of cards,” that their army was “scarcely battleworthy,” probably because “the low intelligence level of the average Russian makes the use of modern weapons impossible.”
⁵⁴

Goebbels firmly believed “all is fair in love and war”—but especially war. As a result, he demanded that Germany throw out the Geneva Convention rules for the treatment of prisoners of war and murder all of the over 40,000 allied airmen prisoners held in Germany.
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He believed the world “belonged to him who took it.”
⁵⁶
So fanatical was Goebbels that, when the allies had entered Berlin and it was abundantly clear that the war was lost, Goebbels remarked, “If a single white flag is hoisted in a Berlin street, I shall not hesitate to have the whole street and all its inhabitants blown up.”
⁵⁷

Goebbels once stated that he was a misanthropist and has “complete contempt for men and their behaviour.”
⁵⁸
German historians Linda Schmittroth and Mary Rosteck wrote that Goebbels, although a formidable personality and a first class intellect, was an excellent

example of the fact that morality does not necessarily go along with high intelligence. This very well-educated man, who influenced the minds of millions of Germans, used his talents to spread hate and violence. Having no respect for people whose ideas differed from his own, he ordered the large-scale burning of books and the murder of political opponents of German leader Adolf Hitler before and during World War II.
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In the end, Goebbels intellect and education led to the Holocaust and the systematic murder of over 11 million innocent men, women and children by the use of modern technology. As late as April 20, 1945, when it was obvious to almost everyone that the war was lost, Goebbels was still asking Germans to trust blindly in the Führer and his government who together would lead them out of their present difficulties.
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At this point the Führer and the government could no longer do anything to help their people because they realized it was hopeless. Goebbels then “emphatically” recommended bombing civilian populations if any group attempted to surrender. Some feel this order was motivated partly to punish his own people for losing the war.
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On April 30th, 1945, Hitler with his new wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide in their Berlin
Führerbunker
and Goebbels became Reich Chancellor. His tenure was brief. In the late afternoon of the following day, Goebbels and his wife, actress Magda Goebbels, sedated, then murdered their six young children with cyanide.
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Soon after, Joseph Goebbels committed suicide with a bullet to his head.
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His self-annihilation was the logical consequence of his ideological nihilism.

GERMAN INTELLECTUALS SUPPORT GOEBBELS

During World War II, Germany had the highest level of education of any nation in the world. The Nazis also valued education, and Goebbels surrounded himself with well-educated Germans, often those with Ph.D.s, for government ministers and other high-level positions. For example, his right-hand man, Dr. Erich Naumann, was state secretary and Dr. Otto Dietrich was Undersecretary for Propaganda Ministry.
⁶⁴
Dr. Glasmayer was the radio minister who, even at the end of the war, was still encouraging Goebbels’ wild fanaticism.
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Dr. Hans Lammers, “the bullhead,” was head of Hitler’s Reich Chancellery and Secretary of the German War Cabinet. Hans Lammers served only six years in prison for his war crimes, specifically his responsibility for the many anti-Jewish decrees that Germany instituted which resulted in the slaughter of millions of Jews.
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Dr. Walter Funk was an undersecretary in the ministry of propaganda and Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart was Permanent Undersecretary to the Ministry of the Interior.
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Dr. Hans Hagen, a political officer attached to the Berlin Guards Regiment, described as a “highly excitable and self-important young man,” worked with Dr. Goebbels at the Propaganda Ministry.
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Other educated Nazis associated with Goebbels included Dr. Karl Goerdeler, the Reich price controller and Dr. Werner Best head of the Gestapo in occupied France and, later, the German minister in Copenhagen.
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SUMMARY

This chapter reviewed the life and work of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Nazi head of propaganda and public information, focusing on his racism and the influence of Darwinism on his beliefs. One of the most educated Nazis, he was also the leading propagandist for Hitler’s racist programme that transformed the Germanic nations and the lands they conquered into a massive killing machine unequaled in world history.

Goebbels was a “malevolent genius whose oratory once inspired a nation to fight a total war and to hold out to the very end” rather than to surrender, even when it was clear that surrender was the only rational choice.
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He was behind Hitler—the architect of the most devastating war in history that in only six years took the lives of a total of over 55 million people, most of whom were innocent civilians.
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Goebbels, as a committed Darwinian eugenics advocate, was determined to produce what he judged was the superior race by any means he could. His racial programme failed and cost the lives of over 11 million innocent victims.

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1
Viktor Reimann,
Goebbels
, trans. Stephen Wendt (Garden City: Doubleday, 1976), 2–3.

2
David Irving,
Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich
(London: Focal Point, 1996), xvii.

3
Helmut Heiber,
Goebbels
(New York: Hawthorn Books, 1972). 7.

4
Paul Roland,
The Illustrated History of the Nazis
(Edison: Chartwell Books, 2009), 55.

5
Irving,
Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich
, 12.

6
Irving,
Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich
, 12.

7
Heiber,
Goebbels
, 248; Ralf Georg Reuth,
Goebbels
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993), 182.

8
Irving,
Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich
, 20, 28.

9
Irving,
Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich
, 11,13.

10
Hugh R. Trevor-Roper,
The Last Days of Hitler
, 3rd ed. (New York: MacMillan, 1962), 3.

11
Heiber,
Goebbels
, 248.

12
James M. Rhodes,
The Hitler Movement: A Modern Millenarian Revolution
(Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1980), 45.

13
Timothy W. Ryback,
Hitler’s Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life
(New York: Knopf, 2008), 77.

14
Alan Bullock,
Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
(New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1962), 398–399.

15
Heiber,
Goebbels
, 5.