Goebbels: A Biography

907 Pages·2015·18.58 MB·English

by  Goebbels

Translation copyright © 2015 by Random House LLC
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC,
New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Originally published in Germany by Siedler Verlag in 2010.
Copyright © 2010 by Peter Longerich.
Photo credits are located beginning on this page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Longerich, Peter.
[Joseph Goebbels. English]
Goebbels : a biography / Peter Longerich; translated by Alan Bance, Jeremy Noakes, and Lesley Sharpe.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4000-6751-0
eBook ISBN 978-0-81299688-3
1. Goebbels, Joseph, 1897–1945. 2. Nazis—Biography. 3. Germany— History—1918–1933. 4. Germany—
History—1933–1945. 5. World War, 1939–1945— Germany. 6. National socialism. I. Title.
DD247.G6L6513 2014
943.086092—dc23 [B] 2014004828
eBook ISBN 9780812996883
www.atrandom.com
eBook design adapted from printed book design by Christopher M. Zucker
Cover design: Daniel Rembert
Cover photograph: Joseph Goebbels, speaking from the steps of the Altes Museum, Berlin (© Hugo
Jaeger/Timepix/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
v4.1
a
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
1897–1933: TO ADVANCE AT ANY PRICE
CHAPTER 1:
“Rings a Song Eternally / From Youth’s Happy Hours”: Goebbels on His
Childhood and Youth
CHAPTER 2:
“Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child”: Goebbels’s Path to National Socialism
CHAPTER 3:
“Working with the Mind Is the Greatest Sacrifice”: Maneuvering in the Early
NSDAP
CHAPTER 4:
“Faith Moves Mountains”: Political Beginnings in Berlin
CHAPTER 5:
“Struggle Is the Father of All Things”: The Gauleiter and the Capital of the
Reich
CHAPTER 6:
“A Life Full of Work and Struggle”: Politics Between Berlin and Munich
CHAPTER 7:
“Dare to Live Dangerously!”: Goebbels’s Radicalism and Hitler’s Policy of
“Legality”
CHAPTER 8:
“Now We Must Gain Power…One Way or Another!”: A Share of Government?
CHAPTER 9:
“I Have a Blind Faith in Victory”: On the Way to Power
1933–1939: CONTROLLING THE PUBLIC SPHERE UNDER
DICTATORSHIP
CHAPTER 10:
“We’re Here to Stay!”: Taking Power
CHAPTER 11:
“Only Those Who Deserve Victory Will Keep It!”: Consolidating the Regime
CHAPTER 12:
“Whatever the Führer Does, He Does Completely”: The Establishment of the
Führer State
CHAPTER 13:
“Taking Firm Control of the Inner Discipline of a People”: Propaganda and
Manipulation of the Public Sphere
CHAPTER 14:
“Never Tire!”: Foreign Policy Successes and Anti-Jewish Policies
CHAPTER 15:
“The Tougher the Better!”: The Olympic Year, 1936
CHAPTER 16:
“The Most Important Factors in Our Modern Cultural Life”: Consolidating
Nazi Cultural Policies
CHAPTER 17:
“Don’t Look Around, Keep Marching On!”: The Firebrand as Peacemaker
CHAPTER 18:
“Maturity Is Only Achieved Through Suffering!”: Preparations for War—from
the Munich Agreement to the Attack on Poland
1939–1945: WAR—TOTAL WAR—TOTAL DEFEAT
CHAPTER 19:
“War Is the Father of All Things”: The First Months of the War
CHAPTER 20:
“There Is Only One Sin: Cowardice!”: The Expansion of the War
CHAPTER 21:
“Our Banners Lead Us On to Victory!”: Between the War in the West and the
War in the East
CHAPTER 22:
“A Great, a Wonderful Time, in Which a New Reich Will Be Born”: The Attack
on the Soviet Union
CHAPTER 23:
“Getting the Nation to Accept Tough Policies”: The Winter Crisis of 1941–42
CHAPTER 24:
“We Can See in Our Mind’s Eye a Happy People”: Offensives and Setbacks
CHAPTER 25:
“Do You Want Total War?”: The Second Winter Crisis
CHAPTER 26:
“The Masses Have Become Somewhat Skeptical or…Are in the Grip of a
Permanent State of Hopelessness”: Crisis as a Permanent State
CHAPTER 27:
“I Have No Idea What the Führer’s Going to Do in the End”: The Search for a
Way Out
CHAPTER 28:
“Virtually a Wartime Dictatorship on the Home Front”: Between an
Apocalyptic Mood and Total War
CHAPTER 29:
“But When Will There Be Some Action?”: Downfall
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Sources
Bibliography
Notes
Credits
By Peter Longerich
About the Author
About the Translators
PROLOGUE
On April 30, 1945, a few hours after becoming Reich chancellor following
Hitler’s death, Dr. Joseph Goebbels made a final attempt to delay his suicide,
announced so often in advance. Goebbels wrote to the “commander-in-chief of
Soviet forces,” informing him of Hitler’s suicide and of the arrangements for his
succession that were now in force. As well as promoting Goebbels to chancellor,
the dictator had made Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz president of the Reich.
Goebbels proposed a ceasefire and offered to negotiate peace terms with the
Soviet commander.
The chief of the general staff, General Hans Krebs, a fluent Russian speaker
from his days as military attaché in Moscow, undertook to cross the front line,
now only a few hundred yards from the Reich Chancellery. Early in the morning
Krebs delivered the letter to Major General Vasily Chuikov, commander of the
8th Guards Army, who had set up his headquarters in Tempelhof. He contacted
Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Army attacking
Berlin. Zhukov in turn informed the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin. Moscow
delivered its answer some hours later: There could be no question of a ceasefire.
The Soviet leader expected the German forces to surrender.1 When Krebs passed
this on to Goebbels on May 1, Goebbels held Krebs responsible for the
Russians’ refusal to negotiate. Goebbels sent another delegation to Chuikov. But
this too was rejected.2
Goebbels now decided to inform Dönitz of Hitler’s death and the Führer’s
arrangements regarding succession; he had wisely made his armistice overtures
before the new head of state took office. In a discussion of the situation,
Goebbels told the staff in the bunker that they were free to break out on their
own initiative.3 He had repeatedly announced in public that if the Third Reich
should fall he intended to end his own life and those of his family. In a radio
address at the end of February he made it clear that he would regard life after the
war as “not worth living, either for myself or for my children.”4 On April 15 he
wrote a piece for the magazine Das Reich entitled “Staking Your Whole Life” in
which he took his leave of readers by posing a rhetorical question: Could anyone
“even conceive of continuing their existence in such conditions after an Allied
victory?”5 No more than two weeks later, the end came for the Goebbels family.
Goebbels left his wife to make the arrangements for the long-planned murder
of the children. The precise circumstances surrounding their death (and the
question of individual responsibility for it) have never been satisfactorily
established. After the war the dentist Helmut Kunz repeatedly stated that he gave
the children morphine injections, after which Magda Goebbels crushed cyanide
capsules in their mouths. Later he changed his statement, ascribing the latter
action to Hitler’s personal physician, Ludwig Stumpfegger.6
By April 28, Magda and Joseph Goebbels had already written farewell letters
to Harald Quandt, Magda’s son from her first marriage, announcing their
intention of killing themselves and their children. They entrusted the letters to
the pilot Hanna Reitsch, who managed to fly out of the city that same day.
Goebbels wrote that Germany would “recover from this terrible war, but only if
presented with examples to give it fresh heart. We want to give such an
example.”7 Magda maintained in her letter to Harald that both her husband and
Hitler had urged her to leave Berlin. She had refused. She made no secret of her
involvement in the plan to murder Harald’s half-sisters and brother: “The world
after the Führer and National Socialism will not be worth living in, and that is
why I have taken the children with me. They are too good for the life that will
come after us, and a merciful God will understand my granting them release.
[…] We have only one aim: faithfulness to the Führer unto death.”8
Hitler’s adjutant, Günther Schwägermann, stated after the war that, on the
evening of May 1, Goebbels called him in to tell him that he and his wife
intended to take their own lives. According to Schwägermann’s testimony,
Goebbels asked that “a shot should be fired to make sure he was dead” and that
the corpses should be burned. With the preparations made, Goebbels said
goodbye to him and gave him the photograph of the Führer that stood on his
desk. Schwägermann conveys the importance that Goebbels attached to
maintaining the proprieties until the very last minute of his life: “Shortly
afterward, at about 20:30 hours, the minister and his wife came out of the room.
He went calmly to the coat rack, put on his hat and coat, and pulled on his
gloves. He offered his wife his arm and without a word left the bunker by the
garden exit.” Not long after this, Schwägermann found the couple’s motionless
bodies—both seemed to have taken poison9—in the garden. “As agreed, my
companion shot Dr. Goebbels once or twice. Neither body showed any sign of