Joseph Goebbels: life and death PDF
Preview Joseph Goebbels: life and death
Joseph Goebbels Also by Toby Thacker: THE END OF THE THIRD REICH: DEFEAT, DENAZIFICATION, AND NUREMBERG, JANUARY 1944–NOVEMBER 1946 MUSIC AFTER HITLER, 1945–1955 Joseph Goebbels Life and Death Toby Thacker Lecturer in Modern European History, Cardiff University © Toby Thacker 2009 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-22889-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identifi ed as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-0-230-27866-0 ISBN 978-0-230-27422-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230274228 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. You fear the dismemberment of your being in all the piecework of human wishing and knowing, and fail to notice that you yourselves cannot achieve wholeness if you reject such large and essential parts of that which ‘has been allotted to all mankind’. You seek the indivisibility of man’s being, and yet assent to its being torn apart … The philosopher Paul Natorp, in a warning to German youth in 1920* * Paul Natorp, ‘Hoffnungen und Gefahren unserer Jugendbewegung’, Werner Kindt (ed.), Grundschriften der Deutschen Jugendbewegung (Düsseldorf and Cologne: Eugen Diederich, 1963), pp. 129–47, pp. 144–5. Contents List of Illustrations viii Acknowledgements xi A Note on Translation xiii Introduction 1 1 ‘This Awful Waiting’ 10 2 ‘Starting to Find Firm Ground’ 33 3 ‘The Coming Dictator’ 56 4 ‘You Are the Nobility of the Third Reich’ 78 5 ‘We Will All Three Be Good to One Another’ 100 6 ‘These Masses Are What Matter’ 124 7 ‘We Are Not Suited to Be Executioners’ 152 8 An ‘Indissoluble Community of Destiny’ 178 9 ‘This People’s War Must Be Carried Through’ 204 10 ‘A Life and Death Struggle’ 227 11 ‘We Have Done the Right Thing’ 250 12 ‘How Distant and Alien this Beautiful World Appears’ 276 Epilogue 305 Notes 333 Bibliography 380 Index 392 List of Illustrations Unless otherwise acknowledged, the illustrations here are taken from Nazi Party publications, or are my own photographs. I am grateful to Heidelberg University Library for permission to use the images from the Völkischer Beobachter and from Das Reich (illustrations 5, 7, 38, and 46). Thanks to Howard Mason for drawing the maps in illustrations 4 and 35, and to Ian Dennis for drawing the maps in illustrations 3, 9, and 45. 1. The house in Dahlemer Strasse, Rheydt, where Goebbels was brought up as a child and lived with his parents until 1924. 11 2. Ludendorff and Hitler during their trial for high treason in March 1924. 35 3. Map of Germany in the 1920s, showing some of Goebbels’ fi rst speaking tours. 45 4. Map of the Rhineland-Ruhr in the 1920s. 47 5. ‘Idea and sacrifi ce’, Goebbels’ fi rst published article in the Nazi Party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, 14/15 June 1925. 52 6. The Little ABC of the National Socialist, a guide to the core beliefs of Nazism. 66 7. For the fi rst time, the Völkischer Beobachter announces a speech at a ‘mass meeting’ in Munich by ‘Party Comrade Dr Goebbels, from Elberfeld’, 8 April 1926. 70 8a. Paths to the Third Reich (1927), a pamphlet in which Goebbels popularized a phrase taken from the title of a book by Moeller van den Bruck. 81 8b. Goebbels’ fi rst and only published novel, Michael: A German Destiny in Pages from a Diary (1929). 81 9. Map of Berlin, city centre, 1939. 89 10. The masthead of Der Angriff (The Attack), the newspaper established by Goebbels in 1927. 90 11. ‘The Future is Ours’, a poster by Hans Schweitzer for the Nazi Party Rally in Nuremberg, September 1927. 91 12. The second book, published by Goebbels in 1931, viciously attacking Berlin police chief Bernhard Weiss. 93 13. Poster for a meeting in Berlin on 8 November 1927, at which ‘Dr. Goebbels’ will speak on ‘The German Volk’s Dance of Death’. 95 14. ‘Goebbels speaks’, a poster for a meeting in Berlin in November 1928, showing a developing awareness of visual imagery. 102 viii List of Illustrations ix 15. The leadership of the Nazi Party at a meeting in Weimar, 20 January 1929. 103 16. Goebbels speaking in Bad Freienwalde, 13 October 1929. 105 17. Hitler and Goebbels in the Lustgarten, Berlin, before the second presidential ballot in 1932. 128 18. A characteristic Hans Schweitzer poster, 1932, which represents National Socialism as ‘The organized will of the nation’. 132 19. Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s. 136 20. Hitler and followers at the Kaiserhof Hotel on 30 January 1933 after hearing of his appointment as Chancellor. 139 21. The Cabinet of 30 January 1933 which Hitler headed as Chancellor. 141 22. Hermann Göring in 1933. 142 23. Goebbels in 1933 with his wife Magda, their fi rst child Helga, and in the background, Harald Quandt, Magda’s son from her fi rst marriage. 149 24. Goebbels inaugurates the ‘one pot meal’ with Hitler, October 1933. 150 25. The ‘Senate’ of the Reich Chamber of Culture meeting in the ‘Throne Room’ of the Propaganda Ministry. 156 26. Goebbels with Marshal Pilsudski on a state visit to Poland, 14 June 1934. 161 27. The Thing site on Heidelberg’s Holy Mountain, which Goebbels opened on the summer solstice in 1935. 169 28. Hitler’s announcement of the remilitarization of the Rhineland to the Reichstag, 8 March 1936. 174 29. ‘Voting Sunday’, 29 March 1936, at the conclusion of the referendum campaign on the remilitarization of the Rhineland. 175 30. Women take part in a civil defence exercise in Berlin in 1936. 176 31. The ‘Entry of the Nations’ at the Olympic Games in Berlin, 1936. 183 32. Hitler Youth at the Nuremberg Rally in 1936. 185 33. By 1936 Himmler’s SS was becoming a huge organization. 186 34. The ‘May Field’ in Berlin on 28 September 1937, at a meeting called to celebrate a state visit by Mussolini to Germany. 195 35. Map of Berlin and the surrounding area, 1939. 211 36. Goebbels paid close attention to the ‘Blitz’ on Britain in the winter of 1940–41. 222 37. The composer Richard Wagner was a huge infl uence on Hitler and, to a lesser extent, on Goebbels. 223 38. From May 1940 a leader written by Goebbels appeared every week on the right-hand side of the front page of the mass-circulation Sunday newspaper Das Reich. 238
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