Joseph Goebbels Also by Toby Thacker:

THE END OF THE THIRD : DEFEAT, , AND NUREMBERG, JANUARY 1944–NOVEMBER 1946

MUSIC AFTER HITLER, 1945–1955 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

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First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

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ISBN 978-0-230-27866-0 ISBN 978-0-230-27422-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230274228

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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 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 (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 . 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 , city centre, 1939. 89 10. The masthead of (The Attack), the newspaper established by Goebbels in 1927. 90 11. ‘The Future is Ours’, a poster by 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

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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. 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 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. 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 x Joseph Goebbels

39. After the defeat at Stalingrad, and became Goebbels’ closest supporters in the campaign for ‘’. 253 40. A mass grave of Polish offi cers shot by the Soviet secret police in 1940 in the Katyn Forest, discovered by the Germans in April 1943. 257 41. Wilhelm Furtwängler, Goebbels’ favourite conductor. 263 42. Goebbels was a huge admirer of the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun who is shown here at the Congress of National Associations of Journalists held by the Nazis in Vienna, 22–25 June 1943. 264 43. A spread of propaganda pictures showing soldiers visiting the Goebbels family in mid-1943. 267 44. The morning after a British bombing raid on a Rhineland city in August 1943. 269 45. Map showing the territory still controlled by Germany in October 1944. 283 46. Goebbels’ last words to the German people: ‘Resistance at any price’, in Das Reich, 22 April 1945. 297 Acknowledgements

Many people and institutions have been involved in the preparation of this book. I am particularly grateful to the staff at the Bundesarchiv Koblenz, and at the Bundesarchiv, Außenstelle Berlin, for their help in fi nding a way through the complexities of their cataloguing systems, and with the practical diffi culties of using and copying documents on microfi lm and microfi che. Similarly, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the staff at the Zeitungsabteilung of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, who enabled me to see copies of Der Angriff from 1927 through to 1934, and of Heidelberg University Library who helped me to see copies of the Völkischer Beobachter and Das Reich, and kindly gave permission to reproduce images from both newspapers for this book. In Britain I am grateful to the staff of Cardiff University Library, of the Bodleian Library and the Taylorian Institute in Oxford, and of Gloucester City Library. I would like also to record my thanks to Frau Cordula Schacht for her permission to cite from the unpublished papers in the Nachlass Joseph Goebbels in the Bundesarchiv Koblenz, and to the Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz for permission to use the photograph reproduced on the front cover of this book. Historians generally owe a debt of gratitude to often unsung colleagues who transcribe and edit published collections of documents, and I wish to acknowledge here my reliance on the sustained scholarship of Elke Fröhlich and her team who have produced the complete edition of Goebbels’ diary from 1923 to 1945, and to the earlier work of Helmut Heiber, who transcribed many of Goebbels’ speeches from 1932 to 1945 from sound recordings to make them more widely accessible to historians. Many individuals have helped me with advice, constructive comments, and in general conversation about Goebbels and his place in history. I am grateful to current and former colleagues at Cardiff University, including Jessica Horsley, Neil Fleming, Gerwin Strobl, and Gregor Benton; special thanks to Jonathan Osmond and Kevin Passmore who both took time to read and comment upon earlier drafts; to Howard Mason and Ian Dennis who drew the maps, and to John Morgan who helped with the preparation of the illustrations. As with my previous books I owe a special debt to my friend and colleague Dirk Deissler of Heidelberg University for his generous help in tracking down obscure publications in Germany, and to him and his wife Chrystelle for their hospitality on research visits there. This is the place to record my thanks to Simon Curle, Lee Russell, and James Reeley, who accompanied me on research visits to Poland, and to John Forster, Clinton Wood, and Roger Headland for their support throughout the writing of this book. I wish also to thank my fellow singers Paul Foster, Jen Madden,

xi xii Joseph Goebbels

David Thompson, and Anna Simon for their help with issues of translation, and insights into Goebbels’ personal relationships. Others like my brother Bevis and my long-standing friend Chris Mitchell have contributed their thoughts and ideas, and I thank them. I am particularly grateful to the anonymous reader for Palgrave who responded with wise and constructive comments to an earlier draft of this book. I hope that reader will feel that I have gone some way to meeting the perceptive criticisms made at that stage. Thanks also to my editors Michael Strang and Ruth Ireland at Palgrave, and the team there which has been so helpful in the production of this book. Finally I wish to record again my thanks to Susan, Amy, and Phoebe, who have had to live with me while I have been working on this book. They make everything possible.

Toby Thacker, 2009 A Note on Translation

Unless otherwise stated, all translations in this book from German and from French are my own. German does not translate exactly into English, and I have sought, particularly when translating from Goebbels’ writings and speeches, to render as closely as possible the sense of his words rather than to try to produce some kind of idiomatic or contemporary English equivalent. In addition to words like Reich, Reichstag, and Wehrmacht which are now widely understood in English, there are a number of key terms in the vocabulary of German right- wing ideology of the 1920s and in Nazi discourse, such as Volk and Führer, which I have retained in the German original after providing an explanation of them. Similarly, I have kept the original titles of German newspapers for which there is no straightforward or meaningful English equivalent, after providing an initial translation.

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