Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich by Irving David

Author:Irving, David [Irving, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9781872197135
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 761406
Publisher: Focal Point Publications
Published: 1958-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Goebbels

31: The Real Chum

ON the day of Hitler’s triumph in Munich an ugly revelation awaits Goebbels

in Berlin. Given the evasions of his diary in matters matrimonial, however,

we cannot properly speculate on what it is. Suffice to say that police chief Helldorff

visits him late that day and Goebbels then records: ‘A sad and difficult day for me

personally.’ He adds philosophically, ‘If it isn’t one thing it’s another.’1

Four painful weeks have already passed since he last visited Schwanenwerder and

saw his children. ‘Papa has been naughty,’ Magda cruelly tells them. ‘He’s not allowed

to come here any more.’2 She herself has begun drinking heavily and hitting

the night spots—a world of chrome, black leather, and subdued lights. She frequents

cabarets where the stand-up comics make fun of her own husband. Admiral Raeder’s

adjutant is drinking in one such club when Magda utters a boozy invitation to him to

share her bar-stool. After a flurry of indiscretions about her marital problems, she

invites the navy captain and his pals back to her home.3 Five years later, when Goebbels

snarls in his famous Total War speech about ‘the nightclub crowd who crawl from one

bar to the next,’ there Magda—seated in the front row—has no doubt whatever

who is meant by that.4

Joseph Goebbels thought he had friends, as Lida Baarova would sadly remark years

later: but he had none. Behind his back Karl Hanke starts the sniggering rumour that

in the street confrontation early in 1937 Lida’s lover Gustav Fröhlich had actually

478 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH

socked Goebbels: improbable though it is—given that the minister throws men into

concentration camp just for their opinions—the story sweeps Germany and delights

foreign capitals.5 A cabaret artiste guffaws, ‘We’d all like to be fröhlich sometime!’—

the word means contented. Schacht calls the minister’s affairs a public scandal.6

Himmler complains to Hitler that he has never liked the Goebbels genus, but has so

far kept his views to himself: ‘Now he’s the most hated man in Germany,’ he said.

There was a time, continues Himmler, when Goebbels used to sound off against the

Jews who sexually coerced their female employees; now the minister is doing the

same himself. ‘It’s obvious,’ adds the Reichsführer, ‘that they are not doing it for love,

but because he’s propaganda minister.’7

Shocked by all this, Hitler orders a watch kept on Goebbels’ former girlfriend

Lida Baarova. Gestapo limousines cruise up and down outside her rented villa in

Grunewald. But Goebbels makes no overt effort to contact her.

During the four dramatic weeks preceding Munich, what he calls his private misère

has receded into the background. For four more weeks he does not see Magda at all.

On the verge of a nervous breakdown he resorts to subterfuge to see Lida. He directs

Hilde Körber to take Lida to the theatre, and feasts his eyes upon her from a

few rows away. He phones Hilde repeatedly to ask how Lida is. He sees the Nuremberg

rally as a welcome distraction from ‘dumb thoughts,’ evidently meaning suicide

because the next day, after talking a party official out of shooting himself over a silly

blunder, he remarks grimly in his diary: ‘We all make silly blunders.’8 He

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