Joseph Goebbels, Life and Death

422 Pages·2009·14.424 MB·English

by  Toby Thacker

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
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First published 2009 by
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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