Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

Howard B Gotlieb, director of the Mugar Memorial Library at Boston Universitydrew my attention to their collection of the former Berlin journalist Bella Fromm’spapers. Archivist Margaret Petersen and assistant archivist Marilyn B Kann at theHoover Library at Stanford University, Ca., allowed me to see their precious troveof original Goebbels diaries as well as the political-warfare papers of Daniel Lernerand Fritz Theodor Epstein. The Seeley Mudd Library of Princeton University let mesee their precious Adolf Hitler collection, although they were not, alas, permitted toopen to me their Allen Dulles papers which contain several files on Goebbels and theJuly 1944 bomb plot. Bernard R Crystal of the Butler Library of Columbia Univer-12 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHsity, N.Y., found several Goebbels items tucked away in the HÊ R Knickerbocker collection.Dr Jay W Baird, of Miami University, Ohio, volunteered access to hisconfidential manuscripts on Werner Naumann, whom he had interviewed at lengthon tape in 1969 and 1970; the manuscripts are currently held at the IfZ, which failedto make them available despite authorisation from Baird. The late Marianne Freifrauvon Weizsäcker, mother of the later President Richard von Weizsäcker, provided tome access to her husband’s then unpublished diaries and letters (later published byLeonidas Hill). The late Freda Rössler, née Freiin von Fircks, talked to me at lengthabout her murdered husband Karl Hanke, Goebbels’ closest colleague, rival in love,and gauleiter of Breslau, and supplied copies of his letters and other materials.Major Charles E Snyder, USAF (retired), gave me a set of the precious originalproofs of the moving Goebbels family photos reproduced in this work; as in Hitler’sWarÊ (London, 1991) some colour photographs are from the unique collection ofunpublished portraits taken by Walter Frentz, Hitler’s HQ film cameraman, to whommy thanks for entrusting the original transparencies to me. Other photographs weresupplied by the U.S. National Archives—I scanned around 40,000 prints from itsmagnificent collection of glass plates taken by Heinrich Hoffmann’s cameramen—and by Leif Rosas, Annette Castendyk (daughter of Goebbels’ first great love AnkaStalherm’s), and Irene Prange, who also entrusted to me Goebbels’ early correspondencewith Anka. Among those whom I was fortunate to interview were Hitler’ssecretary Christa Schroeder, his adjutants Nicolaus von Below, Gerhard Engel,Karl-Jesco von Puttkamer, his press staff officials Helmut Sündermann and HeinzLorenz, his minister of munitions Albert Speer, and Goebbels’ senior aide ImmanuelSchäffer, all of whom have since died, as well as Traudl Junge, Otto Günsche, both ofHitler’s staff, Gunter d’Alquèn, the leading S.S. journalist attached to the propagandaministry, film director Leni Riefenstahl—who privately showed me her productionsof the era—and film star Lida Baarova (now Lida Lundwall). I am gratefulto Thomas Harlan for talking to me about his mother the late film star Hilde Körber,and to Ribbentrop’s secretary Reinhard Spitzy and Admiral Raeder’s adjutant thelate Captain Herbert Friedrichs for anecdotes about Joseph and Magda Goebbels.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 13Gerta von Radinger (widow of Hitler’s personal adjutant Alwin Broder Albrecht),reminisced with me and provided copies of Albrecht’s letters to her, and of her correspondencewith Magda. Richard Tedor provided to me copies of rare volumes ofGoebbels’ articles and speeches. Dr K Frank Korf gave me supplemental informationabout his own papers in Hoover Library. Fritz Tobias supplied important papersfrom his archives about the Reichstag fire and trial, and notes on his interviews withwitnesses who have since died. Israeli researcher Doron Arazi gave me several usefulleads on material in German archives. Ulrich Schlie pointed out to me to key Goebbelspapers on foreign policy buried in the German foreign ministry archives. Dr HelgeKnudsen corresponded with me in 1975 about the authenticity (or otherwise) ofRudolf Semler’s ‘diary’, whose publication he prepared in 1947. I corresponded interalia with Willi Krämer, Goebbels’ deputy in the Reichspropagandaleitung; GünterKaufmann, chief of the Reichspropagandaamt (RPA, Reich Propaganda Agency) inVienna; and Wilhelm Ohlenbusch, who directed propaganda in occupied Poland.Wolf Rüdiger Hess and his mother Ilse Hess gave me exclusive access to the privatepapers of his late father, Rudolf Hess, in Hindelang including correspondence withGoebbels. The late Dr Hans-Otto Meissner discussed with me Ello Quandt and othermembers of Goebbels’ entourage, whom he interviewed for his 1950s biography ofMagda Goebbels. Peter Hoffmann, William Kingsford professor of history at McGillUniversity in Montreal, reviewed my chapter on ‘Valkyrie’, as did Lady Diana Mosleythose pages relating to her own meetings with Goebbels in the Thirties; RobinDenniston, to whom I owe so much for twenty years, read through the whole manuscript,offered suggestions and advised me to temper criticism with charity moreoften than I had.DAVID IRVINGLONDON 199414 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHPrologue: The Mark of CainARE man’s intellectual misfortunes visited upon him before birth, like someineradicable mark of Cain, or is he born free of all attributes?Some basic instincts are inherent, buried deep within the cerebral lobes. That muchis clear. Xenophobia; the urge to mate; the instincts to survive and kill, these are asmuch part of the human mechanism as the escapement is part of the clock. But howis it with the more subtle qualities which, we hope, distinguish man from the lowerorders—his powers to persuade and lead, to cheat and deceive? In short, does theinfant come upon Earth unable to avoid the destiny already implanted in the neuronesof his brain? Is it a genetic lottery? Here, a minute virus ordains that this manshall compose nine symphonies; there, an excess of dopamine will have him hearingthe devil’s whispered commands for the remainder of an adult life that may well becurtailed by the hangman’s rope.Every man has some say in his own fortunes. The tangle of nerves and ganglia is notjust a rack which passively stores data and impressions. It is open to each brain’sowner to work upon it, to devise by intellectual training the swiftest path between itand the muscles and voice over which it is to be master.From the convolutions in the brain’s left frontal lobe springs forth the voice thatcommands other men to hate, to march, to dance, to die. Moreover, man can conditionthis controlling instrument. Man is what he eats, that is true. But his brain ismore than that—it is what he has seen about him too.