Inside the G

Goebbels' diaries: mad hope amid a collapsing Third Reich

Driven by a hunger for information about the once seldom-discussed days of the Third Reich, West Germans keep devouring books about their Nazi past. Latest object of their fascination is Joseph Goebbels, the fiery orator and master of the Big Lie who served for twelve years as the Nazi Minister of Propaganda. Almost as soon as excerpts from his 1945 diary were published late last year, they shot onto the West German bestseller lists.* Because Goebbels apparently intended to use this diary primarily as source material for a book, he never took the time to edit or rewrite his entries.

Thus, although they add few facts to what is already known about the period, the diaries, covering Feb. 27 through April 9, convey a sharp sense of immediacy and give West Germans an intimate glimpse of how one of the brutal regime's leaders viewed the Nazi Goetterdaemmerung.

With each day's entry, Goebbels dutifully records the latest evidence of the Reich's impending collapse. Cologne is "a great city which has been turned into a heap of ruins," Dessau "a sheet of flame and totally destroyed. Yet another German city which has been largely flattened." The air war has become "a crazy orgy. We are totally defenseless against it. The Reich will gradually be turned into a complete desert." After receiving word on March 19 that Wuerzburg has been bombed, Goebbels laments: "So the last beautiful German city still intact has now gone. Thus we say a melancholy farewell to a past which will never return." He observes that "the fate of the Reich sometimes seems to hang by a thread," and speculates darkly that the Allies will treat Germany "like a Negro colony in Africa."

Accounts that German civilians have welcomed the advancing Allies infuriate him. "I cannot understand the fact that hardly any resistance was offered in Cologne," he complains. Especially painful is the report from his home town. "The news that Rheydt received the Americans with white flags makes me blush," he admits. "One of these white flags flew from the house where I was born." Denouncing the "cynicism of the Americans" for singing God Bless America at the end of a service in Cologne Cathedral, he writes on April 2: "What humiliations have we still to suffer before the moment of deliverance comes?"

Goebbels clearly blames the Wehr-macht's generals for Germany's plight, accusing them of lacking imagination and leadership. "It is a shame that the Fuehrer has so few respectable military men on his staff." His most venomous blasts are reserved for Luftwaffe Boss Hermann Goring. Demanding that "the Fuehrer [turn] Goring into a man again," Goebbels exclaims: "Bemedaled idiots and vain perfumed coxcombs have no place in our war leadership." Thanks to Goring's uninterrupted record of incompetence, argues Goebbels, the Luftwaffe has failed to wield the air superiority essential for victory.

Goebbels' petty scorn spares practically none of his colleagues. But his most vile language is aimed at the Jews, especially after he learns that some of them have been given public posts in Allied-occupied parts of Germany. He snarls: "Anyone in a position to do so should kill these Jews off like rats. In Germany, thank God, we have already done a fairly complete job. I trust that the world will take its cue from this."

Even Hitler is not immune. Although Goebbels records frequently that "the sight of the Fuehrer is always thrilling," he is growing impatient with the dictator's refusal to take advice. Particularly vexing is Hitler's reluctance to try to lift the country's faltering morale by broadcasting a speech. The propaganda chief reminds Hitler that in the dark hours after Dunkirk, Churchill rallied Britons with a moving address, as did Stalin during the attack on Moscow. Yet Hitler remains adamant, and a dejected Goebbels writes: "The Fuehrer has an aversion to the microphone which is quite incomprehensible. It is not right to leave the people without a word from him now."

Yet Goebbels refuses to concede that all is lost. His spirit soars at any sign of trouble on the Allied side; he cheers at reports of labor unrest and food shortages in the U.S. and Britain. He goes on at length about how the Allied forces will be weakened by a renewed U-boat campaign and by the deployment of the Luftwaffe's first jet warplanes. Immersing himself in accounts of the Punic Wars and biographies of Prussia's Frederick the Great, he searches for historical examples of nations that averted disaster at the very last moment and concludes: "There is no question of any doubt in my mind regarding the possibility of victory for our cause."

While a complete military triumph seems out of the question, he feels that Berlin could negotiate a settlement with Moscow ("Stalin need take no account of his public opinion"), thus freeing German forces to contend with the Allies in the West. This was probably the master propagandist's final delusion. As Soviet tanks rumbled through Berlin on May 1, 1945 --21 days after his last entry and the day following Hitler's suicide in the Fiihrer-bunker--Goebbels and his wife Magda methodically poisoned their six children and then killed themselves. -

* An English translation, Final Entries 1945: The Diaries of Joseph Goebbels, will be published this spring in New York City by Putnam and in London by Martin Seeker & Warburg.

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