BOOKS OF THE DAY
Minister for Propaganda
THIS book consists of extracts from the diary of a young German who worked as a Press Officer for the Minister of Propaganda from the end of 1940 until the end of the War, except for the year 1942 which Semmler spent as a soldier in Stahngrad and elsewhere on the Eastern Front. Semmler was scarcely twenty-seven when he embarked upon the work directly under Goebbels ; the entries in his diary ring true and show the steady disillusionment of a fairly ordinary young man who was neither brilliant nor brutal. Setrunler's notes provide useful and first-hand confirmation of a number of facts with which we are becoming familiar, such, for instance as the consternation in Berlin when Hess disappeared to England in 1941 and the relief and surprise over the poor use to which the incident was put by British propaganda. On the other hand the diary shows that Goebbels had considerable respect for many later activities of the B.B.C. and an astonishing admiration for Churchill and Roosevelt. It is well known that Hides and Goebbels attached a quite mystical importance to Roosevelt's death. "His (Goebbels's) face went pale and then he exclaimed, 'This is the turning-point '," and telephoned to Hitler to announce that it was like the death of the Czarina which had saved Frederick the Great in the Seven Years' War.
The Semmler diary adds to the story of the shocking and ridiculous feuds between the various Nazi chiefs, among whom it is impossible to find a couple of reliable friends in iniquity ; there was no honour even among thieves. The battle between Goring and Goebbels over Horcher's restaurant is a good case in point ; it is interesting that Goebbels only won by half although Goring's stock had declined so much by 1943; in other words Goring was able te save Horcher by turning the place into a Luftwaffe, club. Setrunier only records Goring's threat to do so, but the threat was actually carried out. In a conversation on December 12th, 1941, Goebbels slimmed up his own chief services to the National Scicialist Cause with great accuracy. National Socialism began as a Bavarian petit- bourgeois revolt ; it was transformed into something which also appealed to the industrial Rhineland and to the key city of Berlin, thanks to the efforts of Goebbels, but—and this he did not admit— quite as much thanks to the murdered Gregor Strasser. His other contributions Goebbels enumerated on this occasion as the working out of the style and technique of the Party's public ceremonies, and his creation of the Fiihrer myth. Here history will concur that this cruelly brilliant little man, warped by his deformity, was without a rival. If he borrowed some of D'Annunzio's gestures, it was hp who perfected the potency of political ritual. Even if one could iinmunise oneself against his methods it was terrifying to feel the effect upon others of the banners of power and glory, the rhythmic intonation of patriotic chants, the organised applause. I can never
forget the imposing farce of Maikowski's state funeral (the Storm Trooper "victim of Bolshevism" who had been shot by other Nazis on January 3oth, 1933), and how one emerged from Berlin Cathedral to find a gigantic Nazi procession marching past and the voice of Goebbels crying out passionately, "Germany awake ! " Berlin policemen, who were probably Socialists for the first time, involun- tarily raised their arms in the Nazi salute. As for the myth of the Fiihrer, one of Sernmler's most interesting entries shows that, if Goebbels helped to create it, he', too, was its slave. On June 6th, 1944, Semmler notes that" whenever Goebbels goes to headquarters he starts off full of distrust of the Fiihrer's genius, full of irritation, criticism and hard words. Each time he is determined to tell Hitler just what he thinks. What happens in their talks I don't know, but every time that Goebbels returns from these visits he is full of admiration for the Fiihrer and exudes an optimism which infects us all." How easily this might be Ciano complaining of Mussolini, except that Ciano did not find the optimism infectious. The fact is that Serrunler's diary belies the English title under which it appears. Goebbels was far from being the man next to Hitler. • Semmler states that Hitler did all he could to avoid Goebbels. He notes on December 12th, 1941, that "Hitler's in- timates, especially Bormann, do all they can to increase the distance between them." Even Dietrich, who was technically subordinate to the Minister of Propaganda, as chief Press officer to Hitler con- sistently flouted Goebbels. When Goebbels tried to urge the neces- sity of making peace with Russia upon Hitler his memorandum on the subject never got beyond Bormann.
Joseph Goebbels was the only pre-1933 Nazi leader who was really intelligent ; I venture to disagree with Mr. McLachlan's excellent preface in believing that if he had appeared before the Nuremberg Tribunal he would have been far cleverer than Goering but perhaps less impressive. In what did he believe? Nothing emerges positively but his mad hatred of the Jews. Mr. McLachlan reminds us that even at the end he foresaw a posthumous triumph for Hitler and himself. "Publication of this diary and similar docaments," writes Mr. McLachlan, "should help to remind Europe of this danger." With regard to Goebbels's own diaries which are here described as lost—" probably burnt during the last days of the siege of Berlin" —it should perhaps be pointed Out that a section wak.- published much earlier and was among the sources used by Konrad Heiden in his invaluable books on Hitler and National Socialism.
The translation of Sermnler's diary is very readable, though it might have been improved if more 'trouble had been taken to anglicise the German order of the words in the sentences. And surely the English for acht Tagen is not "eight days" but' a week." Whoever says, "I did so-and-so eight days ago "? Anyway we mean seven days when the Germans say eight.
ELIZABETH WISKEMANN.
Previous page
