Adjutant of evil
Bruce Anderson
GOEBBELS by David Irving Focal Point, f25, pp. 722 The 20th century's principal political legacy is the evil genius. There had been mass-murderers before: Tamburlaine, Ghengis Khan, Chaka; but these were the savage offspring of demographic convul- sion, no more responsible for their actions than the plague rats were.
Then came Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao. A new form of evil entered human affairs; outstanding intellects, with great resources of personality and equal political panache, dedicated to the destruction of tens of mil- lions of their fellow human beings.
So a biography of one crucial adjutant of evil, Joseph Goebbels, is to be welcomed. David Irving is a scholar of distinction, who can claim the credit for making Goebbels's diaries generally available. He has pro- duced a worlcmanlike trawl through the archives, which will prove an invaluable quarry for subsequent historians who wish to cut deeper. Mr Irving himself is not interested in deep exploration. A picture of Goebbels does emerge, aided by first-class photographs. One shows him half-mincing, half-strutting in Hitler's wake; a posture Charlie Chaplin could not have bettered. Goebbels was the classic seven-stone weak- ling: 5 foot 4 inches tall, with a club foot. Born in 1897, he spent the first world war — the defining experience for Germans of his generation — in a miasma of onanistic pseudo-intellectuality. Then again, crippled dwarves were of little use in the Second Reich's war effort. Thereafter, he drifted into politics. From the beginning, resent- ment was at the fore. He disliked anyone taller, more attractive, less crippled, richer, more successful with women than himself (when in power, however, there were sexu- al conquests. Pace Colonel Bogey, he was as lecherous as a monkey). But the rancour explains his confession in his diary that he hated the human race.
Then he met Hitler: a fatal conjunction. Mr Irving does not try to explain Hitler's magnetism; he may feel that it is self- evident. As for Goebbels, born a Catholic, religious by temperament — which would have reinforced Nietzsche in his condem- nation of slave-morality — Hitler became his God-substitute.
This never prevented him from criticising the Fiihrer, but Goebbels criticised every- body. Mr Irving points out that Goebbels often regarded Hitler as infirm of purpose. As the book also makes clear, the diaries, intended to form the basis of an eventual publication, are self-censored. But many impartial observers, including an American ambassador, William Dodd, thought that Goebbels was a more compelling orator than his master, and had a better intellect. Given Goebbels's self-belief, it would seem extraordinary if it had never occurred to him that six inches taller and with two whole feet, he might have been the Fiihrer and Hitler the acolyte.
Hitler's attitude to Goebbels fluctuated over the years. In 1939/40, the Fiihrer had to devote valuable time to sorting out his propaganda chiefs marital problems; as a result, Goebbels was excluded from the inner circle. But as the war drew on, and victory gave way to failure, Goebbels's importance grew. At the worst moments, he could restore Hitler's self-belief, while he himself pressed ahead with his goal of being 'the architect of the German soul' through total war.
In other books, Mr Irving has argued that Hitler never ordered the Holocaust: it was a spontaneous initiative by his subordi- nates. In this latest work, Mr Irving offers further evidence, which both develops and refutes his thesis. It is clear that as late as 1941, Hitler had no conception of the net- work of extermination camps which were to incinerate European Jewry. He kept telling his subordinates to persecute Jews, but to leave a final solution until the war's suc- cessful conclusion, when the Jews, the churches et al would be dealt with; other- wise, there would be disruption which might damage the war effort. A compro- mise was struck, by which German Jews would be deported to the East, where many of them would fall victim to the local inhabitants, or to starvation; an outcome as welcome to Hitler as to his propaganda minister. But this was too ad hoc: there was chaos on the railway lines and the local gauleiters objected that some Jewish hardy spirits were joining in guerrilla warfare. In this context, the infamous Wannsee Con- ference can convincingly be portrayed as a bureaucratic attempt to impose order on chaos, but it would be absurd to absolve Hitler. He merely had more important topics of concern, such as winning the war.
Its subject-matter apart, there is one moment when this book becomes repug- nant: an attempted moral equivalence between Goebbels and Churchill:
Like Goebbels . . . Churchill had a country funk-hole at Dytchley [sic] .. . where he repaired whenever . . . London was to be the Luftwaffe's target.
Mr Irving ought to be horse-whipped for that remark.
Whipped, not censored: as various stylistic disfigurements in this otherwise adequately-written book make clear, its idiom was designed for the American mar- ket, where its publication has now been prohibited. That ban disfigures the intellec- tual life of the United States; it is also a posthumous victory for Nazi-ism. Goebbels did not only employ monsters: he also used inadequates. Some of their spiritual descendants now work for American pub- lishing houses.
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