Dr. Goebbels and his Ministry
 
Background: Hans Fritzsche, the author of this essay, was a leading
Nazi radio broadcaster. Here he praises Goebbels and outlines the nature
of the newly-founded Reich Ministry for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda.
He makes the interesting argument that Goebbels is promoting a higher
form of artistic freedom in attempting to guide art from his position
as propaganda minister.
The picture of Goebbels is taken from the book. The picture
of the Propaganda Ministry comes from a 1937 postcard.
The source: Hans Fritzsche, "Dr. Goebbels und sein Ministerium,"
in Hans Heinz Mantau-Sadlia, Deutsche Führer Deutsches Schicksal.
Das Buch der Künder und Führer des dritten Reiches (Munich:
Verlag Max Steinebach, 1934), pp. 330-342.
Dr. Goebbels and his Ministry
by Hans Fritzsche
It takes only five minutes to walk from Postdamer Straße 109 in
Berlin to the Wilhelmplatz. Five minutes from the more than modest first
business office of the newly-named National Socialist Gauleiter
of Berlin, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, to the Leopold Palace, the current headquarters
of the Reich Ministry for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda.
It took Dr. Joseph Goebbels six and one half years to cover
the distance. It led him through the middle of the Red hell of
Berlin.
Dr. Goebbels came to Berlin in 1926 on Adolf Hitler's orders
to reorganize the Berlin party, which was at the edge of collapse.
He came alone. He came as a fighter who had proved himself against
the French, separatists and Communists in three years in the
Rhine and Ruhr areas. He came without support; he had to build
his own support.
 The
Red flag flew over Berlin, and it seemed absurd to believe that
the Red domination of the city could even be threatened.
A few years later the Red lords of Berlin had to build their
courage against Adolf Hitler's ambassador, who had come alone,
with the slogan "Berlin Remains Red!" It was too late
by then, for the Gauleiter of the National Socialist German
Workers Party, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, had already conquered Red
Berlin.
The NSDAP won twelve seats in the Reichstag in the May, 1928 election.
Dr. Goebbels was one of the twelve. Adolf Hitler named him the National
Propaganda Leader of the NSDAP. Two and a half years later, on 14 September
1930, the National Socialists came to the Reichstag with 107 men. And
on 30 January 1933, after the unique evening mass meeting of hundreds
of thousands, Dr. Goebbels could with pleasure tell the newly-named Reich
Chancellor that the Berlin movement had organized the event.
When Reich President von Hindenburg appointed the National
Propaganda Leader of the NSDAP the Minister for People's Enlightenment
and Propaganda, this man who already had behind him the battles
in the Rhineland and Berlin as well as enormous accomplishments
in the party leadership, was the youngest minister: only 36!
*
It is but five minutes from the dark and smoky business office of 1926,
which had the mocking name opium den, to the Leopold Palace. The road
took Dr. Joseph Goebbels through a sea of poison and hate and lies. Each
old follower of Adolf Hitler, each old National Socialist, had to withstand
battles that no young party member will have to endure, no matter how
long he lives. But no one had to face as much hate as Dr. Goebbels.
It was almost open season on Dr. Goebbels during the six-and-a-half year
battle for Berlin. At first he was called the "Chief Crook of Berlin"
by the Communists — a title he accepted without embarrassment and
made a title of honor. Soon the middle class newspapers and speakers declared
open season on him too. He is a man of sharp phrases and pitiless language.
The danger he represented had long been recognized. The entire artillery
of the political battle, for which any means is justified, was turned
on him.
It also seemed easy to fight a man who was under the constant
fire of the state prosecutors of the day. There seemed no risk
in dumping piles of filth on the editor of a newspaper that held
the record for the number of times it was banned. No German newspaper
was in fact banned as often as Berlin's "Der Angriff."
The results of the unprecedentedly bitter battle the organs
of the Weimar state and the parties were different than they
had expected: He hardened his weapons in the fire of this battle,
and the masses his enemies attempted to mobilize against him
instead joined him. It is not surprising that those who feared
the oncoming National Socialism attacked with poison and gall.
It is surprising that this man, mocked, ridiculed and insulted
as no one else, did not fall into deep despair and spiritual
misery after those years of struggle.
What most surprised his opponents is his disarming honesty.
One accused him with contempt of being a propagandist, of being
dishonest. The charge was loaded with the contempt and accusations
of dishonesty that had been earned by years of bad propaganda.
What did Dr. Goebbels do?
He said: "Propaganda? Certainly! Good propaganda for
a good cause!" We make propaganda not in the pay of forces
or men in the background, but rather we make propaganda for our own
honest convictions. We advertise for our own ideal, and therefore
we fight using all good means to make good propaganda to win
the soul of our people."
Eugen Hadamovsky, the Reichssendeleiter of German radio, put it
this way: "Under the brilliant leadership of Dr. Joseph Goebbels,
the master of political propaganda, the neglected weapon of German politics
became a creative art."
The feared sharpness of Dr. Goebbels's language was a result
of his honesty. At a time when the word "lie,"or even
the direct term "liar" were thought unrefined and unusable
in the columns of the German press, although they carried lies
in their columns, Dr. Goebbels did not hesitate to call one who
lied a liar. When it is necessary to call things by their proper
name, when it is necessary to expose persons, then things are
called by their name and people are presented in such a way that
even a dog will no longer take a bone from them. The journalist
and speaker Dr. Goebbels did not change his impolite methods,
even when he faced a certain ban or a certain legal process.
His honesty and determined stubbornness use a language and
manner of expression that display crystal clear clarity and irresistible
logic. His clarity of thought won him the respect of international
journalists in Geneva in 1933, certainly the toughest, most hard-boiled
audience. It is impressive that, after Minister Dr. Goebbels'
speech in Geneva, the correspondent of the Paris "Journal"
wrote: "Dr. Goebbels combines German mysticism with Latin
logic."
In everything there is a good portion of humor. Dr. Goebbels drew from
humor the sharpness of irony, once the scourge of Red Berlin. And satire,
too, came from humor, which drove many an opponent to lose his head.
A flood of clever ideas came from his humor. Remember, for example, Dr.
Goebbels' humorous success with Brüning! Dr. Goebbels had challenged
the then Reich Chancellor over and over again to a debate.
Brüning preferred to speak in carefully prepared meetings. Dr. Goebbels
had a recording of the Brüning's radio speech in Königsberg,
and took it to the Berlin Sport Palace to debate an opponent who was unwilling
to appear in any other way.
Those are the weapons that served the faithful National Socialism
of Dr. Joseph Goebbels in the battle for Berlin and the battle
for Germany. Armed with these weapons, he succeeded everywhere
he attacked. If one asked a journalist, regardless of the camp
in which he stood, who was the best German journalist, one would
get the answer, however reluctant: Dr. Goebbels. In an era when
hundreds of German newspapers had given upon the familiar old
institution of the lead article, since its old platitudes no
longer found readers, Dr. Goebbels wrote his lead articles —
and they were read. He wrote in a language that captivated the
reader, who otherwise looked only for sensation. If one asked
for the name of a great speaker in the Reichstag, honest people
answered that no one since Friedrich Naumann so held the attention
of the Reichstag as Dr. Joseph Goebbels.
That is what is unique about him: Dr. Goebbels says what he
has to say in the way that it must be said to those to whom he
is speaking. Hundreds, even thousands of politicians travel about
giving the only speech than can give, using the only language
that they know how to use — regardless of whether they stand
in the Reichstag or before a mass meeting or in a political salon.
Dr. Goebbels speaks every language. He is at home in the north
of Berlin as he is in the west of Berlin. He can be understood
by the average man and the educated. He speaks to the people
in mass meetings, to the representatives in the Reichstag. Once,
long before the beginning of the church's renewal at the time
when the ecclesia militans was just beginning to awake,
I heard him speak to a small circle of Catholic and Protestant
clergy who were concerned with the political persecution they
were encountering in ministering to S.A. and Stahlhelm units.
Dr. Goebbels, the "noisy agitator," spoke to these
clergy of both confessions with a quietness and depth that gave
these pastors new strength to endure all the consequences of
holding services for the Brown Shirts and Stahlhelm men. They
were again determined to stand in the pulpit and speak openly
to the needs of the day.
 This man, uniquely
successful as the propaganda chief of Hitler's party, is now the propaganda
minister of Reich Chancellor Hitler.
The official building he took over, the old Leopold Palace,
had long been the seat of the Press Office of the Reich government.
It was dark and musty. Dark carpets and curtains carried the
dust of years. Only the Garden Room was cheerful and bright.
But for years the representatives of the German press had heard
there only the peculiar wishes of changing Reich governments;
it was not a place with pleasant memories.
After Dr. Goebbels had been in office for a few days, the
dusty old hangings had been removed from the majority of the
rooms, and simple, but friendly furniture filled bright rooms.
When Dr. Goebbels spoke for the first time to representatives
of the German press in the Garden Room of the Leopold Palace,
no one failed to see that the evil spirit of a press hostile
to the people had been forever driven out.
"There are two ways to make a revolution," the newly-named
Reich Minister said. "One can fire at the opponent with
machine guns until he recognizes the superiority of those who
have the machine guns. That is the simplest way. One can also
transform a nation through a revolution of the spirit, not destroying
the opponent, but winning him over. We National Socialists have
gone the second way, and will continue on it. Our first task
in this ministry will be to win the whole people for the new
state. We want to replace liberal thinking with a sense of community
that includes the whole people."
Most memorable, however, was a style of speaking never before
been heard in this room: "Our revolution will never stop."
Thus Dr. Goebbels began his task of being the constant intermediary
between the National Socialist Reich government that sprang from
the people, and the people. At every moment and in each individual
measure, the Reich Ministry for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda
should maintain the living relationship between government and
people. "We have not become a minister to be above the people,
but rather we are now more than ever the servant of the people."
The Propaganda Ministry is not bureaucratic administrative apparatus,
but rather an spiritual center of power that stays in constant touch with
the whole people on political, spiritual, cultural, and economic matters.
It is the mouth and ear of the Reich government.
*
Dr. Goebbels laid his hand on all the powers that once made
common front against him and against the idea of Adolf Hitler
that he represented. On radio, the press, literature, theater,
film. On the whole enormous apparatus of propaganda that once
in the Reich capital used the whole of its enormous power to
make the unknown but dangerous Dr. Goebbels from the Rhineland
into a dreamer and crackpot, the subject of public scorn. The
same enormous apparatus that some others, using enormous millions
had attempted to influence without having any real success; for
decades only one had dominated it, the Jewish intellect.
This multifaceted apparatus of modern propaganda, which Dr.
Goebbels had faced without the weapon of money, only with the
strength of the idea even though the struggle seemed foolish,
fell into the hands of the people that Dr. Goebbels, as a colleague
of the Führer, had mobilized against this citadel of Jewish
power.
Now he can begin the reconstruction of German spiritual life
after the foreign elements have been eliminated.
Even during the very first beginnings of the work on building
the ministry, the new Reich Ministry for People's Enlightenment
and Propaganda could give the first evidence of what it was capable
of: The organization of the first Day of National Labor, 1 May
1933. Although its success was surpassed by 1 May 1934, Dr. Goebbels
showed then for the first time that once the path was made clear
for National Socialism, not hundreds of thousands, but rather millions
could gather at a single place when it called.
Relatively little had to be changed in 1934 on the Day of
Labor after the example of 1 May 1933. Organizationally, it had
been done right the first time. The tradition had been created,
and after a year one could assume that the content German national
holiday needed only to be deepened. The waves of the first May
mass meeting rolled over the many unions and parties. 1 May awoke
old May customs in all the German Gaue had gave renewed
life to the almost decayed German cultural treasure. Department
II, Propaganda (under Ministerialrat Haegert) in the Propaganda
Ministry has the task of carrying out such mass meetings. One
might call this department the general staff of practical propaganda.
But that is only part of the broad domain of Department II. To
name only a few areas, it includes positive propaganda for the
worldview, the structure of governmental life, youth and sports
questions, economic advertising of every form, agricultural advertising,
propaganda in the area of transportation and education in matters
of public health.
Department III, Radio (Ministerialrat Dreßler-Andreß)
unites the whole of the German radio system.
The radio, once a collection of private broadcasters in which
the influence of the Reich, the states, political parties and
private concerns battled, was united, cleansed and clearly organized.
The radio was not only placed under National Socialist control,
but also reconstructed on National Socialist lines.
The new people's radio has proven that it is able literally to draw a
whole nation to the receiver for some "big events." Occurrences
such as the state visit of the Führer and Reich Chancellor to Hamburg
on 17 August 1934 have shown that the new German radio can make such events
festivals for the whole nation. The radio allowed a whole nation to participate
in the ceremony of the German Reichstag for the deceased Reich President,
and the world followed as the General Field Marshal found his final resting
place on the field of his greatest victory.
A year after Dr. Goebbels had taken the German radio in his hand, it
was possible at noon on the first day of spring that not even three people
could be seen at a major point in Berlin, the Potsdamer Platz, because
the Führer was opening the second great battle for work in Bavaria.
He was speaking to a few thousand, but he spoke over the radio to millions
and millions. The new radio system, even at a time when the economic crisis
had not been completely overcome, was able to win millions of new listeners
and produce millions of new receivers, above all the Volksempfänger
[an inexpensive radio receiver].
Without exaggerating, one can say that there is no country
in the world where the radio is anywhere near as intensive an
intermediary between the government and the people as in Germany.
A true labor of Sisyphus was necessary in the area of the
press. From the chaos of 3500 German newspapers, of which only
120 were National Socialist in 1932, a responsible German press
had to be created.
Department IV, the Press (Ministerialrat Dr. Jahnke) is the
tool of the Propaganda Ministry in this area. It is simultaneously
the Press Office of the Reich government. Its head is the Assistant
Press Chief of the Reich government, State Secretary Walter Funk
of the Reich Ministry for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda.
The destructive effects of the past liberal era had especially
serious effects on the German newspaper system. Anyone, even
foreigners and those foreign to the German spirit, could with
no regard for the people or the state write whatever he wanted
about any political question, even if that which he wrote offered
foreign opponents all possible support and aid.
Bans could not help deal with the general decay of the German
newspaper system. They are only a temporary means to deal with
the worst manifestations. Dr. Goebbels therefore created the
new Editor's Law, which laid the foundation for a complete transformation
of the German newspaper system in the moral, political, and economic
areas. The law gave the German editor major rights, but also
major duties.The German editor is now the representative of the
whole people, and must as such give account for all his actions
and inactions. For the first time in the world, this law makes
the interests of the people and the state the supreme law for
the whole press.
Some foreign newspapers thought this was the end of press
freedom. Within a year, even those abroad realized that true
freedom stabilizes a decent and nationally-conscious journalist
class.
Department IV, which supports the press, holds a daily press
conference. It provides constant information for the never-ending
work of domestic and foreign newspapers, news agencies and correspondents.
It also incorporates the Drahloser Dienst, the news agency
of the German radio that provides all Reich stations with news
and broadcasts as well in four languages over shortwave.
Since the most modern ministry works with the most modern
methods, the Drahtlosen Dienst has an excellent teletype system
that transmits its news to all German stations in a form ready
for broadcast.
Department V (Ministerialrat Dr. Seeger) is responsible for
all matters regarding the film system, the film industry and
film technology.
Department VI (Ministerialrat Laubinger) handles the broad
areas of theater, music and the arts.
Department VII (Ministerialrat Demann) is responsible finally
for defense.
That is the staff that the Reich Minister for People's Enlightenment
and Propaganda called to work closely with the National Socialist
Party leadership. From here come the new slogans for the people,
who are to be formed into a new unity and set to the work of
reconstruction.
It is surprising how rapidly Dr. Goebbels became a cultural
organizer after the years of struggle. He succeeded in bringing
order to the most difficult of all areas of public life, culture,
in the form of the Reich Chamber of Culture.
The Reich Chamber of Culture includes the Reich Chamber of
Film, the Reich Chamber of the Visual Arts, the Reich Chamber
of Theater, the Reich Chamber of Radio, the Reich Chamber of
the Press, the Reich Chamber of Music, and the Reich Chamber
of Literature.
In these chambers, all those German creators of culture are
united in a rational manner and without unnecessary compulsion
in the place where they can most effectively work for cultural
reconstruction.
Speaking to the presidents of the specialized chambers of
the Reich Chamber of Culture, Dr. Goebbels explained: "If
professional thinking is really the great sociological idea of
the Twentieth Century, then Germany is breaking new ground."
Dr. Goebbels discussed the foundation of the National Socialist
state: Art is free, and one may never attempt to replace a lack
of intuition with organization. He warned against bureaucratizing
the Chamber of Culture. He explained its duties in this way:
"It is a fundamental mistake to think that the task of the
Reich Chamber of Culture is to produce art. It cannot, it will
not, and it may not. Its task is to bring culture-creating people
together, to organize them, to remove the restrictions and contradictions
that surface and to assist in administering existing art, the
art being produced today, and the art that will be produced in
the future for the benefit of the German people."
Dr. Goebbels, who came to know writers, journalists, theater
agents, film managers, politicians and so on during the years
of struggle, is at home in these areas. To film producers who
complained about a lack of material, he replied: "There
is no shortage of material, but rather the courage to use it is lacking."
To the press he said: "The more unified the national ability
of a people to concentrate is, the more effective national discipline
will be." Speaking of the tasks of German theater: "We
do not want the pendulum of the times to stop at the door of
the theater, but rather that it strike deep into every artist's soul,
and the artist does not merely see the new era as an unpleasant
but unavoidable necessity, but rather that he understands the time
and sees in it a powerful national drama of historic-artistic
scale, an event that will give impulse, material and drive to
German artists for three or four generations."
Or as he said to booksellers: "As long as the book remains
the privilege of a small, elite class and does not find reception
by the people, one will not be able to speak of real benefits
to the nation through the book."
It is obvious that the creative artist Joseph Goebbels is a bitter enemy
of any form of Kitsch. Where inappropriate means are used, and
where ability is not able to achieve the greatness and dignity of the
task, he intervenes. Dr. Goebbels, the first to expose the presumed objectivity
of creative activity, but rather openly affirms the goal of constantly
serving the whole of the people, is the declared and sworn enemy of incompetence.
He does not want to place the intellectual creations of the nation under
censorship from above. The artist, the writer, each creative artist is
free. He wants to bind them from below; after years of unrestrained influence
streaming in from foreign directions, he wants art to again be rooted
in the soil of the homeland, in the soil of the people. This binding is
no chain, but rather liberation and fruitfulness.
For each German, ethnicity must be the decisive reality. From this ground
and no other, creative artistic and cultural forces must rise. The deeper
art's roots are in the soil of the nation, the greater will be its international
significance.
[Page copyright © 2000 by Randall Bytwerk.
No unauthorized reproduction. My email address is available on the
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