8.

In late December 1941, Harald Quandt returned to the paratrooper base in Dessau after his first stint on the eastern front. He wasn’t happy. Near Leningrad’s front line, Harald’s battalion had been deployed as ground infantry rather than dropping in behind enemy lines as usual. The carnage he witnessed on the battlefield had left him rattled and disillusioned. He spent New Year’s Eve with the Goebbelses and their movie star guests at the minister’s country estate north of Berlin. As everyone sat around the large dining table, they reflected on the events of the past year. Goebbels talked to his guests about the prospect of imminent victory. Harald suddenly interrupted his stepfather: “That’s all nonsense. The war . . . will last at least two more years.” Goebbels shot to his feet and began shouting at Harald. The twenty-year-old paratrooper stood his ground. The clash escalated, so much so that Magda had to summon all her strength to hold Goebbels back from her son. People had been executed for far less insubordination.

Not Harald, of course. Over the next year, he was continually deployed across war-torn Europe. He contracted jaundice in occupied France, where he was sent on mine-laying missions. In late July 1942, he returned home to Berlin on convalescent leave. He told his stepfather “interesting things” about the Wehrmacht’s preparations in anticipation of a possible British attempt to establish a second front. Harald and his comrades were still eager to fight the British. “They have a special rage against them, because the constant waiting prevents them from having any vacation or leisure time. It would be desirable that the English, if they want to come at all, come as soon as possible. Our soldiers are ready to give them a warm and cordial welcome,” Goebbels wrote in his diary.

But the British didn’t come, not yet. In mid-October 1942, Harald returned to the eastern front. He was much looking forward to his next deployment and had “vigorously” resisted being assigned to the reserves. Magda and Goebbels worried about his return to combat. They prayed that he would “get through the coming difficult mission safe and sound.” He was posted near Rzhev this time, west of Moscow, in the midst of a fourteen-month battle around the city, which had already taken the lives of millions of German and Soviet soldiers. The body count was so high, the front had become known as the “Rzhev meat grinder.” And Harald was “living more dangerously than anyone else,” according to a war comrade. Harald would go out alone at night on reconnaissance missions to scout enemy positions, and he ran into “trouble with Soviet partisans” at Rzhev, Goebbels told Hitler.

On February 23, 1943, Goebbels received a letter from Harald, thanking his stepfather for a package he had sent to the Rzhev front, which was stuffed with propaganda. Harald flattered Goebbels by praising his latest speeches. Goebbels had given his most fateful address to date just five days earlier. On February 2, the Wehrmacht and its allies had surrendered at Stalingrad, and the Red Army seized the moment to advance farther west. Their long approach to Berlin began. “Total war” was declared, now that battle had turned against Hitler and his troops. On the evening of February 18, Goebbels took the stage at Berlin’s Sportpalast in front of thousands, as he had done so many times before. High above him hung a massive red-and-white banner bearing the regime’s new propaganda motto in full caps: TOTAL WAR — SHORTEST WAR. For the tens of millions of Germans listening, Goebbels conjured a phantasmagoric scenario: hordes of Soviet soldiers approaching, followed by “Jewish liquidation commandos,” all of them reducing Germany to mass starvation, terror, and anarchy. At the end of his speech, the minister asked his audience: “Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want it to be more total and more radical than we can even imagine today?” The crowd went wild. It was pure, raw hatred, stoked into flame.

In the middle of the speech, when speaking of the Jews, Goebbels let slip the word “eradication”; he quickly replaced it with “suppression.” He didn’t want to draw attention to what was already taking place: the systematic murder of millions of Jews in extermination camps that had been secretly built across Nazi-occupied Poland. One year earlier, during a conference led by Reinhard Heydrich in a villa on Berlin’s Wannsee Lake, “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question” had been discussed to ensure that all responsible regime departments cooperated in its implementation. “A fairly barbaric procedure, not to be described in any detail, is being used here, and not much is left of the Jews themselves,” Goebbels confided to his diary.

Joseph Goebbels giving his “Total War” speech at Berlin’s Sportpalast, February 18, 1943.

Bundesarchiv, Scherl