Only ½ Billion for Job Creation
Huge Disappointment/Gereke Explains Scheme (Originally 1.5 Bn. Planned)
– Tägliche Rundschau
Gereke’s Tragi-Comedy
Ambitious Plans – Execution Flops When Capitalists Do Socialism
– Der Angriff
Joseph Goebbels’ telephone rang. Adolf Hitler on the line, a note of alarm in his voice. It had come to his attention that Gottfried Feder, an economic theorist and founding member of the NSDAP, was apparently conspiring with Schleicher. He’d come to Berlin – so close to Christmas! – for that express purpose.
Yet another prominent traitor, then?
Hitler demanded an investigation, so Goebbels sent an ally to the Hotel Excelsior, where Feder had booked a room. Strasser had often stayed there, too. Then, relief: Feder wasn’t in talks with Schleicher. He’d come to the capital for personal reasons. Hitler would be pleased.
The Goebbels were attending a Christmas party for the local branch of the NSDAP, held in the ballroom on Vossstrasse. Joseph gave a short speech in which he declared that the new year would sweep the movement to victory once and for all. Back in their apartment on Reichskanzlerplatz, Magda – who was pregnant again – suddenly complained of feeling unwell.
Joseph Goebbels sent for Magda’s gynaecologist, Professor Walter Stoeckel, who ordered her immediate admission to a private clinic established by the Ida Simons Foundation at the University Women’s Hospital, where Magda had given birth to their daughter Helga in September. The doctor seemed deeply worried. When she learned she’d have to spend Christmas at the clinic, Magda Goebbels cried.
Her husband ended up spending Christmas by himself. How lifeless their apartment seemed, he thought. Goebbels brooded. He suffered. They’d only been married for a year, since late 1931.
They fought often and they made love often. He accepted that Magda worshipped Hitler in her own special way. Once, after the two of them had been brazenly flirting, Goebbels poured out his troubles in his diary. ‘Magda embarrasses herself in front of the boss. I suffer greatly. She is not altogether a lady. Not a wink of sleep all night. Must do something about it. Fear I can’t rely on her fidelity. That would be dreadful.’ And Hitler? Any reproaches? ‘I don’t begrudge the boss a little warmth and loveliness. He gets so little of it.’
Goebbels was feeling deeply lonely. Elsewhere in his diary he’d written: ‘I have few friends in the party. Only Hitler, almost. They all envy my success and my popularity.’ A while back, the SS, under Heinrich Himmler, had actually set up an intelligence office in Berlin for the sole purpose of spying on him – until the Führer intervened.
So many people were leaving Berlin! ‘Everyone is going home,’ noted Plotkin.
The Germans were scattering to their home towns over Christmas.
Edgar Mowrer, correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, was jotting down his thoughts on the Christmas trade. ‘The third depression Christmas, but not so bad as last year. Quite unexpectedly the pessimists have had to admit that the Christmas trade is fairly satisfactory.’ And yet Germany was looking poorer than ever: even the parties were out with their begging bowls. Some of them were young men carrying swastika flags, but others were in Communist and nationalist colours, ‘shaking tinware in one’s face’.
And everywhere, more visible than ever before, were ‘beggars and persons who hide their beggary under the pretense of selling something, real peddlers, street musicians and little children, badly clothed, with blue fingers’. Mowrer was moved, especially by the neglected children. Girls of eleven or twelve had been left to roam the streets.
President Hindenburg had retreated to East Prussia for the holidays. Writing from his residence at Neudeck, far from the teeming city, he sent Schleicher a message in Berlin: ‘Thank you for this calm, peaceful Christmas, the calmest I have experienced during my time in office,’ he wrote, ‘it is a pleasure to tell you, my dear young friend, how deeply satisfied I am with the way you are leading the government.’
There was an astonishing new warmth in his tone. Had Hindenburg forgotten he was nursing a grudge? Or was he simply overcome with the Christmas cheer?
The chancellor, on the other hand, had an excruciating festive season. He toiled and toiled, despite a painful issue with his gall bladder. A few months earlier, before he was made chancellor, he’d remarked of Hindenburg that ‘men of such advanced age are beyond feeling camaraderie towards their staff. Only the influence of family is lasting. When the old gentleman no longer needs me, he’ll cast me aside as unhesitatingly as he did with Brüning.’
Bella Fromm had received her first present – one day before Christmas Eve, when gifts are traditionally opened in Germany. The Rotter brothers had invited her to their Christmas show, the premiere of Catherine I, starring Gitta Alpár and Gustav Fröhlich.
Alfred and Fritz Rotter owned nine theatres in Berlin, including the Theater des Westens, the Lustspielhaus, the Lessingtheater and the Metropol. Their company, the German Dramatic Corporation, was so complexly structured that they could never be held personally liable for any financial problems. Their premieres, whether operettas or Shakespeare plays, were always a major event on the Berlin social scene, so the Christmas performance was inevitably sold out. Fromm was pleased to find herself seated near the Schleichers, who were in the neighbouring box. The chancellor had two military acquaintances in tow: a Captain Noeldechen and Commander Hans Langsdorff, both in uniform. ‘It is our private demonstration against “private armies”,’ said Langsdorff.
Their boss, in civilian clothes, kissed Fromm’s hand. ‘Kurt, you promised me you would always wear your uniform,’ chided Fromm. ‘You know mufti is most unbecoming to you.’
Schleicher’s wife nodded in agreement. ‘He won’t listen to me.’ She explained that he was overworked, sitting at his desk every night until two a.m. or even later. Tonight’s trip to the theatre was his first in a long time without papers and telephone calls.
After the premiere, the Rotters threw a reception at their villa in Grunewald. ‘A bit super-elaborate,’ commented Fromm, who loved sumptuous parties. ‘Floods of champagne, gigantic lobsters, a fantastic cold buffet.’
The Meissners had been invited, too, of course – Frau Meissner never missed these events. She sat at a table with Bella Fromm, as well as the French ambassador, François-Poncet, and his elegant wife. Otto Meissner was in his element. He kept scurrying to the buffet and returning with lobster. Fromm had heard countless tales of Meissner’s gluttony on such occasions, but she was still awestruck. André François-Poncet, grinning, gave his wife a surreptitious nudge. The Meissners seemed not to notice. Dismantling a lobster does, after all, require a degree of concentration.
Why was the head of the DNVP so unpopular? So much would have been easier if Alfred Hugenberg hadn’t been Alfred Hugenberg. Writing in his diary, Reinhold Quaatz had a sobering realisation: ‘He has no sex appeal.’
The doctors’ concerns had proved well founded – Magda Goebbels was going from bad to worse. Was she going to have a miscarriage? That evening Joseph Goebbels sat at home, brooding dismally.
‘The year 1932,’ he confided in his diary, ‘has been one long streak of bad luck. It should be smashed to smithereens.’