IN BERLIN ON SATURDAY MORNING, Joseph Goebbels focused his regular propaganda meeting on how best to take advantage of what he believed must certainly be a rising sense of dread among England’s civilian population.
“The important thing now,” he told the gathering, “is to intensify as far as possible the mood of panic which is undoubtedly slowly gaining ground in Britain.” Germany’s secret transmitters and foreign-language service were to continue describing the “frightful effects” of air raids. “The secret transmitters, in particular, should marshal witnesses who must give horrifying accounts of the destruction they have seen with their own eyes.” This effort, he instructed, should also include transmissions warning listeners that fog and mist would not protect them from aerial attack; bad weather merely confused the aim of German bombers and made it more likely that bombs would fall on unintended targets.
Goebbels warned the heads of his foreign and domestic press departments to prepare for a drive by the British to use atrocity stories about the bombing deaths of old men and pregnant women to arouse the world’s conscience. His press chiefs were to be ready to counter these claims at once, using pictures of children killed in a May 10, 1940, air raid on Freiburg, Germany. What he did not tell the meeting was that this raid, which killed twenty children on a playground, was carried out in error by German bombers whose crews believed they were attacking the French city of Dijon.
Hitler still would not allow bombers to attack London itself. The main goal was to put the English on edge, Goebbels said. “We must continue to emphasize that even the present attacks are a mere foretaste of what is yet to come.”