Here was a report from a foreign radio station about the execution of Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci. With a blue pencil, Hitler had underlined the words ‘Mussolini’ and ‘hung upside down’. This discovery seemed to me to be significant: the news of Mussolini’s fate made it clear to Hitler that he needed to avoid discovery of his body after his death. That was my conclusion at the time, and I later found it confirmed in the Council of Ministers Archive, in the memoirs of Rattenhuber, and in the conclusions of the Control Commission for Germany (British element) of 1 November 1945. We searched for documents and, having familiarized myself with them, I annotated them. They were then forwarded, as already mentioned, to front headquarters, as were our own papers, interrogation reports and all other documentation.
One of our major finds at the time was Goebbels’ diary. It was found in the underground complex where Goebbels lived with his family, in one of two suitcases of documents. There were ten or so thick notebooks from different years, covered in closely written, heavy handwriting in straight lines. The letters had a barely noticeable slant to the left and were tightly squeezed together. The first books of the diary dated from 1932, before the Nazis came to power, and the last ended on 8 July 1941. We discovered later that this was only the date on which the handwritten diary ends. From the following day, 9 July 1941, and almost to the end, he dictated his entries each day to two shorthand typists.
I greatly regretted not being able to sit down and study this diary, which it was not easy to decipher. It would have needed many days of diligent work, and we were having to count the minutes. Our immediate task was to establish what had happened to Hitler and where we could find him. I had no option but to forward the diaries to front headquarters. With the war at an end, such documents were of purely historical interest and considered to be of no value. They suffered a major devaluation.
In the years that followed, when I recalled Goebbels’ diary I feared the notebooks had been lost along with a host of other documents, but a time came when I had the opportunity to read very carefully a part of this diary, to whose discovery I had contributed and which had been preserved in the archive. It was the last handwritten notebook dating from May, June and early July 1941. Realizing that this diary was a tremendously valuable historical document, I quoted abundantly from it in my book (translated, naturally, into Russian). I thus presided over the first publication from this body of handwritten diaries, revealing their whereabouts to the world. Nobody, of course, had any intention of making the original of the diary available for a foreign edition, and accordingly this chapter is all but missing in the [East] German edition of my book that was edited in the USSR.[1]
However, the mere mention of the existence of this notebook and the exact date on which it ended, 8 July 1941, proved to be enough. [West] German historians already had Goebbels’ typewritten diaries at their disposal, which began from the following day, 9 July 1941, and now they knew that the manuscript diary was extant and preserved in an archive in Moscow. They began seeking access to it, and in 1969 microfilm copies were conveyed to the German side. In 1987 all the surviving pages of the manuscript diary were published.
The last notebook of that diary is uniquely interesting historical testimony, reflecting as it does the facts and atmosphere of preparations for the attack on the USSR. It discloses the nature of the provocations and the methods of disinformation undertaken at the time by Nazi Germany.
Goebbels’ diary introduces us to the routine day-to-day activities of the Third Reich’s minister of propaganda. In May–June 1941, these activities are preparing for the attack on the USSR which, for us, marked the beginning of the war. The first references to the impending attack appear in the diary on 24 May. Goebbels sent his representative to Alfred Rosenberg, who was to become minister for the occupied eastern territories, to coordinate their activities in the impending operation. ‘R. must be broken down into component parts… the existence of such a colossal state in the east cannot be tolerated.’
Goebbels was busy with active disinformation, spreading false rumours about a supposedly imminent invasion of Britain in order to mask Germany’s true intentions. ‘The rumours we have sown about the invasion are working. There is a climate of exceptional nervousness in England.’
29 May 1941. In Moscow they are busy solving puzzles. Stalin is apparently beginning little by little, to get the knack. But for the rest, he is still entranced… A heavenly summer! Quiet, a beautiful evening. But you do not enjoy it.
31 May. Operation Barbarossa is developing. We are beginning the first big deception. The entire state and military machinery is being mobilized. Only a few individuals are informed about the true course of events. I am obliged to send the whole ministry off on a false trail, risking, in the event of failure, the loss of my prestige…
Little by little we are elaborating the theme of the invasion. I ordered a song to be composed about it, a new theme, increasing the use of broadcasts in English, training a propaganda company for England, etc. Two weeks allowed for everything… If nobody blabs and, given the small circle of initiates, one can count on that, the deception will succeed.
Forward march!
A busy time is beginning. We will prove that our propaganda is unrivalled. The civilian ministries suspect nothing. They are working in the direction set for them. It will be interesting when the balloon goes up.
Directives on propaganda against R.: no anti-socialism, no restoration of tsarism, no open talk of dismembering the Russian state (otherwise we will alienate the army with its Great Russian inclinations)… Retain the collective farms for the present in order to save the harvest.
Goebbels received a programme for the territorial partitioning of Russia from Hitler:
7 June. The Asian part of R. does not need to be discussed. The European part we shall assimilate. Stalin recently told Matsuoka he is Asian. He can hardly complain!
Goebbels put his back into preparing for the new war. He tightened the screws wherever he could, forbidding the showing of foreign films in the Cabaret of Comedians where ‘all the gripers go’ to watch them; he ‘prepared new measures against the Berlin Jews’. He castigated those sections of the press that failed sufficiently to extol the achievements of German arms, calling them the ‘petty-bourgeois press’. He intervened in matters of ensuring military secrecy in all the Berlin ministries. ‘We will even have to call on the services of the Gestapo.’
He kept Robert Ley of the Nazis’ German Labour Front from promising new post-war social programmes, so as not to awaken an appetite for peace among the population. At the same time, he cancelled the existing ban on dances. ‘That is necessary in order as far as possible to conceal our next operation. The people must believe that we are now “replete with victories” and no longer interested in anything beyond recreation and dancing’ (10 June). Goebbels decided to go easy on anti-tobacco propaganda in order not to offend soldiers who smoked or introduce ‘inflammable matter’ among the populace. ‘War already conceals within itself quite enough natural incendiary matter. Accordingly, I am ordering a toning down of excessively harsh anti-clerical propaganda. There will be time enough for that after the war’ (17 June).
1
Jelena Rshewskaja,