The Russians are desperately defending themselves. A Russian tank division breaks through our tank positions.
The Russians are resisting more strongly than initially expected. Our losses in people and materiel are significant.
He tries to find an explanation for this ‘anomaly’: ‘For now their ally is still Slavic persistence, but that will one day disappear!’
He is buffeted from one conclusion to another, exactly opposite: ‘In a single day we again destroy 235 Russian aircraft. If the Russians lose their air force, they are doomed. God willing!’ (2 July).
But immediately afterwards:
There is altogether very fierce and heavy fighting. There is no question of this being a walkover. The red regime has mobilized the people. To this is added the legendary stubbornness of the Russians. Our soldiers are only just coping. But so far everything is going to plan. The situation is not critical, but serious, and we are going to have to put every effort into it….
In the United States they are becoming increasingly insolent. Knox delivers an impudent speech demanding immediate entry into the war.
The functioning of our secret transmitters is a model of cunning and sophistication.
Soviet propaganda, however, is causing him grave concern: up till now, German soldiers have never been on the receiving end of enemy propaganda: ‘The Bolsheviks are not the English. Moscow has more powerful radio stations.’ (27 June)
Goebbels is having a lot of trouble in Germany itself, trying strictly to suppress listening-in to foreign broadcasts. With the help of the Führer, he attempts to impose a ban on all Russian writers and composers.
There is no peace among the Nazi leaders themselves. ‘Rosenberg is intending to set up his very own little propaganda stall… Everyone wants to play at propaganda, and the less they understand it, the more they want to.’ Thus ends his temporary alliance with Rosenberg. The more customary atmosphere of intrigue, poisonous jealousy and denunciation resumes.
The war with Russia has not resolved some burning issues, has not brought the expected relief: in the Balkans ‘there is a real famine. Especially in Greece. Serious discontent is expressed in Italy. Mussolini is not acting energetically enough. In Romania, support for us has decreased noticeably. Worries wherever you look… In France and Belgium there is almost famine. That determines the mood there.’
Worries, wars, and hardships of the German people notwithstanding, nothing gets in the way of his personal wellbeing and enrichment. In addition to the newly built castle in Schwanenwerder, where Goebbels now often resides, a complex of houses at Krumme Lanke, which he also frequents from Berlin, and other country properties, he is also at this time building ‘a new Norwegian cabin. It will be in the most idyllic location… Inspected our new blockhouse, which is very pretty. It is located in the forest and adapted for peacetime, which will, of course, come.’
All that needed was a small matter of defeating the Russians: ‘We must act quickly, and the operation on the Eastern Front must not go on too long. The Führer will take care of that.’
Goebbels writes, infuriated, at the end of this notebook,
The English are now trying everything they can to exploit this stay of their execution. But it will not, we must hope, be long in coming.
Smolensk is under heavy bombardment. Ever closer to Moscow.
Capitulation! That is the watchword.
It was the evening of 2 May 1945.
The war had come to Berlin. Capitulation was not a watchword but a lived reality, only not in the sense that Goebbels and Hitler had intended.
Several hours had passed since the Berlin garrison had given up resistance. The dumping of weapons, which had started at 3.00 p.m., was still going on. The square by the Town Hall was piled high with abandoned machine guns, assault and ordinary rifles. In the streets abandoned German artillery pieces had their barrels pointing at the ground. There was a drizzle.
Under the triumphal arch of the Brandenburg Gate, over which the red flag was flying, straggled German units that had been defeated at the Volga, the Dnieper, the Danube, the Vistula and the Oder. Many of the soldiers were wearing helmets that were now an absurdity. They walked by, exhausted, deceived, their faces blackened; some of them crushed and round-shouldered, some with obvious relief, but most in a state of abject depression and apathy.
The fires had not yet been extinguished. Berlin was on fire. A Russian horseman whipped up a horse and his steaming field kitchen bounced its way over the rubble. Our soldiers were resting on a German tank dug into the roadway, sitting on the turret, on its gun, singing, rolling cigarettes. Time for a smoke. In Berlin the battle was over.
Troops under the command of Marshal Zhukov had captured the capital of Germany.
Everything was a mixture in these streets: the happiness of people freed from captivity, the joy of our joining up with the Allies, amazing meetings. Grim-faced columns of German men leaving the city, stumbling off into captivity. The anguish of women watching them go.
The tragic fusion of victory and defeat, triumph and retribution, an end and a beginning.
In Bydgoszcz, long before that day in Berlin, Major Bystrov had confided to me on that memorable evening that he was setting himself the goal of capturing Goebbels. Goebbels and no one less. He spoke to me about it in confidence several times afterwards. I let it go in one ear and out the other. What nonsense! There we were in Poland, and where on Victory Day we, let alone Goebbels, would be was anyone’s guess. In the event, on Victory Day we were in Berlin, and found Goebbels in the garden of the Reich Chancellery.
Goebbels had given instructions that after his death he, too, was to be burned to ashes. There was not enough petrol. After dousing Goebbels and his wife, who had also committed suicide, those charged with this duty fled before completing the task. A Gold Party Badge with a single-digit number that had fallen off her burnt dress lay near Magda Goebbels, as well as a gold cigarette case with a portrait of Hitler.
On 2 May, when the Berlin garrison ceased resistance, a surrender of weapons took place in the streets. German soldiers were formed into columns and marched off into captivity. In the Reich Chancellery, however, there was intermittent gunfire from SS soldiers who refused to surrender. It was in the evening of this day that Major Bystrov, along with two other officers, discovered Goebbels. It was almost beyond belief, like much that was to follow in this story.
Goebbels was carried out on the leaf of a door to Wilhelmstrasse in front of the Reich Chancellery. It somehow happened by itself that this became the apotheosis of that day. Berlin had fallen. Its Party regional leader, its commissar for the defence of Berlin, the Reich’s Minister of Propaganda, Hitler’s right-hand man was dead. Goebbels was still recognizable, so let the victorious warriors and the people of Berlin take a look at him. In the absence that day of Hitler, the charred body of Goebbels symbolized the collapse of the Third Reich.
The street was smoke-filled, the acrid fumes of battle had not yet cleared, the fires were still raging, not yet burned out. The Reich Chancellery building, dented by shells, pitted by shrapnel, its windows gaps with jagged glass, had nevertheless survived mainly intact. The eagle with a swastika in its talons above the main entrance was also intact. Mangled enemy vehicles had crashed into the wall of the Reich Chancellery or were scattered over the ravine of the street.