B006OAL1QM EBOK by Heinrich Fraenkel, Roger Manvell Page A
Authors: Heinrich Fraenkel, Roger Manvell
Ads: Link
Feder nowhere. Strasser shakes my hand.”
Goebbels was at this time writing articles and making speeches which implied that although Communism was misguided it was the potential ally of the brand of revolutionary National Socialism that he was promoting. “We will never get anywhere,” he wrote in the Briefe, “if we lean on the interests of the cultured and propertied classes. Everything will come to us if we appeal to the hunger and despair of the masses.” In an article for the Völkischer Beobachter he wrote: “The Soviet system does not endure because it is Bolshevist or Marxist or international but because it is national—because it is Russian.” Von Pfeffer remembers thinking that Goebbels at one time had Marxist leanings. 2 If this kind of sentiment pleased the Strassers, it certainly did not please Hitler, who was feeling his way to power through other channels besides the angry proletariat.
The second conference to discuss these differences was convened by Hitler for 14th February at Bamberg in his own southern territory. Goebbels was told he must attend along with Gregor Strasser. This arrangement does not seem to have been very welcome; Otto Strasser believes he was frightened of going. “Ich muss danach mit nach Bamberg” (“I suppose I'll have to go along to Bamberg”) is how Goebbels put it in his diary. But he adds: “In Bamberg we must lure Hitler on to our terrain.” What he disliked really was the prospect of having to speak at a conference where his views would be necessarily unpopular.
By this time, of course, Goebbels had met Hitler on a number of occasions, and heard him speak. It was Kaufmann who had first introduced him in the autumn of 1925 after a speech which Hitler had made in Elberfeld at the Evangelisches Vereinhaus. The local Party representatives were gathered together afterwards in a small committee room to meet Hitler, and it was then that Kaufmann presented him as Gregor Strasser's secretary who was doing so well with his editorial work on the new Party journal, the Briefe . Kaufmann remembers the formality of the introduction and the handshake that followed; Goebbels appeared reserved and distant.
In the diary, however, Goebbels' first account of his reactions to Hitler occurs on the occasion of a subsequent meeting at Hanover. He was evidently greatly impressed. He refers to Hitler's “big blue eyes! Like stars!” He shook Goebbels' hand “like an old friend”. “I am very happy to see him,” writes Goebbels. This was 2nd November 1925, when he belonged, strictly speaking, to the Party opposition. When he heard Hitler speak he was carried away. “That man's got everything to be a king . A popular leader born and bred (geborener Volkstribun) . The coming dictator.” Goebbels claims they talked at length (“long disputations”) until he had to catch his train to Elberfeld in the early hours of the morning. Three weeks later, on 23rd November they met again, when Hitler spoke at another meeting. “My joy is great,” says Goebbels. “He greets me like an old friend. He speaks to us all the evening. I can't hear enough of it . He gives me his picture with a greeting to the Rhineland inscribed ‘Heil Hitler!
Such was the background to Bamberg—Goebbels identified with the opposition, yet fascinated by Hitler's magnetic personality. According to the diary Goebbels went to this second conference in a proselytising spirit: “No one seems to have any faith left in Munich. Elberfeld is to be the Mecca of German Socialism.” It was then that he added his declaration: “I want to be an apostle and a preacher.”
Legends, once they are well propagated, have an adhesive quality in history. Goebbels was subsequently to encourage the story that Bam- berg was the great occasion of his public abandonment of Strasser and adherence to Hitler, and this is the account that has so far appeared in all the standard histories of the Nazi movement. But once more the legend is
Goebbels was at this time writing articles and making speeches which implied that although Communism was misguided it was the potential ally of the brand of revolutionary National Socialism that he was promoting. “We will never get anywhere,” he wrote in the Briefe, “if we lean on the interests of the cultured and propertied classes. Everything will come to us if we appeal to the hunger and despair of the masses.” In an article for the Völkischer Beobachter he wrote: “The Soviet system does not endure because it is Bolshevist or Marxist or international but because it is national—because it is Russian.” Von Pfeffer remembers thinking that Goebbels at one time had Marxist leanings. 2 If this kind of sentiment pleased the Strassers, it certainly did not please Hitler, who was feeling his way to power through other channels besides the angry proletariat.
The second conference to discuss these differences was convened by Hitler for 14th February at Bamberg in his own southern territory. Goebbels was told he must attend along with Gregor Strasser. This arrangement does not seem to have been very welcome; Otto Strasser believes he was frightened of going. “Ich muss danach mit nach Bamberg” (“I suppose I'll have to go along to Bamberg”) is how Goebbels put it in his diary. But he adds: “In Bamberg we must lure Hitler on to our terrain.” What he disliked really was the prospect of having to speak at a conference where his views would be necessarily unpopular.
By this time, of course, Goebbels had met Hitler on a number of occasions, and heard him speak. It was Kaufmann who had first introduced him in the autumn of 1925 after a speech which Hitler had made in Elberfeld at the Evangelisches Vereinhaus. The local Party representatives were gathered together afterwards in a small committee room to meet Hitler, and it was then that Kaufmann presented him as Gregor Strasser's secretary who was doing so well with his editorial work on the new Party journal, the Briefe . Kaufmann remembers the formality of the introduction and the handshake that followed; Goebbels appeared reserved and distant.
In the diary, however, Goebbels' first account of his reactions to Hitler occurs on the occasion of a subsequent meeting at Hanover. He was evidently greatly impressed. He refers to Hitler's “big blue eyes! Like stars!” He shook Goebbels' hand “like an old friend”. “I am very happy to see him,” writes Goebbels. This was 2nd November 1925, when he belonged, strictly speaking, to the Party opposition. When he heard Hitler speak he was carried away. “That man's got everything to be a king . A popular leader born and bred (geborener Volkstribun) . The coming dictator.” Goebbels claims they talked at length (“long disputations”) until he had to catch his train to Elberfeld in the early hours of the morning. Three weeks later, on 23rd November they met again, when Hitler spoke at another meeting. “My joy is great,” says Goebbels. “He greets me like an old friend. He speaks to us all the evening. I can't hear enough of it . He gives me his picture with a greeting to the Rhineland inscribed ‘Heil Hitler!
Such was the background to Bamberg—Goebbels identified with the opposition, yet fascinated by Hitler's magnetic personality. According to the diary Goebbels went to this second conference in a proselytising spirit: “No one seems to have any faith left in Munich. Elberfeld is to be the Mecca of German Socialism.” It was then that he added his declaration: “I want to be an apostle and a preacher.”
Legends, once they are well propagated, have an adhesive quality in history. Goebbels was subsequently to encourage the story that Bam- berg was the great occasion of his public abandonment of Strasser and adherence to Hitler, and this is the account that has so far appeared in all the standard histories of the Nazi movement. But once more the legend is
Similar Books
