Goebbels Up

Though his most implacable enemies admit his genius as a propaganda technician, few people in Germany, even in the Nazi Party, have any personal admiration for warp-minded, clubfooted Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels. But, according to reliable information from Germany last week, Adolf Hitler has made his ambitious Propaganda Minister unchallenged Nazi leader on the home front.

Goebbels' ascendancy did not astonish those who know him and Germany. He has been portrayed to the world as a jack-rabbity little mouthpiece for Adolf Hitler. Actually, he is smart. He has a kind of courage. He understands the forces at work in the world well enough to pervert their meanings into brass-bold and effective propaganda. And it has long been apparent that when the Third Reich came to crisis--as it is now in crisis--power would go either to Goebbels' radical "leftist" wing of the Nazi Party, or to a "rightist" army clique.

Pushed into the shadows by shrimpish Goebbels' new stature was whalish Hermann Goering, the Nazi best liked by industrialists and old-line Army generals. Goering and his clique reportedly believe that a peace leaving Germany with substantial victory can be managed only if something "untoward" should happen to Hitler and to fanatic Nazis like Goebbels and Himmler. But the industrialists and army generals will probably not make their move unless some total catastrophe first overwhelms the Fuehrer: something like the failure of his promised summer counteroffensive in Russia, or a successful Allied invasion of the Continent.

Goebbels and his faction believe that a bitter defense of Festung Europa and the campaign to frighten the U.S. and Britain with Russian Communism can bring the Allies to terms. Germany, according to this reasoning, would emerge with substantial victory from this war, keep the opportunity for total victory in the next war.

As usual, Hitler is in the middle, playing each side against the other in order to keep both subordinated to him. Thus he raises Goebbels to new eminence at home, where the master propagandist's powers are most effective, and at the same time appeases Goebbels' enemies, the old-school generals, by reinstating them in important army commands. One move in this continuous byplay last week was an order subordinating Heinrich Himmler's Waffen SS to the Wehrmacht's orders.

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