Goebbels: A Biography Read Free

on the grounds that this was another “guide to crime.” 63 Goebbels simply disliked crime films.
    On March 29 he held a reception for newspaper publishers and representatives of the German Press Association. In his address to them he declared that the press should “not only inform but also instruct.” In particular, the “explicitly nationalist press” should surely “perceive that it was an ideal state of affairs” if “the press […] is like a piano in the hands of the government, on which the government can play.” 64
    On April 6 Goebbels appeared with Hitler before the Berlin correspondents of the German press. On this occasion Goebbels gave a talk on the topic of “The Press and National Discipline,” which many have seen as the final swan song of press freedom. He stressed that “public opinion is made, and those who work at forming public opinion take upon themselves an enormous responsibility before the nation and the whole people.” From this responsibility there arose for the press the requirement that any criticism should be kept “within the framework of a general intellectual national discipline.”
    And he threatened that those who set their minds against this requirement could expect “to be excluded from the community ofthose forces prepared to do the work of construction and to be considered unworthy to collaborate in forming the public opinion of the German people.” Goebbels also announced there would be a new press law and came up with the motto that the future would be about “uniformity […] of principles but multiformity […] of nuances.” 65

EXCURSION INTO FOREIGN AFFAIRS: GOEBBELS’S TRIP TO ROME
    In late May Goebbels set out for Rome on his first journey abroad as a Reich minister. He was not the first member of the new government to visit the Italian capital. In April and May Göring and von Papen had both been there, and just before Goebbels’s visit, Göring had returned to the Eternal City in connection with foreign policy negotiations. The immediate objects of Goebbels’s trip were to promote personal connections with leading representatives of the fascistregime and to study some of its cultural institutions which he had long regarded as role models. Ultimately what concerned him was a series of practical questions arising out of ongoing projects in his domain. Beyond all this, in general the idea was for Goebbels to help break down the foreign affairs isolation in which the new German government found itself. However, Goebbels was not to play a major part in shaping the political relations between the two countries.
    Crossing the border by train at the Brenner Pass on May 28, he noted with gratitude that Mussolini had sent a saloon car to meet him. In Bologna he encountered “effusive hospitality,” and after a further overnight journey he arrived in Rome, where he was greeted with a “great fuss.” For the next few days, it was a matter of getting through a crowded engagement schedule.
    After some briefing by the German ambassador, Ulrich von Hassell (“an uninspired petit bourgeois,” “completely incompetent,” “has got to go”), Goebbels had initial discussions with Italian foreign minister Fulvio Suvich, a “wily native of Trieste” who was by no means well disposed toward Germany. They talked about the “global situation,” dwelling briefly on Mussolini’s “Four-Power Pact,” which was nearing ratification at the time.
    At the ensuing audience in the royal palace he gained a “good impression” of the Italian king. Afterward he was taken on a tour around the Italian capital: “Eternal Rome. […] Just looking gives me a warm feeling. Such a fulfilment of long-felt yearning.” There followed a reception given by Mussolini, his longstanding hero, whose aura he obviously found spell-binding: “He’s short. But a huge head. Quite classical-looking. Is like a friend to me right away. ‘Il dottore.’ We hit it off immediately. And talk for