Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity (16 page)

She maintained, however, ‘Whatever else [Goebbels] did is none of my business.’
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She turned a blind eye to what Goebbels and Hitler and the whole Nazi regime were doing.

Many Swedes were appalled by her fraternising with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, seeing her as ‘going over to the other side’
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and branding her a Nazi. They believed her only motivation for going to Germany was to become a star and make a lot of money, not knowing she had an ulterior motive. Probably from the time she met Karl Gerhard she had become a member of, or sympathised with, the Swedish Communist Party.
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The Soviets believed Zarah would be an ideal person to put in the midst of
the Nazi hierarchy; it was well known to the Russians that Hitler and Goebbels and their Nazi cult of celebrity welcomed the most famous, and especially the most beautiful, celebrities.

Leander was recruited by NKVD either before going to Germany or during her early years there. She was given the
codename
Rose-Marie, becoming a courier for the Russians because she was free to travel between Berlin and Stockholm. This might well have been what finally prompted Leander to accept the UFA contract and settle in Germany. ‘Leander helped us build a picture of the situation throughout northern Europe and of the various British, American and German interests in the region,’ said Pavel Sudoplatov, a former head of the NKVD. Leander’s party card is said to be in the KGB archives.
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She may have been a contact in Berlin for assassin Igor Miklashevsky, whose mission to kill Hitler never happened, but overall she was little more than a regular courier. During her frequent trips between Stockholm and Berlin she was often invited to the German embassy, where she socialised with the ambassador and his senior guests from Germany, who enjoyed hearing the news from Germany’s film world while they carelessly told her of the latest gossip in political circles.

In private, she preferred the company of fellow actors and singers to politicians, and each Sunday she invited several of her colleagues to lunch, including Willy Birgel and Heinz Rühmann, whom she entertained with her imitation of Goebbels.
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Actors such as these may well have enjoyed a mutual disrespect for their Nazi leaders and literal employers, but they also enjoyed flourishing careers under the totalitarian state. Willy Birgel was one of Germany’s biggest movie stars and one of Goebbels’s favourite actors who, since his acting career began before the First World War, had made a number of high-profile films under the National Socialist regime that promoted Nazi ideology. Goebbels named him
Staatsschauspieler
in 1937.

Heinz Rühmann was a highly popular comedy actor and singer throughout the 1930s. He had a Jewish wife, Maria Bernheim,
and refused to speak openly about politics. When he divorced his wife in 1938, critics of the state accused him of merely securing his career; Goebbels and Hitler welcomed him to the fold and named him
Staatsschauspieler
. But Rühmann had remained married to his first wife through the first six years of Nazi rule, and his marriage broke down for personal reasons, although after the war the couple admitted on German television that state-sponsored anti-Semitism caused the terminal blow to their marriage. Bernheim became involved with a Swedish actor during the final stage of her relationship with Rühmann, and married him soon after their divorce, leaving Germany to settle with him in Stockholm shortly before the outbreak of war.
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However, it transpired that Rühmann had actually approved of his wife’s extramarital affair and subsequent remarriage to a Swede, and had even instigated it so as to save her life. ‘When Heinz Rühmann was married to a Jew, he saved her life by divorcing her so she could marry a Swedish husband and move to Sweden before the real hell broke out,’ said Curd Jürgens.
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Rühmann remarried quickly, to a woman who had a Jewish grandfather, and although this caused him some difficulty with Nazi cultural leaders, he still refused to speak openly against the state. Perhaps because of Rühmann’s important position in popular German culture, Goebbels overlooked the fact that his second wife had a Jewish background.

Hitler’s strict laws governing anti-Semitism, and Goebbels’s ways of persuading stars to cooperate fully with his own aims, formed a wave of terror that would sweep through the otherwise privileged world of celebrities.

H
itler felt his most important act as Chancellor was to show his Third Reich as a modern industrial state to its foreign visitors; indeed in many areas it led the world, such as its development of airships. Yet Hitler encouraged outdated and mythical elements to Germanic life that were rooted in lore and culture, such as the glorification of blood, soil and farm life, and the revival of the ancient Germanic drama played as open-air theatre. He also practised the Cult of the Blood Banner; Hitler passed along endless rows of flags carrying the sacred
Blutfahne
flag, which was said to have been carried by the fallen Nazis during the Munich Putsch, and from which mystic power flowed into all the banners and flags it touched.

His more essential duties as Chancellor were not his priority. He was lazy but gave the illusion of being busy. He was seldom in Berlin to conduct business but travelled to give speeches; he ensured he was always in demand. He moved from one theatrical stage to another, and the audience was always guaranteed. Workers were fed with the myth of their
Führer
’s years of toil and hardship. He was introduced onto each stage as ‘The greatest worker of the party, Adolf Hitler’, and he repeatedly told the people, as if it was one of his greatest hits, ‘Germany is before us. Germany marches within us and Germany is behind us.’ He never told them anything other than rhetoric; his whole act was built upon favourite sound bites, which were favourites like hit songs that the people expected to hear over and over. But he never gave a speech that had the eternal ring of a Gettysburg Address.

After each tour Hitler grew vague and apathetic, lost in the fantasy of his youth of living in style and having to do little to
maintain it all. ‘A single stroke of genius’, he would say, ‘is more valuable than a lifetime of uninspired drudgery.’

He rarely stayed in one place for any length of time but he frequently stayed at Bayreuth, which had become a Nazi
stronghold
. A Jewish resident, Pinchas Joeli, recalled, ‘I stood in front of the house in Richard-Wagner-Strasse and a unit of SA men marched past. They sang a song. “When Jewish blood spurts from the knife, things are going well.”’
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The citizens of Bayreuth were proud of their opera house, which Hitler elevated to a place of worship and where he held Nazi conferences which always began with music from
Rienzi
.
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This was the model for the spectacle which he adapted to his political career but on a grander scale. The parade at the Day of German Art in Munich in 1938, celebrating 2,000 years of German culture, exemplified Hitler’s penchant for the grand operatic spectacle combined with what was supposedly a glimpse into Germany’s past: knights on horseback, massive flags, floats showcasing the
Hoheitsadler
– the state symbol of the eagle and swastika – all representing the chosen German people. This was Hitler’s version of a German past that never existed, conjured from his own boundless delusions. He even planned to invent a new religion based on vegetarianism which he believed would supplant Christianity.
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For the Nazis, art and abuse merged into one, never more so than inside the concentration camps where the emaciated forced labourers worked to the sounds of Wagner arias. In Hitler’s version of German culture, art lost its virtue.

Whenever he appeared at the Bayreuth Festival, the crowds came to cheer, salute and adore him, turning it into a Hitler Festival. ‘
Führer
, show us your good will,’ they cried. ‘Come now to the window sill.’ He appeared at the window to tumultuous acclaim. The crowds had no idea that the
Festspielhaus
had become Hitler’s control centre for his aggressive policy where, in 1936, he had made the decision to send German soldiers to the Spanish Civil War.
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A few watched anxiously. They were the Jews of Bayreuth. Brigitte Pöhner recalled her father watching ‘that man with the
raised hand’ and ‘the roaring crowd’, then saying softly to his family, ‘We’d better leave.’
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Winifred Wagner basked in the limelight as hostess of Hitler’s patronage. She extended a building her husband had used and called it ‘the
Führer
’s annexe’. There Hitler received guests including Unity Mitford and her sister Diana Mosley. Winifred’s family became his own substitute family. Betti Weiss, Winifred’s foster daughter, recalled that when Hitler visited, ‘children had to be quiet at the table. But for me it was like a rich uncle visiting from America.’
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After each performance in the
Festspielhaus
, Hitler had the family gather around the fireplace in his annexe for a ritual that never changed. ‘No matter how hot it was, the fire had to be lit,’ Winifred recalled, ‘and he sat beside it, poking at the fire for hours. He enjoyed that immensely.’
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Fire had a special significance for Hitler: it was how the Twilight of the Gods would happen, and as he gazed into the flames, he must have imagined how it would be if the whole world was engulfed in an inferno; the great fire was coming, and he knew it.

He delivered endless monologues on his favourite subjects: Wagner, vegetarian food, dogs and history. Winifred was always the first to go to bed while her sons remained with Uncle Wolf to stay up till after midnight to hear of his amazing plans that would follow the final victory. After the world was conquered, Wieland would run all the theatres in the West, and Wolfgang the theatres in the East. Hitler had become their substitute father, and he paid Wieland extra pocket money for taking exclusive photos of him.

Wolfgang was forced to join the
Jungvolk
– the Hitler Youth – but quickly left ‘because of the way they behaved’. He told Hitler that their behaviour was ‘terrible’, and recalled, ‘He said he’d have done the same thing.’
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Hitler’s reply to Wolfgang Wagner indicates a rare moment where Hitler did not wholly believe in his own doctrines, where reality fleetingly broke through his delusions. But aside from these scarce instances, he was bent on fulfilling his destiny, even to the point when he would envisage bringing in the
Twilight of the Gods, which he saw like a vision in the flames of the fireplace in the
Führer
’s annexe.

The gods resided in Bayreuth, which had become such a sacred place to Hitler, and anyone of consequence in the Third Reich had to go to the Festival every year. It was forbidden not to adore Wagner.

Hitler preferred to hold ceremonies at night, with organised torchlight processions giving the proceedings a mystical glow. A state visit by Benito Mussolini, Italy’s Fascist dictator, ended with a nocturnal rally in the stadium in Berlin. Mussolini was treated to a giant rotating swastika created by a mass of people holding aloft flaming torches. The Fascist cult of fire was a portent of the fire that would consume the world. Hitler was enthralled by the mystical spectacle he had created, and so completely seduced by the adulation surrounding him that he approved of having his face recreated by fireworks.

The cinematic quality of the nocturnal event was ideal for the movie cameras, which captured it all for the German people to marvel at. Standing in a sort of glorified glow created by powerful arc lights, and filmed in long shot by a camera slowly tracking past – a cinematic technique very common today – Hitler announced:

Whenever he entertained foreign visitors, he had to pull himself out of his indolence and treat them to a wordy explanation of his pet projects. He was a master of the monologue and would not be interrupted by anyone. Among his most passionate of endeavours was the rebuilding of numerous cities, and able now to indulge himself in the design of anything he wanted regardless of the true opinions of anyone else, he worked with Albert Speer and
other architects on these grandiose ideas, often producing his own sketches. ‘If I hadn’t become involved in politics, I would have been one of Germany’s finest architects,’ he declared.

Berlin was to be rebuilt, which meant the old Berlin would have to be razed. In his new planned capital, 30,000 square yards were set aside for the Riefenstahl Studios, Hitler’s gift to Leni Riefenstahl. But that project, like most of the others, never got beyond the planning stage. One that was completed, however, was the new chancellery, designed by Albert Speer and built in nine months. It became a monumental folly. Hitler’s study was seldom used, and no Cabinet meeting was ever held in the Cabinet room.

On 12 March 1938, Hitler and his forces crossed the border into his birthplace of Spital in Austria as his long-planned
Anschluss
was put into operation. Austria was now a part of Germany, the first act in a programme of expansion which was the fulfilment of an old dream of the German nation that now rejoiced at the news. He entered Vienna, the city that had seen his early failures and now gave him a hero’s welcome. From the balcony of the Imperial Palace he announced, ‘As
Führer
and Chancellor of the German nation and Reich, I hereby make the historic announcement that my native country is now a part of the German Reich.’

As the German army was marching into Vienna, the Austrian-Jewish cabaret and film star Fritz Grünbaum was appearing in the play
Simplicissimus
with his long-time collaborator Karl Farkas. For several years Grünbaum had commuted between Berlin, where he made films and wrote scripts as well as composing popular songs, and Vienna, where he starred in cabarets, which, after the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933, had become more political.

With the arrival of the Nazis in Austria, both Grünbaum and Farkas were banned from continuing their play under Nazi anti-Semitic laws. The next day, Grünbaum tried to flee to Czechoslovakia, but he and his wife, Lilli Herzl, were turned back at the border. Karl Farkas was able to escape from Austria with his
wife, Annie Hän, and they made their way to Paris and eventually New York.

Grünbaum and Lilli had to go into hiding in Vienna, but were eventually betrayed and transported to Dachau. They were later taken to Buchenwald, then returned to Dachau where Fritz put on a New Year’s show for his fellow prisoners. He was killed on 14 January 1941. His wife Lilli was deported to Minsk in 1942 where she presumably died. A star was later dedicated to Fritz Grünbaum on the Walk of Fame of Cabaret in Vienna; he is buried at Vienna Central Cemetery, Old Israelite Part, Gate 1.

Grünbaum was a well-known art collector with a collection of more than 400 pieces, eighty of them by Egon Schiele. The Nazis took the whole lot. A small portion of the collection appeared on the art market in the early 1950s through a Swiss art dealer, but the fate of the rest remains unknown.

Events such as the
Anschluss
and visits to Italy maintained the illusion that Hitler was working endlessly, while in fact much of his time was spent doing as little as possible.

In May 1938 a Reich Music Festival was held in Düsseldorf. Goebbels felt it important enough to set aside the matter of foreign affairs for, and attended so he could deliver a speech to ‘all of Germany’s creative musicians’:
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Goebbels was confirming that Wagner’s works were anti-Semitic, and Hitler was continuing the work that Wagner had begun. This was a clear statement of Nazi doctrine. It had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with culture and the cult of celebrity, as well as Hitler’s assimilation of the church; God and
celebrity were one and the same thing. This was the divine law that governed Germany and brought the world into catastrophic conflict.

Richard Strauss was a special star guest conductor at the festival. A conference on the subject of ‘Music and Race’ was held there, and an exhibition on ‘Degenerate Music’ where visitors listened to examples of ‘Jewish music’ and ‘nigger jazz’ on
headphones
. Lurid pictures of Jewish and black musicians were on display.

This ideological and cultural assault on Jews and all others considered ‘alien’ paralleled the actual physical intimidation happening all over Germany and now Austria, and matters were coming to a head, spurred on by Wagner; just before attending a performance of Wagner’s
Tristan and Isolde
at Bayreuth on 25 July, Hitler and Goebbels felt it appropriate to discuss the ‘Jewish question’. Goebbels’s conclusion to their discussion was, ‘The main thing is that the Jews are forced out. They must be out of Germany in ten years. But for the time being we want the rich ones as a security.’
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Music itself actually meant little to Hitler, who preferred that music go hand in hand with drama, hence his love of opera. If he had to content himself with a gramophone record, it was always a poor alternative to actually being at the opera. When he played records, it was usually to listen to the grander scenes from Wagner, and he had little interest in listening to symphonic works or chamber music. As he sat through countless performances of Wagner’s operas, his interest often shifting to the stage techniques and character interpretations rather than the music. As music without drama meant little to him, so too did drama without music; he had stopped going to the theatre to see plays and went only to the opera for his live stage fix. The greatest experience of all was to be
at
the opera, and for him the supreme expression of opera was the finale of
Götterdämmerung
; whenever he saw it at Bayreuth, when the citadel of the gods collapsed in flames, he took the hand of Winifred Wagner, who always sat behind him in his box, and moved to tears he kissed it.
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