London, Sunday, January 21, 2001
Love
triangle: Baarova, left, gained the
affection of Goebbels to the point
that he wanted to divorce his wife,
right, but Hitler forbade it
Goebbels
mistress tells tales from the grave
Peter Conradi THEIRS was one of the
most dramatic and dangerous love affairs
of the Third Reich. A glamorous Czech
actress who became Josef Goebbels's
mistress and fled Germany after his wife
denounced them to Hitler has
described her turbulent relationship with
the Nazi propaganda chief for the first
time. In her autobiography,
The Sweet
Bitterness of My Life, to be
published posthumously in Germany next
month, Lida Baarova writes of life
in the Nazi upper echelons, where
elegantly dressed ministers mingled with
the film world elite. The actress, who died alone in poverty
in November aged 86, reveals that
Goebbels's wife, Magda, proposed a
ménage à trois to save her
marriage but Hitler ordered an end to the
two-year affair on the grounds that it
could damage the Nazis' image as guardians
of traditional family values. It was Hitler who first fell for
Baarova, then 20, during a visit in 1934
to a film set in Berlin. Three days later
she was summoned to tea at the
chancellery. He said she reminded him of
somebody both "beautiful and tragic" in
his life. To her horror, she later
realised this was Hitler's former lover
and half-niece, Angela Raubal, who
was found dead in her Munich flat in 1931,
aged 23, after shooting herself in the
heart with a pistol. Several more meetings followed, despite
the protests of Gustav
Fröhlich, a jealous actor with
whom Baarova was living. But the
Führer did not press himself on
her. Hitler
and his half niece, whom he thought
Baarova resembled Photograph:
Ullstein
She and Goebbels first met in 1936
during the Berlin Olympics in the city's
opulent Schwanenwerder suburb, where
Goebbels had rented a villa near
Fröhlich's. Baarova was attracted
immediately. "His voice seemed to go straight into
me," she said. "I felt a light tingling in
my back, as if his words were trying to
stroke my body." There were other meetings on Goebbels's
yacht Baldur, and he invited her to hear
him speak at a Nazi congress. He promised
to touch his face with a white
handkerchief during the speech as a sign
of his devotion. Panicking,
Baarova decided to leave town. But as her
train waited at the station, a messenger
arrived with roses and the minister's
picture. "He was a master of the hunt,
whom nobody and nothing could escape," she
said. For months Goebbels pursued her
relentlessly, inviting her for trips in
his chauffeur-driven limousine or visits
to his log cabin on the shores of Lake
Lanke outside Berlin. Although their relationship was
platonic for a long time, she tried to
hide it from Fröhlich. When Goebbels
rang he left messages as Herr Müller
and hung up if the actor answered. One
winter evening in the cabin, however,
before a blazing fire he kissed her for
the first time, saying: "I have never in
my life been so in-flamed with love for a
woman." They met whenever he could get away
from his wife. Baarova recalled his mood
swings dramatically. Sometimes he amused
her with Hitler impressions, at others he
expressed doubts about Nazi ideology. Rumours of their relationship spread
after Goebbels bailed out one of Baarova's
films. Then Fröhlich arrived home to
find them on the road to the villa. He
berated Goebbels and left Baarova soon
afterwards. His
impertinence did not go unpunished.
Goebbels later took revenge by removing
his exemption from military service and
sending him to war. In the autumn of 1938, however,
Goebbels had telephoned Baarova, saying he
had confessed to his wife, and wanted the
two women to meet. Magda Goebbels was
distraught when they were introduced, and
suggested sharing her husband. "I am the mother of his children, I am
only interested in this house in which we
live," she said. "What happens outside
does not concern me. But you must promise
me one thing: you must not have a child by
him." Goebbels appeared with gifts of
jewellery for both women as if to cement
the love triangle. But Magda told Hitler
and Goebbels was summoned to the
Führer. "My wife is a devil," he told
Baarova. Early the next morning he rang again,
weeping. Hitler had refused his request
for a divorce and forbidden him to see
her. "I love you, Liduschka," he said. "I
cannot live without you." The propaganda machine swung into gear.
Newspapers published pictures of the
Goebbels family, and Goebbels
rehabilitated himself with Hitler by
orchestrating Kristallnacht, an orgy of
violence in November 1938 when Jewish
property across Germany was destroyed. Baarova was called to a police station
and told she was barred from appearing in
films or plays and even from attending
social functions. She was pursued by the
Gestapo, who organised hecklers to shout
"Whore", when she defiantly attended the
premiere of her film, Der Spieler (The
Player). Baarova returned to Prague, disobeying
an order from Hitler's adjutant to remain
in Germany. She was on a Nazi blacklist,
however, and it became more difficult for
her to work. In 1942 she moved to Italy
and resumed her career. She saw Goebbels one last time at the
1942 Venice film festival. He ignored her.
"He must have recognised me, but he did
not make a single movement," she said. "He
was always the master of
self-control." In 1945 Baarova was arrested by the
Americans and briefly imprisoned for
collaboration. Goebbels and his wife
stayed with Hitler in his bunker, taking
their own lives and those of their six
children on May 1 as the Russians swept
into Berlin. After two failed marriages, her career
faded as Czechs refused to forgive her.
She continued to deny the Goebbels
relationship until the 1990s, when
Richard Kettermann, a German
publisher, encouraged her to write about
it. Although she was in her eighties when
they met, Kettermann said last week he was
struck by the warmth she exuded. When she
looked back at her relationship with
Goebbels, however, her overwhelming
emotion was regret.
Website
comment: There is nothing in
this article that is not related in the
biography Goebbels. Mastermind of
the Third Reich by David Irving,
who interviewed Baarova at length in
1993. [Free
download of
book].
Related
items on this website:
- Death
of Dr Goebbels' lover Lida
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