The Bulletin’s Day Book

This time it’s the opera which is serving as a bone of contention between Goering and Goebbels. All state theatres of Prussia are under Goering’s control. Now since the Berlin City Opera has been renamed Reich Opera it should be transferred to Goebbels’ jurisdiction for he is the big boss of all Nazi-coordinated culture.

It is at this point that their rivalry of long standing flared up anew. Goering is naturally anxious for his Unter den Linden opera to retain the reputation of Germany’s finest. But Goebbels would make the former city opera Naziland’s model, Goering’s ire is intensified by the fact that the new head of the city opera, Rode, has started to offer special inducements to lure the artists that he covets for his establishment.

Now, while Goebbels is a great propaganda specialist and unsurpassed as a creator of majestic schemes, he has pretty tough sledding in materializing his grandiose projects, and it looks as though Goering will emerge victorious.

In the background of the feud is the Jewish question. Goering with all his maniacal fierceness, has well-defined ideas on the subject, He considers the Jewish question a closed incident. The Jews’ rights have been limited by law, and within that framework why not let them be? Petty persecutions, in his view, are unworthy of the soaring spirit of the Third Reich. For him the National Socialist revolution is over and the era of “enlightened absolutism” is on.

Goering appears to be displeased with such deeds of valor as the removal from the stage of Otto Walburg, Willy Rosen or the orchestra leader of Winter Garden. Not so with Goebbels, a perpetual revolutionist who won’t put down his arms. His is still a merciless and bloodthirsty attitude toward the Jews, who must all be confined in a pale of settlement and begin to engage in petty trade.

Goebbels is particularly enraged by rumors of attentions Goering is paying to a beautiful Jewish actress.