GOEBBELS THRASHED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 December 1938, Page 5

GOEBBELS THRASHED

ACCORDING TO REPORTS PUBLISHED IN U.S.A.

SAID TO HAVE BEEN TAKEN TO HOSPITAL.

ATTENTIONS TO BEAUTIFUL ACTRESS.

By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright NEW YORK, December 30.

American newspapers are giving prominence to stories from two sources that Dr Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, was taken to hospital on December- 22 because of a severe thrashing and not stomach trouble. The details differ, but it is agreed that the thrashing was due to Dr Goebbels’ attention to a beautiful actress, Lida Baarova.

One account states that friends of Lida Baarova’s husband, the actor Gustav Froelich (who was sent to a concentration camp in October after challenging Dr Goebbels on this account) surprised Dr Goebbels in the Froelich’s flat at night. Only the intervention of Dr Goebbels’s chauffeur saved his life. The other story states that Dr Goebbels was waylaid outside the flat. It is Dr Goebbels’s duty to report on the qualification and elegibility of all actresses seeking work in Germany. According to both accounts, Frau Goebbels, some months ago, was so displeased at her husband’s “undue time passed in deciding these qualifications” that she decided to obtain a divorce.

Herr Hitler acted as peacemaker, but the latest episode is reported to have decided 1 her to proceed with the divorce.

It is stated that Gustav Froelich nursed a hatred of Dr Goebbels since 1934, when he was exiled from Germany because his first wife, the singer Gitta Alpar, was a' Hungarian rabbi’s. daughter. The couple were divorced in 1935 so that Froelich could return to Germany.