Joseph Goebbels | |
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Official portrait of Goebbels as the Minister of Propaganda | |
Chancellor of Germany | |
In office 30 April 1945 – 1 May 1945 |
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President | Karl Dönitz |
Preceded by | Adolf Hitler |
Succeeded by | Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk (acting) |
Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda |
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In office 13 March 1933 – 30 April 1945 |
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President | Paul von Hindenburg (1933–1934) |
Führer | Adolf Hitler (1934–1945) |
Chancellor | Adolf Hitler |
Preceded by | Office created |
Succeeded by | Werner Naumann |
Gauleiter of Berlin | |
In office 9 November 1926 – 1 May 1945 |
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Appointed by | Adolf Hitler |
Preceded by | Ernst Schlange |
Succeeded by | None |
Reichsleiter | |
In office 1933–1945 |
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Appointed by | Adolf Hitler |
Preceded by | Office created |
Succeeded by | None |
Personal details | |
Born | Paul Joseph Goebbels 29 October 1897 Rheydt, Prussia, Germany |
Died | 1 May 1945 Berlin, Germany |
(aged 47)
Political party | National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) |
Spouse(s) | Magda Goebbels (née Ritschel) (m. 1931) |
Children | 6 |
Alma mater | |
Occupation | Politician |
Cabinet | Hitler Cabinet |
Signature | ![]() |
Paul Joseph Goebbels (English /ˈɡɜrbəlz/; German: [ˈɡœbəls] ( listen);[1] 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devoted followers, he was known for his zealous orations and deep and virulent antisemitism, which led to his strongly supporting the extermination of the Jews when the Nazi leadership developed their "Final Solution".
Goebbels came to power in 1933 after Hitler was appointed chancellor. One of Goebbels' first acts was to organize the burning of books considered to be "un-German". Under Goebbels' leadership, the Propaganda Ministry quickly gained and exerted controlling supervision over the news media, arts, and information in Germany.
From the beginning of his tenure, Goebbels organized actions against German Jews, commencing with a one-day boycott of Jewish businessmen, doctors and lawyers[2] on 1 April 1933.[3] These actions may have contributed to the violence of Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) on the night of 9–10 November 1938, an open and unrestrained pogrom unleashed by the Nazis across Germany in which synagogues were burned, Jewish-owned businesses trashed, Jews assaulted (91 killed), and thousands of them arrested and incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps.[4]
During World War II, Goebbels increased his power and influence through adroit and shifting alliances with other Nazi leaders. By mid-1943, the tide of war was turning against the Axis powers; Goebbels responded to major defeats on the Russian front in a series of highly orchestrated speeches urging the Germans to embrace the idea of total war and total mobilization. He remained with Hitler in Berlin to the end. Before he committed suicide, Hitler named him his successor as Chancellor in his will. On 1 May 1945, the day after Hitler had committed suicide with his new wife Eva Braun, Goebbels and his wife Magda killed their six young children by giving them poison (in the form of cyanide pills or capsules) in their sleep, then committed suicide themselves. The couple's bodies were burned in a shell crater, but due to the lack of petrol the burning was only partially effective.
Contents
Early life
Paul Joseph Goebbels was born in Rheydt, an industrial town south of Mönchengladbach on the Rhine near Düsseldorf.[5] Both parents were Catholics and from humble beginnings.[5] His father Fritz was a clerk in a factory; his mother Katharina (née Odenhausen) was ethnically Dutch.[6] Goebbels had five siblings: Konrad (1893–1947), Hans (1895–1949), Maria (1896–1896), Elisabeth (1901–1915), and Maria (1910–1949);[5] the last married the German filmmaker Max W. Kimmich in 1938.[7]
Goebbels suffered from ill health during his childhood, including a long bout of inflammation of the lungs. He had a deformed right foot (clubfoot) which turned inwards, due to a congenital deformity. It was thicker and shorter than his left foot.[5] He underwent a failed operation to correct it just prior to starting grammar school.[8] Goebbels wore a metal brace and special shoe because of his shortened leg, but nevertheless walked with a limp. He was rejected for military service in World War I due to his leg deformity.[9]
He was educated at a Christian Gymnasium, where he completed his Abitur (university entrance examination) in 1917.[10] He was the top student of his class and was given the traditional honor to speak at the awards ceremony.[11] His parents initially hoped that he would become a Catholic priest.[12] He studied literature and history at the universities of Bonn, Würzburg, Freiburg, and Munich.[13] By this time Goebbels had begun to distance himself from the church.[14]
Perhaps in compensation for his physical disabilities, he indulged in a lifelong pursuit of women.[15][16] At Freiburg, he met and fell in love with Anka Stalherm, who was three years his senior.[17] She went on to Würzburg to continue school, as did Goebbels.[9] He wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, Michael, a three-part work of which only Parts I and III have survived.[18] Goebbels felt he was writing his "own story".[18] Additional antisemitic content and material about a charismatic leader may have been added by Goebbels shortly before the book was published by the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party; NSDAP) in 1929.[19] By 1920, the relationship with Anka was over. The break-up filled Goebbels with thoughts of suicide.[20][a]
At the University of Heidelberg, he wrote his doctoral thesis on a minor 19th century romantic dramatist, Wilhelm von Schütz.[21] He had hoped to write his thesis under the supervision of Friedrich Gundolf who at that time was a well known literary historian. It did not seem to bother Goebbels that Gundolf was Jewish.[22] However, Gundolf was no longer performing teaching duties, so he directed Goebbels to associate professor Max Freiherr von Waldberg. Waldberg was also Jewish.[22] Waldberg was the one who recommended Goebbels write his thesis on Wilhelm von Schütz. After submitting the thesis and passing his oral examination, Goebbels earned his PhD in 1921.[23]
Goebbels then returned home and worked as a private tutor. He also found work as a journalist and was published in the local newspaper. His writing during that time reflected a dislike for modern culture and indicated a growing anti-Semitism.[24] In the summer of 1922, he met and began a love affair with Else Janke, a schoolteacher.[25] After Janke revealed to Goebbels that she was half-Jewish, the relationship ended. Goebbels stated the "enchantment [was] ruined".[25] He continued to see her on and off until 1927.[26]
He continued for several years to try to become a published author.[27] His diaries, which he began in 1923 and continued for the rest of his life, provided an outlet for his desire to write.[28] The lack of income from his literary works (he wrote two plays in 1923, neither of which sold[29]) forced him to take jobs as a caller on the stock exchange and as a bank clerk in Cologne, a job which he detested.[30][31] He was dismissed from the bank in August 1923 and returned to Rheydt.[32] During this period, he read and was influenced by the works of Oswald Spengler, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the British-born German writer whose book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899) was one of the standard works of the extreme right in Germany.[33] According to Biographer Peter Longerich, Goebbels' diary entries from late 1923 to early 1924 reflected the writings of a man who was isolated, preoccupied by "religious-philosophical" issues, and lacked a sense of direction.[34] Diary entries of mid-December 1923 forward show Goebbels was moving towards the völkisch nationalist movement.[35]
Nazi activist
Goebbels first took an interest in Adolf Hitler and Nazism in 1924.[36] In February 1924, Hitler's trial for treason began in the wake of his failed attempt to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, during 8–9 November 1923 (this failed coup became known as the Beer Hall Putsch).[37] The trial garnered Hitler much press and gave him a platform for propaganda.[38] Hitler was sentenced to prison, and was released on 20 December 1924.[39] Goebbels was drawn to the NSDAP mostly because of Hitler's charisma and commitment to his beliefs.[40] He joined the NSDAP around this time, and was given the party badge number 8762.[30] In late 1924, Goebbels offered his services to Karl Kaufmann, who was Gauleiter (NSDAP district leader) for the Rhine-Ruhr District. Kaufmann put him in touch with Gregor Strasser, a leading Nazi organizer in northern Germany, who hired him to work on their weekly newspaper and to do secretarial work for the regional party offices.[41] He was also put to work as party speaker and representative for Rhineland-Westphalia.[42] Members of Strasser's northern branch of the NSDAP, including Goebbels, had a more socialist outlook than the rival Hitler group in Munich.[43] Strasser disagreed with Hitler on many parts of the party platform, and in November 1926 began working on a revision.[44]
Hitler viewed Strasser's actions as a threat to his authority, and summoned 60 Gauleiters and party leaders, including Goebbels, to a meeting at Bamberg, in Streicher's Gau of Franconia, where he gave a two-hour speech repudiating Strasser's new political programme.[45] Hitler was opposed to the socialist leanings of the northern wing, stating it would mean "political bolshevization of Germany". Further, there would be "no princes, only Germans", and a legal system with no "... Jewish system of exploitation ... for plundering of our people". The future would be secured by acquiring land, not through expropriation of the estates of the former nobility, but through colonization of territories to the east.[44] Goebbels was horrified by Hitler's characterisation of socialism as "a Jewish creation", and his assertion that private property would not be expropriated by a Nazi government. "I no longer fully believe in Hitler. That's the terrible thing: my inner support has been taken away."[46]
In hopes of winning over the opposition, Hitler arranged meetings in Munich with the three Greater Ruhr Gau leaders, including Goebbels.[47] Goebbels was impressed when Hitler sent his own car to meet them at the railway station. That evening Hitler and Goebbels both gave speeches at a beer hall rally.[47] The following day, Hitler offered his hand in reconciliation to the three men, encouraging them to put their differences behind them. Hitler also gave Goebbels "new insight" into the "social question".[48] Goebbels capitulated completely, offering Hitler his total loyalty – a pledge that was clearly sincere, and that he adhered to until the end of his life. "I love him ... He has thought through everything," Goebbels wrote. "Such a sparkling mind can be my leader. I bow to the greater one, the political genius". Later he wrote: "Adolf Hitler, I love you because you are both great and simple at the same time. What one calls a genius."[49] As a result of the Bamberg and Munich meetings, Strasser's new draft of the party programme was discarded. The original National Socialist Program of 1920 was retained unchanged, and Hitler's position as party leader was greatly strengthened.[49]
Propagandist in Berlin
At Hitler's invitation, Goebbels spoke at party meetings in Munich and at the annual Party Congress, held in Weimar in 1926.[50] For the following year's event, Goebbels was involved in the planning for the first time. He and Hitler arranged for the rally to be filmed.[51] Receiving praise for doing well at these events led Goebbels to shape his political ideas to match Hitler's, and to admire and idolize him even more.[52]
Goebbels was first offered the position of party Gauleiter for the Berlin section in August 1926. He travelled to Berlin in mid-September and by the middle of October accepted the position. Thus Hitler's plan to divide and dissolve the northwestern Gauleiters group that Goebbels had served in under Strasser was successful.[53] Hitler gave Goebbels great authority over the area, allowing him to determine the course for organisation and leadership for the Gau. Goebbels was given control over the local Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) and answered only to Hitler.[54] The party membership numbered about 1,000 when Goebbels arrived, and he reduced it to a core of 600 of the most active and promising members. To raise money, he instituted membership fees and began charging admission to party meetings.[55] Aware of the value of publicity (both positive and negative), he deliberately provoked beer-hall battles and street brawls, including violent attacks on the Communist Party of Germany.[56] Goebbels adapted recent developments in commercial advertising to the political sphere, including the use of catchy slogans and subliminal cues.[57] His new ideas for poster design included using large type, red ink, and cryptic headers that encouraged the reader to examine the fine print to determine the meaning.[58]
Like Hitler, Goebbels practiced his public speaking skills in front of a mirror. Meetings were preceded by ceremonial marches and singing, and the venues were decorated with party banners. His entrance (almost always late) was timed for maximum emotional impact on the audience. He usually meticulously planned his speeches ahead of time, using pre-planned and choreographed inflection and gestures, but he was also able to improvise and adapt his presentation to make a good connection with his audience.[60][59]
Goebbels' tactic of using provocation to bring attention to the NSDAP, along with violence at the public party meetings and demonstrations, led the Berlin police to ban the NSDAP from the city on 5 May 1927.[61][62] Violent incidents continued, including young Nazis randomly attacking Jews in the streets.[59] Goebbels was subjected to a public speaking ban until the end of October.[63] During this period, he founded the newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack) as a propaganda vehicle for the Berlin area. It was a modern-style newspaper which took an aggressive tone.[64] To Goebbels' disappointment, circulation was initially small, only 2,000. Material in the paper was highly anti-communist and antisemitic.[65] Among the paper's favourite targets was the Jewish Deputy Chief of the Berlin Police Bernhard Weiß. Goebbels gave him the derogatory nickname "Isidore" and subjected him to a relentless campaign of Jew-baiting in the hope of provoking a crackdown he could then exploit.[66] Goebbels continued to try to break into the literary world, with a revised version of his book Michael finally being published, and the unsuccessful production of two of his plays (Der Wanderer and Die Saat (The Seed)). The latter was his final attempt at playwriting.[67] During this period in Berlin he had relationships many women, including his old flame Anka Stalherm, who was now married and had a small child. He was quick to fall in love, but easily tired of a relationship and moved on to someone new. He worried too about how a committed personal relationship might interfere with his career.[68]
The ban on the NSDAP was lifted in early 1928, in time for the Reichstag elections, held on 20 May.[69] Results were poor, with the NSDAP losing nearly 100,000 voters and earning only 2.6 per cent of the vote nationwide. Results in Berlin were even worse, where they attained only 1.4 per cent of the vote.[70] Goebbels was one of twelve NSDAP members to gain election to the Reichstag.[70] This gave him immunity from prosecution for a long list of outstanding charges, including a three-week jail sentence he received in April for insulting the deputy police chief Bernhard Weiß.[71] The Reichstag changed the immunity regulations in February 1931, and Goebbels was forced to pay fines for libellous material he had placed in Der Angriff over the course of the previous year.[72]
In his newspaper Berliner Arbeiterzeitung (Berlin Workers Newspaper), Gregor Strasser was highly critical of Goebbels' failure to attract the urban vote.[73] However, the party as a whole did much better in rural areas, attracting as much as 18 per cent of the vote in some regions.[70] This was partly because Hitler had publicly stated just prior to the election that Point 17 of the party programme, which mandated the expropriation of land without compensation, would apply only to Jewish speculators and not private landholders.[74] After the election, the party refocused their efforts to try to attract still more votes in the agricultural sector.[75] In May, shortly after the election, Hitler considered appointing Goebbels as party propaganda chief. But he hesitated, as he worried that the removal of Gregor Strasser from the post would lead to a split in the party. Goebbels considered himself well suited to the position, and began to formulate ideas about how propaganda could be used in schools and the media.[76]
By 1930, the violence between the Nazis and communists led to local SA troop leader Horst Wessel being shot by two members of the Communist Party of Germany. He later died in hospital.[78] Exploiting Wessel's death, Goebbels turned him into a martyr for the Nazi movement. He officially declared Wessel's march Die Fahne hoch (Raise the flag), renamed as the Horst-Wessel-Lied, to be the NSDAP anthem.[77]
The Great Depression greatly impacted Germany and by 1930 there was a dramatic increase in unemployment.[79] During this time, the Strasser brothers started publishing a new daily newspaper in Berlin, the Nationaler Sozialist.[80] Like their other publications, it conveyed the brothers' own brand of Nazism, including nationalism, anti-capitalism, social reform, and anti-Westernism.[81] Goebbels complained vehemently about the rival Strasser newspapers to Hitler, and admitted that their success was causing his own Berlin newspapers to be "pushed to the wall".[80] In late April 1930, Hitler publicly and firmly announced his opposition to Gregor Strasser and appointed Goebbels to replace him as Reich leader of NSDAP propaganda.[82] One of Goebbels' first acts was to ban the evening edition of the Nationaler Sozialist.[83] Goebbels was also given control of other Nazi papers across the country, including the party's national newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter (People's Observer). He still had to wait until 3 July for Otto Strasser and his supporters to announce they were leaving the NSDAP. Upon receiving the news, Goebbels was relieved the "crisis" with the Strassers was finally over and glad that Otto Strasser had lost all power.[84]
The rapid deterioration of the economy led to the resignation on 27 March 1930 of the coalition government that had been elected in 1928. A new cabinet was formed, and Paul von Hindenburg used his power as president to govern via emergency decrees.[85] He appointed Heinrich Brüning as chancellor.[86] Goebbels took charge of the NSDAP's national campaign for Reichstag elections called for 14 September 1930. Campaigning was undertaken on a huge scale, with thousands of meetings and speeches held all over the country.[87] Hitler's speeches focused on blaming the country's economic woes on the Weimar Republic, particularly its adherence to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which called for war reparations that had proven devastating to the German economy. He proposed a new German society based on race and national unity.[87] The resulting success took even Hitler and Goebbels by surprise: the party received 6.5 million votes nationwide and took 107 seats in the Reichstag, making it the second largest party in the country.[87]
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20150613044617im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-2004-1202-500%2C_Adolf_Hitler%2C_Joseph_Goebbels%2C_Tochter.jpg/170px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-2004-1202-500%2C_Adolf_Hitler%2C_Joseph_Goebbels%2C_Tochter.jpg)
In late 1930 Goebbels met Magda Quandt, a divorcée who had joined the party a few months earlier. She worked as a volunteer in the party offices in Berlin, helping Goebbels organize his private papers.[88] Her flat on the Reichkanzlerplatz soon became a favourite meeting place for Hitler and other NSDAP officials. Magda had a close relationship with Hitler, and became a member of the small coterie of female friends with whom he was able to relax.[89] Goebbels and Quandt married on 19 December 1931.[90]
For two further elections held in 1932, Goebbels organized massive campaigns that included rallies, parades, speeches, and Hitler travelling around the country by airplane with the slogan "the Führer over Germany".[91] Goebbels also undertook numerous speaking tours during these election campaigns.[92] Goebbels had some of their speeches published on gramophone records and as pamphlets. He was also involved in the production of a small collection of silent films that could be shown at party meetings, though they did not yet have enough equipment to widely use this medium. [93] Many of Goebbels' campaign posters used violent imagery such as a giant half-clad male destroying political opponents or other perceived enemies such as "International High Finance".[94] His propaganda characterized the opposition as "November criminals", "Jewish wire-pullers", or a communist threat.[95] Support for the party continued to grow, but neither of these elections led to a majority government. In an effort to stabilize the country and improve economic conditions, Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Reich chancellor on 30 January 1933.[96]
Propaganda Minister
To celebrate Hitler's appointment as chancellor, Goebbels organized a torchlit parade in Berlin on the night of 30 January of an estimated 60,000 men, many in the uniforms of the SA and SS. The spectacle was covered by a live state radio broadcast, with commentary by longtime party member and future Minister of Aviation Hermann Göring.[97] Goebbels was disappointed to not be given a post in Hitler's new cabinet. Bernhard Rust was appointed as Minister of Culture, the post Goebbels was expecting to receive.[98] Like other NSDAP officials, Goebbels had to deal with Hitler's leadership style of giving contradictory orders to his subordinates, while placing them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped.[99] In this way, Hitler fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power.[100] The NSDAP took advantage of the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933, with Hindenburg passing the Reichstag Fire Decree the following day at Hitler's urging. This was the first of several pieces of legislation that dismantled democracy in Germany and put a totalitarian dictatorship—headed by Hitler—in its place.[101] On 5 March, yet another Reichstag election took place, the last to be held before the defeat of the Nazis at the end of the Second World War.[102] While the NSDAP increased their number of seats and percentage of the vote, it was not the landslide expected by the party leadership.[103] Goebbels finally received Hitler's appointment to the cabinet, officially becoming head of the newly created Reichs Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda on 14 March.[104]
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The role of the new ministry, which set up its offices in the 18th-century Leopold Palace across from the Reich Chancellery, was to centralise Nazi control of all aspects of German cultural and intellectual life.[105] Goebbels described the goal of his department as increasing the popular support of the party from the 37 per cent achieved at the last free election held in Germany on 25 March 1933 to 100 per cent support. An unstated goal was to present to other nations the impression that the NSDAP had the full and enthusiastic backing of the entire population.[106] One of Goebbels' first productions was staging the Day of Potsdam, a ceremonial passing of power from Hindenburg to Hitler, held in Potsdam on 21 March.[107] He composed the text of Hitler's decree authorizing the boycott of Jewish businesses, held on 1 April.[108] Later that month, Goebbels travelled back to Rheydt, where he was given a triumphal reception. The townsfolk lined the main street, which had been renamed in his honour. On the following day, Goebbels was declared a local hero.[109]
Goebbels converted the 1 May holiday from a celebration of workers' rights (observed as such especially by the communists) into a day celebrating the NSDAP. In place of the usual ad hoc labour celebrations, he organized a huge party rally held at Tempelhof Field in Berlin. The following day, all trade union offices in the country were forcibly disbanded by the SA and SS, and the Nazi-run German Labour Front was created to take their place.[110] "We are the masters of Germany", he commented in his diary entry on 3 May.[111] Less than two weeks later, he gave a speech at the Nazi book burning in Berlin on 10 May.[112]
Meanwhile, the NSDAP began passing laws to marginalize Jews and remove them from German society. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April 1933, forced all non-Aryans to retire from the legal profession and civil service.[113] Similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of their right to practise.[113] The first Nazi concentration camps (initially created to house political dissenters) were founded shortly after Hitler seized power.[114] In a process termed Gleichschaltung (co-ordination), the NSDAP proceeded to rapidly bring all aspects of life under control of the party. All civilian organisations, including agricultural groups, volunteer organisations, and sports clubs, had their leadership replaced with Nazi sympathisers or party members. By June 1933, virtually the only organisations not in the control of the NSDAP were the army and the churches.[115] At the end of June 1934, top officials of the SA and opponents of the regime, including Gregor Strasser, were arrested and killed in a purge later called the Night of Long Knives. Goebbels was present at the arrest of SA leader Ernst Röhm in Munich.[116] On 2 August 1934, President von Hindenburg died. In a radio broadcast, Goebbels announced that the offices of president and chancellor had been combined, and Hitler had been formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor).[117]
Workings of the Ministry
The propaganda ministry was organized into seven departments: administration and legal; mass rallies, public health, youth, and race; radio; national and foreign press; films and film censorship; art, music, and theatre; and protection against counter-propaganda, both foreign and domestic.[118] Goebbels style of leadership was tempestuous and unpredictable. He would suddenly change direction and shift his support between senior associates. He was a difficult boss and liked to berate his staff in public.[119]
The Reich Film Chamber, which all members of the film industry were required to join, was created in June 1933.[120] Goebbels promoted the development of films with a Nazi slant, and ones that contained subliminal or overt propaganda messages.[121] Under the auspices of the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture), created in September, Goebbels added additional sub-chambers for the fields of broadcasting, fine arts, literature, music, the press, and the theatre.[122] As in the film industry, anyone wishing to pursue a career in these fields had to be a member of the corresponding chamber. In this way Goebbels could prevent anyone whose views were contrary to the regime could be excluded from working in their chosen field and thus silenced.[123] In addition, journalists (now considered employees of the state) were required to prove Aryan descent back to the year 1800, and if married, the same requirement applied to the spouse. Members of any chamber were not allowed to leave the country for their work without prior permission of their chamber. A committee was established to censor books, and works could not be re-published unless they were on the approved list. Similar regulations applied to other fine arts and entertainment; even cabaret performances were censored.[124] Many German artists and intellectuals left Germany in the pre-war years rather than work under these restrictions.[125]
It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio and the airplane. It is no exaggeration to say that the German revolution, at least in the form it took, would have been impossible without the airplane and the radio.
Goebbels was particularly interested in controlling radio, which was then still a fairly new mass medium.[127] Sometimes under protest from individual states (particularly Prussia, headed by Göring), Goebbels gained control of radio stations nationwide, and placed them under the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (German National Broadcasting Corporation) in July 1934.[128] Manufacturers were urged by Goebbels to produce inexpensive home receivers, called Volksempfänger (people's receiver), and by 1938 nearly ten million sets had been sold. Loudspeakers were placed in public areas, factories, and schools, so that important party broadcasts would be heard live by nearly all Germans.[127] On 2 September 1939 (a few days after the start of the war), Goebbels and the Council of Ministers proclaimed it illegal to listen to foreign radio stations. Disseminating news from foreign broadcasts could result in the death penalty.[129] Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and Minister for Armaments and War Production, later said the regime "made the complete use of all technical means for domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought."[130]
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A major focus of Nazi propaganda was Hitler himself, who was glorified as a heroic and infallible leader and became the focus of a cult of personality.[131] Much of this was spontaneous, but some was stage-managed as part of Goebbels' propaganda work.[132] Adulation of Hitler was the focus of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, where his moves were carefully choreographed. The rally was the subject of the film Triumph of the Will, one of several Nazi propaganda films directed by Leni Riefenstahl. It won the Gold Medal at the 1935 Venice Film Festival.[133]
Goebbels was involved in planning the staging of the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin. It was around this time that he met and started having an affair with the actress Lída Baarová, whom he continued to see until 1938.[134] A major project in 1937 was the Degenerate Art Exhibition, organised by Goebbels, which ran in Munich from July to November. The exhibition proved wildly popular, attracting over two million visitors.[135] A degenerate music exhibition took place the following year.[136] Meanwhile, Goebbels was disappointed by the lack of quality in the National Socialist artwork, films, and literature.[137]
Church struggle
In 1933, Hitler signed the Reichskonkordat (Reich Concordat), a treaty with the Vatican that required the regime to honour the independence of Catholic institutions and prohibited clergy from involvement in politics.[138] However, the regime continued to target the Christian churches and to try to weaken their influence. Throughout 1935 and 1936, hundreds of clergy, nuns, and lay leaders were arrested, often on trumped up charges of currency smuggling or sexual offences.[139][140] Goebbels widely publicised the trials in his propaganda campaigns, showing the cases in the worst possible light.[139] Restrictions were placed on public meetings, and Catholic publications faced censorship. Catholic schools were required to reduce religious instruction and crucifixes were removed from state buildings.[141] Hitler often vacillated on whether or not the Kirchenkampf (church struggle) should be a priority, but his frequent inflammatory comments on the issue were enough to convince Goebbels to intensify his work on the issue in the first half of 1937.[142]
In response to the persecution, Pope Pius XI had the "Mit brennender Sorge" ("With Burning Concern") Encyclical smuggled into Germany for Passion Sunday 1937 and read from every pulpit. It denounced the systematic hostility of the regime toward the church.[143][144] In response, Goebbels renewed the regime's crackdown and propaganda against Catholics.[145] His speech of 28 May in Berlin in front of 20,000 party members, which was also broadcast on the radio, attacked the Catholic church as morally corrupt. As a result of the propaganda campaign, enrolment in denominational schools dropped sharply, and by 1939 all such schools were disbanded or converted to public facilities. Harassment and threats of imprisonment led the clergy to be much more cautious in their criticism of the regime.[146] Partly out of foreign policy concerns, Hitler ordered a scaling back the church struggle by the end of July 1937.[147]
Goebbels at war
As early as February 1933, Hitler announced that rearmament must be undertaken, albeit clandestinely at first, as to do so was in violation of the Versailles Treaty. A year later he told his military leaders that 1942 was the target date for going to war in the east.[148] Goebbels was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Hitler aggressively pursuing Germany's territorial claims sooner rather than later. At the time of the Reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936, Goebbels summed up his general attitude in his diary: "[N]ow is the time for action. Fortune favors the brave! He who dares nothing wins nothing."[149] In the lead-up to the Sudetenland crisis in 1938, Goebbels took the initiative time and again to use propaganda to whip up sympathy for the Sudeten Germans while campaigning against the Czech government.[150] Still Goebbels was well aware there was a growing "war panic" in Germany and so by July had the press conduct propaganda efforts at a lower level of intensity.[151] After the western powers acceded to Hitler's demands concerning Czechoslovakia in 1938, Goebbels soon redirected his propaganda machine against Poland. From May onwards, he orchestrated a "hate campaign" against Poland, fabricating stories about atrocities against ethnic Germans in Danzig and other cities. Even so, he was unable to persuade the majority of Germans to welcome the prospect of war.[152] He himself had private doubts about the wisdom of risking a protracted war against Britain and France by attacking Poland.[153]
After the war started in 1939, Goebbels used his propaganda ministry and the Reich chambers to control access to information domestically. To his chagrin, his rival Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, continually challenged Goebbels' jurisdiction over the dissemination of international propaganda. Hitler declined to make a firm ruling on the subject, so the two men remained rivals for the remainder of the Nazi era.[154] Goebbels did not participate in the military decision making process, nor was he made privy to diplomatic negotiations until after the fact.[155]
The Propaganda Ministry took over the broadcasting facilities of conquered countries immediately after surrender, and began broadcasting prepared material using the existing announcers as a way to gain the trust of the citizens.[156] Every aspect of the media, both domestically and in the conquered countries, was controlled by Goebbels and his department.[157] The German Home Service, the Armed Forces Programme, and the German European Service were all rigorously controlled in everything from the information they were permitted to disseminate to the music they were allowed to play.[158] Party rallies, speeches, and demonstrations continued; speeches were broadcast on the radio and short propaganda films were exhibited using 1,500 mobile film vans.[157] Hitler made fewer public appearances and broadcasts as the war progressed, so Goebbels increasingly became the voice of the Nazi regime for the German people.[158] From May 1940 he wrote frequent editorials that were published in Das Reich which were later read aloud over the radio.[159] He found films to be his most effective propaganda medium, after radio.[160] At his insistence, half the films made in wartime Germany were propaganda films (particularly on antisemitism) and war propaganda films (recounting both historical wars and current exploits of the Wehrmacht).[161]
Goebbels became preoccupied with morale and the efforts of the people on the home front. He believed that the more the people at home were involved in the war effort, the better their morale would be.[162] For example, Goebbels was in charge of the collection of winter clothing and ski equipment for troops on the eastern front.[162] At the same time, Goebbels implemented changes to have more "entertaining material" in radio and film produced for the public, decreeing in late 1942 that 20 per cent of the films should be propaganda and 80 per cent light entertainment.[163] As Gauleiter of Berlin, Goebbels dealt with increasingly serious shortages of necessities such as food and clothing, as well as the need to ration beer and tobacco, which were important for morale. Hitler suggested watering the beer and degrading the quality of the cigarettes so that more could be produced, but Goebbels refused, saying the cigarettes were already of such low quality that it was impossible to make them any worse.[164] Through his propaganda campaigns, he worked hard to maintain an appropriate level of morale among the public about the military situation, neither too optimistic nor too grim.[165] The series of military setbacks the Germans suffered in this period – the thousand-bomber raid on Cologne (May 1942), the Allied victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein (November 1942), and especially the catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad (February 1943) – were difficult matters to present the the German public, who were increasingly weary of the war and sceptical that it could be won.[166]
By early 1943, the war produced a labour crisis for the regime. Hitler created a three-man committee with representatives of the State, the army, and the Party in an attempt to centralise control of the war economy. The committee members were Hans Lammers (head of the Reich Chancellery), Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command; OKW), and Martin Bormann, who controlled the Party. The committee was intended to independently propose measures regardless of the wishes of various ministries, with Hitler reserving most final decisions to himself. The committee, soon known as the Dreierausschuß (Committee of Three), met eleven times between January and August 1943. However, they ran up against resistance from Hitler's cabinet ministers, who headed deeply entrenched spheres of influence and were excluded from the committee. Seeing it as a threat to their power, Goebbels, Göring, and Speer worked together to bring it down. The result was that nothing changed, and the Committee of Three declined into irrelevance by September 1943.[167]
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Partly in response to being excluded from the Committee of Three, Goebbels pressured Hitler to introduce measures that would produce "total war", including closing businesses not essential to the war effort, conscripting women into the labour force, and enlisting men in previously exempt occupations into the Wehrmacht.[168] Some of these measures were implemented in an edict of 13 January, but to Goebbels' dismay, Göring demanded that his favourite restaurants in Berlin should remain open, and Lammers successfully lobbied Hitler to have women with children exempted from conscription, even if they had child care available.[169] After receiving an enthusiastic response to his speech of 30 January 1943 on the topic, Goebbels believed he had the support of the German people in his call for total war.[170] His next speech, the Sportpalast speech of 18 February 1943, was a passionate demand for his audience to commit to total war, which he presented as the only way to stop the Bolshevik onslaught and save the German people from destruction. The speech also had a strong antisemitic element and hinted at the extermination of the Jewish people that was already underway.[171] The speech was presented live on radio and was filmed as well.[172] The discovery around this time of a mass grave of Polish officers that had been killed by the Red Army in the 1940 Katyn massacre was made use of by Goebbels in his propaganda in an attempt to drive a wedge between the Soviets and the other western allies.[173]
Plenipotentiary for total war
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Following the Allied invasion of Italy and the fall of Benito Mussolini in September, he and Joachim von Ribbentrop raised with Hitler the possibility of secretly approaching Joseph Stalin and negotiating a separate peace behind the backs of the western Allies. Hitler, surprisingly, did not reject the idea of a separate peace with either side, but he told Goebbels that he should not negotiate from a position of weakness. A great German victory must occur before any negotiations should be undertaken, he reasoned.[174] The German defeat at Kursk in July had ended any possibility of this.
As Germany's military and economic situation grew steadily worse during 1944, Goebbels renewed his push, in alliance with Speer, to wrest control of the home front away from Göring. In July 1944, following the Allied landings in France and the huge Soviet advances in Belarus, Hitler finally agreed to grant both of them increased powers. Speer took control of all economic and production matters away from Göring, and Goebbels took the title Reich Plenipotentiary for "Total War" (Reichsbevollmächtigter für den totalen Kriegseinsatz an der Heimatfront). At the same time, Himmler took over the Interior Ministry.
This trio – Goebbels, Himmler and Speer – became the real centre of German government in the last year of the war, although Bormann used his privileged access to Hitler to thwart them when he could. In this Bormann was very successful, as the party gauleiters gained more and more powers, becoming Reich Defense Commissars (Reichsverteidigungskommissare) in their respective districts and overseeing all civilian administration. The fact that Himmler was Interior Minister only increased the power of Bormann, as the Gauleiters feared that Himmler, who was General Plenipotentiary for the Administration of the Reich, would curb their power and set up his higher SS and police leaders as their replacement.
Goebbels saw Himmler as a potential ally against Bormann and in 1944 is supposed to have voiced the opinion that if the Reichsführer-SS was granted control over the Wehrmacht and he, Goebbels, granted control over the domestic politics, the war would soon be ended in a victorious manner. However, the inability of Himmler to persuade Hitler to cease his support of Bormann, the defection of SS generals such as Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and his powerful subordinate Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, to Bormann, soon persuaded Goebbels to align himself with the Secretary to the Führer at the end of 1944, thus accepting his subordinate position.
When elements of the army leadership tried to assassinate Hitler in the July 20 plot shortly thereafter, it was this trio that rallied the resistance to the plotters. It was Goebbels, besieged in his Berlin flat with Speer and secretary Wilfred von Oven beside him but with his phone lines intact, who brought Otto Ernst Remer, the wavering commander of the Berlin garrison, to the phone to speak to Hitler in East Prussia, thus demonstrating that the Führer was alive and that the garrison should oppose the attempted coup.[175]
Goebbels promised Hitler that he could raise a million new soldiers by means of a reorganisation of the Army, transferring personnel from the Navy and Luftwaffe, and purging the bloated Reich Ministries, which satraps like Göring had hitherto protected. As it turned out, the inertia of the state bureaucracy was too great even for the energetic Goebbels to overcome. Bormann and his puppet Lammers, keen to retain their control over the Party and State administrations respectively, placed endless obstacles in Goebbels's way.[176] Another problem was that although Speer and Goebbels were allies, their agendas conflicted: Speer wanted absolute priority in the allocation of labour to be given to arms production, while Goebbels sought to press every able-bodied male into the army. Speer, allied with Fritz Sauckel, the General Plenipotentiary for the Employment of Labour from 1942, generally won these battles.[177]
By July 1944, it was in any case too late for Goebbels and Speer's internal coup to make any real difference to the outcome of the war. The combined economic and military power of the western Allies and the Soviet Union, now fully mobilised, was too great for Germany to overcome. A crucial economic indicator, the ratio of steel output, was running at 4.5:1 against Germany. The final blow was the loss of the Romanian oil fields as the Soviet Army advanced through the Balkans in September. This, combined with the allied air campaign against Germany's synthetic oil production, finally broke the back of the German economy and thus its capacity for further resistance.[178] By this time, the best Goebbels could do to reassure the German people that victory was still possible was to make vague promises that "miracle weapons" such as the Me 262 jet aircraft, the Type XXI U-boat, and the V-2 rocket could somehow retrieve the military situation.
Defeat and death
In the last months of the war, Goebbels' speeches and articles took on an increasingly apocalyptic tone.[179] By the beginning of 1945, with the Soviets on the Oder and the Western Allies preparing to cross the Rhine, Goebbels could no longer disguise the fact that defeat was inevitable.[180] Goebbels tentatively discussed with Hitler the issue of making peace overtures to the western allies, but Hitler did not see that leading anywhere. Privately, Goebbels was conflicted at pushing the case with Hitler since he did not want to lose the confidence of his Führer.[181]
When other Nazi leaders urged Hitler to leave Berlin and establish a new centre of resistance in the National Redoubt in Bavaria, Goebbels opposed this, arguing for a last heroic stand in Berlin.[182] By this time, Goebbels had gained the position he had wanted so long – at the side of Hitler, albeit only because of his subservience to Bormann, who was the Führer 's de facto deputy. Göring was utterly discredited, although he was not stripped of his offices until 23 April.[183] Himmler, whose appointment as commander of Army Group Vistula had led to disaster on the Oder, was also in estrangement and disgrace with Hitler.[184] Even Bormann was not "anxious" to meet his end in Berlin. Only Goebbels showed total loyally to Hitler.[185] Goebbels knew how to play on Hitler's fantasies, encouraging him to see the hand of providence in the death of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April.[186] Whether Hitler really saw this event as a turning point as Goebbels proclaimed is not known.[187] On 22 April, Hitler announced that he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself.[188]
On 23 April, Goebbels made the following proclamation to the people of Berlin:
I call on you to fight for your city. Fight with everything you have got, for the sake of your wives and your children, your mothers and your parents. Your arms are defending everything we have ever held dear, and all the generations that will come after us. Be proud and courageous! Be inventive and cunning! Your Gauleiter is amongst you. He and his colleagues will remain in your midst. His wife and children are here as well. He, who once captured the city with 200 men, will now use every means to galvanize the defense of the capital. The battle for Berlin must become the signal for the whole nation to rise up in battle ..."[189]
Unlike many other leading Nazis at this juncture, Goebbels proved to have strong convictions, moving with his family into the Vorbunker, connected to the lower Führerbunker under the Reich Chancellery garden in central Berlin.[190] He told Vice-Admiral Hans-Erich Voss that he would not entertain the idea of either surrender or escape.[191]
After midnight on 29 April, with the Soviets advancing ever closer to the bunker complex, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony within the Führerbunker.[192][b] Afterwards Hitler hosted a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife.[193] Hitler then took secretary Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his last will and testament.[b][194] Goebbels and Bormann were two of the witnesses at Hitler's signing of his last will and testament.[195]
In his last will and testament, Hitler named no successor as Führer or leader of the Nazi Party. Instead, Hitler appointed Goebbels as Reich Chancellor; Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who was at Flensburg near the Danish border, Reich President; and Martin Bormann, Hitler's long-time chief of staff, Party Minister.[196] Goebbels wrote a postscript to the will stating that he would disobey Hitler's order to leave Berlin. "For reasons of humanity and personal loyality" he had to stay.[197] Further, his wife and children would be staying, as well. They would end their lives "side by side with the Führer".[197]
In the mid-afternoon of 30 April, Hitler shot himself.[198] After Hitler's suicide, Goebbels was depressed. Voss later recounted Goebbels said: 'It is a great pity that such a man is not with us any longer. But there is nothing to be done. For us, everything is lost now and the only way left for us is the one which Hitler chose. I shall follow his example'."[199]
On 1 May, Goebbels completed his sole official act as Chancellor. He dictated a letter and ordered German General Hans Krebs, under a white flag, to meet with General Vasily Chuikov and to deliver it. Chuikov, as commander of the Soviet 8th Guards Army, commanded the Soviet forces in central Berlin. Goebbels' letter informed Chuikov of Hitler's death and requested a ceasefire. After this was rejected, Goebbels decided that further efforts were futile.[200]
Later on 1 May, Vice-Admiral Voss saw Goebbels for the last time: "Before the breakout [from the bunker] began, about ten generals and officers, including myself, went down individually to Goebbels's shelter to say goodbye. While saying goodbye I asked Goebbels to join us. But he replied: 'The captain must not leave his sinking ship. I have thought about it all and decided to stay here. I have nowhere to go because with little children I will not be able to make it'."[199]
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20150613044617im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1978-086-03%2C_Joseph_Goebbels_mit_Familie.jpg/220px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1978-086-03%2C_Joseph_Goebbels_mit_Familie.jpg)
On the evening of 1 May 1945, Goebbels arranged for an SS dentist, Helmut Kunz, to inject his six children with morphine so that when they were unconscious, an ampule of cyanide could be crushed in each of their mouths.[201] According to Kunz's later testimony, he gave the children morphine injections but it was Magda Goebbels and SS-Obersturmbannführer Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler's personal doctor, who administered the cyanide.[201]
At around 20:30, Goebbels and his wife left the bunker and walked up to the garden of the Chancellery where they committed suicide.[202] There are several different accounts on what followed. According to one account, Goebbels shot his wife and then himself. Another account was that they each bit on a cyanide ampule and were given a coup de grâce immediately afterwards.[203] Goebbels' SS adjutant Günther Schwägermann testified in 1948 that the couple walked ahead of him up the stairs and out into the Chancellery garden. He waited in the stairwell and heard the "shots" sound.[202] Schwägermann then walked up the remaining stairs and once outside he saw the lifeless bodies of the couple. Following Joseph Goebbels' prior order, Schwägermann had an SS soldier fire several shots into Goebbels' body, which did not move.[202]
The bodies were then doused with petrol, but the remains were only partially burned and not buried.[203] A few days later, Voss was brought back to the bunker by the Soviets to identify the partly burned bodies of Joseph and Magda Goebbels and the bodies of their children. The remains of the Goebbels' family, Hitler, Eva Braun, General Hans Krebs, and Hitler's dogs were repeatedly buried and exhumed.[204] The last burial was at the SMERSH facility in Magdeburg on 21 February 1946. In 1970, KGB director Yuri Andropov authorised an operation to destroy the remains.[205] On 4 April 1970, a Soviet KGB team used detailed burial charts to exhume five wooden boxes at the Magdeburg SMERSH facility. The remains from the boxes were burned, crushed, and scattered into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the nearby Elbe.[206]
Antisemitism and the Holocaust
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Like many Germans of that time, Goebbels was antisemitic from a young age.[207] After joining the NSDAP and meeting Hitler, his antisemitism grew and became more radical. He began to see the Jews as a destructive force with a negative impact on German society.[208] After the Nazis seized power, he began to urge Hitler to take action against the Jews.[209] The goal was to remove them from German cultural and economic life, and eventually to remove them from the country altogether.[210] In addition to his propaganda efforts, Goebbels actively promoted the persecution of the Jews through pogroms, legislation, and other actions.[211] Discriminatory measures he instituted in Berlin in the early years of the regime included bans against their using public transport and requiring that Jewish shops be marked as such.[212]
In November 1938, the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath was killed in Paris by a young Jewish man. In response, Goebbels arranged for inflammatory antisemitic material to be released by the press, and the result was the start of a pogrom. Jews were attacked and synagogues destroyed all over Germany. The situation was further inflamed by a speech Goebbels gave at a party meeting on the night of 8 November, where he obliquely called for party members to incite further violence against Jews while making it appear to be a spontaneous series of acts by the German people. At least a hundred Jews were killed, several hundred synagogues were damaged or destroyed, and thousands of Jewish shops were vandalized. Around 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps.[213] The destruction stopped after a conference held on 12 November, where Göring pointed out that the destruction of Jewish property was in effect the destruction of German property, since the intention was that it would all eventually be confiscated.[214] Goebbels continued his intensive antisemitic propaganda campaign that culminated in Hitler's 30 January 1939 Reichstag speech, which Goebbels helped to write:[215]
If international finance Jewry in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe![216]
While Goebbels had been pressing for expulsion of the Berlin Jews since 1935, there were still 62,000 living in the city in 1940. Part of the delay in their deportation was that they were needed as production workers in the armaments industry.[217] Deportations of German Jews began in October 1941, with the first transport from Berlin leaving on 18 October. Some Jews were shot immediately on arrival in destinations such as Riga and Kaunas.[218] In preparation for the deportations, Goebbels ordered that all German Jews were required by law to wear an identifying yellow badge as of 5 September 1941.[219] On 6 March 1942, Goebbels received a copy of the minutes of the Wannsee Conference.[220] The document made the Nazi policy clear: the Jewish population of Europe was to be sent to extermination camps in occupied areas of Poland and killed.[221] His diary entries of the period show was well aware of the fate of the Jews. "In general, it can probably be established that 60 percent of them will have be liquidated, while only 40 percent can be put to work. ... A judgment is being carried out on the Jews which is barbaric but thoroughly deserved," he wrote on 27 March 1942.[222]
During 1942,[223] Goebbels continued to press for the "final solution to the Jewish question" to be carried forward as quickly as possible now that Germany had occupied a huge swathe of Soviet territory into which all the Jews of German-controlled Europe could be deported. There they could be worked into extinction in accordance with the plan agreed on at the Wannsee Conference convened by Heydrich in January. It was a constant annoyance to Goebbels that, at a time when Germany was fighting for its life on the eastern front, there were still 40,000 Jews in Berlin.[224] They should be "carted off to Russia," he wrote in his diary. "It would be best to kill them altogether."[225]
Family life
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Goebbels remained one of Hitler's intimates. Since his offices were close to the Chancellery, he was a frequent guest for lunch, during which he became adept at listening to Hitler's monologues and agreeing with his opinions. In the months leading up to the war, his influence began to increase again. He ranked along with Joachim von Ribbentrop, Göring, Himmler, and Martin Bormann as the senior Nazi with the most access to Hitler, which in an autocratic regime meant access to power. The fact that Hitler was fond of Magda Goebbels and the children also gave Goebbels entrée to Hitler's inner circle. The Goebbels family regularly visited Hitler's Bavarian mountain retreat, the Berghof. He owned a villa on Schwanenwerder island and another at Bogensee near Wandlitz in Brandenburg, which he spent 2.3 million Reichsmarks refurbishing. The tax office, as it did for all the Nazi leaders, gave him generous exemptions.[226]
In 1937, Goebbels began an intense affair with the Czech actress Lída Baarová, causing the break-up of her marriage. When Magda Goebbels learned of this in October 1938, she complained to Hitler, a prude in sexual matters, who was fond of Magda and the Goebbels' young children. He ordered Goebbels to break off his affair, whereupon Goebbels offered his resignation, which Hitler refused. On 15 October, Goebbels attempted suicide. A furious Hitler then ordered Himmler to remove Baarová from Germany, and she was deported to Czechoslovakia, from where she later left for Italy. These events damaged Goebbels' standing with Hitler, and his zeal in furthering Hitler's antisemitic agenda was in part an effort to restore his reputation.[227] The Baarová affair did nothing to dampen Goebbels' enthusiasm for womanising. As late as 1943, the Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann was ingratiating himself with Goebbels by procuring young women for him.[228]
See also
- Glossary of Nazi Germany
- Gottbegnadeten list
- Kolberg (film) — Goebbels' 1945 version of the 1807 siege of Kolberg
- List of Nazi Party leaders and officials
- Nazi propaganda
- Titanic (1943 film) — Goebbels' version of the 1912 RMS Titanic sinking
Notes
- ^ Among Goebbels' school papers offered for auction in 2012 were more than 100 love letters written between Goebbels and Stalherm. The Telegraph 2012.
- ^ a b MI5, Hitler's Last Days: "Hitler's will and marriage" on the website of MI5, using the sources available to Trevor-Roper (a World War II MI5 agent and historian/author of The Last Days of Hitler), records the marriage as taking place after Hitler had dictated his last will and testament.
Citations
- ^ Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Goebbels
- ^ "Boycott of Jews to Commence on April 1.". The Sydney Morning Herald. 30 March 1933.
- ^ "Boycott of Jews Enforced for One Day". The Sydney Morning Herald. 3 April 1933.
- ^ "Kristall" refers to the broken glass spread on the streets, as the Nazis smashed the windows of thousands of Jewish businesses. Evans (2006)
- ^ a b c d Longerich 2015, p. 5.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 2.
- ^ Hull 1969, p. 149.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 6.
- ^ a b Longerich 2015, p. 14.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 7.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 10.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 6.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 10–11, 14.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 14.
- ^ Evans 2003, p. 204.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 164.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 12, 13.
- ^ a b Longerich 2015, p. 16.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 19, 26.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 20, 21.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 17.
- ^ a b Longerich 2015, p. 21.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 21, 22.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 22–25.
- ^ a b Longerich 2015, p. 24.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 72, 88.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 32–33.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 3.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 32.
- ^ a b Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 33.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 25–26.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 27.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 24–26.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 28, 33, 34.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 33.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 36.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 127–131.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 133-135.
- ^ Longerich 2015.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 36, 37.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 40–41.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 46.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 167.
- ^ a b Kershaw 2008, p. 169.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 168–169.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 170.
- ^ a b Longerich 2015, p. 67.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 68.
- ^ a b Kershaw 2008, p. 171.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 61, 64.
- ^ Thacker 2010, p. 94.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 62.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 71, 72.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 75.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 75.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 75–77.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 81.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 76, 80.
- ^ a b c d Longerich 2015, p. 82.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 75–79.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 79.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 93, 94.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 84.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 89.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 82.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 80–81.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 95, 98.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 108–112.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 99–100.
- ^ a b c Evans 2003, p. 209.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 94.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 147–148.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 100–101.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 189.
- ^ Evans 2003, pp. 209, 211.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 116.
- ^ a b Longerich 2015, p. 124.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 123.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 127.
- ^ a b Longerich 2015, pp. 125, 126.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 200.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 128.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 129.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 130.
- ^ Evans 2003, pp. 249–250.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 199.
- ^ a b c Kershaw 2008, p. 202.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 151–152.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 94.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 167.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 227.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 172, 173, 184.
- ^ Thacker 2010, p. 125.
- ^ Evans 2003, pp. 290–291.
- ^ Evans 2003, p. 293.
- ^ Evans 2003, p. 307.
- ^ Evans 2003, pp. 310–311.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 206.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 131.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 323.
- ^ Evans 2003, pp. 332–333.
- ^ Evans 2003, p. 339.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 212.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 121.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 212–213.
- ^ Evans 2005, p. 121.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 214.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 218.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 221.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 128–129.
- ^ Evans 2003, p. 358.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 224.
- ^ a b Longerich 2010, p. 40.
- ^ Evans 2003, p. 344.
- ^ Evans 2005, p. 14.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 132–134.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 137.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 140–141.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 370.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 224–225.
- ^ Thacker 2010, p. 157.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 142.
- ^ Evans 2005, p. 138.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 142-143.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 140.
- ^ Goebbels 1933.
- ^ a b Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 127.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 226.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 434.
- ^ Snell 1959, p. 7.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 292–293.
- ^ Evans 2005, pp. 122–123.
- ^ Evans 2005, pp. 123–127.
- ^ Thacker 2010, pp. 184, 201.
- ^ Evans 2005, pp. 171, 173.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 351.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 346, 350.
- ^ Evans 2005, pp. 234–235.
- ^ a b Thacker 2010, p. 189.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 382.
- ^ Evans 2005, pp. 239–240.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 382.
- ^ Shirer 1960, pp. 234–235.
- ^ Evans 2005, pp. 241–243.
- ^ Evans 2005, p. 244.
- ^ Evans 2005, pp. 245–247.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 334.
- ^ Evans 2005, pp. 338–339.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 352, 353.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 380-382.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 381, 382.
- ^ Evans 2005, p. 696.
- ^ Thacker 2010, p. 212.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 155, 180.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 422, 456–457.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, pp. 185–186.
- ^ a b Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 181.
- ^ a b Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 188.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 470.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 190.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 468–469.
- ^ a b Longerich 2015, p. 509.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 510, 512.
- ^ Thacker 2010, pp. 235–236.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 502–504.
- ^ Thacker 2010, pp. 246–251.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 749–753.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 549–550.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 553–554.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 555.
- ^ Thacker 2010, p. 255.
- ^ Thacker 2010, p. 256.
- ^ Thacker 2010, p. 256–257.
- ^ Kershaw, Hitler, II, p 601
- ^ Joachim Fest, Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler 1933–1945, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996, p 271
- ^ Kershaw, Hitler, II, p 709. Kershaw comments, "Nothing was ever quite what it seemed in the Third Reich."
- ^ Kater, Hitler Youth, p 218, discusses the conflicting demands of production and the army on young Germans.
- ^ Tooze, Wages of Destruction, p 639
- ^ "Fighters for the Eternal Reich Das Reich, 8 April 1945
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 892, 893, 897.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 897, 898.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 924, 925, 929, 930.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 913, 933.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 891, 913-914.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 929, 930, 932.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 918.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 918, 919.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 929.
- ^ Dollinger 1967, p. 231.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 280.
- ^ Vinogradov 2005, p. 154.
- ^ Beevor 2002, pp. 342, 343.
- ^ Beevor 2002, p. 343.
- ^ Beevor 2002, pp. 343, 344.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 950.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 949, 950.
- ^ a b Longerich 2015, p. 686.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 955.
- ^ a b Vinogradov 2005, p. 156.
- ^ Vinogradov 2005, p. 324.
- ^ a b Beevor 2002, pp. 380, 381.
- ^ a b c Joachimsthaler 1999, p. 52.
- ^ a b Beevor 2002, p. 381.
- ^ Vinogradov 2005, pp. 111, 333.
- ^ Vinogradov 2005, p. 333.
- ^ Vinogradov 2005, pp. 335, 336.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 24–25.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 39–40.
- ^ Thacker 2010, p. 145.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 454–455.
- ^ Manvell & Fraenkel 2010, p. 156.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 454.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 455–459.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 400–401.
- ^ Thacker 2010, p. 205.
- ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 469.
- ^ Longerich 2015, pp. 464–466.
- ^ Thacker 2010, p. 236.
- ^ Thacker 2010, p. 235.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 513.
- ^ Longerich 2010, pp. 309–310.
- ^ Longerich 2015, p. 514.
- ^ Jewish Virtual Library
- ^ Kershaw, Hitler, II, p 519
- ^ Kershaw, Hitler, II, p 473
- ^ Evans, The Third Reich in Power, p 405
- ^ This account is taken from the Wikipedia article on Lída Baarová, which is sourced to her memoirs and other Czech-language sources. The connection between the Baarová affair and Goebbels' role in inciting Kristallnacht is made by Ian Kershaw, Hitler, Volume II, W. W. Norton, 2000, p 145.
- ^ Kater, Hitler Youth, p 58
Sources
- Beevor, Antony (2002). Berlin: The Downfall 1945. London: Viking-Penguin Books. ISBN 0-670-03041-4.
- Dollinger, Hans (1967) [1965]. The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. New York: Bonanza. ISBN 978-0-517-01313-7.
- Evans, Richard J. (2003). The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin Group. ISBN 978-0-14-303469-8.
- Evans, Richard J. (2005). The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-303790-3.
- Goebbels, Joseph (18 August 1933). "The Radio as the Eight Great Power". German Propaganda Archive. Grand Rapids: Calvin College.
- Hamilton, Richard F. (1982). Who Voted for Hitler?, ISBN 0-691-09395-4
- Herf, Jeffrey. "The 'Jewish War': Goebbels and the Antisemitic Campaigns of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry," Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 19, Number 1, Spring 2005, pp. 51–80
- "Hitler's Last Days". mi5.gov.uk. MI5 Security Service. Retrieved 6 June 2015.
- Hull, David Stewart (1969). Film in the Third Reich: A Study of the German Cinema, 1933–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Joachimsthaler, Anton (1999) [1995]. The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth. Trans. Helmut Bögler. London: Brockhampton Press. ISBN 978-1-86019-902-8.
- Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6.
- Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280436-5.
- Longerich, Peter (2015). Goebbels: A Biography. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-1400067510.
- Manvell, Roger; Fraenkel, Heinrich (2010) [1960]. Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death. New York: Skyhorse. ISBN 978-1-61608-029-7.
- Shirer, William L. (1960). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-62420-0.
- Snell, John L. (1959). The Nazi Revolution: Germany's Guilt Or Germany's Fate?. Boston: Heath & Co. OCLC 504833477.
- Staff (25 September 2012). "Joseph Goebbels love letters up for auction". The Telegraph. Associated Press.
- Thacker, Toby (2010) [2009]. Joseph Goebbels: Life and Death. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-27866-0.
- Vinogradov, V. K. (2005). Hitler's Death: Russia's Last Great Secret from the Files of the KGB. Chaucer Press. ISBN 978-1-904449-13-3.
Further reading
- Bramsted, Ernest (1965). Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda, 1925–1945, Michigan State University Press.
- Browning, Christopher (2004). The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, ISBN 0-434-01227-0
- Burleigh, Michael (2001). The Third Reich: A New History
- Fest, Joachim (1996). Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler 1933–1945, ISBN 0-297-81774-4
- Friedländer, Saul (1997). Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1, The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939, New York: HarperCollins.
- Gilbert, Martin (2006). Kristallnacht: the Prelude to Destruction, ISBN 978-0-06-057083-5
- Kater, Michael H. (2004). Hitler Youth, ISBN 0-674-01496-0
- Miller, Michael D. and Schulz, Andreas (2012). Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925–1945 (Herbert Albreacht-H. Wilhelm Huttmann)-Volume 1, R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN 978-1-932970-21-0
- Mollo, Andrew (1988). Ramsey, Winston, ed. "The Berlin Führerbunker: The Thirteenth Hole". After the Battle (London: Battle of Britain International) (61).
- Read, Anthony and Fisher, David (1994). Berlin: The Biography of a City, ISBN 0-09-178021-7
- Rentschler, Eric (1996). The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and its Afterlife, Cambridge: Harvard University Press
- Tooze, Adam (2006). The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, ISBN 0-7139-9566-1
External links
- Online books, movies, images, and speeches at the Internet Archive
- Collection of speeches and essays by Joseph Goebbels at Calvin College
- The Man Behind Hitler, documentary film and supplementary material from PBS
Political offices | ||
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Preceded by Adolf Hitler |
Chancellor of Germany 30 April-1 May 1945 |
Succeeded by Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk |
Preceded by![]() |
President of Organizing Committee for Winter Olympic Games 1936 |
Succeeded by![]() Heinrich Schläppi |
Preceded by![]() |
President of Organizing Committee for Summer Olympic Games (with Karl Ritter von Halt) 1936 |
Succeeded by![]() |
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