and goals. Women, newly enfranchised after World War I, were encouraged to leave the marketplace and have babies; the Weimar Republic, blamed for Germany’s defeat in 1918, was pilloried at every opportunity; and the Jews were likened to a virus attacking a healthy Aryan body and were destined for isolation. The Nazi vision of education was a Spartan life-style punctuated by political and military training, polished by a stint in the labor service or armed forces, not the university. Hitler distrusted and despised intellectuals (Goebbels being an exception) and free thought. The purpose of education—indeed, life itself—was to produce healthy, obedient servants of the state. Most important, Goebbels portrayed Hitler as a new Christ—the answer to Germany’s problems and the defender of the mythical Aryan race. Goebbels left little doubt about the identity of Christ’s messenger to Berlin.

In 1928, Goebbels was elected as a deputy to the Reichstag, representing the NSDAP. In 1929, Hitler was so impressed with Goebbels’ overall success in Berlin that he named him the Party’s minister of propaganda. In October of that year, the disastrous stock market crash in the United States reverberated across Europe and plunged the West into the Great Depression. Hitler’s party capitalized on the crisis and within a year garnered almost 6.5 million votes, and 107 seats in the Reichstag. The result largely of Goebbels’ hugely successful propaganda efforts, the NSDAP was the third strongest party in Berlin (after the Communists and the Social Democrats). It was at a Nazi rally that Goebbels met a twenty-nine-year-old divorcée, Magda Quandt, wealthy, bored, and in search of a cause. Goebbels was a surprisingly romantic figure, and, whether for love, money, or social connections, they were married on the Quandt estate on September 19, 1931. Hitler was a witness at the ceremony. Their luxury Berlin apartment became the center of Hitler’s social life. Although Goebbels maintained a string of mistresses, usually flashy showgirls, Magda remained with him, often at Hitler’s urging.

The continuing Depression was the ideal setting for Goebbels’ propaganda. He organized as many as three thousand meetings a day, and distributed millions of posters, handbills, pamphlets, brochures, and newspapers. He made films of Hitler’s speeches, which were distributed to cinema owners and projected against the sides of large buildings on warm summer nights. Hitler was a candidate for national office and by November, 1932, was assured of a position in the government. He demanded to be named chancellor, and on January 30, 1933, the bewildered President Paul von Hindenburg gave in. Recognizing Goebbels’ crucial contribution to his success, Hitler named him the Reich’s minister for public enlightenment and propaganda on March 13, 1933.

Goebbels was now in charge of Germany’s news media, cinemas, art, music, and culture, and, at thirty-five, he was the youngest member of Hitler’s cabinet. The works by such immortal painters as Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and even Vincent van Gogh were no longer to be shown; the same for such German luminaries as Paul Klee, Georg Grosz, Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Lovis Corinth. A similar decimation of culture took place in every other area of German art, journalism, opera, publications, and films. Many of the nation’s finest writers were expelled, and hundreds of other scholars and artists left Germany on their own.

Through the creation of his Reich Chamber of Literature, Goebbels succeeded in achieving a strong degree of centralization. First came newspapers. When Hitler became chancellor, Germany had nearly 4,700 newspapers, many with long traditions and worldwide reputations. Of these the Nazis controlled only 121 dailies and periodicals. On October 4, 1933, the new Nazi government passed a law promoting the position of newspaper editor to an official post. Editors were now subject to strict regulations. They were bound by law not to print anything that criticized Germany or her government. Jews, like everywhere else, were to be immediately dismissed. Faced with punishment for breaking these laws, the majority of newspapers soon fell into line. Free opinion in Germany had become illegal.

Among all the artistic sections under his ministry, Goebbels felt closest to the film division. The films were a virtual obsession. In each of his three private homes, he had a cinema installed, where he watched one or two films every evening. He was particularly interested in foreign films, and a continuous supply was obtained through neutral countries even at the height of the war. Final control over the film industry came with the Film Law of February 16, 1934. The government introduced a bureau of censorship that determined if any film violated religious, moral, or National Socialist beliefs. Simultaneously, the regime created a Film Credit Bank that provided money for new films—but only those approved by the government censors. Goebbels gloried in his success and even presented the reading public with his blueprint by publishing a book composed of his copious diary entries between January 1, 1932, and May 1, 1933.

Goebbels was not without enemies in the Party. One in particular was Alfred Rosenberg, the powerful Nazi ideologue. Rosenberg’s task was to analyze all published or cinematic works to evaluate their ideological trustworthiness. Goebbels and Rosenberg clashed over a number of issues, generally film projects, with no clear winner overall. Another occasional opponent, to Goebbels’ horror, was Hitler, who sometimes overruled his propaganda minister.

Germany’s attack on Poland in September 1, 1939, and the beginning of World War II saw Goebbels and the propaganda machine move into high gear. Although he argued against the war in secret meetings with Hitler prior to 1939, Goebbels quickly became the war’s fiercest defender. It was no longer merely a case of politics; propaganda now trumpeted nationalism, patriotism, sacrifice, and total participation. To be anti-Nazi was now to be anti-Germany, and the punishment for treason was death. Goebbels mobilized every means at his disposal to exhort the population to greater sacrifice. Radio broadcasts, newspapers, broadsides and posters, even postage stamps were utilized to rally the public against Germany’s various enemies. After the Allies called for unconditional surrender, Goebbels turned it to his advantage by convincing his audiences that there was no alternative to victory but destruction.

His propaganda was so filled with untruths that it often backfired. For example, when German forces discovered, in the spring of 1943, the buried corpses of several thousand murdered Polish officers near the Polish town of Katyn, the world was horrified and refused to believe Berlin’s (truthful) explanation that the Soviets had committed the brutal crime. The German public was told on three separate occasions during the war that the Soviets had surrendered. By the end of the war, only the most devoted followers of Hitler believed the official news. Still, the propaganda mills continued to grind out stories of nonexistent secret weapons, chaos in their enemies’ camps, and the arrival of heroic German armies who would turn the tide. There can be little doubt that Goebbels and his ministry, together with Heinrich Himmler’s shadow army of informers and Gestapo agents, held the home front together as the war progressed, and that, on at least one occasion, he saved Hitler’s regime.

Goebbels chose his end as the war closed in on Berlin. Like Hitler, he was enraptured by the glory of a final apocalypse, and, as Berlin crumbled before the Red Army, Goebbels decided to commit suicide. Disregarding Hitler’s last will and testament, which named him as the new Reich chancellor, Goebbels and Magda had their six children poisoned by lethal injection and ordered their own executions at the hands of a Schutzstaffel (SS) orderly on May 1, 1945.

Summary

Joseph Goebbels, was a master of theater. Driven by demons stemming from his diminutive size, club foot, and intellectual isolation, Goebbels found a unique ability to sway people. Being the Party propagandist and cultural dictator, Goebbels, in essence, created the play and its players. Hitler became his god, the source of his power and, eventually, his reason for life. At the same time, Goebbels was a brazen liar, a man without scruple, obsessed with a desire for power. He manipulated public opinion against the hapless Jews. Indeed, the nationwide attack on the Jews of Germany on November 10, 1938, the so-called Kristallnacht, was largely orchestrated by Goebbels’ propaganda ministry. Goebbels later introduced the measure requiring all Jews to wear yellow stars or armbands, thus making them daily targets for further discrimination and terror. Millions died as a result. Yet, for all his professed love of the German people, Goebbels had a profound disdain for the public, whom he continued to exhort and deceive until the very end. Like Hitler, he played his part until the final curtain, and with his devoted family, considered by Hitler nearly his own, the “little doctor” died with his creation.

Bibliography

Meissner, Hans-Otto. Magda Goebbels: The First Lady of the Third Reich. Translated by Gwendolen Mary Keeble. New York: Dial Press, 1980. A bit dramatic in the English edition, but a fascinating look into the private and social lives of the Nazi leadership.

Reimann, Viktor. Goebbels. Translated by Stephen Wendt. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. An excellent and objective history of both the man and the Nazi era, based on detailed and authoritative sources.

Semmler, Rudolph. Goebbels: The Man Next to Hitler. London: Westhouse, 1947. An interesting diary, kept by one of Goebbels’ aides. Although it is somewhat lavish in its judgment about the Goebbels ministry, this diary is an important insight into the man and the movement.

Sington, Derrick, and Arthur Weidenfeld. The Goebbels Experiment: A Study of the Nazi Propaganda Machine. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1943. This is an excellent analysis of both Goebbels and his propaganda ministry. It is filled with the passion of wartime writing, and, despite some minor inaccuracies, it is an outstanding source on the topic.

Zeman, Z. A. B. Nazi Propaganda. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. The standard text on the topic, this fine volume examines the art of propaganda in the hands of the Nazis, while simultaneously painting the backdrop of events between 1933 and 1945.