Joseph Goebbels

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Propagandist as Propagandee

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SOURCE: "Propagandist as Propagandee," in ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. 36, No. 2, Summer, 1979, pp. 204-08.

[In the following essay, Haratonik considers the extent to which Goebbels himself believed in the principles and ideas that he fostered as propaganda minister for the Third Reich.]

Diaries are a curious form of literary endeavor. They are simultaneously both a private and public document; private in that the material is quite often initially meant for the use of the author exclusively; public in that, once committed to the page, by that very act, all information is accessible. "Diary"; the very word has always conjured up the image of a small Moroccan leather bound volume, securely sealed with a neat brass hasp, opened with a filagreed key. It seemed the perfect vehicle for Victorian ladies or pubescent girls to document precious moments of social (and sexual) triumph and tragedy. As Oscar Wilde had Gwendolyn tell Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest: "I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."

Wilde aside, diaries often hold more significance. They shed light on events which otherwise would not have been documented. Antonio Pigafetta's classic account of Magellan's voice is one historic example. Select diaries such as Pepys' London document an entire epoch. Still others transform the medium into a tool for intellectual discourse as do the journals of Thoreau or Emerson. Literary diaries are often viewed as Rosetta stones in terms of deciphering the meaning of a larger body of work. The recent publication of diaries of Virginia Woolf and Edmund Wilson are but two examples. At times, diaries can often overshadow an author's other work, the diaries of Anais Nin being a case in point.

Political and military diaries have traditionally been held to be particularly important in that often such materials are the only sources available which provide an inside view of operations which by their very nature must be clandestine. For a historian a diary can lead to fascinating and intriguing consequences. The recent discovery and subsequent publication of portions of "lost diaries" of Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment, is one such fascinating and intriguing event.

There is an old story that turns out to be both ironic and tragic in relation to these diaries. It tells of the last conversation between Hitler and Goebbels in the Fuehrer's bunker. As Allied bombardment is heard on the outskirts of Berlin and the Nazi command now accepts the inevitable, Dr. Goebbels turns to Hitler and questions, "Mein Fuehrer, if you had to do it all over again, would anything be different?" Hitler pauses and replies, "No Goebbels, not a thing except… next time, no more Mr. Nice Guy."

When one completes The Final Entries the joke becomes even more ironic and chillingly tragic, for here we are presented, in self-imposed detail, with a portrait of a man consumed by the power of an image he, himself, created.

Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, editor of the English edition, calls Goebbels "The only interesting man in the Third Reich, other than Hitler." His diary entries certainly support this claim. Goebbels was a compulsive and consistent keeper of these journals, which begin in 1925 and apparently were kept up until three weeks before his death on May 1, 1945. As a student of history, philology, and romantic literature, he had completed his Ph. D. in 1921, an accomplishment which both he and Hitler viewed with a great deal of pride. Goebbels' early diaries reflect youthful social, sexual, and career oriented concerns, but gradually the entries take on more and more of the tenor of Nationalist Socialist propaganda. In many ways, the early diaries become a substitute for more substantive written work, possibly as a result of Goebbels failure as both a novelist and journalist. By the early 1930's he considered the writings to be important enough to include in published texts of Nazi policy and philosophy. All that remains from this period, however, is a single handwritten diary of 1925-26 which was presented to then former president Herbert Hoover during a post World War II visit to Europe. Until the publication of this text, edited down from the first German edition, it was believed that the only other existing material was that of the period of 1942-43, which was translated and edited by journalist Louis Lochner, in 1948. All of the diaries appear to have been in the bunker in 1945, Goebbels having publicly acknowledged that he felt them to be his major contribution to posterity. With the Soviet occupation, most of the documents seem to have been either destroyed or at best transported to the U. S. S. R. and never released. The entries edited by Lochner contained many missing sections and many of the pages had been singed and trampled upon. The recent collection appeared quite unexpectedly, as a result of the fact that all of what the Nazi High Command considered to be valuable was microfilmed during the last months of the war, and a copy later verified by one of Goebbels' stenographers mysteriously found its way to a publisher (leading many to believe that there are indeed other materials in either private or government hands). It should be noted that up until July of 1941 Goebbels wrote all of his own manuscripts by hand. Beginning that month, however, he turned to dictation, given at high speed and typed directly each evening by the stenographer. Often the entries would run as long as eighty pages, with Goebbels practicing a curious approach to diary writing by accounting the previous day's events in the present tense, thus giving him at least a day for reflection and a sense of the future. The entries are consistent, beginning first with an assessment of military situations and then moving on to a broad range of other political and personal concerns.

Every word was taken down verbatim, yet according to both the stenographers he employed, never once did he ask to see any entries again, or to make any corrections. The material was clearly designed for future editing and reference, to be shaped later to create a personalized history of the Reich.

The collection is revealing more for what it confirms than for any new issues it raises. Two major themes remain from the earlier materials. First is Goebbels' unquestioning, unwavering belief in the power and ultimate righteousness of Adolph Hitler, and second is his belief in his personal power as propagandist. On March 7, 1945, less than two months before the final collapse, he wrote that Hitler is "in his best and most resolute form. Though the situation is extraordinarily serious and menacing, he still represents a firm, fixed point round which events revolve. As long as he is at the head of the Reich, we have no need to haul down our flag." In his handling of the last attempts at propaganda, the entries showed Goebbels retreating more and more into the romantic German past. To rally the already depleted sense of German patriotism, he stressed local heroism above anything else and called upon all of the still active elements of the media to devote their columns and airwaves to such historical precedents as the Second Punic War, the inspiration of Frederick the Great, and the military writings of Von Clausewitz.

By April of 1945, Goebbels still clung tenaciously and irrationally to the belief that the Reich would survive. He perpetuated his own mythical creation of the "Werewolf Organization," a supposed resistance front which would continue fighting against any occupation forces. His faith in Hitler likewise never diminished. On April 4, 1945, with the end clearly in sight, he could still write that though he did not know where ultimately the military crisis would lead, he still felt that, "he [Hitler] will get the better of the situation. He has always known how to await his moment with lofty calm." That moment came less than four weeks later, with Hitler and Goebbels dead and the rest of the Command either having surrendered or in flight. Yet to the end Goebbels expected "ultimate vindication." Three days before his death by suicide, he wrote a letter to his stepson, Harold Quandt. (Goebbels took the lives of his own six children.) In it, he says, "Do not let yourself be disconcerted by the worldwide clamor which will now begin. One day the lies will crumble away of themselves and truth will triumph once more. That will be the moment when we shall tower over all, clean and spotless, as we have striven to be and believe ourselves to be." In the end Goebbels fell victim to his own maniacal approach in rationalizing complex problems, a philosophy he had applied in his earlier efforts. In 1935 he wrote, "By simplifying the thoughts of the masses, and reducing them to primitive patterns, propaganda was able to present the complex process of political and economic life in the simplest terms… we have taken matters previously available only to experts and … specialists and have carried them into the streets and hammered them into the brain of the little man." The act of simplifying language, in tandem with a total media effort (another principle of Goebbels' propaganda philosophy), can create a semantic environment both devoid of thought and composed of only the most predictable and organized actions. Private opinion becomes totally devalued propaganda. As Jacques Ellul notes, "The more progress we make [in our use of media for purposes of propaganda] the less private opinion can express itself through mass media." Organized media, by their very nature, serve to create organized or public opinion. Ultimately, as in Goebbels' case, even the individual opinion of the mass opinions' creator is subsumed into a generalized response.

One may doubt the sincerity of Goebbels' reflections, noting the ever-present possibility of reprisal for being candid. Such a conclusion fails to recognize the profound influence that the very act of keeping these diaries seems to have had on his self-image and his psychological state. He clearly does not avoid controversy—a point revealed in his criticism of those leaders he believed to be ineffective, such as Goering. Each entry is a curious blending of what E. K. Bransted calls "intense feelings of hatred, revenge, and destruction … side-by-side with cool assessments of military, political and social problems."

One problematic aspect of this edition should be noted. Trevor-Roper's introduction to the English edition (playwright Rolf Hochhuth wrote the introduction to the German edition) fails adequately to provide a sense of the complexity of the problem of dealing with this historic period and relies on tracing the roots of Goebbels' fanaticism to his Catholic background and restless radicalism. Goebbels was unsatisfied by the Church, university life, and Socialism; for these reasons, Trevor-Roper states, he was ripe for Hitler's brand of Fascism. This may be compelling psycho-history but does not in any way adequately confront the ultimate significance of a Goebbels, who Trevor-Roper himself calls, "a man of words, images, gestures," but one who had "no ideas, no beliefs of his own … no positive aim … even the positive aim of Nazism."

If The Final Entries reveal nothing else, they do point out how limited our knowledge is when attempting to explain such a life. They give us a dramatic demonstration of the power of language. George Steiner wrote, "Everything forgets, but not a language." Perhaps closer examination of this text will remind us of the conversation in the bunker, so that we will be prepared for any "next time," nice guys or not.

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