[In the following review of The Early Goebbels Diaries, Dannhauser details Goebbels's shortcomings as a diarist.]

To readers of history, [The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926] will prove disappointing. There is little new historical information to be gained from them, and there are even occasional distortions of the facts we already have. We know, for instance, that during the period spanned by the diary entries—August 24, 1925, to October 30, 1926—the Nazi party was still small and disorganized. But the impression Goebbels gives is the opposite: the entire adult population of Germany seems to be attending the rallies which he describes. Moreover, Goebbels was in no position to impart "inside" information even had he wished to; he was still at this time a long way from becoming "the man next to Hitler." When the book opens, he is a member of the Strasser faction in the Rhineland, "out in the sticks" for the Munich-centered movement; at the time of the final entry fourteen months later, he is about to become Gauleiter of a Berlin which is not the stronghold but the Achilles' heel of the movement. It is only from this position that he will begin his rise to prominence. The diaries do provide new data on the factionalism within the party—between national socialists and national socialists—which grew and subsided during this period. But the main outlines of Nazi party affairs in the mid-20's have been known before this, and admirably described by Bullock himself in his book on Hitler. Nevertheless, the book is entirely fascinating.

This is due in large part to the fascination we bring to the figure of Goebbels. I cannot here discuss the meaning and grounds of it, but I know it exists, and especially among Jews. It is compounded by a bizarre nostalgia we have begun to feel even for the terrible past. Goebbels was, after all, not a fictional character, but terribly real, and the diaries promise to tell us what this monstrous man "was really like." The reader welcomes the very badness of the book, which proves it to be genuine and not written for publication: nobody could possibly choose to appear this way in print.

These journals reveal Goebbels as an abominable diarist. A good diarist is one who makes his journal the battleground of a genuine struggle for self-knowledge, or an austere man who uses the occasion to settle accounts with himself, or a genius for whom a journal is a playground, sometimes the place where he fashions masks. In good diaries, therefore, one expects poignant reflections on the quest for sincerity (which often take the form of reflections on diary-keeping), or the genuine self-reckonings of the ascetic, or the aphorisms and witticisms which are the spontaneous overflow of a great mind. Very few of these things are to be found here. There is no struggle for self-knowledge, but rather the empty praise of struggle (if only because of the title of Hitler's book [Mein Kampf]) by a man who thinks he knows what and who he is: tragic figure in a hostile world. There are no austere reckonings, but endless recitals of activities. And his remarks are so far from brilliant that they force one to wonder on what basis so many have agreed that Goebbels, say whatever else you will, was a genius. Is it because we have an Iago complex and assume that evil must always be spectacularly brilliant?

Goebbels was a bad diarist who wanted to be a good one. The result is a parody of a good diary, a diary of adolescent romanticism. All the conventions of the genre are obeyed: The hero is never alone without being lonely and never in company without being alone; he is never tired but always weary to the breaking point. He is not content or gloomy but ecstatic or wretched; he both fears death and yearns for it, and sometimes imagines himself already dead. He addresses his heart and his soul. "Heart, be silent." "Be still, my soul!" Childhood is bliss but not to be recovered; home is bliss, but one can't go home again. On birthdays he reflects on getting old, and on the New Year he Takes Stock. This is Goebbels's entry on January 1, 1926, in its entirety: "I close the old year. It brought me much joy, much consolation, much misery, much despair. Now I am in the midst of everything. And enter the new state with courage! We have progressed! We must progress infinitely further! The struggle continues!" (Almost 70 per cent of the entries end with exclamation points, and almost 90 per cent contain them.)

The days he describes are remarkably alike. There is always too much work, most of it paperwork. With peculiar German thoroughness the Nazis were determined, even by 1925, to be the best-documented political movement of all time. There is usually a speaking engagement. Goebbels's account of it almost never varies. He notes the size and composition of the audience, the length of his speech (totalitarian speakers invariably talk longer than others), and the response to the speech; he never mentions what he said. He likes to call himself a preacher. A successful speech "inspires" the audience or makes it shudder.

Within this framework one looks in vain for his inner life. One seeks real passion but finds only artificially stimulated frenzy. The woman of the diaries is Else. When he is not yearning for Else to arrive, he is waiting impatiently for her to leave. When he is pleased by her, he realizes that it is because she loves him, but this, of course, becomes impossible to bear. He regrets his increasing estrangement from his family, but generally after an experience of failure. What is more surprising is that he does not really hate much either. He can scorn or disdain, and is a master of resentment, but there is no great passion in any of it. Jews, for example, are mentioned in the diary less frequently and much more perfunctorily than one would expect. Instead of passions there are moods ranging from the suicidal to the euphoric. But since they change from day to day, and sometimes between the beginning of an entry and the end, and since they are usually devoid of all discernible consequences, one discounts them. He is capable of certain insights, but never reaches the basic one of seeing himself as actor or poseur. Expecting such a man's emotional life to be demonic, one finds it is only drab.

The landscape of his mind is equally dreary. His view of man is simple: man is an animal, a worm, a beast; man is cowardly and lukewarm; man is evil. To the extent that he is not by nature completely depraved, he has been corrupted and degraded by politics. Significantly, Goebbels does not think of himself as a politician. He shares with other Nazis a contempt for day-to-day politics, a contempt that, in the Right wing of our time, is contained in the distinction between the "great" politics of the future and "petty politics," that is, politics as one really knows it. (The distinction is similar to the one the Left makes between making history and making politics.) His political views, such as they are, circle around the opinion that Russia is fascinating (a view he is soon to surrender without anguish) and that workers are more trustworthy than bosses. He has little interest in the actual politics of the Weimar Republic, except that, characteristically enough, he views Locarno, which marked Germany's re-entry into respectability and the Western community, with scorn. Whatever happens in real politics he must find repulsive, since men are beasts whose beastliness is accentuated by politics. At times he insists on playing the Stock Nazi, a volatile combination of sentimentality and brutality. The reader does not at first realize that the "Benno" Goebbels refers to frequently is the family dog, whom he describes in human terms and prefers to human company. He can enjoy riots in which heads are bashed, he can write of a book, "Cruel and great!" but he is also shocked to find prostitution rife on the Hamburg waterfront.

He thinks mechanically, that is, in words. The good words are "fanatic" and "revolutionary." The bad words are "waffler" and "philistine." He discovers that Else, his father, and almost everybody in Berlin and Munich are philistines. He reads a good deal, including novels, glorifications of Germany's past, and crackpot books of the extreme Right (Christ as Aryan, etc.). He likes Schubert and Wagner, does not like Ibsen. He is at least formally educated, and can refer to Thomas Mann, Goethe, Schiller, and Kant. His judgments of people are subject to quick change, and not particularly incisive. Thus he recognizes Feder, an economist of sorts who advocated the abolition of "interest slavery," as a crank, but considers Alfred Rosenberg "brilliant." As for Streicher—for whom the label sex pervert is a kindness—Goebbels knows him to be "a sow," but also calls him courageous and honest.

In rare moments the dreariness and repulsiveness of all this are relieved. In a man like Goebbels all minor vices become endearing because they establish his bonds with humanity: we read almost with pleasure that he worries about excessive smoking, ponders his inability to be true to Else, and is given to sleeping all through Sunday. And rarely, very rarely, he shows the qualities of a poet, as when he writes of the Hamburg harbor, "Out there in fog and smoke lie the ships. There is a feeling of the sea and of America." But even at his most appealing moments he is frightening, for the few remaining vestiges of humanity are clearly withering or being squelched.

Yet one must resist the temptation of picturing Goebbels as the great cynic or even nihilist, for that is to miss the point. It will not do to characterize him as an opportunist who knew he was evil and enjoyed that knowledge, or as a cynical manipulator who deliberately projected a fraudulent image of Hitler and delighted in his own success, or as the cold man who rode to power with Hitler without believing in him. It will not do because, as the diary shows, he was really enchanted by Hitler, turning to him not for ulterior motives but because he had no basis for judging or resisting him.

Strasser, for whom Goebbels worked in 1925, was a competitor for leadership of the party. Hitler opposed the radicalism to which Goebbels was at this time committed. The first mention of Hitler in the diaries (August 21, 1925) shows, however, that Goebbels did not blame Hitler for the opposition. Hitler can be criticized only for excessive kindness in not getting rid of bad advisers. On August 29, Goebbels is reading Mein Kampf. He finds it "wonderful."

In October of the same year, the factionalism grows bitter, and Strasser fans the flames. On October 12, Goebbels writes: "Letter from Strasser. Hitler does not trust me. He has abused me. How that hurts." On October 14, he shows that this has not lessened his reverence, writing of Hitler: "Who is this man? Half plebeian, half God! Really Christ, or only John?" It is all some misunderstanding that would be solved if only he could break through and "get close to Hitler" (October 19). On November 6, the crisis is over because Hitler was friendly: "Shakes my hand like an old friend. And those big blue eyes, like stars."

Alas, the dispute swells up again. Goebbels is involved in proposing a party program which enrages Hitler. This time Goebbels will fight, even though he now has "a number of new photographs of him [Hitler] on my desk" (February 6, 1926). At a Bamberg rally Hitler comes out against expropriating the property of princes, which Goebbels advocated. A break seems inevitable, the crisis is upon him."I can no longer believe in Hitler absolutely.… I have lost my inner support" (February 15).

The crisis begins to wane in less than a month. Goebbels reads a pamphlet by Hitler on the Tyrol question, and many doubts are dispelled. In a month, "Hitler is great… I bow to his greatness, his political genius!" (April 13). Six days later Goebbels exorcises his last vestige of independence. Though Hitler "has not yet quite appreciated the Russian problem," what does it matter? For he has "taken me to his heart like no one else… Adolf Hitler, I love you, because you are both great and simple. A genius" (April 19). Only in connection with Hitler does Goebbels speak of love, and he does so frequently.

When Goebbels receives the greatest of all possible gifts, a few days with Hitler in the mountains, he is captured forever. He will go to Berlin, because Hitler wants him to go. He does not even resent Strasser's opposition, treating it as understandable envy. On July 24, he records a day spent listening to Hitler: "He is a genius. The natural creative instrument of a fate determined by God. I am deeply moved." At night, Hitler's words sound like prophecy: "Up in the skies a white cloud takes on the shape of the swastika. There is a blinking light that cannot be a star."

That is what Goebbels was "really like." He is neither cynic nor opportunist, for he shows a capacity for selfless devotion that could not possibly be faked. We do not seem to have the proper categories for understanding such a man: to know what he was like is not to understand him. We have only a terrifying clue which the word "selfless" gives us. We work from the surface through a maze of moods and thoughts only to find that the periphery conceals a dead center. In his own words, he has no "inner supports." Goebbels is the man with nothing in his soul, and hence there is nothing to understand, except that the man with nothing in his soul is the ideal vessel for that most evil of men, the man with the lie in his soul—Hitler. One can never wrong an empty man enough, but it is an error to attribute to him motives like treachery. We should have known that the celebrated propaganda triumphs of the later years could not have been perpetrated by a cynical man.

Goebbels was fulfilled by Hitler, literally filled full. His real intelligence, or cleverness at least, was never directed to seeing Hitler as he was. There was no self to direct it. History bears us out. Though Hitler never completely trusted him, it was Goebbels who proved to be the one trustworthy man in Hitler's inner circle. Only Goebbels chose to remain in the bunker with Hitler, and to imitate Hitler's suicide. It was the most graceful possible act of a type of man who can exhibit grace only under pressure. In his death he showed that such a man is capable of only one virtue, the most terribly ambiguous virtue of all: loyalty.