Joseph Goebbels, Dr. | Biography

Joseph Goebbels was Nazi Germany's Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. Goebbels's task was to ensure that all media content in Germany was in line with Adolf Hitler's National Socialist (Nazi) policies; dissent was not tolerated. Hitler and Goebbels continually reminded Germans and later citizens of Nazi-occupied countries, that Europe's problems were the fault of the Jews and that German superiority would vanquish the Allied enemy. Hitler named Goebbels as his successor in his last will and testament, but the devoted minister escaped prosecution for war crimes by committing suicide on May 1, 1945.

Born in 1897 in Rheydt, Germany, Goebbels came from a Roman Catholic family of modest means. He harbored an early ambition to enter the priesthood, but attended university on scholarship instead. Exempted from military service during World War I because of his clubfoot, Goebbels earned a doctorate in literature in 1922. He then attempted to establish himself as a writer, with dismal success; his surviving journals reveal a bombastic style and an immature mind. The short stories, magazine articles, and even a novel that Goebbels submitted were all rejected by editors and publishers. Some of their names sounded Jewish, and their rebuff fueled a bitter anti-Semitism in Goebbels. He found a calling, however, with the National Socialist Party, which he joined in 1924. He began working as editor of its publications, such as the Gau and National-Sozialistiche Briefe (National Socialist Letters). Devoted to the cause, he wrote in his journal around this time, "Hitler, I love you, because you are great and simple at the same time."

In November of 1926, Goebbels moved to Berlin, at the invitation of Hitler, to become a district leader of a Berlin quarter that was a notorious bastion of anti-Fascism. Goebbels's oratory and publicity stunts were a success and he was said to have conquered "red" Berlin for National Socialism. He became involved in Nazi propaganda on a wider scale and was responsible for elevating a slain Nazi, Horst Wessel, to a party folk hero. He was the founder and editor of Der Angriff ("The Attack"), the Nazi Party weekly, and held the post of party propaganda director after 1928, the same year he was elected to the Reichstag. In 1933, when Hitler seized power, Goebbels was named Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. He helped make the Führer, as Hitler was called, one of first modern political leaders to employ the media for political gain.

Goebbels used the media to support Hilter by first molding all artistic and intellectual expression to fit Nazi ideology. This was done by ruthlessly eliminating Jews, Communists, and political foes of Nazis from the arts. He was the mastermind behind Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"), which took place on November 9 and 10, 1938. Overnight, Jewish synagogues across Germany and Austria were set aflame, Jewish businesses were looted, and 30,000 Jews were arrested and deported to concentration camps. The Nazi elite militia, Schutzstaffel (SS), under Goebbels's orders, carried out the terror and were assisted by ordinary citizens with Nazi sympathies. Goebbels also orchestrated the mass rallies at which Germans became enraptured by quasi-religious atmosphere and Nazi sloganeering. Known as an excellent public speaker with a mellifluous voice, he gave the annual address on Hitler's birthday and on New Year's Day.

Goebbels's ideas were published in articles and books as well. In one article, "The War and the Jews," Goebbels claimed that the war's suffering was solely the Jews' fault. "This war is a racial war. The Jews started it and they direct it. Their goal is to destroy and exterminate our people. We are the only force standing between Jewry and world domination.... The Jews laughed in Germany too when they first saw us," Goebbels wrote in conclusion. "They are not laughing any longer. They chose to wage war against us. But that war is turning against them. When they planned a war to totally destroy the German nation, they signed their own death warrant. Here too world history will be the world court."

Despite his clubfoot, Goebbels had always had a certain confidence with women and was known to have enjoyed many affairs. He married Magda Quandt in 1931, with whom he had six children, but a deep infatuation with a Czech actress brought a sharp rebuke from Hitler in the 1930s. During World War II, when Germany battled the Allies on the western front and attempted to penetrate Soviet defenses in the east, Goebbels was responsible for the morale-boosting propaganda that urged the civilian populace to endure terrible hardship. In speeches, Goebbels often gave false assurances that Germany was winning its battle for world domination, and in one such speech advocated "total war." He even hinted of a secret cache of wonder weapons. Hitler named him General Plenipotentiary for Total War Measures in July of 1944 and, as Hitler grew increasingly reclusive, Goebbels assumed the public face of the Nazi leadership. He was named Reich Chancellor by Hitler in the final days of the war, but in Berlin on May 1, 1945--a day after Hitler's suicide--Goebbels poisoned his six children before he and his wife committed suicide.