Joseph Goebbels Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Tom Clark

Critical Essay by Tom Clark

SOURCE: "The Nazi Wrote a Novel," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 25, 1987, p. 7.

In the following review of Michael, Clark discusses Goebbels's novel as a reflection of his Nazi principles and attitudes.

Joseph Goebbels wrote [Michael] in 1923, at age 26, two years after he'd taken his Ph. D in literature. The book was originally—and rather appropriately, as things turned out—called Michael: Pages From a German Destiny, but the subtitle may have caused some queasy moments for the publishers of this first English edition, who have left it off. Variously rejected by German publishers before the author had made a name for himself in politics, it finally came out in Germany in 1929 and by 1945 had gone through 17 printings. Though the author's position as Hitler's propaganda minister certainly didn't hurt his sales figures, he never got around to composing a sequel. That was perhaps...
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