Background

Joseph Goebbels was born on October 29, 1897, in Rheydt, Germany. Goebbels was the third of five children of Friedrich Goebbels, a pious Roman Catholic factory clerk, and Katharina Maria Odenhausen. His father was a bookkeeper at the United Wick Factories.

Fritz Goebbels made progress in his career and soon after Joseph was born, he was promoted and now earned 2,100 marks a year, with a one-time holiday bonus of 250 marks. Joseph Goebbels later described him as a "starched-collar proletarian." He had a difficult relationship with his father and disliked his "Spartan discipline" and only loved him "as he understands love." He was much closer to his mother who lavished love on her son the love "she withheld from her husband."

Soon after his birth, Joseph Goebbels nearly died of pneumonia. Although he finally recovered he did not enjoy good health. At the age of three, he contacted osteomyelitis. As Ralf Georg Reuth, the author of Joseph Goebbels (1993), pointed out: "For two years his family doctor and a masseur struggled to rid his right leg of intermittent paralysis. Finally they had to tell the despairing parents that Joseph's foot was 'lamed for life,' would fail to grow properly, and would eventually develop into a clubfoot. Fritz and Katharina Goebbels refused to accept this prognosis. They even arranged for Joseph to be seen by doctors at the University of Bonn's medical school, a step requiring great courage for people of their humble station... Later, after the boy had hobbled around for some time with an ugly orthopedic appliance that was supposed to hold the paralyzed foot straight and provide support, the surgeons at the Maria-Hilf Hospital in Monchengladbach agreed to operate on the ten-year-old. The operation proved a failure, putting an end to any hopes that the child might be spared a clubfoot."

Education

Goebbels's parents provided him with high school education and also helped support him during the five years of his undergraduate studies.

As a result of the operation on his foot, he spent a long time in the hospital. During this period he developed an obsession with reading: "My first fairy tales... These books awakened my joy in reading. From then on I devoured everything in print, including newspapers, even politics, without understanding the slightest thing." He also worked his way through the two-volume version of Meyer's encyclopedia that his father had purchased. "He soon realized that his physical disadvantages could be offset by excellence in learning. His sense of inferiority constantly drove him to overcompensate." He later wrote that he found it unbearable if anyone else knew more than he did, "for he fully expected the others to be cruel enough to exclude him intellectually as well." He explained that this thought "filled him with diligence and energy." His extensive reading eventually had an impact on his academic performance and he claims that he was now "top of the class."

Goebbels compensated for his physical frailty with intellectual accomplishments. He intended on training to be a priest, but after growing distant from his Catholic faith, he studied literature and philosophy at universities in Bonn, Würzburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, and Heidelberg, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on the eighteenth century romantic novelist Wilhelm von Schütz. His two most influential teachers, Friedrich Gundolf and his doctoral supervisor at Heidelberg, Max Freiherr von Waldberg, were Jewish. His intelligence and political astuteness were generally acknowledged by his teachers and peers.

Career

Joseph Goebbels was seventeen at the outbreak of the First World War. He desperately wanted to join the German Army but was rejected for health reasons - he was under five feet tall with a bad limp. Goebbels wrote in a school essay: "The soldier who marches forth to offer his fresh young life for wife and child, hearth and home, village and fatherland, serves the fatherland in the most distinguished and honorable way."

In the first half of the 1920s, after unsuccessfully attempting to establish a career as a journalist, novelist and playwright, Goebbels became a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party, which promoted German pride and anti-Semitism. Goebbels eventually became acquainted with the organization’s leader, Adolf Hitler. At this time, inflation had wrecked the German economy, and the morale of the German citizenry, who had been defeated in World War I, was low. Hitler and Goebbels were both of the opinion that words and images were potent devices that could be used to exploit this discontent. Hitler was impressed with Goebbels’ ability to communicate his thoughts in writing, while Goebbels was enamored of Hitler’s talent for speaking in front of large crowds and employing words and gestures to play on German nationalistic pride.

Rising swiftly through the ranks, Goebbels was appointed a Gauleiter of Berlin and was given the task of building up Nazi support there. He published a weekly newspaper Der Angriff ("The Assault"), designed posters, staged impressive parades, and even organized his bodyguards to participate in beer hall brawls. With his powerful voice and unscrupulous instincts, he played upon the German people's economic fears to create support for the National Socialist cause.

In November 1926 Hitler appointed him district leader in Berlin. The NSDAP, or Nazi Party, had been founded and developed in Bavaria, and, up to that time, there had been practically no party organization in Berlin, the German capital. Goebbels owed his new appointment to the prudent choice he made in a conflict between Gregor Strasser, representing the "left-wing" anticapitalist faction of the NSDAP, and the "right-wing" party leader, Hitler. In this conflict, Goebbels displayed opportunism by taking Hitler’s side against his own inner convictions. Goebbels began to create the Führer myth around the person of Hitler and to institute the ritual of party celebrations and demonstrations that played a decisive role in converting the masses to Nazism. In addition, he spread propaganda by continuing his rigorous schedule of speech making.

Despite his revolutionary rhetoric, Goebbels’s most important contribution to the Nazi cause between 1930 and 1933 was as the organizer of successive election campaigns: The Reichstag elections of September 1930, July and November 1932, and March 1933, and Hitler’s presidential campaign of March–April 1932. He proved to be an organizer of genius, choreographing Hitler’s dramatic airplane tours of Germany and pioneering the use of radio and cinema for electoral campaigning. The Nazi Party’s use of torchlight parades, brass bands, massed choirs, and similar techniques caught the imagination of many voters, particularly young people. Although the spectacular rise in the Nazi vote in 1930 and July 1932 was caused mainly by the effects of the Depression, Goebbels as party campaign manager was naturally given much of the credit.

After the Nazis seized power, Goebbels took control of the national propaganda machinery. A National Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was created for him, and he became president of the newly formed "Chamber of Culture." In this capacity he controlled, besides propaganda as such, the press, radio, theatre, films, literature, music, and the fine arts. In May 1933 he was instrumental in the burning of "unGerman" books at the Opera House in Berlin. "The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is at an end," Goebbels triumphantly told the crowd. A month earlier, Hitler had commanded him to organize a boycott of Jewish businesses. On 2 June 1933, Hitler appointed Goebbels a Reichsleiter, the second-highest political rank in the Nazi Party.

Goebbels’s influence decreased in the years 1937 and 1938. During this time he also became involved in a love affair with a Czechoslovakian film star that nearly caused him to give up his career and family. (In 1931 he married Magda Ritschel, a woman from the upper-middle class who eventually bore him six children.)

At the start of World War II in 1939, Goebbels was entrusted with the task of uplifting the spirit of the German people and employing the media, and specifically the cinema, to convince the population to support the war effort. A typical project he instigated was "Der ewige Jude," also known as “The Eternal Jew” (1940), a propaganda film that ostensibly charted the history of the Jews. In the film, however, Jews are depicted as parasites who disrupt an otherwise tidy world. Goebbels also orchestrated the production of "Jud Süss" (1940), a feature film depicting the life of Josef Süss Oppenheimer (1698-1738), a Jewish financial consultant who collected taxes for Duke Karl Alexander of Württemberg (1684-1737), ruler of the Duchy of Württemberg, in the early 18th century. After the duke’s sudden death, Oppenheimer was put on trial and executed. Under Goebbels’s stewardship of the project, the story of Jud Süss was transformed from a human tragedy to an allegory about Jewish self-importance and greed.

Goebbels’s mastery of propaganda was particularly apparent after Germany’s defeats in Stalingrad and Africa. Goebbels did not falsify the facts of the prevailing situation. On the contrary, the main thrust of his propaganda - which he carried on personally and without respite in the press and over the radio - was to continually raise hopes by citing historical parallels and making other comparisons, by conjuring up allegedly immutable laws of history, or even, as a last resort, by referring to some secret miracle weapons. His public appearances, in sharp contrast to those of many other prominent Nazis who had retreated to bunkers and fortifications, did much to improve an image that had until then been overwhelmingly negative. Goebbels’s work was especially effective in intensifying the efforts of the home front: he became the protagonist of total war. After several false starts, the attempted assassination of Hitler on July 20, 1944 (see July Plot), brought him within view of his goal. On August 25 he became "Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War" - but it was, as he shortly lamented, too late.

On April 30, 1945, Goebbels was named chancellor of the Reich in Hitler’s will. The following day, Goebbels, the only one of the original Nazi leaders to remain with Hitler in the besieged bunker in Berlin, poisoned his six children, and he and his wife took their own lives.

Achievements

• Joseph Goebbels went down in history as a major ideologist of the Third Reich. Known for his zealous, energetic oratory, and virulent antisemitism, he was one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers. Being a Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Goebbels had complete jurisdiction over the content of German newspapers, magazines, books, music, films, stage plays, radio programs, and fine arts. His mission was to censor all opposition to Hitler and present the chancellor and the Nazi Party in the most positive light while stirring up hatred for Jewish people.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Goebbels Diaries

    (Reveals the daily occurrences in the history of the Third...)

  • Journal de Joseph Goebbels 1939-1942

Religion

Joseph Goebbels's deeply religious parents, especially his mother, viewed his misfortune as a curse on the family. In their world a physical defect was a punishment inflicted by God. His club-foot caused Joseph to question the existence of God. "Why had God made him this way, so that people laughed at him and mocked him? Why was he not allowed to love himself and life as others did? Why did he have to feel hatred when he wanted and needed to feel love?" After receiving religious instruction by Johannes Mollen, the assistant priest of the parish, at the age of thirteen, he resolved to dedicate his life to God.

Although raised a Catholic, Goebbels had mixed views on the Church and advocated more government control over it as well as the Protestant churches in Germany.

Politics

Goebbels joined the Nazi Party in 1924, entering a milieu where his talents were quickly recognized. He was member #8762 of the Nazi Party. Hitler was so impressed with Goebbels’ mastery of modern propaganda techniques that he appointed him Reich leader of propaganda for the Nazi Party in 1929.

As for World War II, Goebbels encouraged Hitler to invade the Soviet Union. He also advocated terror bombing of Britain.

Views

Goebbels was antisemitic from a young age. His Major influences included Friedrich Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler, and most importantly, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the British-born German writer who was one of the founders of "scientific" anti-Semitism and whose book, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899), was one of the standard works of the extreme right in Germany.

As a propagandist, Goebbels followed Hitler's thinking. Propaganda was a collection of methods to be judged only on the basis of their effectiveness. Methods that worked were good; those that failed were bad. Academic theorizing was useless. Through natural ability and experience, the skilled propagandist developed a feeling for what was effective and what was not. Propaganda had to be founded on a clear understanding of the audience. One could not persuade people of anything without taking existing attitudes and building on them.

Goebbels wanted Nazi propaganda to be easy to understand. It had to appeal to the emotions and repeat its message endlessly (but with variations in style). He favored holding to the truth as much as possible. However, Goebbels had no compunction about lying - although he thought it safer to selectively present or distort material rather than completely fabricate it.

At a time when advertising was making its mark on the world, Goebbels was using publicity and marketing ideas in the political realm. He brought eye-catching slogans and psychology to political adverts. He redesigned the propaganda posters of Germany to include bright red ink and a large typeface for the headlines that grabbed the reader’s attention, enticing them to read the smaller print below.

Goebbels’s control of foreign propaganda, the press, theatre, and literature was limited - exercised only in bitter jurisdictional struggles with other officials - and he displayed little interest in regulating music and art. Many of his cultural policies were fairly liberal, but he had to capitulate to the demands of nationalist extremists. Even his propaganda messages were limited by the rationale that ceaseless agitation only dulls the receptive powers of the listener. As far as Goebbels was concerned, efficiency took precedence over dogmatism, expediency over principles.

Goebbels was the protector of the arts as well as their regulator. In this, he had the support of Hitler, a passionate devotee of Richard Wagner. However, Hitler loathed modernism of all kinds, and Goebbels, whose own tastes were sympathetic to modernism, was forced to acquiesce in imposing traditionalist forms on the artistic and musical worlds. The music of Paul Hindemith, for example, was banned only because Hitler did not like it.

Goebbels also resisted the complete Nazification of the arts, knowing that the masses must be allowed some respite from slogans and propaganda. He ensured that film studios such as UFA at Babelsberg near Berlin continued to produce a stream of comedies and light romances, which drew mass audiences to the cinema where they would also watch propaganda newsreels and Nazi epics. He resisted pressure from Nazi xenophobes to ban all foreign films—helped by the fact that Hitler enjoyed Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse.

Quotations: "We shall go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time, or as the greatest criminals."

"If you tell a lie, tell a big one."

"When the Führer speaks it is like a divine service."

"To attract people, to win over people to that which I have realized as being true, that is called propaganda. In the beginning, there is the understanding, this understanding uses propaganda as a tool to find those men, that shall turn understanding into politics… Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths."

Personality

Goebbels’ organizational talent, deft use of propaganda techniques, and tireless work ethic were highly appreciated by his friends and colleagues. Where Hitler’s public speaking style was hoarse and passionate, Goebbels’s was cool, sarcastic, and often humorous: he was a master of biting invective and insinuation, although he could whip himself into a rhetorical frenzy if the occasion demanded. Unlike Hitler, however, he retained a cynical detachment from his own rhetoric.

Goebbels was known to be a very hard boss and would frequently embarrass his staff members while in public. Goebbels was not frightened to bring to light improprieties resulting from abuses committed by Party members. He reported to Hitler quite candidly on irregularities in the state medical funds, a sector in which SA people had risen to key positions after the seizure of power. When they were unable to justify the trust placed in them, Goebbels stepped in, and after Hitler declined to act Goebbels appealed to the Party court and won. He did not spare his old comrades.

Goebbel did not play sports, but he favored boxing, as it promotes an aggressive spirit, requires lightning-fast determination, and develops physically.

Joseph had several affairs with different women. While Goebbels was married to Magda, he had an affair with Czech actress Lida Baarova.

Physical Characteristics: Paul Joseph Goebbels was a small man with a large head, a crippled foot, and a fragile body, but his voice was mesmerizing. Goebbels’ right foot turned abnormally inwards and was both thicker and shorter than his left foot. He unsuccessfully tried to fix the defect through surgery. He wore a metal brace, as well as a specially made shoe, and walked with a limp.

Interests

• art

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler, Houston Stewart Chamberlain

• Politicians

  Adolf Hitler

• Writers

  Wilhelm von Schütz, Fyodor Dostoevsky

• Artists

  Emil Nolde

• Sport & Clubs

  boxing

• Music & Bands

  Paul Hindemith, Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner

Connections

Goebbels married Magda Quandt on December 19, 1931, in Mecklenburg, with Hitler as a witness. Over the next few years they had six children: Helga, Hildegard, Helmut, Holdine, Hedwig and Heidrun.

Father:

Fritz Goebbels

Mother:

Katharina Maria Goebbels

colleague:

Hermann Göring

Hermann Göring was a Nazi Party leader and one of the primary architects of the Nazi police state in Germany.

Brother:

Konrad Goebbels

(1893–1947)

Brother:

Hans Goebbels

(1895–1949)

Sister:

Maria Goebbels

(1896–1896)

Sister:

Elisabeth Goebbels

(1901–1915)

Sister:

Maria Goebbels

(1910–1949)

Wife:

Magda Quandt

(1901-1945)

Goebbels spoke about Magda's "entrancing beauty" and her "clever, realistic sense of life." Goebbels claimed that together they spent "completely contented" evenings, after which he was "almost in a dream... so full of fulfilled happiness."

Daughter:

Helga Susanne Goebbels

(1932-1945)

Daughter:

Hildegard Traudel Goebbels

(1934-1945)

Son:

Helmut Christian Goebbels

(1935-1945)

Daughter:

Holdine Kathrin Goebbels

(1937-1945)

Daughter:

Hedwig Johanna Goebbels

(1938-1945)

Daughter:

Heidrun Elisabeth

(1940-1945)

girlfriend:

Anka Stalherm

Goebbels met Anka Stalherm in May 1918. She was a wealthy young woman studying law and economics. He immediately fell in love with the woman with the "extraordinary passionate mouth" and the "brown-blond hair" that lay "in a heavy coil on her marvelous neck." They gradually grew closer and became a couple.

Anka's parents completely disapproved of the relationship. Her mother sent her to confession to rid herself of the sins she had committed with this "penniless cripple."

Goebbels and Anka Stalherm soon began to argue about politics. Despite the revolutionary turmoil shaking the Reich to its foundations, Anka Stalherm remained true to her bourgeois origins. The two separated by 1920.

colleague:

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was impressed by Goebbels's work. He wrote in 1930: "Years ago I dispatched you, dear Dr. Goebbels, to the most difficult post in the Reich, in hopes that your energy and vigor would succeed in creating a tight, unified organization. You have fulfilled this task in such a way that you are assured of the movement's gratitude and my own highest recognition."

Hitler spent a good deal of time with Goebbels and his wife, not only in their various apartments (which he subsidized) but also in their summer homes, as well as on trips to the theatre and cinema and holidays together. In addition, as Goebbels reports in his diary, Magda often spent days, sometimes weeks, alone with Hitler as his guest. The Goebbelses’ five girls and one boy, all of them with names that began with the letter H, served Hitler as a substitute family.

colleague:

Rudolf Hess

Walter Richard Rudolf Hess was a Deputy Fuhrer of Nazi Germany from 21 April 1933 to 12 May 1941, preceding Martin Bormann. He is considered the third most important politician in Nazi Germany after Hitler and Hermann Göring.

girlfriend:

Lida Baarová

Goebbels had an affair with Lida Baarová, a young actress from Prague. The relationship upset Adolf Hitler. Magda had a long conversation with Hitler about it on 15 August 1938. Frau Goebbels wanted a divorce and to emigrate to Switzerland, causing Hitler to envisage for himself a major scandal. He decided to attempt a reconciliation of the couple and invited them both to Obersalzberg. There he received them separately. In individual conversations, he explained to them that they must relegate their personal interests to those of the state. The separation was prevented. After her relationship ended with Goebbels, Lida Baarová had difficulty making a career.

References

• Goebbels: A Biography From renowned German Holocaust historian Peter Longerich comes the definitive one-volume biography of Adolf Hitler’s malevolent minister of propaganda. In life, and in the grisly manner of his death, Joseph Goebbels was one of Adolf Hitler’s most loyal acolytes.
  2010
• Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death Through interviews with his friends and family and with information from his own unpublished diary, a remarkable picture of Goebbels emerges in this book.
  1960
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich gives a clear, detailed, and well-documented account of how it was that Adolf Hitler almost succeeded in conquering the world.
  1960
• Joseph Goebbels The book explores the many fascinating and pertinent aspects of Goebbels' character: the insecurities brought on by his diminutive stature; his rejection by his family; his consuming jealousy of his rivals; and his obsession with sex. It remains one of the most authoritative biographies of the man whose manipulative genius steered the German nation to ruin.
  2015
• The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda Published in the year 1994, The Third Reich is a valuable contribution to the field of History.
  1994
• Joseph Goebbels: Life and Death An insightful new biography of Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister of the 'Third Reich' and one of the most important and troubling figures of the twentieth century.
  2009
• Joseph Goebbels: Nazi Propaganda Minister The book tells the life of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and his role in formulating Hitler's policy of exterminating the Jewish people.
  2000
• Understanding Nazi Ideology: The Genesis and Impact of a Political Faith The book also depicts the dramatic development of the Nazi movement - and the explosive impact of its political faith, racing from its bloody birth in the trenches of World War I to its cataclysmic climax in the Holocaust and World War II.
  2017