The man known to history as Paul Joseph Goebbels
was born in the town of Rheydt in west Germany on the 29th of October 1897. He was born into a modest family and his background
was quite unremarkable, his father was Fritz Goebbels, he worked in the local wick factory
and eventually rose to become a foreman there. His mother, Katharina Maria Odenhausen, was
half Dutch, the daughter of a blacksmith, Katharina had a close connection with her
son, and she and Joseph remained close throughout his life. Both Joseph’s parents were devoted Roman
Catholics, though later in his life Goebbels had to persistently refute allegations they
were partly Jewish, the family was solidly lower-middle class, enough that a family piano
was purchased in 1909, a symbol of their upwardly mobile aspirations, but Fritz Goebbels was
earning just 4,000 marks annually and had no liquid assets, consequently the young Joseph
did not come from any significant wealth, and his early life was characterised by efforts
to attain a greater financial and social position. Goebbels’ suffered from ill health as a
child, he had a club foot that he acquired in his early years, following a bout of osteomyelitis,
a swelling of the bone marrow, this left his leg deformed for the remainder of his life,
and he also had lung problems, and so much of his later psychology was shaped by insecurities
about his health problems and lack of athleticism, this was compounded by his rejection for military
service, when he sought to enlist in the German army at the height of the First World War,
his later writings are suffused with statements which make it clear that he was attempting
throughout his life to compensate for his physical deformity through his literary and
political ambitions. The world in which Joseph Goebbels reached
his teenage years and then young manhood in, was one of turmoil, in the summer of 1914
conflict enveloped Europe, when a regional diplomatic crisis in the Balkans expanded
to lead to a war involving all of Europe’s major powers, on one side were arrayed Britain,
France, Italy and Russia, with the United States joining these Allied Powers in 1917,
on the other the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Turkish Empire formed
an alliance known as the Central Powers. As a native of western Germany, Goebbels would
have spent his early years watching German soldiers passing through on trains, towards
the Western Front in north-east France where the bulk of the fighting took place, in horrific
trench warfare between 1914 and 1918, consequently his spurning by the military in his formative
years was a difficult experience for the young Goebbels. Germany eventually lost the war in November
1918, and was forced into a highly punitive series of peace treaties the following year,
generally referred to under the umbrella terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the German Reich
was stripped of a huge amount of its territory which was granted to other countries and made
up much of the new country of Poland, formed to the east of Germany after the war ended. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles
Germany was also forced to pay punitive monetary remuneration to France and Britain, for its
alleged fault in causing the war, furthermore Germany was forced to reduce its army to a
tiny contingent of men, and was prohibited from remilitarising the Rhineland region of
western Germany. The terms were negotiated by the government
of the Weimar Republic which was formed in Germany following the dissolution of the Second
German Reich or Empire, named after the town in central Germany where the new republic
was formed early in 1919, in time Weimar would become a derogatory term for those who had
negotiated Germany’s humiliating surrender to the Allied Powers, and the architects of
the peace became known as the ‘November Criminals’. Goebbels’ life in the years that followed
was highly formative for him, for a while he considered entering the priesthood, but
his commitment to his parent’s Catholicism cooled eventually, he also spent periods of
time at multiple universities at Bonn, Munich, Wurzburg and Freiburg, before eventually earning
a PhD in German philology from Heidelberg University in 1921 at just twenty-four years
of age, he would later publish this work, just one of fourteen books he had written
by 1940. Following his time at Heidelberg, Goebbels
attempted to establish himself in the early 1920s variously as a journalist, novelist
and playwright, but he was broadly unsuccessful in his endeavours, somewhat like Hitler, who
had aspired to become a watercolour artist in his early years, Goebbels had sought a
career in the arts and literature through his writing, but was frustrated in his efforts,
as this occurred, he became increasingly disaffected in the course of 1923 and 1924. Like many other young men who were disillusioned
with life in post-war Germany, Goebbels found himself drawn to a new political party in
Bavaria which had earned a reputation for controversy in a short period of time, the
National Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi Party had been established in Munich
in 1920, its goals were the overturning of the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles
which had ended the war, German rearmament and re-expansion of the German state into
Eastern Europe. From its earliest day, the Nazi party was
also an extremely anti-Semitic party and envisaged the total exclusion of the Jewish community
from German life, it was led by a young Austrian called Adolf Hitler, under his leadership
the Nazis attempted a failed coup d’état in Munich on the 8th of November 1923, the
Beer Hall Putsch, as it became known, was quickly snuffed out on the 9th of November
by the regional authorities, Hitler and some of his closest associates were tried for treason
in March 1924 and imprisoned. The abortive revolt possibly drew Goebbels
to the Nazis, he had been moving increasingly in right wing political circles throughout
1924, his radicalisation at this time may also have been owing to the occupation of
the Ruhr area of western Germany by French and Belgium troops, between January 1923 and
August 1925 in response to Germany defaulting on its war reparations payments. On the 22nd of October 1924, the Goebbels
family home in Rheydt was searched by Belgian police, and the following day Goebbels himself
was interrogated by the occupation police, it is hardly coincidental that two weeks later,
in November 1924, he wrote and published an article in a newspaper, the Volkische Freiheit,
in which he called for Hitler’s early release from prison, Hitler was indeed released early
on the 20th of December 1924, by which time Goebbels had joined the Nazi party, beginning
the association which would dominate the remainder of his life. Goebbels’ role in the Nazi party grew in
the years that followed, we know a great deal about his life from the mid-1920s through
Goebbels’ own writings, starting in 1923 he kept a series of extensive diaries unbroken
for 22 years down to his death in 1945, these diaries were taken to Russia after the war,
and have only become fully available since 2008. Stretching to 32 volumes in the modern print
editions, they provide a uniquely detailed insight into the life, career and thoughts
of one of the leading members of the Nazi leadership, they also provide what one of
the foremost historians of Nazi Germany, Ian Kershaw, has deemed a ‘vitally important
source of insight into Hitler’s thinking and action’, particularly in his ascent
to power in the 1920s and early 1930s. The diaries give extensive details of Goebbels’
career in the initial years of his membership of the Nazi party, in his early days he was
under the patronage of Gregor Strasser, a leading member of the party, who led a branch
of the Nazis that leaned more towards socialism and anti-capitalism, in opposition to Hitler’s
right-wing faction, and owing to Strasser’s influence, in 1924 Goebbels was appointed
as a spokesperson for the party in the Rhineland region where he originally hailed from, his
role as a propagandist for the party also began at this time, as he was set to start
work as a writer and editor for the party newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter, or the
People’s Observer. During these years of the mid-1920s, Goebbels
found himself increasingly drawn into an internal struggle within the Nazi regime over the ideological
future of the party, this was driven by a split between Hitler, who favoured a hard-line
anti-Semitic, nationalist approach, with only a limited emphasis on socialism, and Strasser. Goebbels’ diaries reveal that he sympathised
with both sides, he was drawn to the more socially grounded outlook of Strasser, but
he increasingly favoured Hitler from late 1925 onwards, having read Hitler’s anti-Semitic
biography, Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, which Hitler had written while serving his prison
sentence for the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1924, and the first volume of which was published
in 1925. Following multiple meetings with the charismatic
Hitler, at a party conference held at Bamberg in northern Bavaria on the 14th of February
1926, Goebbels became a committed adherent of the Nazi leader, it has been speculated
that Goebbels was an extreme narcissist, and needed a figurehead or leader of some sort
from whom he could gain affirmation and approval, this would certainly explain the obsession
he developed with gaining Hitler’s esteem in the mid-1920s, an obsession which would
characterise their relationship over the twenty years that followed. Goebbels’ support for the leader bordered
on zealotry, and from this point forward, Goebbels began his long association as one
of Hitler’s closest allies. In recognition of his rising position within
the party Goebbels was appointed as Gauleiter or regional commander of Berlin within the
Nazi party in August 1926, a position he would hold until his eventual death in 1945. In Berlin, in an effort to promote the party
in the capital, Goebbels developed many of the propaganda strategies which became hallmarks
of the Nazis in the years ahead, these involved using large posters of vibrant red and black
ink, often emblazoned with the swastika, the Goebbels also founded a party newspaper called
Der Angriff or The Attack, in the capital, combining his propaganda strategy with violence
and intimidation, Goebbels also had the Nazis uniformed paramilitary body, the SA, engage
in attacks and violence in beer halls in Berlin, in the months that followed his appointment. As a consequence of all this work Goebbels
won election to parliament in the Reichstag elections held on the 20th of May 1928, his
election was especially surprising as the Nazis generally performed poorly in these
elections, particularly in the cities, and their power base was largely confined to the
Munich region of Bavaria and some parts of the countryside by 1928. The attitude of the new Reichstag deputy towards
parliamentary democracy was stark, having stated, “We are entering the Reichstag,
in order that we may arm ourselves with the weapons of democracy from its arsenal. We shall become Reichstag deputies in order
that the Weimar ideology should itself help us to destroy it.” Goebbels’ statements that the Nazis could
undermine the German republic from within parliament itself may have seemed fanciful
given the party’s election result in 1928, but all of this began to change in 1929, after
years of rapid economic growth in the 1920s, the United States stock market began to overheat
and collapse in the autumn of 1929, starting in September share prices began to fall, culminating
on the 25th of October, with the largest one-day selling off of shares in US history. What became known as Black Friday was the
peak of the Wall Street Crash, it ushered in the Great Depression, which would see economies
all over the world impacted in the years ahead, still suffering from its war debt and other
political and economic problems, Germany was particularly susceptible to the problems created
by the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression, and in the years ahead, as the German economy
contracted and millions of Germans lost either their jobs or their savings, the Nazi party
with its message of resentment and xenophobia, would grow in popularity. The first major electoral boom occurred in
1930, an election was called in the spring for the 14th of September 1930, Goebbels was
central to the Nazis electoral campaign, shaping the party’s message around opposition to
the terms of the Versailles Treaty which had ended the First World War, and the humiliating
terms of which, Germany continued to suffer under, thousands of meetings were held countrywide. In the resulting election, the Nazis went
from being a minor party which had actually lost support in the 1928 election, to the
second largest party in Germany, with nearly one in five voters supporting them, this translated
into 107 seats in the 577 seat Reichstag, only the centrist Social Democratic Party
won more seats, taking 143, the Social Democratic Party were consequently in a position to lead
the government, significantly the Communist Party of Germany came in third in the election,
winning 77 seats, as such, the extremist parties won a great share of the vote in this election,
as the effects of the Great Depression hit home in Germany, the rise of the Communists
also allowed the Nazis to depict themselves in the years ahead as a bulwark against a
potential Communist takeover of Germany. As one of the Nazis chief propagandists, Goebbels
was central to efforts to exploit fears over a Communist surge in the years ahead, between
1930 and the next Reichstag elections the Berlin Gauleiter was developing new methods
of disseminating the Nazi message, he began experimenting with the new medium of silent
films, something which would play a central role in spreading the Nazis’ ideology and
war time propaganda in the 1930s and 1940s. The radio was also exploited effectively by
Goebbels, when Hitler ran unsuccessfully for the office of German president in 1932, Goebbels
oversaw the broadcasting of regular radio messages, detailing the Fuhrer’s almost
daily plane journeys around Germany to torch-lit parades where he stirred up increasing support
amongst Protestants, middle-class business owners and women, these were groups in German
society, who increasingly favoured the Nazis as the German banking system neared collapse
in 1931 and efforts by the centrist administration in Berlin to negotiate German debt relief
with Britain and France failed. Although Hitler lost the 1932 presidential
election to Paul von Hindenburg, a German hero of the First World War, the Nazi leader,
buoyed by Goebbels’ propaganda and election strategizing had nevertheless performed very
well, coming a close second to von Hindenburg. It was inevitable that this newfound support
for the party would translate into greater electoral success when a new Reichstag election
took place. New elections were imminent by 1932, in their
efforts to ensure that both the Nazis and the Communists were kept out of government,
a coalition of centrist parties had been operating minority governments for months, when the
first election since 1930 was held, on the 31st of July 1932, the Nazis became the largest
party in Germany for the first time, this was largely owing to socio-economic circumstances. The unemployment rate in Germany had reached
nearly 30% by 1932, people’s savings had been obliterated, the banking system was on
the verge of total collapse, and the centrist governments had seemed incapable of arresting
the situation, despite successfully negotiating to have the majority of Germany’s war reparations
debt cancelled, by expertly manipulating popular resentment and anger at the prevailing economic
conditions, the Nazi party won 230 seats in the July 1932 Reichstag elections. Thus, the Nazis, along with Goebbels, a major
driving force behind their propaganda and election campaigns, had ascended to become
the dominant party in Germany by the summer of 1932. Nearly 2 out of every 5 voters had supported
Hitler and his party, however, they lacked a majority in parliament, and negotiations
with some of the more centrist parties to establish a coalition, broke down in the autumn
of 1932, consequently, Germans had to return to the polls in November 1932 for the second
time that year. The Reichstag elections held on the 6th of
November 1932 were the last free and fair elections held in Germany prior to the establishment
of the German Third Reich, although the Nazis lost votes, they yet again emerged as the
largest party, winning 196 seats and 1 in 3 votes. The elections of November 1932 continued the
parliamentary stalemate, yet a solution was in the making, for several months an uneasy
alliance, but an alliance nonetheless, had been developing between the Nazi party and
some centrist political forces, along with the powerful industrial lobbyists who ran
German business, the latter were wary of the Nazis, but were prepared to countenance supporting
Hitler and the party Goebbels had become the leading propagandist for, if the Nazis could
prevent the rise of the parties of the left in Germany. As such the industrialists and centrists agreed
to do business with the Nazis in 1932, in an effort to prevent the further rise of the
Communist party and their allies on the left of the political spectrum. The spectre of Soviet Russia where the Communists
had risen to power following the Russian Revolution of 1917, hung large over Germany in 1932,
inadvertently it would facilitate the rise of Hitler and the destruction of the Weimar
Republic. Following extensive negotiations a coalition
of the Nazis, centre parties and industrialists was finally concluded on the 30th of January
1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, the head of the government, and the Nazis
were given three of the eleven cabinet positions, Goebbels was frustrated not to receive one
of these positions, but he would not have long to wait. To mark the event, he oversaw a huge torch-lit
parade in Berlin on the night of the 30th of January 1933, attended by approximately
60,000 supporters of the Nazis, it featured brigades of SS and SA members, the paramilitary
branches of the Nazi party, and would prefigure the military parades which would become ubiquitous
in Germany, for the next twelve years of Nazi rule. The new government moved quickly to consolidate
its power, punitive measures to repress the Communist party and other parties of the left,
were quickly implemented in February 1933, a fire at the Reichstag on the 28th of February
was then used as a pretext for passing emergency legislation, which briefly gave the government
additional powers and a snap Reichstag election was called for the 5th of March, voter intimidation
and fraud was employed in the resulting campaign, but the Nazis were still only able to win
44% of the vote which translated into 288 seats in the Reichstag. This, however, was enough, on the 23rd of
March 1933 the Nazis excluded the Communists and others from the Reichstag and intimidated
several other parties in order to ensure that an Enabling Act was passed by an overwhelming
majority through both houses of the parliament, this Enabling Act decreed that the German
Chancellor and his government, could effectively suspend the government and rule by decree
for a period of four years, the passage of it through the Reichstag effectively spelled
the end of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of a single party Nazi rule in Germany. Goebbels did not have to wait until the passage
of the Enabling Act to acquire the ministerial position he had long sought, on the 14th of
March 1933 Hitler appointed Goebbels as head of the newly created Reich Ministry for Public
Enlightenment and Propaganda, over the next twelve years and for the duration of the German
Third Reich Goebbels would enforce Nazi ideology throughout Germany and Europe through his
ministry. Goebbels’ thoughts on propaganda and its
uses was perhaps best expressed in a speech entitled ‘The Art of Propaganda’ which
he made before the Political Education Seminar of the Nazi Party in Berlin on the 9th of
January 1928. Here he stated: “Propaganda shows that it is good if, over
a certain period of it, it can win over and fire up people for an idea. If it fails to do so, it is bad propaganda. If propaganda wins the people it wanted to
win, it was presumably good, and if not, it was presumably bad. No one can say that your propaganda is too
crude or low or brutal, or that it is not decent enough, for those are not the relevant
criteria. Its purpose is not to be decent, or gentle,
or weak, or modest; it is to be successful.” Thus Goebbels’ view was clear, the end always
justified the means when it came to state propaganda, and any methods however crude
or deceptive could be used, if they furthered Hitler’s and the wider Nazi party’s ideological
goals. A sense of the scale of control which Goebbels
hoped to exercise over German life through his ministry, can be glimpsed by examining
the organisational structure of his department, it was divided into multiple branches which
variously dealt with broadcasting, the national and foreign press, films, censorship, the
arts, music and theatre, mass rallies, race issues, indoctrination of German youth, and
counter-offensives against anything which was deemed to be foreign or domestic propaganda
directed against the Nazi state. Over the next twelve years from its headquarters
across from Hitler’s own offices in the Reich Chancellery, Goebbels would shape the
ideology of the Nazi Party and the Third Reich, Goebbels’ role in this respect was so significant
that the controversial historian of Nazi Germany, David Irving, has described him as the ‘Mastermind
of the Third Reich’ in his extensive biography of Goebbels, no one did more to shape how
the German people perceived the Nazis and their governance of Germany. Goebbels’ propaganda methods were immensely
varied, one of his first major acts was the massive repression of German art and culture,
writers and artists who were considered anti-German in their actions were silenced and their works
destroyed or suppressed. Goebbels was also central to a series of mass
book burnings, which swept through Germany shortly after the assent to power of the Nazis,
the foremost occurrence being on the 10th of May 1933, that evening German students
in Berlin oversaw the burning of over 25,000 books which were deemed un-German, these included
works by Karl Marx, Erich Maria Remarque, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Goebbels was central to the events in Berlin
on the 10th of May and gave a speech before thousands of people in which he encouraged
the crowd to reject the moral corruption which such books instilled, suffusing his oration
with the anti-Semitism which was the trademark of the Nazi party, he stated at the event
in Berlin that “The era of Jewish intellectualism is at an end.” These events showed how far Goebbels had drifted
from his earlier life, the PhD student and would-be writer of 1921, had become the overseer
of mass book burnings and cultural destruction, unsurprisingly in the years ahead many prominent
authors such as Thomas Mann began to leave Germany. Goebbels continued in these years to mould
German culture to the goals of Nazi ideology, using the Reich Chamber of Culture which was
established in September 1933. The arts were subordinated to the Nazi cause,
for instance, new films being produced in Germany henceforward often had a Nazi message,
sometimes a subtle one, but one which aided the Nazi cause. Much of this sought to portray Hitler as the
saviour of Europe against the threat of Bolshevism and Communism taking power in Germany and
elsewhere on the continent, Goebbels’ control over the German film industry became absolute
in March 1937 when the German film industry was nationalised and came virtually entirely
under his ministry’s control. Around this time he stated his views on how
cinema could be used as “an art which expresses an attitude through its national-socialist
character and by taking up national-socialist problems”, but should do so in a way which
did not “appear deliberate” and “remains in the background.” Even more consequential was Goebbels exploitation
and control over the national press and methods of communication, Germany had more papers
than almost all other European countries under the Weimar Republic, but under Goebbels’
ministry the Nazi party effectively took control over the major newspapers, journalists were
briefed by Goebbels’ ministry and often had what they printed dictated to them by
the party apparatus, journalists who diverged from the Nazi message were often intimidated
or arrested. His control of and exploitation of the new
and emerging types of mass media was even more comprehensive, under his leadership the
Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda distributed millions of radios to Germans,
this was the mass medium which Goebbels preferred for indoctrination of the German people. In the first year of full Nazi rule alone
over fifty of Hitler’s speeches were broadcast on radio, the emerging medium of film was
also exploited in this way, loudspeakers were set up in public places throughout Germany
so that state messages could be drilled into people in public places. Goebbels was also central to the organisation
of the huge Nazi party rallies which were held throughout Germany in the years ahead,
the most infamous example was the 1934 Nazi Party Congress rallies at Nuremburg, the events
of which were immortalised in the propaganda film of the same directed by Leni Riefenstahl,
The Triumph of the Will, which won many film awards around Europe in the 1930s and has
been called one of the most effective pieces of political propaganda ever made. The effect over time, of this constant affirmation
of the Nazi message was immense, In their rise to power, the Nazis had never been able
to attain the support of more than about a third of the German people, in the last free
Reichstag elections in November 1933 the party had gleaned only one-third of the votes, however,
by the late 1930s, in large part owing to Goebbels’ propaganda work, the Nazis had
become more popular countrywide and faith in Hitler’s leadership was immense. As a result when a referendum was held on
the 19th of August 1934 to appoint Hitler officially as Fuhrer or leader of Germany,
with the combined offices of Chancellor and President, it was passed by an overwhelming
majority of 88% in favour, a result which was only partly fraudulent, indicating the
growing popularity of the Nazis, and in the months and years after their rise to power,
there is little doubt that Goebbels’ work as a propagandist was highly successful, after
the Nazis seized power in the 1930s. At the same time, Goebbels’ own political
power was growing in the 1930s, he was generally disliked by his colleagues in government,
indeed an article in Life magazine in 1938 noted that Goebbels “likes nobody, is liked
by nobody, and runs the most efficient Nazi department.”, despite his aloofness towards
most of his colleagues, he was one of Hitler’s closest confidantes, when Hitler decided to
combine the offices of German Chancellor and President of Germany following the death of
the president, Paul von Hindenburg, in August 1934, it was Goebbels who made the announcement
by radio to the German nation on the 2nd of August. As well as this, Hitler had become close with
Goebbels’ family, on the 19th of December 1931 Goebbels had married Magda Ritschel,
they had numerous children in the 1930s and the family became referred to as the first
family of the Reich, Hitler having remained a bachelor without children, other signs of
Goebbels prominence in the regime followed, for instance, he was appointed as President
of the Organizing Committee for the Summer and Winter Olympics when they were held in
Berlin in 1936, a major role which put him centre stage in Germany for an international
event. Goebbels was also involved in the growing
persecution of Germany’s Jewish population in the years following the Nazis’ assent
to power, his anti-Semitism was longstanding, and was one of the reasons why he had been
attracted to the Nazi party and Hitler in the 1920s, yet there were also contradictions
to Goebbels’ anti-Semitism, in his student years he had a close relationship with several
Jewish teachers for a time, and he dated Else Janke, a Jewish schoolteacher, for several
years in the early 1920s, he even considered marrying her. Despite these contradictions in his attitudes
towards German Jewry, Goebbels quickly became one of the most enthusiastic persecutors of
Germany’s Jews following the Nazi’s assent to power in 1933, in October of that year
he was responsible for passing the Reich Press Law through which all Jewish editors were
removed from working at German newspapers and other print outlets, throughout these
years there are repeated references in his diaries to efforts to ‘de-Jewify’ German
culture. When a set of laws known as the Nuremburg
Laws were passed on the 15th of September 1935, effectively prohibiting Jews from holding
German citizenship and from marrying Germans, Goebbels had propaganda pieces published in
outlets such as the newspaper, Der Sturmer, justifying the prohibitions and attacks on
Germany’s Jews, his propaganda continued to feed the Nazi state’s growing anti-Semitism
in the years ahead, as the first concentration camps were set up in Germany to house political
prisoners, including many Jews. In early November 1938 Goebbels was central
to the worst anti-Semitic pogrom in Germany prior to the outbreak of the war, on the 7th
of November 1938 a Jewish teenager, Herschel Grynszpan, shot a German diplomat, Ernst Vom
Rath, at the German embassy in Paris, Vom Rath died two days later on the 9th of November,
later that evening Goebbels gave a speech at a commemorative event marking the fifteen
year anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, in which he made it clear that spontaneous
acts of violence and attacks on Jews and their property would be tolerated by the government,
in response to Vom Rath’s death. A later report stated that Goebbels speech
had clearly been intended to indicate that while the Nazi Party and the government did
not wish to be seen as perpetuating retaliations on the Jewish community, it was essentially
stating that they should be organised and carried out on an unofficial basis. What followed was an orgy of violence on the
night of the 9th of November 1938, Kristallnacht, or the Night of the Broken Glass, as it has
become known, saw the Nazi paramilitary forces and gangs of German citizens attack Jewish
businesses, homes and synagogues throughout Germany, approximately one-hundred Jews were
murdered in the hours of violence, over two-hundred synagogues were ransacked or destroyed, and
as many as 7,000 Jewish businesses had windows broken or worse damaged inflicted. Perhaps as many as 30,000 Jews were also detained
on fabricated charges, and confined to the new concentration camps, which were proliferating
around Germany, the psychological effects were even worse, and Jews thereafter in Germany
were aware that they were a people under perpetual attack, it is estimated that several hundred
Jews committed suicide in the days and weeks following the pogrom, and many Jewish families
began to consider leaving Germany, however Kristallnacht was a portent of worse to come. While Goebbels was one of the most ardent
supporters and actors in Germany’s growing anti-Semitic policies, he was less enthusiastic
about the Nazi state’s drift towards war in the late 1930s, the Nazis had long been
committed to re-establishing German military power, in contravention of the heavy restrictions
placed on the size of the German army and air-force under the terms of the Versailles
Treaty. From 1933 onwards Hitler and the Nazi leadership
began expanding the German air-force, the Luftwaffe, and the German army, the Wehrmacht,
and on the 7th of March 1936 German troops were sent into the Rhineland region of western
Germany which had been established as a demilitarised zone under the terms of Versailles. Further aggression followed in the years ahead,
on the 12th of March 1938 Germany annexed Austria, uniting the two German speaking countries
under Nazi rule, the Anschluss, as it has become known, made clear Germany’s aggressive
intentions in Europe and the other European powers were increasingly fearful of war from
early 1938 onwards, however, Britain’s prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, tried to pacify
Hitler through concessions in the months ahead, particularly as the Nazis began pressing a
claim to the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in the autumn of 1938, on the 14th of September
1938 Goebbels published an aggressive editorial in the Volkischer Beobachter, promoting German
claims to the region, owing to the large number of ethnically German people living there. Eventually in early October 1938 Germany was
ceded the Sudetenland in return for a guarantee that Hitler would otherwise respect Czechoslovakia’s
independence, this was breached in early March 1939 as Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, in
the days ahead the country and neighbouring Hungary were variously either annexed by Germany
or formed into satellite, vassal states. Thus, by the spring of 1939 the Nazis had
established themselves as masters of all of central Europe, but Britain and France were
now clear, that Hitler and Germany could not be pacified, as a consequence when the Germans
invaded Poland on the 1st of September 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany
two days later, on the 3rd of September 1939, the Second World War had commenced. In its initial stages the war was a resounding
success for Germany, Poland was quickly overrun and divided up between Germany and Soviet
Russia in the autumn of 1939, with whom a non-aggression pact had been agreed, despite
the ideological differences between the Fascist Nazis and the Communist Russians, the following
April, Denmark and Norway were invaded and quickly conquered. Then on the night of the 9th of May 1940,
after months of military build-up in western Germany, the Wehrmacht received orders to
invade France through the Low Countries of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Over the next five weeks there followed a
complete military collapse of France, Paris was captured on the 14th of June 1940 effectively
ending the military campaign, and on the 25th of June an armistice was signed as a preliminary
to establishing a puppet government in France. Germany had effectively conquered western
Europe, Britain had only barely managed to pull its army out of mainland Europe and back
to Britain in time, undertaking a daring naval evacuation of over 300,000 troops from the
port town of Dunkirk in northern France, between the 26th of May and the 4th of June, consequently
Britain was able to continue in the war and Germany would have to undertake a protracted
effort to weaken its resolve, through bombing campaigns in 1940 and 1941, the Blitz, as
this campaign became known, was ultimately unsuccessful. Despite these early successes, Goebbels was
less enthusiastic about the prospects of war in 1939 than many of the other senior members
of the Nazi party, at times he was entirely realistic, for instance, an entry in his diaries
in April 1940 noted; “We must achieve victory in the course of this year. Otherwise the material superiority of the
opposite side would become too strong. A war of many years would also be difficult
to maintain for psychological reasons.” Nevertheless he was central to the war effort,
the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was effectively responsible
for shaping the state’s message about the war effort and what German citizens were told
about what was happening in 1939 and 1940. From the start of the invasion of the Low
Countries and France in May 1940, Goebbels wrote and published editorials which were
broadcast nationally on German radio and often published in newspapers, for instance, between
May 1940 and the spring of 1945 Goebbels published 218 editorials in the newspaper he had founded,
Das Reich, or the Empire, this was published weekly, so Goebbels’ writings glorifying
the war effort and denouncing Germany’s enemies were rarely absent from any edition
of the paper. As the war progressed Goebbels also increasingly
exploited the medium of film to glorify the German war effort at home and abroad, films
of the German armies progressing through Poland and France became staples of German life,
though these depictions of German valour would have to be increasingly doctored from late
1941 onwards, as the German army began to suffer increasing setbacks, and as it did,
Goebbels’ job increasingly became about managing the expectations of the German people,
what was needed from the spring of 1942 onwards was resolve, in a war that would not be over
soon, and which was almost certainly doomed to end in German defeat. Goebbels was also central to the increasingly
barbaric methods being used to persecute the Jews of Germany and occupied Europe, on the
30th of January 1939 Hitler had delivered a speech in the Reichstag which Goebbels had
been involved in writing, in which it was declared that if Europe was cast into war,
the Jewish people would be held responsible by the Nazi state, and the ‘annihilation’
of the Jews of Europe would be undertaken, in the years ahead this threat was put into
action. Following the conquest of Poland, a huge ghetto,
largely populated by Poland’s considerable Jewish population, was established in Warsaw
in October 1939, the following month Polish Jews were legally required to wear arm bands
or yellow stars, to indicate they were Jews, this stipulation would eventually be imposed
in Germany by Goebbels’ express order in September 1941, and on the 20th of May 1940,
a concentration camp was established at Auschwitz in southern Poland, a place which would become
the epicentre of the Holocaust which followed in the years ahead. However the most terrible moment in the Nazi
state’s persecution of the Jewish people did not come until 1942. On the 20th of January 1942 at a conference
at Wannsee, a Berlin suburb, it was effectively decided by the Nazi party, to begin exterminating
the Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe, the Final Solution, as it has become known, resulted
in the Holocaust of approximately six million Jews between 1942 and the end of the war in
1945. There is no doubting the significance of Goebbels’
role in the persecution of Europe’s Jews, the development of the Final Solution and
the Holocaust in general, in a radio address he made on the 16th of November 1941 as a
more extreme approach towards the Jews was being developed within the Nazi hierarchy,
Goebbels made his views clear, in an outlandish address he claimed that the Jews were responsible
for the war which now enveloped all of Europe and much of the wider world. “The Jews”, Goebbels asserted, were “receiving
a penalty that is certainly hard, but more than deserved,” going on he stated that
“The Jews must be removed from the German community, for they endanger our national
unity. This is an elementary principle of racial,
national and social hygiene…Who cares about their difficulties.” There is no doubting that Goebbels’ anti-Semitism
was extreme by the early 1940s, this manifested itself further in the production of anti-Semitic
propaganda films during the war years, such as The Eternal Jew, a film made in 1940, in
which Jews were depicted as parasites who were undermining social and political order,
these efforts by Goebbels to sway public opinion against the Jews of Germany and Europe was
largely responsible for creating an environment in which hundreds of thousands of people were
at least partially complicit, in the murders of millions of Europe’s Jews in the years
that followed. Moreover there is no doubt that he was entirely
aware of what was occurring at Auschwitz and the other extermination and labour camps of
eastern and central Europe, having received the details of the Wannsee conference in early
March 1942 Goebbels noted in his diary that he assumed about 40% of the Jews in these
camps would be put to work producing armaments and other war material, but in a chilling
turn of phrase he stated that the other 60% would almost certainly be ‘liquidated’. There is no doubt that Goebbels was one of
the central architects of the sustained policy of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and in the
Holocaust itself, indeed as the Jews of Berlin were being deported to concentration camps
from the capital in the early summer of 1942, Goebbels urged Hitler to speed up this process,
he mused at this time, that it might even be better to ‘liquidate’ them in Berlin
itself, as this would be more efficient that shipping them to the camps. As the Final Solution was being developed
German fortunes in the war were declining, in the summer of 1941 Hitler turned his attentions
away from Britain and western Europe towards the east, it was now time, he believed, to
confront Bolshevik Russia and acquire Lebensraum, or living space, for the German people in
Eastern Europe. On the 22nd of June 1941 Operation Barbarossa
was initiated, and an army of three million Germans invaded Russia. In the weeks that followed, the Soviet Empire
in Eastern Europe crumbled, as the poorly trained and equipped Russian armies were devastated
by the oncoming German forces, by the autumn, the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, was contemplating
negotiating peace terms, whereby the Soviet state would cede much of Eastern Europe to
the German Third Reich, but at this point Hitler’s ambitions got the better of him
and envisaging a total victory over Bolshevism he directed further drives towards the major
Russian cities of Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad, this was to be the fatal moment for the Third
Reich. As the Russian winter of 1941 set in, the
German army’s progress eastward slowed, confronted by a Russian army that suffered
enormous casualties, but which had a seemingly never-ending stream of manpower, and improperly
supplied with winter clothing and arms, which could not withstand the Russian winter, the
German Wehrmacht began to experience significant setbacks on the Eastern front. Goebbels became central to these events in
many ways, for instance, on the 17th of December 1941, he was placed in charge of the drive
in Germany to collect winter clothing, to be sent to the Eastern Front as a matter of
urgency, by the spring of 1942, a stalemate had set in, on the fronts near Leningrad,
Moscow and Stalingrad, with the latter city experiencing one of the bloodiest and most
catastrophic sieges in modern warfare. More and more resources were pumped into Stalingrad
as the winter of 1942 neared and the region became the crucible of war, in which the confrontation
between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia would be decided, when the siege eventually ended
in victory for the Soviets in early 1943, the result of the war was sealed, the Russians
henceforth were now on the offensive and began the long inexorable campaign westwards towards
Berlin, reconquering on their way all the lands of Eastern and Central Europe, that
the Nazis had occupied between 1939 and 1941. This reversal in fortunes for the Third Reich
was further compounded in the years ahead, as a Southern Front was first opened in Italy
when a combined British and American force invaded Sicily on the 10th of July 1943, and
then a Western Front was established when the western allies invaded France on D-Day,
on the 6th of June 1944. Goebbels took on an ever more important role
in the war effort from 1942 onwards, as these escalating military reverses began, recent
research has highlighted how several members of the Nazi leadership became increasingly
incapacitated from 1942, by various illnesses and even drug addiction, particularly so in
the case of both Hitler and the head of the Luftwaffe, the German air-force, Hermann Goring,
the latter of whom was heavily addicted to opiates. As Hitler sank into a miasma of delusion about
German war prospects and needed ever greater amounts of painkillers to alleviate various
ailments, more and more of the day to day direction of government in Berlin, fell on
Goebbels’ shoulders, particularly as Hitler was increasingly ensconced in a military bunker
in Poland. Goebbels was one of the most clear-sighted
of the German leadership, Hitler was broadly delusional about the prospects of victory
until late in the war, but as early as 1942 Goebbels was aware of the unlikelihood of
victory, now that the Russian campaign had stalled in 1941, and the German army was unlikely
to win the war on the Eastern Front. This was made clearer in the winter of 1942
when the tide was turned in Russia, with German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad, as a consequence,
from the spring of 1943 Goebbels began arguing for what he termed ‘Total War’, by which
he meant that all of the state’s resources would be employed to the maximum degree possible
to fight the war. At a meeting of the Nazi faithful at the Berlin
Sportpalast, a huge sports stadium in the capital, on the 18th of February 1943, Goebbels
laid out his belief about what was needed in what has been deemed to be his most famous
speech, Germans would have to live a Spartan, exhausting way of life henceforward Goebbels
asserted, in his speech, which was broadcast, nationally on radio, he argued that Germans
would have to work fourteen or sixteen hour days to keep up the war machine, but this
was necessary to keep Europe from falling almost entirely under the control of Bolshevik
Russia, having stirred up the thousands of attendees who had been selected for their
Nazi credentials, he ended by asking the frenzied crowd, “Do you want total war?” Although Hitler was won over by the idea of
total war, he would take until the 23rd of July 1944, before he officially appointed
Goebbels as Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total War Effort, this was just three days
after a failed attempted coup by senior members of the Wehrmacht which had sought to assassinate
Hitler and end the war, shocked by the coup effort, Hitler committed himself to Goebbels
extreme plan for total war just days later. With this new position, Goebbels was charged
with overseeing the deployment of all parts of society to facilitate the army’s efforts,
the position was a major confirmation of Goebbels’ seniority in the Nazi leadership, with the
promotion essentially being an acknowledgement that Goebbels had supplanted Hermann Goring
as Hitler’s second in command of the Nazi party and was now his ostensible successor
should he die. Goebbels’ efforts to put his ideas on total
war into effect in the weeks and months ahead, met with mixed results, he focused first on
increasing the numbers of men entering the armed forces, the numbers of the rank and
file in the German Wehrmacht had fallen drastically in 1942 and 1943, owing to huge casualties
on the Eastern Front and, with the opening of additional fronts by the Allies in France
and Italy, the German army was stretched extremely thin by 1944. To combat this, Goebbels increased the age
limit to which German women were required to work in German factories producing war
material of all kinds from 45 to 55, this had the benefit of freeing up many men who
had been working in the factories for active service on the front, yet in the end these
measures were not effective, the German state was simply too under-resourced and not possessed
of sufficient manpower by 1944, and the additional men who were conscripted into the German army,
were simply replacing those who were dying or being captured on a daily basis, as the
Russians advanced from the east, and the Americans and the British from the west and the south. Ultimately total war achieved little, other
than the further impoverishment of the German people, and the conscription of old men and
boys into the German army in the last desperate stages of the war in the winter of 1944 and
the spring of 1945, yet Goebbels never wavered, the last of his 218 wartime editorials in
Das Reich called for resistance to the very end, even as the Soviet armies closed in on
central Berlin. In January 1945 the Soviet forces crossed
into eastern Germany and the Americans and British simultaneously advanced into the Rhineland
in western Germany, following a bitter struggle in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium and Luxembourg
in December 1944 and January 1945, German defeat was clearly just months away, and Hitler
and the Nazi leadership were now hoping that a falling out might occur between the English
speaking allies and the Russians which might work in Germany’s favour, this never came,
and in the spring of 1945, the only question was whether the Russians advancing from the
east, or the British and Americans from the west, would seize Berlin. Despite these setbacks Goebbels’ commitment
to Total War never wavered, it was expressed most forcefully in the final weeks of the
war, in an article in Das Reich magazine published on the 22nd of April 1945 entitled ‘Resistance
at Any Price’, here Goebbels’ fanaticism and willingness to let everything in Germany
be destroyed in defence of the remnants of the Reich is laid bare: “The war has reached a stage at which only
the full efforts of the nation and of each individual can save us. The defence of our freedom no longer depends
on the army fighting at the front. Each civilian, each man and woman and boy
and girl fight with unequalled fanaticism…No village and no city may give in to the enemy.” Perhaps it was his unwavering fanaticism and
commitment to the Nazi cause in the final days of the Third Reich which led Hitler to
appoint his Propaganda minister as his successor when the Fuhrer took the decision to end his
life on the 30th of April 1945. Goebbels’ few hours as head of the German
state, were a ghastly conclusion to his own life, on the 1st of May a day after Hitler’s
suicide, he sent an offer for a ceasefire to General Vasily Chuikov, the head of the
Soviet army’s assault on Berlin, when this was rejected he decided to follow his master’s
example, later that day Joseph and Magda Goebbels had their six children sedated with morphine,
before killing their children by force-feeding them cyanide, once they had lost consciousness,
Joseph and Magda then headed upstairs where they committed suicide themselves in the garden
of the Reich Chancellery, thus died the mastermind of so much of the Nazi party’s ideology. Few individuals were as critical in shaping
the Third Reich as Joseph Goebbels, both prior to the party coming to power and as Reich
Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, in the years ahead he shaped how the Nazi
message was presented to German citizens and the wider world, the visual image we have
of the Nazi party as being visually dominated by huge parades with massive Nazi banners
in red and black, is almost entirely owing to how Goebbels choreographed and designed
these events, and the public view of the Nazis. From 1939 he was the decisive figure in deciding
what information on the war effort was provided to German citizens and how it was presented,
he also pushed for an increasingly fanatical all-out war as Plenipotentiary for Total War. Moreover, he was one of the central individuals
in the evolution of the Final Solution and Holocaust of Europe’s Jews, a zealous adherent
of Hitler’s, Goebbels was perhaps the most clear-sighted of the Nazi leadership, about
the prospects of German victory in the Second World War, and yet his fanatical adherence
to the Fuhrer and the tenets of National Socialism, led him to favour dragging Europe to the brink
of utter destruction, given how close his ideology was to Hitler’s own, it was perhaps
unsurprising that the Fuhrer appointed him
