Joseph Goebbels

Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted acolytes, known for his skills in public speaking and his deeply virulent antisemitism, which was evident in his publicly voiced views. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust.

Goebbels, who aspired to be an author, obtained a Doctor of Philology degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1921. He joined the Nazi Party in 1924, and worked with Gregor Strasser in its northern branch. He was appointed ''Gauleiter'' of Berlin in 1926, where he began to take an interest in the use of propaganda to promote the party and its programme. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry quickly gained and exerted control over the news media, arts, and information in Nazi Germany. He was particularly adept at using the relatively new media of radio and film for propaganda purposes. Topics for party propaganda included antisemitism, attacks on the Christian churches, and (after the start of the Second World War) attempting to shape morale.

In 1943, Goebbels began to pressure Hitler to introduce measures that would produce "total war", including closing businesses not essential to the war effort, conscripting women into the labour force, and enlisting men in previously exempt occupations into the Wehrmacht. Hitler finally appointed him as Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War on 23 July 1944, whereby Goebbels undertook largely unsuccessful measures to increase the number of people available for armaments manufacture and the Wehrmacht.

As the war drew to a close and Nazi Germany faced defeat, Magda Goebbels and the Goebbels children joined him in Berlin. They moved into the underground ''Vorbunker'', part of Hitler's underground bunker complex, on 22 April 1945. Hitler committed suicide on 30 April. In accordance with Hitler's will, Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor of Germany; he served one day in this post. The following day, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide, after having poisoned their six children with cyanide.

Early life, education, and relationships

Paul Joseph Goebbels was born on 29 October 1897 in Rheydt, an industrial town south of Mönchengladbach near Düsseldorf, Germany. Both of his parents were Roman Catholics with modest family backgrounds. His father Fritz was a German factory clerk; his mother Katharina Maria (''née'' Odenhausen) was born to Dutch and German parents in a Dutch village close to the border with Germany. Goebbels had five siblings: Konrad (1893–1949), Hans (1895–1947), Maria (1896–1896), Elisabeth (1901–1915), and Maria (1910–1949), who married the German filmmaker Max W. Kimmich in 1938. In 1932, Goebbels commissioned the publication of a pamphlet of his family tree to refute the rumours that his maternal grandmother was of Jewish ancestry.

During childhood, Goebbels experienced ill health, which included a long bout of inflammation of the lungs. He had a deformed right foot that turned inwards, due to a congenital disorder. It was thicker and shorter than his left foot. He underwent a failed operation to correct it just prior to starting grammar school. Goebbels wore a metal brace and special shoe because of his shortened leg and walked with a limp. He was rejected for military service in World War I because of this deformity.

Goebbels was educated at a '' Gymnasium'', where he completed his '' Abitur'' (university entrance examination) in 1917. He was the top student of his class and was given the traditional honour to speak at the awards ceremony. His parents initially hoped that he would become a Catholic priest, which Goebbels seriously considered. He studied literature and history at the universities of Bonn, Würzburg, Freiburg, and Munich, aided by a scholarship from the Albertus Magnus Society. By this time Goebbels had begun to distance himself from the church.

Historians, including Richard J. Evans and Roger Manvell, speculate that Goebbels' lifelong pursuit of women may have been in compensation for his physical disability. At Freiburg, he met and fell in love with Anka Stalherm, who was three years his senior. She went on to Würzburg to continue school, as did Goebbels. By 1920, the relationship with Anka was over. The break-up filled Goebbels with thoughts of suicide. In 1921, he wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, '' Michael'', a three-part work of which only Parts I and III have survived. Goebbels felt he was writing his "own story". Antisemitic content and material about a charismatic leader may have been added by Goebbels shortly before the book was published in 1929 by Eher-Verlag, the publishing house of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party; NSDAP).

At the University of Heidelberg, Goebbels wrote his doctoral thesis on Wilhelm von Schütz, a minor 19th-century romantic dramatist. He had hoped to write his thesis under the supervision of Friedrich Gundolf, a literary historian. It did not seem to bother Goebbels that Gundolf was Jewish. Gundolf was no longer teaching, so directed Goebbels to associate professor Max Freiherr von Waldberg. Waldberg, also Jewish, recommended Goebbels write his thesis on Wilhelm von Schütz. After submitting the thesis and passing his oral examination, Goebbels earned his PhD in 1921. By 1940, he had written 14 books.

Goebbels returned home and worked as a private tutor. He also found work as a journalist and was published in the local newspaper. His writing during that time reflected his growing antisemitism and dislike for modern culture. In the summer of 1922, he met and began a love affair with Else Janke, a schoolteacher. After she revealed to him that she was half-Jewish, Goebbels stated the "enchantment asruined." Nevertheless, he continued to see her on and off until 1927.

He continued for several years to try to become a published author. His diaries, which he began in 1923 and continued for the rest of his life, provided an outlet for his desire to write. The lack of income from his literary works (he wrote two plays in 1923, neither of which sold) forced him to take employment as a caller on the stock exchange and as a bank clerk in Cologne, a job he detested. He was dismissed from the bank in August 1923 and returned to Rheydt. During this period, he read avidly and was influenced by the works of Oswald Spengler, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the British-born German writer whose book ''The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century'' (1899) was one of the standard works of the extreme right in Germany. He also began to study the "social question" and read the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels

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