Master propagandist of the Nazi regime and dictator of its cultural life for
twelve years, Joseph Goebbels was born into a strict Catholic, working-class
family from Rheydt, in the Rhineland, on 29 October 1897. He was educated at a
Roman Catholic school and went on to study history and literature at the
University of Heidelberg under Professor Friedrich Gundolf, a Jewish literary
historian renowned as a Goethe scholar and a close disciple of the poet Stefan
George.
Goebbels had been rejected for military service during World War I because of a
crippled foot - the result of contracting polio as a child - and a sense of
physical inadequacy tormented him for the rest of his life, reinforced by
resentment of the reactions aroused by his diminutive frame, black hair and
intellectual background. Bitterly conscious of his deformity and fearful of
being regarded as a "bourgeois intellectual," Goebbels overcompensated for his
lack of the physical virtues of the strong, healthy, blond, Nordic type by his
ideological rectitude and radicalism once he joined the NSDAP in 1922.
The hostility to the intellect of the "little doctor," his contempt for the
human race in general and the Jews in particular, and his complete cynicism were
an expression of his own intellectual self-hatred and inferiority complexes, his
overwhelming need to destroy everything sacred and ignite the same feelings of
rage, despair and hatred in his listeners.
At first Goebbels's hyperactive imagination found an outlet in poetry, drama and
a bohemian life-style, but apart from his expressionist novel, Michael: ein
Deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchblattern (1926), nothing came of these first
literary efforts. It was in the Nazi Party that Goebbels's sharp, clear-sighted
intelligence, his oratorical gifts and flair for theatrical effects, his
uninhibited opportunism and ideological radicalism blossomed in the service of
an insatiable will-to-power.
In 1925 he was made business manager of the NSDAP in the Ruhr district and at
the end of the year was already the principal collaborator of Gregor Strasser,
leader of the social-revolutionary North German wing of the Party. Goebbels
founded and edited the Nationalsozialistischen Briefe (NS Letters) and other
publications of the Strasser brothers, sharing their proletarian anti-capitalist
outlook and call for a radical revaluation of all values. His National Bolshevik
tendencies found expression in his evaluation of Soviet Russia (which he
regarded as both nationalist and socialist) as "Germany's natural ally against
the devilish temptations and corruption of the West."
It was at this time that Goebbels, who had co-authored the draft programme
submitted by the Nazi Left at the Hanover Conference of 1926, called for the
expulsion of "petty-bourgeois Adolf Hitler from the National Socialist Party."
Goebbels's shrewd political instinct and his opportunism were demonstrated by
his switch to Hitler's side in 1926, which was rewarded by his appointment in
November of the same year as Nazi district leader for Berlin-Brandenburg.
Placed at the head of a small, conflict-ridden organization, Goebbels rapidly
succeeded in taking control and undermining the supremacy of the Strasser
brothers in northern Germany and their monopoly of the Party press, founding in
1927 and editing his own weekly newspaper, Der Angriff (The Attack). He designed
posters, published his own propaganda, staged impressive parades, organized his
bodyguards to participate in street battles, beer-hall brawls and shooting
affrays as a means to further his political agitation.
By 1927 the "Marat of Red Berlin, a nightmare and goblin of history" had already
become the most feared demagogue of the capital city, exploiting to the full his
deep, powerful voice, rhetorical fervour and unscrupulous appeal to primitive
instincts. A tireless, tenacious agitator with the gift of paralysing opponents
by a guileful combination of venom, slander and insinuation, Goebbels knew how
to mobilize the fears of the unemployed masses as the Great Depression hit
Germany, playing on the national psyche with "ice-cold calculation."
With the skill of a master propagandist he transformed the Berlin student and
pimp, Horst Wessel, into a Nazi martyr, and provided the slogans, the myths and
images, the telling aphorisms which rapidly spread the message of National
Socialism.
Hitler was deeply impressed by Goebbels's success in turning the small Berlin
section of the Party into a powerful organization in North Germany and in 1929
appointed him Reich Propaganda Leader of the NSDAP. Looking back many years
later (24 June 1942), Hitler observed: "Dr. Goebbels was gifted with the two
things without which the situation in Berlin could not have been mastered:
verbal facility and intellect.. . . For Dr. Goebbels, who had not found much in
the way of a political organization when he started, had won Berlin in the
truest sense of the word."
Hitler had indeed cause to be grateful to his Propaganda Leader, who was the
true creator and organizer of the Fuhrer myth, of the image of the
Messiah-redeemer, feeding the theatrical element in the Nazi leader while at the
same time inducing the self-surrender of the German masses through skilful stage
management and manipulation. A cynic, devoid of genuine inner convictions,
Goebbels found his mission in selling Hitler to the German public, in projecting
himself as his most faithful shield-bearer and orchestrating a pseudo-religious
cult of the Fuhrer as the saviour of Germany from Jews, profiteers and Marxists.
As a Reichstag deputy from 1928, he no less cynically gave open voice to his
contempt for the Republic, declaring: "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's deeply rooted contempt for humanity, his urge to sow confusion,
hatred and intoxication, his lust for power and his mastery of the techniques of
mass persuasion were given full vent in the election campaigns of 1932, when he
played a crucial role in bringing Hitler to the centre of the political stage.
He was rewarded on 13 March 1933 with the position of Reich Minister for Public
Enlightenment and Propaganda, which gave him total control of the communications
media - i.e. radio, press, publishing, cinema and the other arts.
He achieved the Nazi 'co-ordination' of cultural life very quickly, astutely
combining propaganda, bribery and terrorism, "cleansing" the arts in the name of
the volkisch ideal, subjecting editors and journalists to State control,
eliminating all Jews and political opponents from positions of influence. On May
10, 1933 he staged the great ritual "burning of the books" in Berlin, where the
works of Jewish, Marxist and other "subversive" authors were publicly burned in
huge bonfires.
He became a relentless Jew-baiter, demonizing the stereotyped figure of the
"International Jewish Financier" in London and Washington allied with the
"Jew-Bolsheviks" in Moscow, as the chief enemy of the Third Reich. At the Party
Day of Victory in 1933, Goebbels attacked the "Jewish penetration of the
professions" (law, medicine, property, theatre, etc.), claiming that the foreign
Jewish boycott of Germany had provoked Nazi "counter-measures."
Goebbels's hatred of the Jews, like his hatred of the privileged and clever,
stemmed from a deep-rooted sense of inferiority and internalization of mob
values; at the same time it was also opportunist and tactical, based on the need
to create a common enemy, to feed popular resentment and to mobilize the masses.
For five years Goebbels chafed at the leash as the Nazi regime sought to
consolidate itself and win international recognition. His opportunity came with
the [Kristallnacht] Crystal Night pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, which he
orchestrated after kindling the flame with a rabble-rousing speech to Party
leaders assembled in the Munich Altes Rathaus (Old Town Hall) for the annual
celebration of the Beer-Hall putsch. Later, Goebbels was one of the chief secret
abettors of the "Final Solution," personally supervising the deportation of Jews
from Berlin in 1942 and proposing that Jews along with gypsies should be
regarded as "unconditionally exterminable."
He combined verbal warnings that, as a result of the war, "the Jews will pay
with extermination of their race in Europe and perhaps beyond" with careful
avoidance in his propaganda material of discussing the actual treatment of the
Jews, i.e., any mention of the extermination camps. Goebbels's anti-Semitism was
one factor whichbrought him closer to Hitler, who respected his political
judgement as well as his administrative and propagandist skills. His wife Magda
and their six children were welcome guests at the Fuhrer's Alpine retreat of
Berchtesgaden. In 1938, when Magda tried to divorce him because of his endless
love affairs with beautiful actresses, it was Hitler who intervened to
straighten out the situation.
During World War II relations between Hitler and Goebbels became more intimate,
especially as the war situation deteriorated and the Minister of Propaganda
encouraged the German people to ever greater efforts. After the Allies insisted
on unconditional surrender, Goebbels turned this to advantage, convincing his
audience that there was no choice except victory or destruction. In a famous
speech on February 18, 1943 in the Berlin Sportpalast, Goebbels created an
atmosphere of wild emotion, winning the agreement of his listeners to
mobilization for total war. Playing adroitly on German fears of the "Asiatic
hordes," using his all-pervasive control of press, film and radio to maintain
morale, inventing mythical "secret weapons" and impregnable fortresses in the
mountains where the last stand would be made, Goebbels never lost his nerve or
his fighting spirit.
It was his quick thinking and decisive action on the afternoon of July 20, 1944,
when he isolated the conspirators in the War Ministry with the help of
detachments of loyal troops, which saved the Nazi regime. Shortly afterwards he
achieved his ambition to be warlord on the domestic front, following his
appointment in July 1944 as General Plenipotentiary for Total War.
Given the widest powers to move and direct the civilian population and even to
redistribute manpower within the armed forces, Goebbels imposed an austerity
programme and pressed for ever greater civilian sacrifice. But with Germany
already close to collapse, it was too late to accomplish anything beyond further
dislocations and confusion. As the war neared its end, Goebbels, the supreme
opportunist, emerged as the Fuhrer's most loyal follower, spending his last days
together with his family, in the Fuhrerbunker under the Chancellery. Convinced
that the Nazis had finally burnt all their bridges and increasingly fascinated
by the prospect of a final apocalypse, Goebbels's last words on dismissing his
associates were: "When we depart, let the earth tremble!"
Following the Fuhrer's suicide, Goebbels disregarded Hitler's political
testament, which had appointed him as Reich Chancellor, and decided to follow
suit. He had his six children poisoned with a lethal injection by an SS doctor
and then himself and his wife Magda shot by an SS orderly on May 1, 1945. With
characteristic pathos and egomania he declared not long before his death: "We
shall go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time, or as the
greatest criminals."
Contact/Submit
theNSAisWATCHIN
News Monster
Images Archive
News Monster Archive
The Killing The Messenger Web
Portal