Joseph Goebbels
From Metapedia
Paul Joseph Goebbels (October 29, 1897 – May 1, 1945) was a German politician and Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda during the National Socialist regime from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers.
Goebbels earned a Ph.D. from Heidelberg University in 1921, on the basis of a doctoral thesis on 18th century romantic drama; he then went on to work as a journalist and later a bank clerk and caller on the stock exchange. He also wrote several novels and plays. Goebbels came into contact with the NSDAP in 1923 during the French occupation of the Ruhr and became a member in 1924. He was appointed Gauleiter (regional party leader) of Berlin. In this position, he put his propaganda skills to full use, combating the local socialist and communist parties with the help of papers and the paramilitary SA. By 1928 he had risen in the party ranks to become one of its most prominent members.
After the Party seized power in 1933, he was appointed propaganda minister. An early and avid supporter of war, Goebbels did everything in his power to prepare the German people for a large scale military conflict. During the Second World War, he increased his power and influence through shifting alliances with other German leaders.
Goebbels remained with Hitler in Berlin to the very end, and following the Führer's suicide he was the second person to serve as the Third Reich's Chancellor—albeit for one day. In his final hours Goebbels allowed his wife, Magda, to kill their six young children. Shortly after, Goebbels and his wife both committed suicide.
Early Life
Goebbels was born in Rheydt, an industrial town south of Mönchengladbach (of which it is now part) on the edge of the Ruhr district. His family were Catholics of modest means, his father a factory clerk, his mother originally a farmhand. He had four siblings: Konrad (1895–1949), Hans (1893–1947), Elisabeth (1901–1915) and Maria (born 1910, later Maria Kimmich). Goebbels was educated at a local grammar school, where he completed his Abitur (school leaving examination) in 1916. Beginning in childhood, he had a deformed right leg, the result either of club foot or osteomyelitis. He wore a metal brace and special shoe to compensate for his shortened leg, but nevertheless walked with a limp all his life. The limp, along with his height (1.65 m; 5 ft 5 in), exposed him to ridicule and humiliation in a society that worshipped physical prowess. As a result of these conditions, he was rejected for military service in World War I, which he bitterly resented. He later frequently misrepresented himself as a war veteran and misrepresented his disability as a war wound. The nearest he came to military service was as an "office soldier" from June 1917 to October 1917 in Rheydt's "Patriotic Help Unit".
Goebbels compensated for his physical frailty with intellectual accomplishments. He originally intended to train as 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 18th century romantic novelist Wilhelm von Schütz. His two most influential teachers, Friedrich Gundolf and his doctoral supervisor at Heidelberg Max Freiherr von Waldberg, were Jews. His intelligence and political astuteness were generally acknowledged even by his enemies.
After completing his doctorate in 1921, Goebbels worked as a journalist and tried for several years to become a published author. He wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, Michael, two verse plays, and quantities of romantic poetry. In these works, he revealed the psychological damage his physical limitations had caused. "The very name of the hero, Michael, to whom he gave many autobiographical features, suggests the way his self-identification was pointing: a figure of light, radiant, tall, unconquerable," and above all 'To be a soldier! To stand sentinel! One ought always to be a soldier,' wrote Michael-Goebbels." Goebbels found another form of compensation in the pursuit of women, a lifelong compulsion which he indulged "with extraordinary vigour and a surprising degree of success." His diaries reveal a long succession of affairs, before and after his marriage in 1931 to Magda Quandt, with whom he had six children.
Goebbels was embittered by the frustration of his literary career: his novel did not find a publisher until 1929 and his plays were never staged. He found an outlet for his desire to write in his diaries, which he began in 1923 and continued for the rest of his life. He later worked as a bank clerk and a caller on the stock exchange. During this period, he read avidly and formed his political views. Major influences were 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. Goebbels spent the winter of 1919–20 in Munich, where he witnessed and admired the violent nationalist reaction against the attempted communist revolution in Bavaria. His first political hero was Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley, the man who assassinated the Munich socialist leader Kurt Eisner. (Hitler was in Munich at the same time and entered politics as a result of similar experiences.)
NSDAP Activist
Like others who were later prominent in the Third Reich, Goebbels came into contact with the Party in 1923, during the campaign of resistance to the French occupation of the Ruhr. But Hitler’s imprisonment following the failed November 1923 "Beer Hall Putsch" left the party temporarily leaderless, and when the 27-year-old Goebbels joined the party in late 1924 the most important influence on his political development was Gregor Strasser, who became organiser in northern Germany in March 1924. Strasser, took the "socialist" component of National Socialism far more seriously than did Hitler and other members of the Bavarian leadership of the party.
"National and socialist! What goes first, and what comes afterwards?" Goebbels asked rhetorically in a debate with Theodore Vahlen, Gauleiter (regional party head) of Pomerania, in the Rhineland party newspaper National-sozialistische Briefe (National-Socialist Letters), of which he was editor, in mid 1925. "With us in the west, there can be no doubt. First socialist redemption, then comes national liberation like a whirlwind… Hitler stands between both opinions, but he is on his way to coming over to us completely." Goebbels, with his journalistic skills, thus soon became a key ally of Strasser in his struggle with the Bavarians over the party programme. The conflict was not, so they thought, with Hitler, but with his lieutenants, Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher and Hermann Esser, who, they said, were mismanaging the party in Hitler’s absence. In 1925, Goebbels published an open letter to "my friends of the left," urging unity between socialists and Nazis against the capitalists. "You and I," he wrote, "we are fighting one another although we are not really enemies."
In February 1926, Hitler, having finished working on Mein Kampf, made a sudden return to party affairs and soon disabused the northerners of any illusions about where he stood. He summoned about 60 gauleiter and other activists, including Goebbels, to a meeting at Bamberg, in Streicher’s gau of Franconia, where he gave a two-hour speech repudiating the political programme of the "socialist" wing of the party. For Hitler, the real enemy of the German people was always the Jews, not the capitalists. Goebbels was bitterly disillusioned. "I feel devastated," he wrote. "What sort of Hitler? A reactionary?" He was horrified by Hitler’s characterisation of socialism as "a Jewish creation," his declaration that the Soviet Union must be destroyed, and his assertion that private property would not be expropriated by a German government. "I no longer fully believe in Hitler. That’s the terrible thing: my inner support has been taken away."
Hitler, however, recognised Goebbels’s talents, and he was a shrewd judge of character—he knew that Goebbels craved recognition above all else. In April, he brought Goebbels to Munich, sending his own car to meet him at the railway station, and gave him a long private audience. Hitler berated Goebbels over his support for the "socialist" line, but offered to "wipe the slate clean" if Goebbels would now accept his leadership. Goebbels capitulated completely, offering Hitler his total loyalty—a pledge which was clearly sincere, and which he adhered to until the end of his life. "I love him… He has thought through everything," Goebbels wrote. "Such a sparkling mind can be my leader. I bow to the greater one, the political genius. Later he wrote: "Adolf Hitler, I love you because you are both great and simple at the same time. What one calls a genius."
Suicide
On 30 April, with the Russians advancing to within a few hundred metres of the bunker, Hitler dictated his last will and testament. Goebbels was one of four witnesses to Hitler's last will and testament. Not long after completing it, Hitler shot himself. Of Hitler's death, Goebbels commented: "The heart of Germany has ceased to beat. The Führer is dead."
In his last will and testament, Hitler named no successor as Führer or leader of the Party. Instead, Hitler appointed Goebbels Reich Chancellor, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who was at Flensburg near the Danish border, Reich President and Martin Bormann, Hitler's long-time chief of staff, Party Minister. Goebbels knew that this was an empty title. Even if he was willing and able to escape Berlin and reach the north, it was unlikely that Dönitz, whose only concern was to negotiate a settlement with the western Allies that would save Germany from Soviet occupation, would want such a notorious figure as Goebbels heading his government.
As it was, Goebbels had no intention of trying to escape. Voss later recounted: "When Goebbels learned that Hitler had committed suicide, he was very depressed and said: 'It is a great pity that such a man is not with us any longer. But there is nothing to be done. For us, everything is lost now and the only way left for us is the one which Hitler chose. I shall follow his example'."
On 1 May, within hours of Hitler's suicide on April 30, Goebbels completed his sole official act as Chancellor of Germany (Reichskanzler). He dictated a letter and ordered German General Hans Krebs, under a white flag, to meet with General Vasily Chuikov and to deliver his letter. Chuikov, as commander of the Soviet 8th Guards Army, commanded the Soviet forces in central Berlin. Goebbels' letter informed Chuikov of Hitler's death and requested a ceasefire, hinting that the establishment of a National Socialist government hostile to Western plutocracy would be beneficial to the Soviet Union, as the betrayal of Himmler and Göring indicated that otherwise anti-Soviet National Socialist elements might align themselves with the West. When this was rejected, Goebbels decided that further efforts were futile. Shortly afterwards he dictated a postscript to Hitler's testament:
"The Führer has given orders for me, in case of a breakdown of defense of the Capital of the Reich, to leave Berlin and to participate as a leading member in a government appointed by him. For the first time in my life, I must categorically refuse to obey a command of the Führer. My wife and my children agree with this refusal. In any other case, I would feel myself... a dishonorable renegade and vile scoundrel for my entire further life, who would lose the esteem of himself along with the esteem of his people, both of which would have to form the requirement for further duty of my person in designing the future of the German Nation and the German Reich"
Later on 1 May, Vice-Admiral Hans-Erich Voss saw Goebbels for the last time: "Before the breakout [from the bunker] began, about ten generals and officers, including myself, went down individually to Goebbels's shelter to say goodbye. While saying goodbye I asked Goebbels to join us. But he replied: 'The captain must not leave his sinking ship. I have thought about it all and decided to stay here. I have nowhere to go because with little children I will not be able to make it'."
At 8 p.m. on the evening of 1 May, Goebbels arranged for an SS doctor, Helmut Kunz, to kill his six children by injecting them with morphine and then, when they were unconscious, crushing an ampoule of cyanide in each of their mouths. According to Kunz's testimony, he gave the children morphine injections but it was Magda Goebbels and Stumpfegger, Hitler's personal doctor, who then administered the cyanide. Shortly afterwards, Goebbels and his wife went up to the garden of the Chancellery, where they killed themselves. After the war, Rear-Admiral Michael Musmanno, a U.S. naval officer and judge, published an account apparently based on eye-witness testimony: "At about 8.15 p.m., Goebbels arose from the table, put on his hat, coat and gloves and, taking his wife's arm, went upstairs to the garden." They were followed by Goebbels's adjutant, SS-Hauptsturmführer Günther Schwägermann. "While Schwägermann was preparing the petrol, he heard a shot. Goebbels had shot himself and his wife took poison. Schwägermann ordered one of the soldiers to shoot Goebbels again because he was unable to do it himself."
The bodies of Goebbels and his wife were then burned in a shell crater, but owing to the lack of petrol the burning was only partly effective, and their bodies were easily identifiable. A few days later, Voss was brought back to the bunker by the Soviets to identify the partly burned bodies of Joseph and Magda Goebbels and the bodies of their children. "Vice-Admiral Voss, being asked how he identified the people as Goebbels, his wife and children, explained that he recognised the burnt body of the man as former Reichsminister Goebbels by the following signs: the shape of the head, the line of the mouth, the metal brace that Goebbels had on his right leg, his gold NSDAP badge and the burnt remains of his party uniform." The remains of the Goebbels family were secretly buried, along with those of Hitler, near Rathenow in Brandenburg. In 1970, they were disinterred and cremated, and the ashes thrown in the Elbe.
