Profile of Josef Goebbels on Famous Like Me

Paul Joseph Goebbels

Order:	25th Chancellor of Germany
Term of Office:	April 30 - May 1, 1945
Predecessor:	Adolf Hitler
Successor:	Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk
Date of Birth:	October 29, 1897
Date of Death:	May 1, 1945
Political Party:	NSDAP
Profession:	journalist

Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels (October 29, 1897 – May 1, 1945) was Adolf Hitler's Propaganda Minister (see Propagandaministerium) in Nazi Germany. Following Hitler's death he served as Chancellor for one day, approved the murder of his six children and committed suicide.

Goebbels was known for his zealous and energetic oratory, virulent anti-Semitism and perfection of the so-called Big Lie technique of mass propaganda.

Early life

Goebbels was born to accountant Friedrich Goebbels and his wife Marian (née Oldenhausen) in Rheydt (now Mönchengladbach), a Catholic area in the Rhineland. A botched operation during his childhood resulted in a club foot which caused him to be rejected when he volunteered for military service at the beginning of World War I (he wore a metal brace on his leg for most of his life). After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1921 he worked as a journalist and tried for several years to become a published author (his work included a novel called Michael). Joining the Nazi Party in 1924 (although he later claimed to have joined in 1922), Goebbels initially opposed Hitler's leadership but later supported him. His diary shows many instances of great admiration for Hitler.

In December 1931, after a stormy courtship, he married divorcee Magda Quandt whose son Harald (from her previous marriage to an industrialist) accompanied them beneath the raised arms of an SS honour guard (Harald, who served as a non-com in the Luftwaffe, was the only one of Magda's seven children to survive World War II). By most accounts Magda had been strongly attracted to Hitler, who was the principal witness at the ceremony.

Propaganda minister

Goebbels played a large role in helping the Nazis achieve and retain power by creating propaganda to present the Nazi ideology to the German people in a favourable light. He was a committed anti-Semite, being involved with Kristallnacht in 1938 and later connected with the Nazi Endlösung (Final Solution) to the Judenfrage ("Jewish Question"), especially the deportation of Jews from Berlin.

The Goebbels technique, also known as argumentum ad nauseam, is the name given to a policy of repeating a lie until it is taken to be the truth (see Big Lie). For example, when Goebbels took ownership of the Der Angriff (The Assault) newspaper, he attacked Berlin Police President Bernhard Weiss, calling him "Isidor" Weiss. To German ears, Isidor is a name with strong Jewish connotations. Eventually the public believed Isidor was Weiss' real given name and he became a figure of ridicule. Goebbels also pioneered the use of broadcasting in mass propaganda, promoting the distribution of inexpensive radio receivers to the German public which ensured that millions of people heard the output of the Reich's propaganda ministry while being unable to receive news and other broadcasts from outside Germany. Meanwhile his ministry busily broadcast Nazi propaganda around the world by shortwave radio. Newsreels, movies and books were impossible to publish without prior approval and censorship by Goebbels' ministry. He is credited by most historians with developing many techniques of modern propaganda.

Although Goebbels was disappointed when Germany went to war with Britain in 1939, he remained steadfastly loyal to Hitler throughout the war and derived immense power and prestige from his position. Goebbels' ministry of propaganda controlled essentially every aspect of culture in Germany. He is often remembered for his Sportpalast speech, given on February 18, 1943 (sometimes called the Total War speech) in which he tried to motivate the German people to continue their struggle after the tides of World War II had turned against Germany. By this time many influential Germans privately believed Germany was on its way to irrevocable defeat.

There was strong animosity between Goebbels and the popular Hermann Göring, whose political influence waned following his disastrous management of the Luftwaffe early during the war and Goebbels became the third most powerful leader in Germany (after Martin Bormann, who most Germans were not aware of). As Germany's military situation collapsed, the increasing shrillness of the government's propaganda brought discreet ridicule from the German people who nicknamed Goebbels The Malicious Dwarf and The Wotan Mickey Mouse.

Ruin, murder and suicide

Chancellor for a day

During the final stages of the war in the spring of 1945 Hitler split the offices of Reichskanzler (Chancellor of the Reich) and Reichspräsident (President of the Reich), both of which he had held as Führer since the death of Hindenburg in August 1934. He appointed Goebbels Chancellor of Germany in his will, with Grand-Admiral Karl Dönitz, the commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine, as President without the Führer title (the post-Hitler Flensburg government had hopes of being recognized by the Allied powers but was ultimately arrested towards the end of May 1945 when the Allies decided to formally replace it with their own military administration).

Shortly after Hitler committed suicide at about 3.30 in the afternoon (Berlin time) on April 30, 1945 an emotional and agitated Goebbels sought out Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge and dicatated these lines as an addition to Hitler's political testament:

Der Führer hat mir den Befehl gegeben, im Falle des Zusammenbruchs der Verteidigung der Reichshauptstadt Berlin zu verlassen und als führendes Mitglied an einer von ihm ernannten Regierung teilzunehmen. Zum erstenmal in meinem Leben muß ich mich kategorisch weigern, einem Befehl des Führers Folge zu leisten. Meine Frau und meine Kinder schließen sich dieser Weigerung an. Im anderen Falle würde ich mir selbst (...) für mein ganzes ferneres Leben als ein ehrloser Abtrünnling und gemeiner Schuft vorkommen, der mit der Achtung vor sich selbst auch die Achtung seines Volkes verlöre, die die Voraussetzung eines weiteren Dienstes meiner Person an der Zukunftsgestaltung der Deutschen Nation und des Deutschen Reiches bilden müßte.

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.

Murder

After several hours of anxiously waiting for news that German troops might be able to rescue the bunker's occupants, Goebbels and his wife resolved to carry out a previously arranged plan of murder and mutual suicide. Magda Goebbels had all six of their children put to sleep with morphine, then poisoned them with cyanide (to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Red Army), an act condemned by virtually every witness in the bunker who was subsequently asked about it by investigators and historians. Joseph Goebbels did not take a direct part in the murders but acquiesced throughout, even refusing the offers of others to take the children out of Berlin before it was too late. Contrary to what he hastily added to Hitler's last political will, by all accounts the children were in good spirits and entirely unaware of their parents' plans to kill them. They were:

• Helga Susanne (born, September 1, 1932 † aged 12)
• Hildegard (Hilde) Traudel (born April 13, 1934 † aged 11)
• Helmut Christian (born October 2, 1935 † aged 9)
• Hedwig (Hedda) Johanna (born February 19, 1937 † aged 8)
• Holdine (Holde) Kathrin (born May 1, 1938 † the day before what would have been her 7th birthday)
• Heidrun (Heide) Elisabeth (born October 20, 1940 † aged 4)

A popular story that each had been given a name starting with an H for Hitler is generally discounted by serious historians. Magda and her ex-husband Dr. Quandt also gave their son a name beginning with H and Quandt's son by a previous marriage was named Helmut.

Suicide

While early reports suggested Joseph and Magda Goebbels were shot by SS bodyguards in the ruins of the Chancellory garden at their own request on May 1, 1945, they likely took cyanide first. Another account claims Goebbels shot Magda then himself afterwards (as shown in the 2004 film, Der Untergang, where Goebbels was portrayed by actor Ulrich Matthes). Their bodies were partially burned, left unburied and quickly found by Soviet troops. The children's pajama-clad bodies were found still in the three sets of two-tiered bunk beds they were murdered in. A photograph of Goebbels' incinerated face was widely published. The bodies of the Goebbels family, along with those of Hitler and Eva Braun were secretly buried and reburied together by the Soviets. In April 1970 all the remains were reburned and scattered in the Elbe river.

Goebbels in popular culture

The Man in the High Castle, an alternative history novel by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick set in the 1960s, describes Goebbels as challenging to become Reichschancellor after Hitler and his immediate successor, Martin Bormann, are dead.

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