Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels ran Nazi propaganda for twelve years and killed his six children in a bunker. Born in 1897 in the Rhineland to a devout Catholic working-class family, he had a deformed right foot from childhood osteomyelitis that left him limping and exempt from military service, which he minded permanently. He took a doctorate in literature at Heidelberg in 1921 and failed to publish a novel or get his plays staged. He joined the party in 1924 and initially belonged to its socialist wing, calling for Hitler's expulsion, and switched entirely after Hitler flattered him and made him Gauleiter of Berlin in 1926. Berlin was a communist city and he set out to take it by provocation — marching through hostile districts, courting street violence, and turning a killed stormtrooper named Horst Wessel into a martyr with a song. He became Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in March 1933 and took control of the press, radio, film, theatre, music and publishing within months, organising the book burnings that May. His method was not chiefly the big lie but saturation and entertainment: cheap radio sets in every home, feature films that were mostly comedies and romances with the politics carried by newsreels, and repetition. He was among the most radical antisemites in the leadership and pushed the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938. He became the regime's most effective voice after Stalingrad, calling for total war. He and his wife poisoned their children on 1 May 1945 and killed themselves. His diaries run to some 30,000 pages and are among the most complete records any senior Nazi left.
- Lived: 1897 CE – 1945 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: minister, propagandist
