GOEBBELS, (PAUL) JOSEPH

born Oct. 29, 1897, Rheydt, Ger. died May 1, 1945, Berlin Goebbels, c. 1935 minister of propaganda for the German Third Reich under Adolf Hitler, generally accounted responsible for presenting a favourable image of the Nazi regime to the German people. Goebbels was the third of five children of a Catholic factory clerk. His parents provided him with a high school education and also helped support him during the five years of his undergraduate studies. In World War I he was exempted from military service because of his clubfoot, which later enabled his enemies to draw a parallel with the cloven hoof and limp of the Devil. This defect, presumably not congenital but rather the result of a childhood disease, played a disastrous role in his life by engendering strong desires for compensation. After graduating from Heidelberg University in 1922, with a doctorate in German philology, Goebbels engaged inlargely unremunerativeliterary, dramatic, and journalistic efforts. Although not yet involved in politics, Goebbels, in common with most of his contemporaries, was imbued with a nationalistic fervour made more intense by the frustrating outcome of the war. During his university days, a friend also introduced him to socialistic and communistic ideas. Antibourgeois from his youth, Goebbels remained so in spite of all his later upper-class affectations. On the other hand, he was initially not anti-Semitic. The high school teachers he valued most were Jews, and he was, during that time, engaged to a half-Jewish girl. At that point his options, if he chose to enter politics, were still wide open. An accident determined the party he was to join. In the autumn of 1924 he made friends with a group of National Socialists. A gifted speaker, he was soon made the district administrator of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP; National Socialist German Workers' Party) in Elberfeld and editor of a biweekly National Socialist magazine. In November 1926 Hitler appointed him district leader in Berlin. The NSDAP, or Nazi Party, had been founded and developed in Bavaria, and, up to that time, there had been practically no party organization in Berlin, the country's capital. Goebbels owed his new appointment to the prudent choice he made in a conflict between Gregor Strasser, representing the left-wing, anti-capitalist faction of the NSDAP, and the right-wing party leader, Hitler. In this conflict, Goebbels, against his own inner convictions, took Hitler's side. Personally courageous and never shirking danger, Goebbels proceeded to build Nazi strength in Berlin until Hitler's accession to power in January 1933. In 1928 Hitler gave the successful orator, well-versed propagandist, and brilliant journalist (he was editor of Der Angriff [The Assault] and later, from 1940 to 1945, Das Reich) the additional post of propaganda director for the NSDAP for all of Germany. Goebbels began to create the Fhrer myth around the person of Hitler and to institute the ritual of party celebrations and demonstrations that played a decisive role in converting the masses to Nazism. In addition, he spread propaganda by continuing his rigorous schedule of speechmaking. After the seizure of power, Goebbels was also able to take control of the national propaganda machinery. A National Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was created for him, and in addition he became president of the newly formed Chamber of Culture for the Reich. In this capacity he controlled, besides propaganda as such, the press, radio, theatre, films, literature, music, and the fine arts as well. To be sure, his control of foreign propaganda, the press, theatre, and literature was limitedexercised only in bitter jurisdictional struggles with other officialsand he displayed little interest in regulating music and art. He did not, however, succeed in extending his power into other areas, such as the high schools. His cultural policies were fairly liberal, but he had to capitulate to the demands of nationalist extremists. Even his propaganda messages were limited by the rationale that ceaseless agitation only dulls the receptive powers of the listener. As far as Goebbels was concerned, efficiency took precedence over dogmatism, expediency over principles. Goebbels' influence decreased in the years 1937 and 1938. During this time he also became involved in a love affair with a Czechoslovakian film star that nearly caused him to give up his career and family. (Since 1931 he had been married to a woman from the upper middle class who eventually bore him six children.) His position underwent little change with the outbreak of World War II (which he did not welcome): in times of victory, the propagandist's services are not much in demand. Goebbels' hour came with the turn in fortunes of the war after the defeats in Stalingrad and Africa, when he was to prove himself a master of the clever propaganda of holding out in the face of defeat. It would be erroneous to believe that Goebbels falsified the facts of the prevailing situation. On the contrary, the main thrust of his propagandawhich he carried on personally and without respite in the press and over the radiowas to continually raise hopes by citing historical parallels and making other comparisons, by conjuring up allegedly immutable laws of history, or even, as a last resort, by referring to some secret miracle weapons. Here, too, he demonstrated personal courage by appearing constantly before the public long after the other prominent Nazis had retreated to their bunkers and fortifications. His public appearances in these years did much to improve an image that had until then been overwhelmingly negative. Goebbels' work was especially effective in intensifying the efforts of the home front: he became the protagonist of total war. After several false starts, the attempted assassination of Hitler on July 20, 1944, brought him within view of his goal. On August 25 he became Reich Plenipotentiary for Total Warbut it was, as he shortly lamented, too late. On May 1, 1945, the only one of the original Nazi leaders to remain with Hitler in the besieged bunker in Berlin, Goebbels and his wife took their lives and those of their six children. This was the last and, if not the bloodiest, at least the most macabre production of this talented stage manager. The day before, he had been named chancellor of the Reich in Hitler's will. For one day, on a few square metres, he thus became the last successor to Otto von Bismarck. Helmut Heiber