Abstract
Do we need a new biography of the most notorious demagogue of the twentieth century? Joseph Goebbels was a man who lived most of his adult life in the full glare of publicity, much of it self-created. When, in 1926, he arrived to take charge of the Nazi Party in Berlin, he quickly became a controversial public figure, delighting in the title of ‘super bandit’ which was bestowed on him by his opponents. From 1932 until shortly before his death in 1945 Goebbels was seen regularly by German cinema audiences in newsreel film, and his speeches were heard by millions of radio listeners. After the Nazi accession to power in 1933 Goebbels and his growing family were frequently photographed for the German press. Internationally Goebbels was indissolubly linked with the mass hysteria of Nazi rallies, and with the persecution of the Jews. Well before the collapse of the ‘Third Reich’ in 1945, Goebbels’ name and public image had become synonymous with the most paradoxical aspects of Nazism, its doctrine of racial superiority, its unconcealed aggression towards the outside world, and its huge popularity inside Germany. The uniquely shocking circumstances of Goebbels’ death, and the decision he took with his wife Magda to kill themselves and all six of their children in Hitler’s bunker as the Soviet forces closed in around them, have served only to heighten the repugnance he evokes.
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Notes
See Wilfried Bade, Joseph Goebbels (Lübeck: Charles Coleman, 1933);
Max Jungnickel, Goebbels (Leipzig: Kittler, 1933);
Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels: The Man Next to Hitler (London: Westhouse, 1947);
Boris Borresholm and Karena Nichoff (eds), Dr. Goebbels. Nach Aufzeichnungen aus seiner Umgebung (Berlin: Journal, 1949);
Stephan Werner, Joseph Goebbels. Dämon einer Diktatur (Stuttgart: Union deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1949);
Prinz Friedrich Christian zu Schaumburg-Lippe, Dr. G. Ein Porträt des Propagandaministers (Wiesbaden: Limes Verlag, 1963);
and Wilfred von Oven, Finale Furioso. Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende ([1949/50] Tübingen: Grabert Verlag, 1974).
Curt Riess, Joseph Goebbels (London: Hollis and Carter, 1949);
Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death (London: Heinemann, 1960).
Helmut Heiber, Joseph Goebbels (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1962);
see also Helmut Heiber (ed.), Goebbels-Reden, Band 1: 1932–1939 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1971); and Goebbels-Reden, Band 2: 1939–1945 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1972).
Viktor Reimann, The Man who Created Hitler: Joseph Goebbels (trans. Wendt, London: William Kimber, 1977).
See, for examples in otherwise thoroughly referenced scholarly studies, p. 147 in Henning Eichberg, ‘The Nazi Thingspiel: Theater for the Masses in Fascism and Proletarian Culture’, New German Critique, 11 (Spring 1977), pp. 133–50; or p. 184
in Reinhard Bollmus, ‘Alfred Rosenberg: National Socialism’s “Chief Ideologue”?’, in Ronald Smelser and Rainer Zitelmann (eds), The Nazi Elite (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 183–93; or, more recently, the unreferenced quotation on p. 544
of Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London: Penguin, 2007). These may all of course be individual oversights, but there is a pattern which is alarmingly magnified in more popular histories.
Louis Lochner (ed.), The Goebbels Diaries (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1948);
Helmut Heiber (ed.), The Early Goebbels Diaries: The Journal of Joseph Goebbels from 1925–1926 (trans. Watson, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962);
H. R. Trevor-Roper (ed.), The Goebbels Diaries: The Last Days (trans. Barry, London: Book Club Associates, 1978).
Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Sämtliche Fragmente (Munich: Saur, 1987);
Ralf Georg Reuth (ed.), Joseph Goebbels. Tagebücher 1924–1945 (Munich: Piper, 1992).
Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Teil I, Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941 (Munich: Saur, 1998–2006), 14 volumes;
Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Teil II, Diktate 1941–1945 (Munich: Saur, 1993–98), 15 volumes (hereafter TBJG, TI, or TBJG, TII).
Ralf Georg Reuth, Goebbels (trans. Winston, London: Harcourt Brace, 1993).
The brief sketch by Elke Fröhlich, ‘Joseph Goebbels: The Propagandist’, in Ronald Smelser and Rainer Zitelmann (eds), The Nazi Elite (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 48–61, which was originally published in German in 1987, is littered with inaccuracies.
See also Joachim Fest, ‘Joseph Goebbels: Eine Porträtskizze’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 43:4 (1995), pp. 565–80;
Thomas Altstedt, Joseph Goebbels. Eine Biographie in Bildern (Berg: Druffel, 1999);
Christian Barth, Goebbels und die Juden (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003);
Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch, Der junge Goebbels. Erlösung und Vernichtung (Munich: Fink, 2004).
On Goebbels’ journalism see Carin Kessemier, Der Leitartikler Goebbels in den NS-Organen ‘Der Angriff’ und ‘Das Reich’ (Munich: Fahle, 1967);
and Russell Lemmons, Goebbels and Der Angriff (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994).
For his earliest political publications, see Joseph Goebbels, Das kleine abc des Nationalsozialisten (Elberfeld: Verlag der Nationalsozialistischen Briefe, no date given [1925]);
Joseph Goebbels, Die zweite Revolution. Briefe an Zeitgenossen (Zwickau: Streiter-Verlag, 1926);
and Joseph Goebbels, Wege ins Dritte Reich (Munich: Eher Verlag, 1927).
For early collections of his speeches, see Joseph Goebbels, Revolution der Deutschen. 14 Jahre Nationalsozialismus (Oldenburg: Stalling, 1933);
Joseph Goebbels, ‘Goebbels spricht’. Reden aus Kampf und Sieg (Oldenburg: Stalling, 1933);
Joseph Goebbels, Signale der neuen Zeit; 25 ausgewählte Reden (Munich: Franz Eher, 1934); and from the wartime years,
Joseph Goebbels, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel. Reden und Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1939/40/41 (Munich: Franz Eher, 1941);
Joseph Goebbels, Das eherne Herz. Reden und Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1941/42 (Munich: Franz Eher, 1943);
Joseph Goebbels, Dreißig Kriegsartikel für das deutsche Volk (Munich: Franz Eher, 1943);
and Joseph Goebbels, Der steile Aufstieg. Reden und Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1942/43 (Munich: Franz Eher, 1943).
For collections of his early journalism see Joseph Goebbels, Der Angriff (Munich: Franz Eher, 1936);
and Joseph Goebbels, Wetterleuchten: Zweiter Band ‘Der Angriff’ (Munich: Franz Eher, 1939). See the bibliography for a fuller list of Goebbels’ publications.
On Goebbels’ earliest writings see Kai Michel, Vom Poeten zum Demagogen: Die schriftstellerischen Versuche Joseph Goebbels’ (Vienna: Böhlau, 1999);
Lovis Maxim Wambach, ‘Es ist gleichgültig, woran wir glauben, nur dass wir glauben.’ Bemerkungen zu Joseph Goebbels Drama ‘Judas Iscariot’ und zu seinen ‘Michael-Romanen’ (Bremen: Raphael-Lemkin-Institut für Xenophobie- und Genozidforschung, 1996);
and David Barnett, ‘Joseph Goebbels: Expressionist Dramatist as Nazi Minister of Culture’, New Theatre Quarterly, 17:2 (May 2001), pp. 161–9.
Joseph Goebbels, Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei. Eine historische Darstellung in Tagebuchblättern (Munich: Franz Eher, 1934);
and Joseph Goebbels, Kampf um Berlin. Der Anfang (Munich: Franz Eher, 1932).
See my comments on this in Chapter 11; also Glenn Cuomo, ‘The Diaries of Joseph Goebbels as a Source for the Understanding of National Socialist Cultural Politics’, in Glenn Cuomo (ed.), National Socialist Cultural Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), pp. 197–245, p. 203.
Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (London: Allen Lane, 1998), xiii.
See Hendrik Eberle and Matthias Uhl (eds), The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin (London: John Murray, 2006), pp. 191 and 208.
There are large historiographies of propaganda in the ‘Third Reich’, and separately of different branches of the arts and media. See, with particular reference to Goebbels, Ernest Bramsted, Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda 1924–1945 (London: Cresset Press, 1965);
and Felix Möller, The Film Minister: Goebbels and the Cinema in the Third Reich (Stuttgart: Axel Menges, 2000).
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© 2009 Toby Thacker
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Thacker, T. (2009). Introduction. In: Joseph Goebbels. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274228_1
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