Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death (Summary)

About Roger Manvell

Roger Manvell was born on October 10, 1909, and he lived until November 30, 1987. He was known for the propaganda films he created for Great Britain during the Second World War. For his biography about Hitler’s inner circle, he worked with Heinrich Fraenkel, who was a German Jew who had lived in Germany for a period of time under the Third Reich. Before Manvell’s death, he was named professor at Boston University.

Part 1: Goebbels’ Early Years, Education, and Joining the Nazi Party

Joseph Goebbels was born in Rheydt in 1897 into a humble home with five siblings. He was rejected outright by the German Army at the outbreak of the First World War, largely because of his imbalanced leg. He compensated for that by enrolling in a university, which neither he nor his parents had the financial capability to pay for. He was only able to finish his PhD through scholarships from a Catholic organization in his hometown, and he would later despise Christianity as a whole.

After the war ended, Goebbels began to see himself as a prolific writer, which gave him the confidence to write a book titled Michael, published in 1929.

He joined the Nazi Party through a close friend in 1925, although he had heard Hitler speak in the past. It was around this time that he began working for Gregor Strasser as an editor, who paid him a salary of 200 marks per month, double what he had been earning in his odd previous job.

Part 2: Goebbels’ Relationship with Gregor Strasser

By the time Goebbels joined the Nazi Party in 1925, Adolf Hitler had restructured the party properly after it had been fractured during his time in prison for the failed Beer Hall Putsch. Meanwhile, Goebbels frequently complained in his surviving diary that the party’s responsibilities, as soon as he joined, were demanding on him to the extent that he let go of his fiancée of five years, Else.

At the same time, he continued to practice his public speaking, enjoying it and improving his ability to engage the audience.

In Goebbels’s early years in the party, Goebbels sided with Gregor Strasser’s left-wing party policy; he was only converted to Hitler’s right-wing largely because the latter gave him luxurious treatment, which he thought he deserved. After some lengthy negotiations with the Berlin Gauleiter and Goebbels himself, Hitler appointed Goebbels the Nazi Party Gauleiter of Berlin on October 26, 1926. It would be one of Hitler’s best decisions ever.

Part 3: Gauleiter of Berlin and Attack on the Communist

Goebbels’s first assignment in Berlin as the new Gauleiter was to instill discipline in the current party members in Berlin and relocate the headquarters from its current, dilapidated building to a more suitable office. Then he adopted tactics of provocation and rabble-rousing against opposition, notably the communists in the city, to get the people talking about the Nazi party at all times.

With Goebbels’s rough tactics and the ensuing civil unrest, he got the party banned and himself banned from public speaking, which was the primary means by which he reached his party members. However, to compensate for that, he founded Der Angriff, an agitation newspaper that would serve as a mouthpiece for him, both now and whenever he was banned from public speaking. By October 1927, before his 30th birthday, the ban on him and the party had been lifted.

In 1928, Goebbels added to his rank within and outside the party by getting elected to the German Reichstag, along with Hermann Goring, and was chosen by Hitler as the Nazi Party head of propaganda.

Not long after, in 1930, the Great Crash occurred, and Germany held a new Reichstag election, where Goebbels was reelected. A further 106 members of the Nazi Party were elected, making them the second-largest party in Germany. Goebbels married Magda on December 19, 1931.

Part 4: Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany

Long before Hitler’s ascension to power, Goebbels already had a clear idea of what he wanted propaganda to look like on a national scale should they come to power. Part of his plan was to adopt talking film, which was strictly new and untested, and then wireless radio, which was almost non-existent in Germany at the time.

Throughout 1932, Goebbels faced opposition from the Nazi Party. Despite this, he launched a full-scale attack against them. He turned funerals and any event into propaganda for maximum attention for the Nazi Party. For these actions, he was banned and fined multiple times. Still, he continued to make quiet speeches whenever possible.

However, as soon as Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933, Goebbels was appointed Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment on March 14, 1933.

Part 5: Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment

As the minister of propaganda, Goebbels did not waste time coordinating every cultural aspect of Germany into his newly created ministry. He created the Reich Culture Chamber, where professional press, radio, filmmakers, theater, and other cultural organizations had to be members to operate in Germany. To further consolidate control, he also formed a Film Credit Bank, which would finance film making with his blessing only. Additionally, he introduced inexpensive wireless radios and street loudspeakers so that National Socialism’s speeches would reach far and wide.

After Hitler purged the SA in June 1934, the president died, and Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor to make himself the Führer of Germany. Goebbels was the man responsible for announcing these events both domestically and internationally.

It was made clear that Goebbels also had more money for his ministry than he could ever need.

Goebbels loved to live a frugal life, or at least to be perceived as such, while simultaneously borrowing money to finance more than two unnecessary luxurious homes. Hitler even rescued him once from house finance debt.

His extreme love for women’s companionship did not end when he became the propaganda minister; it only escalated. Lida Baarova was one of the women who almost ruined his career and marriage; only Hitler’s true intervention set Goebbels’ head straight.

Part 6: Goebbels’ Relationship with Hitler During the War Years

During the war years, Goebbels’ propaganda ministry had to compete rigorously with that of other ministries, particularly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the rivalry persisted until the end of the Third Reich. The only time Goebbels was victorious was when Hitler intervened on his behalf.

Goebbels considered foreign radio broadcasts a danger to the Germans and inhabitants of occupied territories; this was why a ban was imposed on listening to international radio stations such as the BBC. But all the while, he curated films to entertain the population and sway them from the harshness of the ongoing war, while still incorporating proper propaganda.

As the war escalated, Goebbels complained bitterly about his failure to get Hitler’s attention, who was busy with war problems. It is shown that Goebbels filled his diary with extensive work details, not personal matters, and treated it as a historical manuscript that cannot be bought at a cheap price.

Part 7: Plenipotentiary for Total War

From 1942, Goebbels demanded total control of all of Germany’s defense from Hitler; he even lobbied for the position of interior minister, but to no avail. He went to Goring to appeal to Hitler to give him the power needed to mobilize every German resource for total war, with no response.

Persistently, he made his famous Sportpalast speech in 1943 just after the humiliating German defeat at Stalingrad, requesting total war from carefully selected Germans; Hitler still neglected him. It was after the failed attempt on Hitler’s life that he appointed Goebbels as the Plenipotentiary for Total War.

Part 8: Hitler’s Birthday

By the end of 1944, Goebbels was optimistic about the war’s positive outcome; however, he realistically knew the war was already lost. Even after the Führer’s surprise visit to the Goebbels, the propaganda minister knew it was just a matter of time before all would be lost for their country.

By April 1945, Goebbels wanted Magda to move south, where she and their six children would be safe; however, Magda refused, stating that her place was with the Führer and her husband.

Meanwhile, it was Hitler’s birthday on 20th April, where high-ranking Nazis and the inner circle attended, but many departed without saying their farewells. Only Goebbels and Bormann were the last of the high-ranking officials left with the Führer in these last hours.

Part 9: World War II Ended, and Goebbels Killed Himself

Two days after Hitler’s birthday, Magda and the children moved into the Führerbunker, where Goebbels had been staying. This was the last time Magda would see her mother, who survived the war.

Goebbels and Magda wrote a goodbye letter to Magda’s first son from her first marriage, in which the couple explains their reason for staying with Hitler to the end and taking away their six children.

As his final act, Hitler married Eva and dictated his political statement, followed by his personal will. In the political statement, he appointed Goebbels as Reich Chancellor after his death and Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as Reich President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

Hitler shot himself dead, while Eva Hitler poisoned herself. Goebbels assumed the chancellorship for a few hours before he and his wife shot themselves, but not before they had first put their six children to death.