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Joseph Goebbels
Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister (–)
"Goebbels" redirects here. For other uses, see Goebbels (disambiguation).
Paul Joseph Goebbels (German:[ˈpaʊ̯lˈjoːzɛfˈɡœbl̩s]ⓘ; 29 October &#;– 1 May ) was a German Nazi politician and philologist who was the Gauleiter (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from to He was one of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted followers, known for his skills in public speaking and his deeply virulent antisemitism which was evident in his publicly voiced views.
He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust.
Goebbels, who aspired to be an author, obtained a doctorate in philology from the University of Heidelberg in He joined the Nazi Party in , and worked with Gregor Strasser in its northern branch. He was appointed Gauleiter of Berlin in , where he began to take an interest in the use of propaganda to promote the party and its programme.
After the Nazis came to power in , Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry quickly gained control over the news media, arts and information in Nazi Germany. He was particularly adept at using the relatively new media of radio and film for propaganda purposes. Topics for party propaganda included antisemitism, attacks on Christian churches, and (after the start of the Second World War) attempts to shape morale.
In , Goebbels began to pressure Hitler to introduce measures that would produce "total war", including closing businesses not essential to the war effort, conscripting women into the labour force, and enlisting men in previously exempt occupations into the Wehrmacht. Hitler finally appointed him as Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War on 23 July , whereby Goebbels undertook largely unsuccessful measures to increase the number of people available for armaments manufacture and the Wehrmacht.
As the war drew to a close and Nazi Germany faced defeat, Magda Goebbels and the Goebbels children joined Hitler in Berlin. They moved into the underground Vorbunker, part of Hitler's underground bunker complex, on 22 April Hitler committed suicide on 30 April. In accordance with Hitler's will, Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor of Germany; he served one day in this post.
The following day, Goebbels and his wife Magda committed suicide, after having poisoned their six children with a cyanide compound.
Early life, education, and relationships
Paul Joseph Goebbels was born on 29 October in Rheydt, an industrial town south of Mönchengladbach near Düsseldorf, Germany.
Both of his parents were Roman Catholics with modest family backgrounds. His father, Fritz, was a German factory clerk; his mother, Katharina Maria (née Odenhausen), was born to Dutch and German parents in a Dutch village close to the border with Germany. Goebbels had five siblings: Konrad (–), Hans (–), Maria (–), Elisabeth (–) and Maria (–), who married the German filmmaker Max W.
Kimmich in In Goebbels commissioned the publication of a pamphlet of his family tree to refute the rumours that his maternal grandmother was of Jewish ancestry.
During childhood Goebbels experienced ill health, which included a long bout of inflammation of the lungs. He had a deformed right foot, which turned inwards and was due to a congenital disorder.
It was thicker and shorter than his left foot. Just prior to starting grammar school he underwent an operation, which failed to correct the problem. Goebbels wore a metal brace and a special shoe because of his shortened leg and walked with a limp. He was rejected for military service in World War I because of this deformity.
Goebbels was educated at a Gymnasium, where he completed his Abitur (university entrance examination) in He was the top student of his class and was given the traditional honour of speaking at the awards ceremony.
His parents initially hoped that he would become a Catholic priest, which Goebbels seriously considered. He studied literature and history at the universities of Bonn, Würzburg, Freiburg and Munich, aided by a scholarship from the Albertus Magnus Society. By this time Goebbels had begun to distance himself from the church.
Historians, including Richard J.
Evans and Roger Manvell, speculate that Goebbels' lifelong pursuit of women may have been in compensation for his physical disability. At Freiburg he met and fell in love with Anka Stalherm, who was three years his senior. She went on to Würzburg to continue studying, as did Goebbels. By the relationship with Anka was over; the break-up filled Goebbels with thoughts of suicide.[a] In he wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, Michael, a three-part work of which only Parts I and III have survived.
Goebbels felt he was writing his "own story". Antisemitic content and material about a charismatic leader may have been added by Goebbels shortly before the book was published in by Eher-Verlag, the publishing house of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party; NSDAP).
At the University of Heidelberg Goebbels wrote his doctoral thesis on Wilhelm von Schütz, a minor 19th-century romantic dramatist.
He had hoped to write his thesis under the supervision of Friedrich Gundolf, a literary historian. It did not seem to bother Goebbels that Gundolf was Jewish. As he was no longer teaching, Gundolf directed Goebbels to associate professor Max Freiherr von Waldberg. Waldberg, who was also Jewish, recommended Goebbels write his thesis on Wilhelm von Schütz.
After submitting the thesis and passing his oral examination, Goebbels received his PhD on 21 April By he had written 14 books.
Goebbels returned home and worked as a private tutor. He also found work as a journalist and was published in the local newspaper. His writing during that time reflected his growing antisemitism and dislike for modern culture.
In the summer of he met and began a love affair with Else Janke, a schoolteacher. After she revealed to him that she was half-Jewish, Goebbels stated the "enchantment [was] ruined." Nevertheless he continued to see her on and off until
He continued for several years to try to become a published author.
His diaries, which he began in and continued for the rest of his life, provided an outlet for his desire to write. The lack of income from his literary works – he wrote two plays in , neither of which sold – forced him to take employment as a caller on the stock exchange and as a bank clerk in Cologne, a job he detested.
He was dismissed from the bank in August and returned to Rheydt. During this period he read avidly and was influenced by the works of Oswald Spengler, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the British-born German writer whose book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century () was one of the standard works of the extreme right in Germany.
He also began to study the social question and read the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, August Bebel and Gustav Noske. According to German historian Peter Longerich, Goebbels's diary entries from late to early reflected the writings of a man who was isolated, preoccupied with "religious-philosophical" issues and lacked a sense of direction.
Diary entries from mid-December onwards show Goebbels was moving towards the Völkisch nationalist movement.
Nazi activist
Goebbels first took an interest in Adolf Hitler and Nazism in In February , Hitler's trial for treason began in the wake of his failed attempt to seize power in the Beer Hall Putsch of 8–9 November The trial attracted widespread press coverage and gave Hitler a platform for propaganda.
Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, but was released on 20 December , after serving just over a year, including pre-trial detention. Goebbels was drawn to the Nazi Party mostly because of Hitler's charisma and commitment to his beliefs. He joined the Nazi Party around this time, becoming member number In late , Goebbels offered his services to Karl Kaufmann, who was Gauleiter (Nazi Party district leader) for the Rhine-Ruhr District.
Kaufmann put him in touch with Gregor Strasser, a leading Nazi organiser in northern Germany, who hired him to work on their weekly newspaper and undertake secretarial work for the regional party offices. He was also put to work as party speaker and representative for Rhineland-Westphalia. Strasser founded the National Socialist Working Association on 10 September , a short-lived group of about a dozen northern and western German Gauleiter; Goebbels became its business manager and the editor of its biweekly journal, NS-Briefe.
Members of Strasser's northern branch of the Nazi Party, including Goebbels, had a more socialist outlook than the rival Hitler group in Munich. Strasser disagreed with Hitler on many parts of the party platform, and in November began working on a revision.
Hitler viewed Strasser's actions as a threat to his authority, and summoned 60&#;Gauleiters and party leaders, including Goebbels, to a special conference in Bamberg, in Streicher'sGau of Franconia, where he gave a two-hour speech repudiating Strasser's new political programme.
Hitler was opposed to the socialist leanings of the northern wing, stating it would mean "political bolshevization of Germany." Further, there would be "no princes, only Germans," and a legal system with no "Jewish system of exploitation&#; for plundering of our people." The future would be secured by acquiring land, not through expropriation of the estates of the former nobility, but through colonising territories to the east.
Goebbels was horrified by Hitler's characterisation of socialism as "a Jewish creation" and his assertion that a Nazi government would not expropriate private property. He wrote in his diary: "I no longer fully believe in Hitler. That's the terrible thing: my inner support has been taken away."
After reading Hitler's book Mein Kampf, Goebbels found himself agreeing with Hitler's assertion of a "Jewish doctrine of Marxism".
In February , Goebbels gave a speech titled "Bolshevism or National-socialism? Lenin or Hitler?" in which he asserted that communism or Marxism could not save the German people, but he believed it would cause a "socialist nationalist state" to arise in Russia. In , Goebbels published a pamphlet titled Nazi-Sozi which attempted to explain how National Socialism differed from Marxism.
In hopes of winning over the opposition, Hitler arranged meetings in Munich with the three Greater Ruhr Gau leaders, including Goebbels.
Goebbels was impressed when Hitler sent his own car to meet them at the railway station. That evening, Hitler and Goebbels both gave speeches at a beer hall rally. The following day, Hitler offered his hand in reconciliation to the three men, encouraging them to put their differences behind them. Goebbels capitulated completely, offering Hitler his total loyalty.
He wrote in his diary: "I love him&#; He has thought through everything," "Such a sparkling mind can be my leader. I bow to the greater one, the political genius." He later wrote: "Adolf Hitler, I love you because you are both great and simple at the same time. What one calls a genius." As a result of the Bamberg and Munich meetings, the National Socialist Working Association was disbanded.
Strasser's new draft of the party programme was discarded, the original National Socialist Program of was retained unchanged, and Hitler's position as party leader was greatly strengthened.
Propagandist in Berlin
At Hitler's invitation, Goebbels spoke at party meetings in Munich and at the annual Party Congress, held in Weimar in For the following year's event, Goebbels was involved in the planning for the first time.
He and Hitler arranged for the rally to be filmed. Receiving praise for doing well at these events led Goebbels to shape his political ideas to match Hitler's, and to admire and idolise him even more.
Gauleiter
Goebbels was first offered the position of party Gauleiter for the Berlin section in August He travelled to Berlin in mid-September and by the middle of October accepted the position.
Thus Hitler's plan to divide and dissolve the northwestern Gauleiters group that Goebbels had served in under Strasser was successful.
Jews in america map This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 18 January Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister (–) "Goebbels" redirects here. For other uses, see Goebbels (disambiguation). Reichsleiter Joseph Goebbels Goebbels in Chancellor of Germany In office 30 April – 1 May President Karl Dönitz Preceded by Adolf Hitler Succeeded.Hitler gave Goebbels great authority over the area, allowing him to determine the course for organisation and leadership for the Gau. Goebbels was given control over the local Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) and answered only to Hitler. The party membership numbered about 1, when Goebbels arrived, and he reduced it to a core of of the most active and promising members.
To raise money, he instituted membership fees and began charging admission to party meetings. Aware of the value of publicity (both positive and negative), he deliberately provoked beer-hall battles and street brawls, including violent attacks on the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Goebbels adapted recent developments in commercial advertising to the political sphere, including the use of catchy slogans and subliminal cues.
His new ideas for poster design included using large type, red ink, and cryptic headers that encouraged the reader to examine the fine print to determine the meaning.
Goebbels speaks at a political rally (). This body position, with arms akimbo, was intended to show the speaker as being in a position of authority.
Goebbels giving a speech in Lustgarten, Berlin, August This hand gesture was used while delivering a warning or threat.
Like Hitler, Goebbels practised his public speaking skills in front of a mirror.
Meetings were preceded by ceremonial marches and singing, and the venues were decorated with party banners. His entrance (almost always late) was timed for maximum emotional impact. Goebbels usually meticulously planned his speeches ahead of time, using pre-planned and choreographed inflection and gestures, but he was also able to improvise and adapt his presentation to make a good connection with his audience.
He used loudspeakers, decorative flames, uniforms, and marches to attract attention to speeches.
Goebbels' tactic of using provocation to bring attention to the Nazi Party, along with violence at the public party meetings and demonstrations, led the Berlin police to ban the Nazi Party from the city on 5 May Violent incidents continued, including young Nazis randomly attacking Jews in the streets.
Goebbels was subjected to a public speaking ban until the end of October. During this period, he founded the newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack) as a propaganda vehicle for the Berlin area, where few supported the party. It was a modern-style newspaper with an aggressive tone; libel suits were pending against Goebbels at one point.
To his disappointment, circulation was initially only 2, Material in the paper was highly anti-communist and antisemitic. Among the paper's favourite targets was the Jewish Deputy Chief of the Berlin Police Bernhard Weiß. Goebbels gave him the derogatory nickname "Isidore" and subjected him to a relentless campaign of Jew-baiting in the hope of provoking a crackdown he could then exploit.
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Goebbels subjected artists and journalists to state control and eliminated all Jews and political opponents from positions of influence. On May 10, , he staged a massive book burning in.Goebbels continued to try to break into the literary world, with a revised version of his book Michael finally being published, and the unsuccessful production of two of his plays (Der Wanderer and Die Saat (The Seed)). The latter was his final attempt at playwriting. During this period in Berlin he had relationships with many women, including his old flame Anka Stalherm, who was now married and had a small child.
He was quick to fall in love, but easily tired of a relationship and moved on to someone new. He worried too about how a committed personal relationship might interfere with his career.
election
The ban on the Nazi Party was lifted before the Reichstag elections on 20 May The Nazi Party lost nearly , voters and earned only per cent of the vote nationwide.
Results in Berlin were even worse, where they attained only per cent of the vote. Goebbels was one of the first 12 Nazi Party members to gain election to the Reichstag. This gave him immunity from prosecution for a long list of outstanding charges, including a three-week jail sentence he received in April for insulting the deputy police chief Weiß.
The Reichstag changed the immunity regulations in February , and Goebbels was forced to pay fines for libellous material he had placed in Der Angriff over the course of the previous year. Goebbels continued to be elected to the Reichstag at every subsequent election during the Weimar and Nazi regimes.
In his newspaper Berliner Arbeiterzeitung (Berlin Workers Newspaper), Gregor Strasser was highly critical of Goebbels' failure to attract the urban vote.
However, the party as a whole did much better in rural areas, attracting as much as 18 per cent of the vote in some regions. This was partly because Hitler had publicly stated just prior to the election that Point 17 of the party programme, which mandated the expropriation of land without compensation, would apply only to Jewish speculators and not private landholders.
After the election, the party refocused their efforts to try to attract still more votes in the agricultural sector. In May, shortly after the election, Hitler considered appointing Goebbels as party propaganda chief. But he hesitated, as he worried that the removal of Gregor Strasser from the post would lead to a split in the party. Goebbels considered himself well suited to the position, and began to formulate ideas about how propaganda could be used in schools and the media.
By Berlin was the party's second-strongest base of support after Munich.
Joseph goebbels biography jews in america Goebbels subjected artists and journalists to state control and eliminated all Jews and political opponents from positions of influence. On May 10, , he staged a massive book burning in.That year the violence between the Nazis and communists led to local SA troop leader Horst Wessel being shot by two members of the KPD. He later died in hospital. Exploiting Wessel's death, Goebbels turned him into a martyr for the Nazi movement. He officially declared Wessel's march Die Fahne hoch (Raise the flag), renamed as the Horst-Wessel-Lied, to be the Nazi Party anthem.
Great Depression
The Great Depression greatly impacted Germany and by there was a dramatic increase in unemployment.
During this time, the Strasser brothers started publishing a new daily newspaper in Berlin, the Nationaler Sozialist. Like their other publications, it conveyed the brothers' own brand of Nazism, including nationalism, anti-capitalism, social reform, and anti-Westernism. Goebbels complained vehemently about the rival Strasser newspapers to Hitler and admitted that their success was causing his own Berlin newspapers to be "pushed to the wall".
In late April , Hitler publicly and firmly announced his opposition to Gregor Strasser and appointed Goebbels to replace him as Reich leader of Nazi Party propaganda. One of Goebbels' first acts was to ban the evening edition of the Nationaler Sozialist. Goebbels was also given control of other Nazi papers across the country, including the party's national newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter (People's Observer).
He still had to wait until 3 July for Otto Strasser and his supporters to announce they were leaving the Nazi Party. Upon receiving the news, Goebbels was relieved the "crisis" with the Strassers was finally over and glad that Otto Strasser had lost all power.
The rapid deterioration of the economy led to the resignation on 27 March of the coalition government that had been elected in Paul von Hindenburg appointed Heinrich Brüning as chancellor.
A new cabinet was formed, and Hindenburg used his power as president to govern via emergency decrees. Goebbels took charge of the Nazi Party's national campaign for Reichstag elections called for 14 September Campaigning was undertaken on a huge scale, with thousands of meetings and speeches held all over the country. Hitler's speeches focused on blaming the country's economic woes on the Weimar Republic, particularly its adherence to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which required war reparations that had proven devastating to the German economy.
He proposed a new German society based on race and national unity. The resulting success took even Hitler and Goebbels by surprise: the party received million votes nationwide and took seats in the Reichstag, making it the second-largest party in the country.
In late Goebbels met Magda Quandt, a divorcée who had joined the party a few months earlier.
She worked as a volunteer in the party offices in Berlin, helping Goebbels organise his private papers. Her flat on Reichskanzlerplatz soon became a favourite meeting place for Hitler and other Nazi Party officials. Goebbels and Quandt married on 19 December at a Protestant church. Hitler was his best man.
For two further elections held in , Goebbels organised massive campaigns that included rallies, parades, speeches, and Hitler travelling around the country by aeroplane with the slogan "the Führer over Germany".
Goebbels wrote in his diary that the Nazis must gain power and exterminate Marxism. He undertook numerous speaking tours during these election campaigns and had some of their speeches published on gramophone records and as pamphlets. Goebbels was also involved in the production of a small collection of silent films that could be shown at party meetings, though they did not yet have enough equipment to widely use this medium.
Many of Goebbels' campaign posters used violent imagery such as a giant half-clad male destroying political opponents or other perceived enemies such as "International High Finance". His propaganda characterised the opposition as "November criminals", "Jewish wire-pullers", or a communist threat.
Role in Hitler's government
Support for the party continued to grow, but neither of these elections led to a majority government.
In an effort to stabilise the country and improve economic conditions, Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Reich chancellor on 30 January
To celebrate Hitler's appointment as chancellor, Goebbels organised a torchlight parade in Berlin on the night of 30 January of an estimated 60, men, many in the uniforms of the SA and SS.
The spectacle was covered by a live state radio broadcast, with commentary by longtime party member and future Minister of Aviation Hermann Göring. Goebbels was disappointed not to be given a post in Hitler's new cabinet. Bernhard Rust was appointed as Minister of Culture, the post that Goebbels was expecting to receive.
Like other Nazi Party officials, Goebbels had to deal with Hitler's leadership style of giving contradictory orders to his subordinates, while placing them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped. In this way, Hitler fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power.
The Nazi Party took advantage of the Reichstag fire of 27 February , with Hindenburg passing the Reichstag Fire Decree the following day at Hitler's urging. This was the first of several pieces of legislation that dismantled democracy in Germany and put a totalitarian dictatorship—headed by Hitler—in its place. On 5 March, yet another Reichstag election took place, the last to be held before the defeat of the Nazis at the end of the Second World War.
While the Nazi Party increased their number of seats and percentage of the vote, it was not the landslide expected by the party leadership. Goebbels finally received Hitler's appointment to the cabinet, officially becoming head of the newly created Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda on 14 March.
The role of the new ministry, which set up its offices in the 18th-century Ordenspalais across from the Reich Chancellery, was to centralise Nazi control of all aspects of German cultural and intellectual life.
Goebbels hoped to increase popular support of the party from the 37 per cent achieved at the last free election held in Germany on 25 March to per cent support. An unstated goal was to present to other nations the impression that the Nazi Party had the full and enthusiastic backing of the entire population. One of Goebbels' first productions was staging the Day of Potsdam, a ceremonial passing of power from Hindenburg to Hitler, held in Potsdam on 21 March.
He composed the text of Hitler's decree authorising the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses, held on 1 April. Later that month, Goebbels travelled back to Rheydt, where he was given a triumphal reception. The townsfolk lined the main street, which had been renamed in his honour. On the following day, Goebbels was declared a local hero.
Goebbels converted the 1 May holiday from a celebration of workers' rights (observed as such especially by the communists) into a day celebrating the Nazi Party.
In place of the usual ad hoc labour celebrations, he organised a huge party rally held at Tempelhof Field in Berlin. The following day, all trade union offices in the country were forcibly disbanded by the SA and SS, and the Nazi-run German Labour Front was created to take their place. "We are the masters of Germany," he commented in his diary entry of 3 May.
Less than two weeks later, he gave a speech at the Nazi book burning in Berlin on 10 May, a ceremony he suggested.
Meanwhile, the Nazi Party began passing laws to marginalise Jews and remove them from German society. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April , forced all non-Aryans to retire from the legal profession and civil service.
Similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of their right to practise. The first Nazi concentration camps (initially created to house political dissenters) were founded shortly after Hitler seized power. In a process termed Gleichschaltung (coordination), the Nazi Party proceeded to rapidly bring all aspects of life under control of the party.
The most famous jews in america: A cynic, devoid of genuine inner convictions, Goebbels found his mission in selling Hitler to the German public, in projecting himself as his most faithful shield-bearer and orchestrating a pseudo-religious cult of the Fuhrer as the savior of Germany from Jews, profiteers and Marxists.
All civilian organisations, including agricultural groups, volunteer organisations, and sports clubs, had their leadership replaced with Nazi sympathisers or party members. By June , virtually the only organisations not in the control of the Nazi Party were the army and the churches. On 2 June , Hitler appointed Goebbels a Reichsleiter, the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party.
On 3 October , on the formation of the Academy for German Law, Goebbels was made a member and given a seat on its executive committee. In a move to manipulate Germany's middle class and shape popular opinion, the regime passed on 4 October the Schriftleitergesetz (Editor's Law), which became the cornerstone of the Nazi Party's control of the popular press.
Modelled to some extent on the system in Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy, the law defined a Schriftleiter as anyone who wrote, edited, or selected texts and/or illustrated material for serial publication. Individuals selected for this position were chosen based on experiential, educational, and racial criteria.
The law required journalists to "regulate their work in accordance with National Socialism as a philosophy of life and as a conception of government."
In , Goebbels published Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei ("From the Kaiserhof to the Reich Chancellery"), his account of Hitler's seizure of power, which he based on his diary from 1 January to 1 May The book sought to glorify both Hitler and the author.
It sold around , copies, making it Goebbels's best-selling publication during his lifetime.
At the end of June , top officials of the SA and opponents of the regime, including Gregor Strasser, were arrested and killed in a purge later called the Night of Long Knives. Goebbels was present at the arrest of SA leader Ernst Röhm in Munich. On 2 August , President von Hindenburg died.
In a radio broadcast, Goebbels announced that the offices of president and chancellor had been combined, and Hitler had been formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor).
Workings of the Ministry
The propaganda ministry was organised into seven departments: administration and legal; mass rallies, public health, youth, and race; radio; national and foreign press; films and film censorship; art, music, and theatre; and protection against counter-propaganda, both foreign and domestic.
Goebbels's style of leadership was tempestuous and unpredictable. He would suddenly change direction and shift his support between senior associates; he was a difficult boss and liked to berate his staff in public. Goebbels was successful at his job, however; Life wrote in that "[p]ersonally he likes nobody, is liked by nobody, and runs the most efficient Nazi department."John Gunther wrote in that Goebbels "is the cleverest of all the Nazis", but could not succeed Hitler because "everybody hates him".
The Reich Film Chamber, which all members of the film industry were required to join, was created in June Goebbels promoted the development of films with a Nazi slant, and ones that contained subliminal or overt propaganda messages.
Under the auspices of the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture), created in September, Goebbels added additional sub-chambers for the fields of broadcasting, fine arts, literature, music, the press, and the theatre. As in the film industry, anyone wishing to pursue a career in these fields had to be a member of the corresponding chamber.
In this way anyone whose views were contrary to the regime could be excluded from working in their chosen field and thus silenced. In addition, journalists (now considered employees of the state) were required to prove Aryan descent back to the year , and if married, the same requirement applied to the spouse. Members of any chamber were not allowed to leave the country for their work without prior permission of their chamber.
A committee was established to censor books, and works could not be re-published unless they were on the list of approved works. Similar regulations applied to other fine arts and entertainment; even cabaret performances were censored. Many German artists and intellectuals left Germany in the pre-war years rather than work under these restrictions.
Goebbels was particularly interested in controlling the radio, which was then still a fairly new mass medium.
Sometimes under protest from individual states (particularly Prussia, headed by Göring), Goebbels gained control of radio stations nationwide, and placed them under the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (German National Broadcasting Corporation) in July Manufacturers were urged by Goebbels to produce inexpensive home receivers, called Volksempfänger (people's receiver), and by nearly ten million sets had been sold.
Loudspeakers were placed in public areas, factories, and schools, so that important party broadcasts would be heard live by nearly all Germans. On 2 September (the day after the start of the war), Goebbels and the Council of Ministers proclaimed it illegal to listen to foreign radio stations. Disseminating news from foreign broadcasts could result in the death Speer, Hitler's architect and later Minister for Armaments and War Production, later said the regime "made the complete use of all technical means for domination of its own country.
Through technical devices like the radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought."
A major focus of Nazi propaganda was Hitler himself, who was glorified as a heroic and infallible leader and became the focus of a cult of personality. Much of this was spontaneous, but some was stage-managed as part of Goebbels' propaganda work.
Adulation of Hitler was the focus of the Nuremberg Rally, where his moves were carefully choreographed. The rally was the subject of the film Triumph of the Will, one of several Nazi propaganda films directed by Leni Riefenstahl. It won the gold medal at the Venice Film Festival. At the Nazi party congress rally at Nuremberg, Goebbels declared that "Bolshevism is the declaration of war by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself."
Goebbels was involved in planning the staging of the Summer Olympics, held in Berlin.
It was around this time that he met and started having an affair with the actress Lída Baarová, whom he continued to see until A major project in was the Degenerate Art Exhibition, organised by Goebbels, which ran in Munich from July to November. The exhibition proved wildly popular, attracting over two million visitors. A degenerate music exhibition took place the following year.
Meanwhile, Goebbels was disappointed by the lack of quality in the National Socialist artwork, films, and literature.
Church struggle
See also: Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany
In , Hitler signed the Reichskonkordat (Reich Concordat), a treaty with the Vatican that required the regime to honour the independence of Catholic institutions and prohibited clergy from involvement in politics.
However, the regime continued to target the Christian churches to weaken their influence. Throughout and , hundreds of clergy and nuns were arrested, often on trumped up charges of currency smuggling or sexual offences. Goebbels widely publicised the trials in his propaganda campaigns, showing the cases in the worst possible light. Restrictions were placed on public meetings, and Catholic publications faced censorship.
Catholic schools were required to reduce religious instruction and crucifixes were removed from state buildings.[b] Hitler often vacillated on whether or not the Kirchenkampf (church struggle) should be a priority, but his frequent inflammatory comments on the issue were enough to convince Goebbels to intensify his work on the issue; in February he stated he wanted to eliminate the Protestant church.
In response to the persecution, Pope Pius XI had the "Mit brennender Sorge" ("With Burning Concern") Encyclical smuggled into Germany for Passion Sunday and read from every pulpit.
It denounced the systematic hostility of the regime toward the church. In response, Goebbels renewed the regime's crackdown and propaganda against Catholics. His speech of 28 May in Berlin in front of 20, party members, which was also broadcast on the radio, attacked the Catholic church as morally corrupt.
Jews in america pbs A cynic, devoid of genuine inner convictions, Goebbels found his mission in selling Hitler to the German public, in projecting himself as his most faithful shield-bearer and orchestrating a pseudo-religious cult of the Fuhrer as the savior of Germany from Jews, profiteers and Marxists.As a result of the propaganda campaign, enrolment in denominational schools dropped sharply, and by all such schools were disbanded or converted to public facilities. Harassment and threats of imprisonment led the clergy to be much more cautious in their criticism of the regime. Partly out of foreign policy concerns, Hitler ordered a scaling back of the church struggle by the end of July
Antisemitism and the Holocaust
Goebbels was antisemitic from a young age.
After joining the Nazi Party and meeting Hitler, his antisemitism grew and became more radical. He began to see the Jews as a destructive force with a negative impact on German society. In , he criticised Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini for his relative lack of hostility towards Jews, stating that "Mussolini appears to have not recognized the Jewish question." After the Nazis seized control, he repeatedly urged Hitler to take action against the Jews.
Despite his extreme antisemitism, Goebbels spoke of the "rubbish of race-materialism" and of the unnecessity of biological racism for the Nazi ideology. He also described Himmler's ideology as "in many regards, mad" and thought Alfred Rosenberg's racial theories were ridiculous.
The Nazi Party's goal was to remove Jews from German cultural and economic life, and eventually to remove them from the country altogether.
In addition to his propaganda efforts, Goebbels actively promoted the persecution of the Jews through pogroms, legislation, and other actions. Discriminatory measures he instituted in Berlin in the early years of the regime included bans against their using public transport and requiring that Jewish shops be marked as such.
In November , the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath was killed in Paris by the young Jewish man Herschel Grynszpan.
In response, Goebbels arranged for inflammatory antisemitic material to be released by the press, and the result was the start of a pogrom. Jews were attacked and synagogues destroyed all over Germany. The situation was further inflamed by a speech Goebbels gave at a party meeting on the night of 8 November, where he obliquely called for party members to incite further violence against Jews while making it appear to be a spontaneous series of acts by the German people.
At least a hundred Jews were killed, several hundred synagogues were damaged or destroyed, and thousands of Jewish shops were vandalised in an event called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Around 30, Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. The destruction stopped after a conference held on 12 November, where Göring pointed out that the destruction of Jewish property was in effect the destruction of German property since the intention was that it would all eventually be confiscated.
Goebbels continued his intensive antisemitic propaganda campaign that culminated in Hitler's 30 January Reichstag speech, which Goebbels helped to write: