A German politician and Minister of Propaganda in Hitler's government and his companion in his underground bunker, he took over the propaganda work of the Nazi Party after the Nazis seized power, and led the organization of the election campaign and propaganda for the election of "Adolf Hitler", and he was skilled in writing and organization, and succeeded in winning German public opinion.
Birth and upbringing
Paul Joseph Goebbels was born on October 29, 1897, in the village of Riedt in the state of Rhineland in Germany, and was raised with his five brothers in a poor conservative German Catholic family.
His mother was of Dutch origin, and his father, Frederick, was an accountant, and he hoped his son would become a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, but Goebbels dreamed of working as a writer or journalist.
It was rumored that he was Jewish, but he denied this by publishing a booklet on his family tree in 1932.
On December 19, 1931, Goebbels married Magda Reichel, who was so impressed with the personality of Nazi leader Hitler that she chose for her six children names beginning with the letter "H" (H);
The first letter of "Hitler", who in turn loved Goebbels' children, especially his eldest daughter, of whom many pictures spread with him.
Joseph Goebbels supported Hitler's policy that he was not allowed to serve in the army (Getty Images)
feeling of inferiority
Goebbels' health was not good in his childhood, he suffered from severe pneumonia that almost killed him, and he also suffered from a birth defect (his right leg is shorter than the left and curved inward), and surgeries were performed to correct this defect, but to no avail.
Because of his lameness, Goebbels was not allowed to serve in the German army during World War I, which damaged his pride, and he stigmatized himself for "not being able to serve his country during the war."
He looked at the inferiority of his body very sharply and painfully, and felt the humiliating ridicule of his companions, who called him "the little mouse doctor", and the reactions to his short stature and black hair had a profound effect on his life.
His secretary said in one of the press interviews - at the age of 105 - that she was sorry for the lameness he was suffering from, which he "compensated with with some arrogance".
Goebbels said that he was tortured in 1920 in the basement of the French leadership in the occupied city of Cologne, and he also said in his speeches that his foot was deformed as a result of this torture, but the Berlin court judge proved that Goebbels' foot deformity arose with his birth, and the court ruled in November 1927 to pay francs French symbolic compensation for the retired French general, whom Goebbels accused of torturing him.
The lack of physical merits created in Goebbels a deep-rooted hatred, and his fault became the reason for his advocating the purity of the Aryan race, because mixed marriages affected the health of children.
Throughout his life he did not love anyone and no one loved him.
Study and training
His parents hoped that Goebbels would enter the Faculty of Theology, and with the support of Catholic charitable organizations, he graduated from high school and university, and then attended Christian school.
In 1916, he completed the university entrance examination and obtained admission to the boarding school, then joined the German Franciscan fraternity in the Dutch city of Pellegerheide in 1917, after which he worked as a soldier for only 5 months in the office of the National Aid Unit in the city of Riedt.
But Goebbels, eager to become a journalist, threw all his might into the study of the humanities, and enrolled at the University of Heidelberg, where he studied history and literature under Professor Friedrich Gundolf (a Jewish literary scholar, well-known specialist in the German poet Johann Goethe and a close friend of the poet Stefan Georg).
He studied German literature and philosophy at the University of Bonn, then moved to the University of Würzburg, received admission at the University of Freiburg, and obtained a doctorate from the University of Heidelberg in 1921 with a thesis on the romantic playwright Wilhelm von Schutz.
literary work
After Goebbels completed his education with distinction, he tried to work in literary, theatrical and journalistic writing, and showed a great inclination for poetry and drama. A clerk in a modest bank until 1924.
Joseph Goebbels Studied Poetry, Literature and Philosophy (Getty Images)
During this period he read extensively and shaped his political views, as well as being greatly influenced by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler and Huston Chamberlain (the British-born German writer and one of the founders of anti-Semitism).
With the exception of his expressive novel "Michael: A German Destiny in the Memoirs of 1926", nothing was mentioned about him in the literary and artistic creative field, and he did not succeed in making this novel interesting to the publishers, and it was not published until 5 years later, when Goebbels became a well-known politician, journalist and member of Reichstag".
interest in politics
After failing in the field of poetry and drama, Paul Joseph Goebbels found an outlet for his energy in politics, and in the fall of 1924 he became friends with a group of socialists (Nazis).
It was his way to join the National Socialist German Workers' Party, which had a branch in his hometown and then became one of its pillars.
It is reported that he was an opponent of Hitler's membership in the party, and in 1926 his political sympathy changed sharply in favor of Hitler, and they became inseparable companions.
Goebbels was an influential orator, so he was appointed regional director of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and was appointed editor-in-chief of a newspaper in his name in 1927, which he called "The Attack", and he was spreading the party's philosophy and ideology through it.
Paul Joseph Goebbels (left) with Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler (Getty Images)
In 1926, Hitler appointed him head of the party in the Berlin region, to entrust him two years later with the position of director of propaganda for the party in Germany in general, and Goebbels began creating the legend of the leader (Fuhrer) about the person of Hitler.
He also began to establish party patterns and slogans, and arranged mass demonstrations and influential speeches that had a decisive impact in converting the masses to Nazism and belief in its principles.
He was elected to the German Parliament in 1928, and the Nazi party saw modern art as immoral, and took several measures to seize it, and its implementation of the Reich Press Law (Reich) led to the expulsion of a number of non-Nazi editors from newspapers, magazines and publishing houses in Germany.
In September 1933, he became director of the party's culture room, which was used to control cultural life in Germany at the time and had a role in the forced unemployment of a number of artists.
Minister of Propaganda
Goebbels, the dictator of Hitler's cultural life for 12 years, had a knack for influencing rhetoric and rhetoric, and succeeded in drawing widespread attention with a powerful and ruthless voice, covering Berlin's city government, Jews, and communists with ridicule and insults.
Hitler established a special ministry for him called the Ministry of Propaganda, and became the country's first official in charge of propaganda and everything that follows it, and through it Goebbels controlled the media, including the press, radio, theater, cinema and the arts, and harnessed all of them to serve the party and its principles.
Goebbels was speaking to the people on Hitler's birthday, who recorded for him alone during 1933 about 50 conversations, and in 1935 about 65 conversations.
Joseph Goebbels (behind the chair), the propaganda minister who used all media to promote Nazism (Getty Images)
Paul Joseph Goebbels adopted 3 axes to control the press, namely tightening censorship, and the party owns the majority of German newspapers directly or indirectly, and the ministry's direct supervision of the news agency's press.
He held a meeting every morning with foreign newspapers' correspondents, and talked to them about the news that should be published or not, and how to write it, as well as laying out their titles.
Goebbels used his official position to oversee the contents of the country's newspapers, magazines, books, music, plays, films, radio, and fine arts;
In order to consolidate Hitler's philosophy.
Hitler appointed him as the party's propaganda director, and he was allocating huge sums of money to spend on the media. He once said, "If I had $100, I would spend most of it on advertising and keep a little for other things."
In April 1933, on Hitler's initiative;
Goebbels organized a party at the Berlin Opera to destroy non-German books, where he destroyed and burned a number of valuable books written by notable personalities, such as Albert Einstein, Helen Keeler and Herbert Georg Wells.
And between 1937 and 1938 his influence waned somewhat, after he drifted into an affair with a Czech actress named Lida Barona.
It was about to push Goebbels to abandon his work and his family, had it not been for the shift in the direction of war after Germany's defeats in Stalingrad and Africa.
The basis of Paul Joseph Goebbels' propaganda, which he continued tirelessly, was to constantly arouse hope, by citing historical examples and the laws of history, which he claimed were immutable.
German Secretary of Paul Joseph Goebbels Brunhild Pomsel (French)
Describing his inconsistency, Goebbels' secretary said, "No actor could better perform this transformation from a serious civilized person to a rude, screeching man, in the office with a certain civility and nobility, and then seeing you there on the stage looking like an angry dwarf, you can't imagine a more incongruity." who is this".
Goebbels' bravery was also shown in the late two years of the war, his constant appearance to the people while all the prominent Nazi leaders disappeared into their underground bunkers, and this improved his image and that of his party.
framing theory
The Nazi Minister of Propaganda was one of the most prominent employed and invested in the media, through the "framing theory" based on the idea of controlling minds and passing policies in several ways;
The most important of them is repetition a lot, because it forms specific stereotypes.
In addition, the blatant lie finds acceptance and credibility for those who hear it, and attention to statistics because the language of numbers dispenses with details and raises self-confidence, and the news is published in open countries at the same time, provided that the news or article is included on a specific page and in a specific place in all newspapers and in all cities .
It also adopted the method of systematic and programmed lying that promotes the Nazi approach and its aspirations, and aims to destroy opponents from the other side.
He used the art of propaganda campaigns, and when he set the goal, he paved the way for an editorial article in a newspaper, or a statement made by an official spokesperson.
This is followed by a statement that leader Hitler will make a speech, and once the speech is given, the problem is solved, and he thanks Hitler.
He divided the world into specific qualitative audiences, and proceeded to address each audience in a manner that he understood and was influenced by;
He was of the opinion that propaganda in North America should focus on benefit, and for the masses of South America, he saw that they like elegant speech, and loud words, and are linked to France by the ties of Latin origin, and culture and theory with its philosophical content, they must be presented with propaganda on this basis.
And he followed the system of propaganda trampled on by major news agencies, and it was issued by small newspapers in neutral countries, and then it is easy after that to lie with irrefutable evidence so that the masses appear to be lying and question their truthfulness and honesty.
Important newspapers in South America were allowed to transmit news from the German News Agency, provided that it was published on behalf of its correspondents in Paris, New York, London and others. The German Radio also distributed its news bulletins to newspapers free of charge.
He encouraged the writing of articles in American newspapers from the German point of view, and he spent huge sums for this.
His policy in Spain was also to encourage small news agencies, and he said, "There is nothing better than news agencies to influence public opinion because they give the media skeleton that newspapers and radios take."
In April 1935, he selected 50 German specialists in oriental languages and sent them after scientific training to Jaffa, Algeria, Rabat and other Arab countries, India and Africa.
He took advantage of the Postal Authority to promote Germany's propaganda ideas and national celebrations, as it issued many postage stamps bearing Nazi slogans or advertising for one of its ideas or for one of its holidays.
Maker of "Hitler's Legend"
Goebbels was the creator of the "Hitler Myth" and the owner of the Nazi propaganda machine that portrayed "Hitler" to the Germans as their saviour.
He used this myth to convey the principles of the Nazi Party and its message to the German people in support of the intense media campaign of World War II, and he used all media to spread his message about Nazism.
When World War II began in 1939, he galvanized the German people to support the war, and to that end effectively managed the power of the media.
In 1940, the release of the movie "The Eternal Jew" was propaganda for the Nazi party, and provoked hatred against Jewish groups. He also produced another propaganda film for Nazism in the same year called "Jud Suss", in which he tried to show the Jews bad.
In 1942, he organized an exhibition in support of Nazism called "Paradise of the Soviets", and attacked "Herbert Baum", the German resistance leader, in order to thwart his mission.
Goebbels began to pressure Hitler to introduce measures that would produce a war that he called "total war" in his speech.
Measures included closing nonessential businesses, recruiting women into the workforce, and recruiting men into previously abolished occupations in the German Armed Forces.
Hitler then appointed Goebbels as Commissar for Total War on July 23, 1944, and in August he incited the Germans to support the German war effort.
Joseph Goebbels, who committed suicide one day after being inaugurated as German chancellor (Getty)
One day advisor
Prior to his suicide on April 30, 1945, in the final chapter of World War II;
Hitler appointed Paul Joseph Goebbels as chancellor of Germany, as indicated in his written will.
Goebbels, who had earned the reputation of the evil "genius" who lured the whole of Germany to follow Hitler, was head of the German government for just one day, choosing a more tragic end than his leader.
his suicide
After his hope was to win the war that he was primarily responsible for waging;
Goebbels and his wife committed suicide at his command the day after Hitler's suicide, on May 1, 1945.
This was after his children, aged 4 to 11, were put to sleep by injecting them with morphine with the help of a doctor, and their mother herself crushed the cyanide packets in their mouths.
The bodies of Goebbels and his wife were then cremated, but only partially, so they were easily identifiable.
The bodies were secretly buried with Hitler's remains near Brandenburg, and in 1970 their remains were exhumed and cremated, and the ashes thrown into the Elbe River.
Goebbels, the Nazi theorist from 1923 to April 1945, had kept notes in the form of notebooks, printed pages and on photographic plates, and accordingly published a complete edition in 28 volumes, the last part of the notes was published in the book "Goebbels Joseph: Diary 1945". Recent Posts.
Some of Goebbels' famous sayings:
“Faith moves mountains, but knowledge alone moves them to the right place.”
“The mission of advertising is not to be good publicity, but to be successful.”
"Successful advertising must contain few points and be repetitive."
“The bigger the lie, the easier it is to believe it.”
"Lie, lie, then lie, so that people will believe you."
“Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun.”
"Give me a media without conscience, I give you a people without awareness."