Joseph goebbels biography jews killed

Bramsted , R. Lemmons , and F. Moeller tr. Hachmeister, dir. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. All rights reserved. See more Encyclopedia articles on: German History: Biographies. History Government U. 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.

We shall become Reichstag deputies in order that the Weimar ideology should itself help us to destroy it. He was rewarded on March 13, , with the position of Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, which gave him total control of the communications media - i. For five years Goebbels chafed at the leash as the Nazi regime sought to consolidate itself and win international recognition.

His opportunity came with the Kristallnacht pogrom of November , , which he orchestrated after kindling the flame with a rabble-rousing speech to Party leaders assembled in the Munich Altes Rathaus Old Town Hall for the annual celebration of the Beer-Hall putsch. Goebbels was a womanizer before and after his marriage in to Magda Quandt, a fervent admirer of Hitler.

In , when Magda tried to divorce him because of his endless love affairs with beautiful actresses, it was Hitler who intervened to straighten out the situation. During World War II relations between Hitler and Goebbels became more intimate, especially as the war situation deteriorated and the Minister of Propaganda encouraged the German people to ever greater efforts.

After the Allies insisted on unconditional surrender, Goebbels turned this to advantage, convincing his audience that there was no choice except victory or destruction. In a famous speech on February 18, , in the Berlin Sportpalast, Goebbels created an atmosphere of wild emotion, winning the agreement of his listeners to mobilization for total war.

In , Goebbels was elected to the Reichstag, the German Parliament. More significantly, Hitler named him the Nazi Party propaganda director. It was in this capacity that Goebbels began formulating the strategy that fashioned the myth of Hitler as a brilliant and decisive leader. He arranged massive political gatherings at which Hitler was presented as the savior of a new Germany.

Such events and maneuverings played a pivotal role in convincing the German people that their country would regain its honor only by giving unwavering support to Hitler. In this capacity, Goebbels had complete jurisdiction over the content of German newspapers, magazines, books, music, films, stage plays, radio programs and fine arts. His mission was to censor all opposition to Hitler and present the chancellor and the Nazi Party in the most positive light while stirring up hatred for Jewish people.

In September , Goebbels became director of the newly formed Reich Chamber of Culture, whose mission was to control all aspects of the creative arts. An offshoot of the formation of the chamber was the forced unemployment of all Jewish creative artists, including writers, musicians and theater and film actors and directors. Then in October came the passage of the Reich Press Law, which ordered the removal of all Jewish and non-Nazi editors from German newspapers and magazines.

At the start of World War II in , Goebbels was entrusted with the task of uplifting the spirit of the German people and employing the media, and specifically the cinema, to convince the population to support the war effort. It had to appeal to the emotions and repeat its message endlessly but with variations in style. He favored holding to the truth as much as possible.

However, Goebbels had no compunction about lying—although he thought it safer to selectively present or distort material rather than completely fabricate it. Goebbels was a prime mover in the Nazis' anti-Semitic campaign. He regularly issued orders to intensify the campaign against the Jews. At the book burning in Berlin in May , he announced the end of an "era of Jewish hyperintellectualism" Reuth, , pp.

He played a central role in the anti-Semitic violence of Kristallnacht the night of broken glass on November 9, He wanted Berlin to be one of the first major German cities to be "free of Jews. The former was a so-called historic film set in the eighteenth century that accused Jews of financial and sexual crimes, the latter a documentary-style film based largely on footage filmed after the German invasion of Poland.

It compared Jews to rats and suggested that they were responsible for most of the world's ills. In his final major anti-Semitic essay in January , Goebbels wrote: "Humanity would sink into eternal darkness, it would fall into a dull and primitive state, were the Jews to win this war. They are the incarnation of that destructive force that in these terrible years has guided the enemy war leadership in a fight against all that we see as noble, beautiful and worth keeping" p.

After Hitler committed suicide as the Russian siege of Berlin raged, Goebbels and his wife decided to also end their lives on May 1, , to avoid capture, but only after administering a fatal dose of poison to their six children. To their way of thinking, death, even that of their children, was preferable to life under a government other than the Third Reich.

Although Goebbels did not succeed in persuading all Germans to be strongly anti-Semitic, his propaganda intensified existing attitudes and made it easier for Germans to believe that the persecution of the Jews was at least partially justified.

Joseph goebbels biography jews killed

The Holocaust would not have been possible in Ten years of unremitting anti-Semitic propaganda established the foundation on which the concentration camps were built. Bramsted, E. Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda. German Propaganda Archive. Goebbels, Joseph Reuth, R. New York : Harcourt Brace. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

January 8,