ebook img

Goebbels: A Biography PDF

907 Pages·2015·18.58 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Goebbels: A Biography

Translation copyright © 2015 by Random House LLC All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Originally published in Germany by Siedler Verlag in 2010. Copyright © 2010 by Peter Longerich. Photo credits are located beginning on this page. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Longerich, Peter. [Joseph Goebbels. English] Goebbels : a biography / Peter Longerich; translated by Alan Bance, Jeremy Noakes, and Lesley Sharpe. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-4000-6751-0 eBook ISBN 978-0-81299688-3 1. Goebbels, Joseph, 1897–1945. 2. Nazis—Biography. 3. Germany— History—1918–1933. 4. Germany— History—1933–1945. 5. World War, 1939–1945— Germany. 6. National socialism. I. Title. DD247.G6L6513 2014 943.086092—dc23 [B] 2014004828 eBook ISBN 9780812996883 www.atrandom.com eBook design adapted from printed book design by Christopher M. Zucker Cover design: Daniel Rembert Cover photograph: Joseph Goebbels, speaking from the steps of the Altes Museum, Berlin (© Hugo Jaeger/Timepix/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images v4.1 a CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Prologue 1897–1933: TO ADVANCE AT ANY PRICE CHAPTER 1: “Rings a Song Eternally / From Youth’s Happy Hours”: Goebbels on His Childhood and Youth CHAPTER 2: “Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child”: Goebbels’s Path to National Socialism CHAPTER 3: “Working with the Mind Is the Greatest Sacrifice”: Maneuvering in the Early NSDAP CHAPTER 4: “Faith Moves Mountains”: Political Beginnings in Berlin CHAPTER 5: “Struggle Is the Father of All Things”: The Gauleiter and the Capital of the Reich CHAPTER 6: “A Life Full of Work and Struggle”: Politics Between Berlin and Munich CHAPTER 7: “Dare to Live Dangerously!”: Goebbels’s Radicalism and Hitler’s Policy of “Legality” CHAPTER 8: “Now We Must Gain Power…One Way or Another!”: A Share of Government? CHAPTER 9: “I Have a Blind Faith in Victory”: On the Way to Power 1933–1939: CONTROLLING THE PUBLIC SPHERE UNDER DICTATORSHIP CHAPTER 10: “We’re Here to Stay!”: Taking Power CHAPTER 11: “Only Those Who Deserve Victory Will Keep It!”: Consolidating the Regime CHAPTER 12: “Whatever the Führer Does, He Does Completely”: The Establishment of the Führer State CHAPTER 13: “Taking Firm Control of the Inner Discipline of a People”: Propaganda and Manipulation of the Public Sphere CHAPTER 14: “Never Tire!”: Foreign Policy Successes and Anti-Jewish Policies CHAPTER 15: “The Tougher the Better!”: The Olympic Year, 1936 CHAPTER 16: “The Most Important Factors in Our Modern Cultural Life”: Consolidating Nazi Cultural Policies CHAPTER 17: “Don’t Look Around, Keep Marching On!”: The Firebrand as Peacemaker CHAPTER 18: “Maturity Is Only Achieved Through Suffering!”: Preparations for War—from the Munich Agreement to the Attack on Poland 1939–1945: WAR—TOTAL WAR—TOTAL DEFEAT CHAPTER 19: “War Is the Father of All Things”: The First Months of the War CHAPTER 20: “There Is Only One Sin: Cowardice!”: The Expansion of the War CHAPTER 21: “Our Banners Lead Us On to Victory!”: Between the War in the West and the War in the East CHAPTER 22: “A Great, a Wonderful Time, in Which a New Reich Will Be Born”: The Attack on the Soviet Union CHAPTER 23: “Getting the Nation to Accept Tough Policies”: The Winter Crisis of 1941–42 CHAPTER 24: “We Can See in Our Mind’s Eye a Happy People”: Offensives and Setbacks CHAPTER 25: “Do You Want Total War?”: The Second Winter Crisis CHAPTER 26: “The Masses Have Become Somewhat Skeptical or…Are in the Grip of a Permanent State of Hopelessness”: Crisis as a Permanent State CHAPTER 27: “I Have No Idea What the Führer’s Going to Do in the End”: The Search for a Way Out CHAPTER 28: “Virtually a Wartime Dictatorship on the Home Front”: Between an Apocalyptic Mood and Total War CHAPTER 29: “But When Will There Be Some Action?”: Downfall Conclusion Acknowledgments Sources Bibliography Notes Credits By Peter Longerich About the Author About the Translators PROLOGUE On April 30, 1945, a few hours after becoming Reich chancellor following Hitler’s death, Dr. Joseph Goebbels made a final attempt to delay his suicide, announced so often in advance. Goebbels wrote to the “commander-in-chief of Soviet forces,” informing him of Hitler’s suicide and of the arrangements for his succession that were now in force. As well as promoting Goebbels to chancellor, the dictator had made Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz president of the Reich. Goebbels proposed a ceasefire and offered to negotiate peace terms with the Soviet commander. The chief of the general staff, General Hans Krebs, a fluent Russian speaker from his days as military attaché in Moscow, undertook to cross the front line, now only a few hundred yards from the Reich Chancellery. Early in the morning Krebs delivered the letter to Major General Vasily Chuikov, commander of the 8th Guards Army, who had set up his headquarters in Tempelhof. He contacted Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Army attacking Berlin. Zhukov in turn informed the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin. Moscow delivered its answer some hours later: There could be no question of a ceasefire. The Soviet leader expected the German forces to surrender.1 When Krebs passed this on to Goebbels on May 1, Goebbels held Krebs responsible for the Russians’ refusal to negotiate. Goebbels sent another delegation to Chuikov. But this too was rejected.2 Goebbels now decided to inform Dönitz of Hitler’s death and the Führer’s arrangements regarding succession; he had wisely made his armistice overtures before the new head of state took office. In a discussion of the situation, Goebbels told the staff in the bunker that they were free to break out on their own initiative.3 He had repeatedly announced in public that if the Third Reich should fall he intended to end his own life and those of his family. In a radio address at the end of February he made it clear that he would regard life after the war as “not worth living, either for myself or for my children.”4 On April 15 he wrote a piece for the magazine Das Reich entitled “Staking Your Whole Life” in which he took his leave of readers by posing a rhetorical question: Could anyone “even conceive of continuing their existence in such conditions after an Allied victory?”5 No more than two weeks later, the end came for the Goebbels family. Goebbels left his wife to make the arrangements for the long-planned murder of the children. The precise circumstances surrounding their death (and the question of individual responsibility for it) have never been satisfactorily established. After the war the dentist Helmut Kunz repeatedly stated that he gave the children morphine injections, after which Magda Goebbels crushed cyanide capsules in their mouths. Later he changed his statement, ascribing the latter action to Hitler’s personal physician, Ludwig Stumpfegger.6 By April 28, Magda and Joseph Goebbels had already written farewell letters to Harald Quandt, Magda’s son from her first marriage, announcing their intention of killing themselves and their children. They entrusted the letters to the pilot Hanna Reitsch, who managed to fly out of the city that same day. Goebbels wrote that Germany would “recover from this terrible war, but only if presented with examples to give it fresh heart. We want to give such an example.”7 Magda maintained in her letter to Harald that both her husband and Hitler had urged her to leave Berlin. She had refused. She made no secret of her involvement in the plan to murder Harald’s half-sisters and brother: “The world after the Führer and National Socialism will not be worth living in, and that is why I have taken the children with me. They are too good for the life that will come after us, and a merciful God will understand my granting them release. […] We have only one aim: faithfulness to the Führer unto death.”8 Hitler’s adjutant, Günther Schwägermann, stated after the war that, on the evening of May 1, Goebbels called him in to tell him that he and his wife intended to take their own lives. According to Schwägermann’s testimony, Goebbels asked that “a shot should be fired to make sure he was dead” and that the corpses should be burned. With the preparations made, Goebbels said goodbye to him and gave him the photograph of the Führer that stood on his desk. Schwägermann conveys the importance that Goebbels attached to maintaining the proprieties until the very last minute of his life: “Shortly afterward, at about 20:30 hours, the minister and his wife came out of the room. He went calmly to the coat rack, put on his hat and coat, and pulled on his gloves. He offered his wife his arm and without a word left the bunker by the garden exit.” Not long after this, Schwägermann found the couple’s motionless bodies—both seemed to have taken poison9—in the garden. “As agreed, my companion shot Dr. Goebbels once or twice. Neither body showed any sign of

Description:
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE TELEGRAPH • From renowned German Holocaust historian Peter Longerich comes the definitive one-volume biography of Adolf Hitler’s malevolent minister of propaganda. In life, and in the grisly manner of his death, Joseph Goebbels was one of Adolf Hit
See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.