Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death

Joseph Goebbels was possibly the most dangerous and intelligent member of the Nazi hierarchy, not excluding Hitler himself. Without Goebbels’ flair for propaganda and spectacular organisation the Führer might never have come to power.

It was through Goebbels’ practical and intuitive understanding of the instruments of ‘public enlightenment’ that the dictatorship was built and maintained. As the founder of the Reich Chamber of Culture, the Gauleiter of Berlin and the architect of the complex machinery of modern totalitarian propaganda, Goebbels was unquestionably one of the most significantly evil figures of the twentieth century.

A remarkable picture emerges of Goebbels’ mind as a schoolboy, student, lover, unsuccessful author and apprentice in political agitation. Interviews with his friends and family shed light on his character as a young man. This book charts the full trajectory of Goebbels’ career, showing him at the apex of his power, a master of oratory, a brilliant and cynical showman and a ruthless administrator.

Doctor Goebbels also portrays the man at the end, in the Berlin bunker, the most devoted of the Führer’s henchmen, committing the last gesture of propaganda of which he was capable: the sacrifice of his life and that of his wife and six children.

Roger Manvell & Heinrich Fraenkel
Paperback 256 pages