Goebbels, Paul Josef ___ 1897-1945 ___ German ___ politician

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Goebbels was born at Rheydt, a Catholic area of the Rhineland, with a club foot. At the start of World War I he volunteered for military service, but was rejected. He studied at universities in Bonn, Berlin and Heidelberg, and then worked as a journalist. He joined the Nazi party in 1924. By 1926 he had been appointed a party leader for the region of Berlin. A year later he launched 'Der Angriff' ('The Attack'). In 1928, he was elected to the Reichstag, and the following year he became the Nazi party propaganda chief. With Goebbels help, Hitler was elected leader in 1933, and Goebbels himself was made minister for propaganda and national enlightenment, a position he then held until his death, by suicide, in 1945. As a dedicated anti-Semite, Goebbels was strongly linked to the Nazi Final Solution policy, and, especially, the deportation of Jews from Berlin. In the final stages of the war, Hitler, before killing himself, appointed Goebbels Chancellor of Germany, but days later Goebbels and his wife killed themselves and their six children.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1925-1926 1939-1941 ___ military political Nazism family self people historyeye

WEB TEXT LINKS
good extracts
several extracts
about but with a different perspective!

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Hoover Institution Library and Archive - 1941-1943
Institute of Conteporary History

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
The Early Goebbels Diaries
The Goebbels Diaries 1939-41
The Goebbels Diaries: The Last Days
 

May 2005, June 2008
Please email if you have any corrections, additions or comments, or if you've found the site useful. Thank you.

IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.