 Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death
by Roger Manvell
List Price: $22.95
Paperback: 256 pages
ISBN: 1853677159
Publisher: Greenhill Books
Publish Date: November 27, 2006
New in Print
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 organization the Fuehrer might never have come to
power. If Hitler was the Nazi genius of destructive evil, Goebbels was its
constructive genius, for it was through his 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 can be considered one of the most
significantly evil and portentous 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 Fuehrer’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.
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