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{{Infobox officeholder
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| status =
| president = [[Karl Dönitz]]
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| predecessor = [[Adolf Hitler]]
| successor = [[Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk]] (as Leading Minister){{ref label|ch|1|}}
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{{Joseph Goebbels series}}
'''Paul Joseph Goebbels''' ({{IPA|de|ˈpaʊ̯l ˈjoːzɛf ˈɡœbl̩s|lang|De-Paul Joseph Goebbels.oga}}; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German [[Nazism|Nazi]] politician and [[philologist]] who was the ''[[Gauleiter]]'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief [[Propaganda in Nazi Germany|propagandist]] for the [[Nazi Party]], and then [[Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda|Reich Minister of Propaganda]] from 1933 to 1945
Goebbels, who aspired to be an author, obtained a doctorate in philology from the [[University of Heidelberg]] in 1921. He joined the Nazi Party in 1924, and worked with [[Gregor Strasser]] in its northern branch. He was appointed ''Gauleiter'' of Berlin in 1926, where he began to take an interest in the use of propaganda to promote the party and its programme. After the [[Adolf Hitler's rise to power|Nazis came to power]] in 1933, Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry quickly gained control over the news media, arts and information in [[Nazi Germany]]. He was particularly adept at using the relatively new media of radio and film for propaganda purposes. Topics for party propaganda included antisemitism, attacks on Christian churches, and (after the start of the [[Second World War]]) attempts to shape morale.
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Historians, including [[Richard J. Evans]] and [[Roger Manvell]], speculate that Goebbels' lifelong pursuit of women may have been in compensation for his physical disability.{{sfn|Evans|2003|p=204}}{{sfn|Manvell|Fraenkel|2010|p=164}} At Freiburg he met and fell in love with Anka Stalherm, who was three years his senior.{{sfn|Longerich|2015|pp=12, 13}} She went on to Würzburg to continue studying, as did Goebbels.{{sfn|Longerich|2015|p=14}} By 1920 the relationship with Anka was over; the break-up filled Goebbels with thoughts of suicide.{{sfn|Longerich|2015|pp=20, 21}}{{efn|name=letters}} In 1921 he wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, ''[[Michael (novel)|Michael]]'', a three-part work of which only Parts I and III have survived.{{sfn|Longerich|2015|p=16}} Goebbels felt he was writing his "own story".{{sfn|Longerich|2015|p=16}} Antisemitic content and material about a charismatic leader may have been added by Goebbels shortly before the book was published in 1929 by [[Eher-Verlag]], the publishing house of the [[Nazi Party]] (National Socialist German Workers' Party; NSDAP).{{sfn|Manvell|Fraenkel|2010|pp=19, 26}}
At the [[University of Heidelberg]] Goebbels wrote his [[doctoral thesis]] on [[Wilhelm von Schütz]], a minor 19th-century romantic dramatist.{{sfn|Manvell|Fraenkel|2010|p=17}} He had hoped to write his thesis under the supervision of [[Friedrich Gundolf]], a literary historian. It did not seem to bother Goebbels that Gundolf was Jewish.
Goebbels returned home and worked as a private tutor. He also found work as a journalist and was published in the local newspaper. His writing during that time reflected his growing [[antisemitism]] and dislike for modern culture. In the summer of 1922 he met and began a love affair with Else Janke, a schoolteacher.{{sfn|Longerich|2015|pp=22–25}} After she revealed to him that she was half-Jewish, Goebbels stated the "enchantment [was] ruined."{{sfn|Longerich|2015|p=24}} Nevertheless he continued to see her on and off until 1927.{{sfn|Longerich|2015|pp=72, 88}}
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Later on 1 May, Voss saw Goebbels for the last time: "While saying goodbye I asked Goebbels to join us. But he replied: 'The captain must not leave his sinking ship. I have thought about it all and decided to stay here. I have nowhere to go because with little children I will not be able to make it, especially with a leg like mine'."{{sfn|Vinogradov|2005|p=156}} On the evening of 1 May, Goebbels arranged for an SS dentist, [[Helmut Kunz]], to inject [[Goebbels children|his six children]] with [[morphine]] so that when they were unconscious, an ampule of [[cyanide|a cyanide compound]] could be then crushed in each of their mouths.{{sfn|Beevor|2002|pp=380, 381}} According to Kunz's later testimony, he gave the children morphine injections but Magda Goebbels and SS-''[[Obersturmbannführer]]'' [[Ludwig Stumpfegger]], Hitler's personal doctor, administered the cyanide.{{sfn|Beevor|2002|pp=380, 381}}
At around 20:30, Goebbels and Magda left the bunker and walked up to the garden of the Chancellery, where they killed themselves.{{sfn|Joachimsthaler|1999|p=52}} There are several different accounts of this event. One is that they each bit on a cyanide ampule near where Hitler had been buried and were given a [[coup de grâce]] immediately afterward.{{sfn|Beevor|2002|p=381}} Goebbels' SS adjutant [[Günther Schwägermann]] testified in 1948 that they walked ahead of him up the stairs and out into the Chancellery garden. He waited in the stairwell and heard shots. Schwägermann then walked up the remaining stairs and, once outside, saw their lifeless bodies. Following Goebbels' prior order, Schwägermann had an SS soldier fire several shots into Goebbels' body, which did not move.{{sfn|Joachimsthaler|1999|p=52}} In a contradictory account, {{Nowrap|SS-{{lang|de|[[Oberscharführer]]}}}} [[Rochus Misch]] claimed that mechanic [[Johannes Hentschel]] told him that early on 2 May, Goebbels killed himself in his room in the ''Führerbunker'', while Magda did so in the ''Vorbunker''.{{sfn|Misch|2014|pp=182, 183}}
The corpses were then doused with petrol, but they were only partially burned and not buried.{{sfn|Beevor|2002|p=381}} A few days later, the Soviets brought Voss back to the bunker to identify the Goebbels' partly burned bodies. The remains of the Goebbels family, Krebs, and [[Blondi#Death of Blondi and other dogs|Hitler's dogs]] were repeatedly buried and exhumed.{{sfn|Fest|2004|pp=163–164}}{{sfn|Vinogradov|2005|pp=111, 333}} The last burial was at the [[SMERSH]] facility in [[Magdeburg]] on 21 February 1946. In 1970, KGB director [[Yuri Andropov]] authorised an operation to destroy the remains.{{sfn|Vinogradov|2005|p=333}} On 4 April 1970, a Soviet [[KGB]] team used detailed burial charts to exhume five wooden boxes at the Magdeburg SMERSH facility. They were burned, crushed, and scattered into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the nearby [[Elbe]].{{sfn|Vinogradov|2005|pp=335, 336}}
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[[Category:Adolf Hitler]]
[[Category:Antisemitism in Germany]]
[[Category:Filicides in Germany]]
[[Category:Gauleiters]]
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