He was born in Rheydt in the Rhineland into a modest Catholic family. Stricken with a congenital infirmity, he limps. In 1922, he obtained his doctorate in philosophy but failed to make a name for himself in literature.
It is ultimately politics that will bring him recognition. The same year, he became secretary of National Socialism and experimented with his talents as a polemicist and editor in the weekly review Völkische Freiheit . In August 1926, Hitler appointed him Berlin district commissioner and then party propaganda chief for the whole of Germany in 1928. In 1933, the Third th Chancellor Reich creates a Ministry of Information and Propaganda and appoints Goebbels as its head. As soon as he took power, the latter attached himself to the Nazification of the party, closing the borders to all foreign sources of information. As a relentless anti-Semite, he has no other mission than to persecute the Jews. He was also the instigator of Kristallnacht in 1938 (burning of synagogues). It makes this ministry a formidable weapon of war.
His loyalty to the Führer knew no bounds, so much so that Goebbels and his wife did not want to survive Hitler, who committed suicide on April 30, 1944. The 1 st May 1945, the couple poisoned their six children and killed themselves in turn. Alongside Himmler and Hitler, he remains one of the most powerful actors of the III e Reich.
1897 - 1945
Status
Politician