His name is almost a byword for political propaganda. His legacy is one of relentless allegiance to the Nazi cause and terrible cruelty. Called "the genius of spin" and "Reich Liar-General," he
Actor Kenneth Branagh read Joseph Goebbels' portrait The Man Behind Hitler, which was taken straight from his diaries kept from 1924, when he joined the Nazi party, until his suicide in 1945. This 90-minute documentary from directors Lutz Hachmeister and Michael Kloft presents never-before-seen footage providing an insider's view of the growth of the Nazi party.
An unusual candidate to rank second most powerful person in Nazi Germany was Goebbels. Born into a strict Roman Catholic family in 1897, he was small in stature and suffered with a deformed foot from polio that would later prevent him from military duty. Goebbels withdrew into books and writing, a reclusive, sour young man. In 1924 he signed up for the Nazi party. It was as a party member that his later speaking and writing abilities were acknowledged and developed. Goebbels developed into a confident orator serving as Adolf Hitler's right-hand man.
Branagh relates Goebbels' early attraction to the Nazi party and his adoration of Hitler using his early journal entries: "I bow to his superiority. I find his political brilliance admirable.
Selected minister of propaganda in 1929, Goebbels oversaw all of Germany's media. Not one movie was made, not one newspaper printed, not one radio show aired without his clearance. To forward the Nazi cause, he planned grand parades and demonstrations. Among many notorious Third Reich projects, he was a major coordinator of Kristallnacht, the violent destruction of synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses across Germany; the burning of books in Berlin; and the "Final Solution," the scheme to deport Jews from Germany and label them "exterminable."
Devotion to his work and his Führer was pure. Of Hitler, he said, "you can't help liking him as a person." "His mind is really amazing. The born inspirer! With him we can rule the planet." He saw the Nazi party as Germany's only hope and believed that Nazi success depended mostly on his work and words.
Goebbels insisted to the last that Hitler and the Nazi party would triumph, clinging tightly to his convictions even as the tide of the war turned against Germany. One day following his darling Führer's suicide, the reality of defeat sank in. Magda, his wife, poisoned their six children in sleep so they would not fall into enemy hands. Magda and Joseph ended their own lives early the next morning.
Executive producer Mark Samels of American Experience says, "by examining the inner workings of the Nazi party's chief spokesman," "this film chillingly conveys the power of evil."