Goebbels Dead in Bunker: Nazi Propaganda Machine Ends

Joseph Goebbels was Hitler's Minister of Propaganda for twelve years, the architect of the Nazi media apparatus that controlled every newspaper, radio station, film studio, and public event in Germany. On May 1, 1945, one day after Hitler's suicide, he killed his six children and then himself in the garden of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Born in Rheydt, in the Rhineland, on October 29, 1897, Goebbels had a clubfoot from birth, the result of osteomyelitis, which exempted him from military service in World War I and caused him lifelong physical insecurity. He earned a doctorate in German philology from the University of Heidelberg in 1921 and initially pursued a literary career before being drawn to the Nazi movement in the mid-1920s. He joined the party in 1924 and rose quickly through its ranks. Hitler appointed him Gauleiter (regional leader) of Berlin in 1926, where he turned the party's street violence into political theater. He created the myth of Horst Wessel, a murdered SA stormtrooper, as a Nazi martyr. He organized rallies, torchlight parades, and provocations designed to generate media coverage. When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, Goebbels was made Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. He centralized control over all German media, banned opposition newspapers, coordinated the burning of books by Jewish, communist, and politically undesirable authors, and oversaw the production of propaganda films including Triumph of the Will and The Eternal Jew. His ministry controlled what Germans could read, hear, and see. He kept a diary that documented Nazi decision-making with disturbing clarity and self-awareness. He was present at discussions of the Final Solution. He organized the pogrom of Kristallnacht in November 1938. He managed public morale during the bombing campaigns and the military reversals of 1943-1945. He was Chancellor of Germany for one day, May 1, 1945, appointed in Hitler's will. That afternoon, he and his wife Magda poisoned their six children with cyanide capsules in the Fuhrerbunker. The children ranged in age from four to twelve. Both parents then killed themselves in the Chancellery garden.