Hitler's Third Reich and World War II in the News is a daily edited review of WWII news, providing thought-provoking collection of hand-picked WW2 information.

WW2 category: Joseph Goebbels Nazi Propaganda Minister  -- See latest WWII news here. See also 'Goering', 'Himmler', 'Nazi Propaganda', 'Leni Riefenstahl'.

Murder in Hitler's Bunker: Who really poisoned the Goebbels children?     spiegel.de :: 2009-10-09
The murder by poisoning of the 6 children of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels remains a unclear. Newly discovered records reveal that SS doctor Helmut Kunz - who served in Totenkopf (Death's Head) division - admitted in the 1950s to having been an accomplice. --- Berlin, the end of April 1945, the Reich Chancellery. Hitler's bunker, under the Chancellery, is a place of gray concrete and iron doors. Russian soldiers are just a few hundred meters away, and everyone is advising the parents to take the kids to a safe place. But the Goebbels remain persistent. "It is better for my children to die than to live in disgrace and humiliation," says Magda Goebbels.    

Berlin 1945: Red Army officer Viktor Boev called Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Göbbels     russiatoday.com :: 2009-05-16
Just hours before the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945 a Red Army officer had a phone conversation with Josef Goebbels, recalls the memoirs of filmmaker Roman Karmen. While located at Siemensstadt district in Berlin his unit found a phone. The interpreter called the switch-board and asked to connect him with Doctor Goebbels. After a 15m wait they were switched to Reich Minister's cabinet. --- Interpreter Viktor Boev: "Who is on the phone?" Answer: "The Imperial Minister of Propaganda Doctor Goebbels." Boev: "I would like to ask you a few questions..." Nobody was penalized for the call, and the story became a hit at the soviet frontline.    

Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels swastika tapestry sparks row     thelocal.de :: 2009-05-15
The tapestry that once belonged to Nazi propaganda genius Joseph Goebbels has set off an ownership dispute after being allegedly smuggled of East Germany in the boot of a car in the 1980s. The 2.27 by 4.18-metre tapestry has been in police evidence vault for two years pending the resolution of an ownership disagreement. "It is one of a triptych of tapestries ordered from by the propaganda ministry in 1943, and finished in 1945. The image shows the sinking of the Nibelung treasure in the Rhine, from the old Norse mythological saga - and there are two swastikas embroidered on the top," explained spokesperson Markus Scharf.    

Hitler led henchmen in Kristallnacht riots, newly deciphered Goebbels diary passages show     telegraph.co.uk :: 2008-10-22
Adolf Hitler marched his henchmen onto the streets of Munich to perpetrate Kristallnact, deciphered passages from the diaries of Josef Goebbels show. A German scholar has uncovered evidence that on the night of Nov 9 the Führer led Nazis to destroy an important synagogue, on purpose throwing a match into a tinderbox. Historian Angela Hermann has deciphered a mysterious passage in the diary of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels that had baffled scholars ever since this section of Goebbels' diaries was retrieved from Moscow in 1992. The riddle focused on Goebbels' puzzling reference to "Hitler's Stosstrupp", or Hitler's "special troops".    

The Quandt family trying to explore the Nazi past     dw-world.de :: 2008-08-02
In addition to being one of the most important German arms producers during World War II, the Quandt family also had a private link to the Nazis: Guenther Quandt's first wife Magda Ritschel married Joseph Goebbels. After tv documentary "The Silence of the Quandt Family" recounted the use of Nazi prisoners helped the Quandt family make its fortune, Stefan Quandt explained: "The allegation that the family's assets can be traced back to the time of the Third Reich defrauds 50 years of ... success ... before the year 1933." The family hired historian Joachim Scholtyseck to research the family history - findings may lead the Quandts to face the skeletons in the family closet.     [Nazi Leaders, Axis high ranks]

Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels's Villa near Berlin taken off the market     bloomberg.com :: 2008-07-05
A villa near Berlin where Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels entertained young film actresses and singers like Lida Baarova was taken off the market amid fears that right-wing groups might try to purchase it. The city of Berlin, owner of the Waldhof am Bogensee estate, had tried to get at least 2M euros for the villa. Berlin city authorities gave the Waldhof to Goebbels in 1936, 3 years after the Nazi party assumed power in Germany, as a reward for his work as a Gauleiter (regional leader). "What a jewel the house has become, so idyllic, romantic, and peaceful," Goebbels wrote in his diary on October 29, 1936.     [Joseph Goebbels Nazi Propaganda Minister]

The hideaway Berlin villa used by Joseph Goebbels for sale     freerepublic.com :: 2007-01-28
The hideaway villa used by the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels to entertain his lovers is to be put up for sale. The rundown, empty Wald-hof estate, set in woodland 40 kilometres north of the city, has become a burden for the Berlin council. The propaganda minister, in charge of film-making, built a cinema on the premises and invited a string of film starlets to the house, including his mistress Lida Baarová. Other glamorous visitors included the Third Reich actresses Zarah Leander and Marika Rökk. It was not only play for Goebbels. He also wrote his most important speech, calling for Total War, in the study of the house during 1942-1943.    

Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels - The Man Behind Hitler documentary     tbo :: 2006-05-22
In May 1945, as the Russian army descended on Berlin, Joseph and Magda Goebbels carried out a morbid footnote to World War II. They subdued their 6 children with morphine, then crushed a capsule of cyanide in their mouths. Afterward, the parents committed suicide, their bodies falling not far from the man who led them to rise and ruin: Adolf Hitler. He was educated (a Ph.D. in philosophy), well-versed in the arts and a skilled orator. Goebbels was instrumental in feeding the Nazi machine and kept the German people on a diet of falsehoods. He set up the "burning of the books" -event in 1933.     [Nazi Leaders, Axis high ranks]

Profile of Third Reich propaganda minister Josef Goebbels     oregonlive :: 2006-05-19
Documentary "The Man Behind Hitler" offers excerpts from the diary of propaganda minister Josef Goebbels. Parts of it were lost for decades in the Soviet Union. He admired Hitler early, joined his new political movement in 1924. He was soon calling Nazism a religion and expected it to conquer the world. Goebbels told his diary that he loved his new wife Magda more than anyone, but that the party still came first. He did not confide his fervent affair with movie star Lida Baarova, which Hitler ended in 1938. He hated many of his fellow Nazis, SA head Ernst Rohm, SS head Heinrich Himmler and the operatic fop Hermann Goering. But on film he smiles and shakes hands with them.    

Hitler's adoring henchman in his own words - Joseph Goebbels     azstarnet :: 2006-01-12
You could call it "The Prince of Darkness Diaries." Documentarian Lutz Hachmeister uses journals to form a chilling and often illuminating portrait of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Film has nearly continuous narration of the diaries that Goebbels kept 1924-1945, illustrated by archive footage. Goebbels committed suicide in 1945 at age 47. In effect, Goebbels tells his own story in "The Goebbels Experiment." What emerges is an intimate look at the rise and fall of the Third Reich through the eyes of the pretentious, driven figure in charge of Nazi propaganda.    

The Goebbels Experiment: Enthralling film of excerpts from Goebbels's diaries     Boston :: 2005-11-11
Entries are spoken over montages of archival footage that span Goebbels's miserable childhood at the start of the 20th century to his ghastly family suicide in 1945. He loved Germany to death, and he remained a defiant nationalist even as the Allies invaded Berlin. The diary entries the film culls present a man teeming with schadenfreude for all things non-German.    

Horst Wessel - Making a martyr     everything 2 :: 2005-05-08
Horst Wessel became a member of the Bismarck-Jugend and joined the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA Stormtroopers). Horst Wessel was a lowlife, but in death he proved useful to his Reich. After his death, Goebbels set about making a martyr of him with a speech "Die Fahne Hoch!" - Raise high the flag - after the first line of a poem written by Wessel. He was exalted as a example of Nazi virtue; the seedier aspects were played down and his murder was portrayed as National Socialism's struggle against Marxism. The poem quoted by Goebbels was set to music and became a Nazi anthem and SA marching song: Die Fahne Hoch, Horst Wessel Lied or "The Horst Wessel Song."     [Music of Third Reich & Military Marches]

Swingtime for Hitler - Banning jazz     guardian :: 2004-10-27
A few weeks after Hitler came to power in 1933, the German broadcasting authority announced its intention to ban jazz from the airwaves. It was degenerate, subhuman music, the reasoning went, written by Jews and performed by blacks. Two years later, the authority proudly declared: "As of today, nigger jazz is finally switched off on German radio." Then, in 1940, a jazz band formed in Berlin. The band was the brainchild of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and the lyrics were Axis propaganda, meant only for Allied ears. Any Germans caught listening were subject to "very, very severe punishment".    

Our Hitler - Goebbels' 1944 Speech on Hitler's 55th Birthday     calvin :: 2004-05-15
"... He will be the man of the century, not his opponents. He gave this century its meaning, its content, its goal. ... He points the way. He commands, we follow. We, his old and tested comrades, march in the first row behind him. We are tested by danger, steeled by misfortune, hardened by storm and trial, but also crowned with the first victories of the coming new world. We are at the head of a countless multitude who carry and defend the future of the Reich. We defend the cause of the nation, which has found its visible form in the Führer. In this battle between life and death, he is and will remain for us what he always was: Our Hitler!"     [Hitler's birthday: Birth date of Adolf Hitler]

Of all the devotees of Hitler none sacrificed more than Magda Goebbels     telegraph :: 2002-04-29
Whereas soldiers offered up their own lives for Hitler, she gave up her six children, and then committed suicide herself. The fact that Hitler admired her, and took her side when Goebbels's philandering became too blatant, twice saved her marriage. In the absence of a wife for the Führer Magda personify German motherhood. In her last letter (from the Führerbunker) to her son Harald: "Our magnificent idea is finished - and with it everything beautiful, admirable, noble and good that I have known in my life. The world that will come after the Führer and National Socialism is not worth living in, and for that reason I have brought the children here as well."     [Nazi Women of Third Reich]

See also:
'Goering'
'Himmler'
'Nazi Propaganda'
'Leni Riefenstahl'.

Although the articles linked from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich 1933-1945 and World War II in the News are reviewed and specially selected, they do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, who is not responsible for the content of any external sites. This service is © Joni Nuutinen 2005-2010. All rights reserved.