Customer Reviews

Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

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When you have finished this book you will surely know almost everything about the life and character of Doctor Goebbels. It is intensively researched and thorough. But somehow it fails to transmit to the reader the continuous excitement and drama that characterized the hateful, roiling Third Reich. Perhaps that is attributable to the authors' commendable effort to present this despicable man in a balanced, non-biased form. But all in all a good history book worth the read.

Lies and deception, cruelty and hatred were the unsavoury ingredients which were brewed in the brain of Joseph Goebbles (1897-45). He was born in Rheydt in the Rhineland to good middle class parents; graduated with a Ph.D from Heidelberg and wrote "Michael" an early novel. Goebbels was an early member of the Nazi Party. The little doctor was a truculent worshipper of Adolf Hitler his beloved "Fuhrer." Goebbels was a rabid anti-semitic Nazi who drove the Communist Party out of Berlin in his role as Gauleiter of the German capital.
Goebbles was a meticulous well organized workaholic demanding perfection from himself and others. It is rumoured that he wore a different suit for each day of the year. He wed Magda Goebbles a lovely divorcee and rabid Nazi. The couple had six children. The Goebbels commited suicide in the Berlin bunker shortly following the suicide of Hitler. The infamous couple poisoned all of their children even though they could have grown up with relatives. Goebbels was unfaithful to Magda conducting affairs with showgirls and movie stars including Lida Baarova the fetching Czech screen idol of Germany. Magda was also, probably, unfaithful to Goebbels. The couple were forced to reconcile on orders from Hitler.
Goebbels was a master of mass propaganda controlling German media from radio to cinema to theatre and opera. His word was law and there was no freedom of expression in the arts during his reign over German culture.
This relatively brief but comprehensive biography of Goebbles will enable the reader to get inside the mind and world view of this cruel genius of oratory and hatred. The joint authors are deceased writing this book in the 1960s. Despite new research on Goebbles this biography is still worth reading.

Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel present a very well documented account of Joseph Goebbels which in itself reveals an individual who was driven and blinded by absolute loyalty and a quest for Nazi power. The authors worked from existing remnants of Goebbels diary's and accounts from people who knew and worked with the Goebbels family and Joseph Goebbels himself. The truths behind the historical facts is a stunning, even shocking, account of a very intelligent narcissistic individual who became the driving force of the Nazi Party. It was Goebbels who designed and shaped the great party rallies and was the written and radio voice of a propaganda machine that has been studied and followed by others, but never matched or duplicated. This book then should be read with care and understanding of an individual whose blind loyalty to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi cause made Germany the most powerful country in Europe and yet destroyed Germany completely in the end.

This monograph is a must read for any student of Nazi history to help better understand the inner circle of the Nazi Party and how it eventually destroyed itself.

Not a bad book to read.A little dry at times but overall very informative.I did like the Heinrich Himmler book by the same authors a little better.If you want to learn about Germany's past then it's a must read.

This is a good general biography of one of mankind's worst. The details revealed of his life are at least shocking. This man who was Hitler's #2 man in the Nazi heirarchy is revealed as a man who should not have been so high up in the Nazi world. He was defective physically and morally in spite of his high intelligence and organizational skills. It is interesting to read about such an evil man, his philosophies, his lust for the ladies and his ignoble suicide and his killing of his wife and children. One might say' read this and be warned. The photographs were few and of poor quality.

Joseph Goebbles personifies racial hatred and Roger Manvill brings this out A reader should read his books on Goring and Himmler to see how such warped thinkiing that one race is superior to another leads to a lack of vision which ultimitily to ones downfall.Goebbles physical characteristics are so far from the ideal "nordic type" its a wonder the others didn't subject him to "Racial purefication. Brilliant but equally evil