Part biography and part horror, Manvell and Fraenkel delve deep into the mystery shrouding one of Hitler's most evil henchman. Using first-hand accounts from the Nuremberg Trials; by Goebbel's sister Maria; and from the fiance of his youth, Else, Goebbel's carefully crafted character is ripped apart to reveal a boy determined to overcome youthful disabilities and prove, above all, his devotion and dedication to his country. --

Joseph Goebbels was one of Adolf Hitler’s most loyal acolytes. But how did this club-footed son of a factory worker rise from obscurity to become Hitler’s malevolent minister of propaganda, most trusted lieutenant and personally anointed successor? In this definitive one-volume biography, renowned German Holocaust historian Peter Longerich sifts through the historical record – and thirty thousand pages of Goebbels’s own diary entries – to answer that question. Longerich paints a chilling picture of a man driven by a narcissistic desire for recognition who found the personal affirmation he craved within the virulently racist National Socialist movement – and whose lifelong search for a charismatic father figure inexorably led him to Hitler. This comprehensive biography documents Goebbels’ ascent through the ranks of the Nazi Party, where he became a member of the Führer’s inner circle and launched a brutal campaign of anti-Semitic propaganda. Goebbels delivers fresh and important insight into how the Nazi message of hate was conceived, nurtured, and disseminated, and shreds the myth of Goebbels’ own genius for propaganda. It also reveals a man dogged by insecurities and – though endowed with near-dictatorial control of the media – beset by bureaucratic infighting. And, as never before, Longerich exposes Goebbels’s twisted personal life – his mawkish sentimentality, manipulative nature, and voracious sexual appetite. This complete portrait of the man behind Hitler’s message is sure to become a standard for historians and students of the Holocaust for decades to come.

Traces the life and career of the Nazi propaganda minister, describing how he became a member of Hitler's inner circle as well as unusual aspects of his character, including his all-consuming jealousy of his rivals and his obsession with sex.

"Paul Joseph Goebbels (help·info) (German: [œbls];[1] 29 October 1897? 1 May 1945) was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous orations and visceral and homicidal antisemitism."--Wikipedia.

A New York Times bestseller, Norman Ohler's Blitzed is a "fascinating, engrossing, often dark history of drug use in the Third Reich” (Washington Post). The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. Yet as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs: cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, which were consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to German soldiers. In fact, troops were encouraged, and in some cases ordered, to take rations of a form of crystal meth—the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to account for the breakneck invasion that sealed the fall of France in 1940, as well as other German military victories. Hitler himself became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs—ultimately including Eukodal, a cousin of heroin—administered by his personal doctor. Thoroughly researched and rivetingly readable, Blitzed throws light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows. “Delightfully nuts.”—The New Yorker

Reveals the daily occurrences in the history of the Third Reich, and the disintegration of the Nazi High Command, through the eyes of Goebbels, one of Hitler's closest confidants

The Berlin newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack), founded by Joseph Goebbels in 1927, was a significant instrument for arousing support for Nazi ideas. Berlin was the center of the political life of the Weimar Republic, and Goebbels became an actor upon this frenetic stage in 1926, becoming Gauleiter of Berlin's Nazis. Focusing on the period from 1927 to 1933, a time the Nazis later called "the blood years," Russel Lemmons examines how Der Angriff was used to promote support for Nazism. Some of the most important propaganda motifs of the Third Reich first appeared in the pages of Der Angriff. Horst Wessel, murdered by the German Communist Party in 1930, became the archetypal Nazi hero; much of his legend began on the pages of Der Angriff. Other Nazi propaganda themes—the "Unknown SA man" and the "myth of resurrection and return"—made their first appearances in this newspaper. How could the Germans, seemingly among the most cultured people in Europe, hand over their fate to the Nazis? As this book demonstrates, Der Angriff had much to do with the rise of National Socialism in Berlin and the cataclysmic results.

The twelve years of the Third Reich casts a dark shadow over history. Fierce debates still rage over many of the hows, whys and wherefores of this perplexing period. Leading expert on German history, Martin Kitchen, provides a concise, accessible and provocative account of Nazi Germany. It takes into account the political, social, economic and cultural ramifications, and sets it within the context of the times, while pointing out those areas that still defy our understanding. This lively account addresses major issues such as the reasons for Hitler’s extraordinary popularity, his hold over the German people even when all seemed lost, the role of ideology, the cooption of the elites, and the descent into war for race and space, culminating in the horrors of the holocaust.

"Up to the last moment, his overwhelming, despotic authority aroused false hopes and deceived his people and his entourage. Only at the end, when I watched the inglorious collapse and the obstinacy of his final downfall, was I able suddenly to fit together the bits of mosaic I had been amassing for twelve years into a complete picture of his opaque and sphinx-like personality." - Otto Dietrich When Otto Dietrich was invited in 1933 to become Adolf Hitler's press chief, he accepted with the simple, uncritical conviction that Adolf Hitler was a great man, dedicated to promoting peace and the welfare for the German people. At the end of the war, imprisoned and disillusioned, Dietrich sat down to write what he had seen and heard in twelve years of the closest association with Hitler, requesting that it be published after his death. Dietrich's role placed him in a privileged position. He was hired by Hitler in 1933, and was a confidant until 1945, and he worked and clashed with Joseph Goebbels. His direct, personal experience of life at the heart in the Reich makes for compelling reading.