Goebbels Diaries

Goebbels began to keep a diary in October 1923, shortly before his 26th birthday, while unemployed and living in his parents' home at Rheydt in the Ruhr region. He had been given a diary as a present by Else Janke, a young woman (of part-Jewish background) with whom he had a turbulent but eventually unsuccessful relationship, and most of his early entries were about her. His biographer Toby Thacker writes: "Writing a diary quickly became a kind of therapy for this troubled young man, and several historians have commented on how extraordinarily candid and revealing Goebbels was, particularly in his early years as a diarist."[2] From 1923 onwards he wrote in his diary almost daily.

According to biographer Peter Longerich, Goebbels' diary entries from late 1923 to early 1924 reflected the writings of a man who was isolated, preoccupied by "religious-philosophical" issues, and lacked a sense of direction.[3] Diary entries of mid-December 1923 forward show Goebbels was moving towards the völkisch nationalist movement.[4] Goebbels first took an interest in Adolf Hitler and Nazism in March 1924.[5] In February 1924, Hitler's trial for treason had begun in the wake of his failed attempt to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, during 8–9 November 1923 (this failed coup became known as the Beer Hall Putsch).[6] The trial garnered Hitler much press and gave him a platform for propaganda.[7] After Goebbels first met Hitler in July 1925, however, the Nazi leader increasingly became the central figure in the diary. By July 1926 Goebbels was so enraptured by Hitler speaking on "racial issues", that he wrote: "It is impossible to reproduce what [Hitler] said. It must be experienced. He is a genius. The natural, creative instrument of a fate determined by God. I am deeply moved.".[8]

Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933 and appointed Goebbels Propaganda Minister. Goebbels then published an edited version of his diaries for the period of Hitler's rise to power in book form, under the title Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei: Eine historische Darstellung in Tagebuchblättern (From the Kaiserhof to the Reich Chancellery: a Historical Diary). The Kaiserhof was a Berlin hotel where Hitler stayed before he came to power. Goebbels's book was later published in English as My Part in Germany's Fight. Although this book was propagandist in intent, it provides insight into the mentality of the Nazi leadership at the time of their accession to power.

By July 1941 the diaries had grown to fill twenty thick volumes, and Goebbels realised that they were too valuable a resource to risk their destruction in an air raid. He therefore moved them from his study in his Berlin home to the underground vaults of the Reichsbank in central Berlin.[9] From this time onwards, he no longer wrote the diaries by hand. Instead he dictated them to a stenographer, who later typed up corrected versions. He began each day's entry with a resume of the day's military and political news. Thacker notes: "Goebbels was already aware that his diary constituted a remarkable historical document, and entertained fond hopes of reworking it at some future stage for further publication, devoting hours to each day's entry."[10] The involvement of a stenographer, however, meant that the diaries were no longer entirely secret, and they became less frank about personal matters.

By November 1944 it was evident to Goebbels that Germany was going to lose the war. He wrote in his diary: "How distant and alien indeed this beautiful world appears. Inwardly I have already taken leave of it." Realising that he was unlikely to survive the fall of the Third Reich, he gave orders that his diaries were to be copied for safekeeping, using the new technique of microfilm.[11] A special darkroom was created in Goebbels's apartment in central Berlin, and Goebbels's stenographer, Richard Otte, supervised the work.[12]

Goebbels made the last entry in his diary on the afternoon of 1 May 1945, hours before his death, but it was not preserved.[13] The last preserved entry dates to 9 April 1945. The boxes of glass plates containing the microfilmed diaries were sent in April 1945 to Potsdam just west of Berlin, where they were buried. The original handwritten and typed diaries were packed and stored in the Reich Chancellery.[14] Some of these survived, and formed the basis for the publication of sections of the diaries (mainly from the war years) after the war. The boxes of glass plates at Potsdam were discovered by the Soviets and shipped to Moscow, where they sat unopened until they were discovered by the German historian Elke Fröhlich in 1992. Only then did the publication of the full diaries become possible.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Diary of Joseph Goebbels.

• Churcher, Sharon (30 May 1983). "The Goebbels Diaries: More Controversy Over Nazi Papers". New York Magazine: 9.
• Fest, Joachim E. (1970). The Face Of The Third Reich: Portraits Of The Nazi Leadership. New York: Pantheon. p. 90. OCLC 556907716.
• Kershaw, Ian (1998). Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris. New York: W.W.Norton.
• Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6.
• Longerich, Peter (2015). Goebbels: A Biography. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-1400067510.
• Stroebel, Leslie; Zakia, Richard D. (1993). The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography. Focal Press.
• Thacker, Toby (2010) [2009]. Joseph Goebbels: Life and Death. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-27866-0.