This article examines the role of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, during the final year of World War II (1944–1945). While the Third Reich collapsed militarily, Goebbels reached the zenith of his political power. Relying heavily on his extensive diaries—which span from 1923 to his final days in the Berlin bunker—the study explores how Goebbels’s sophisticated propaganda machine sustained the regime, radicalized the home front, and accelerated the Holocaust amidst impending doom.
Goebbels stood out among Nazi leadership as an intellectual, shaped by a lower-middle-class Catholic background, a severe physical disability, and early literary ambitions. Frustrated by initial career rejections, he joined the Nazi party in 1924, becoming a master of rhetoric and helping forge the mystical “Hitler Myth.” Following the failed July 20, 1944 assassination attempt (“Operation Valkyrie”), Goebbels seized a pivotal opportunity to expand his influence. Allied with Albert Speer, he was appointed Plenipotentiary for Total War. As Hitler retreated into military delusions and psychological isolation, Goebbels emerged as the regime’s psychological dictator, demanding absolute national cohesion and total mobilization.
Crucially, the article highlights that the irrational decision to continue a lost war manifested in the intense acceleration of the “Final Solution.” Even as Germany suffered catastrophic military defeats and severe aerial bombings, the extermination of European Jews was aggressively expanded. The deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews in mid-1944, peak operations at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and brutal winter death marches demonstrate that genocide remained a primary, uninterrupted objective. Goebbels viewed the destruction of international Jewry as a vital mechanism to enforce a “burned bridges” policy. By framing the war as an existential struggle against “international Jewry” and Bolshevism, he ensured that soldiers and civilians remained bound to a radical ideology with no possibility of retreat.
As Soviet forces closed in on Berlin in April 1945, Goebbels orchestrated a theatrical, “Wagnerian” conclusion. Rather than facing Allied capture, Joseph and Magda Goebbels committed suicide in the bunker on May 1, 1945, killing their six children and aligning their fate with Hitler’s final act. Ultimately, Ozacky-Stern demonstrates that Goebbels’s propaganda of extermination succeeded in captivating millions of Germans until the bitter end. By prioritizing ideological fanaticism and mass murder over national survival, the Nazi leadership dragged the nation into total ruin, cementing a dark legacy driven by unscrupulous opportunism and profound contempt for humanity.
Ozacky-Stern, Daniela (2021). “Propaganda of extermination: Goebbels and the last year of World War II”. In Virányi, Péter (Ed.), Európa 1944–1945: Konferenciakötet (pp. 265–281). MTA II. Világháború Története Albizottság.
