DID A BETRAYAL LEAD TO THE RISE OF ADOLF HITLER?

He is not the typical Nazi. Since the party’s re-establishment in early 1925, Joseph Goebbels has been affiliated with the left wing of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—and he wants nothing to do with Hitler’s right-wing i deology. Quite the contrar y: Many in the party pin their hopes on Goebbels, a gifted speaker whom they see as a secret weapon against the influence of the right-wing military and elite capitalist interests. But appearances are often deceptive. Goebbels, who had struggled with a club foot since childhood, is a penniless doctoral graduate. In his diary he has repeatedly noted how difficult it is to provide for himself. He is desperately looking for security—and is even prepared to betray his values to get it. It is a decision that ultimately costs the lives of millions of people.

In the early 1920s political success is still a far-off dream for Goebbels. In the aftermath of World War I, as General Walther von Lüttwitz attempts the Kapp

Putsch against Germany’s postwar Weimar Republic, Goebbels is rmly not on the side of the right-wing nationalists; he supports the Ruhr Red Army, a group of roughly 50,000 workers who are opposed to the putsch. Goebbels’ great dream is a Germany based on a socialist model. He speaks of “holy Russia,” is a staunch anticapitalist, seeks to stifle the power of the aristocracy and industrial magnates, and says he is an admirer of Lenin and a “German communist.”

When Austrian-born Adolf Hitler refounds Germany’s Nazi Party in February of 1925 after being released from jail, Goebbels and his influential colleague Otto Strasser head the left wing of the party. Were it up to him, he would expel the “petit bourgeois Adolf Hitler” from the party. When Goebbels attends the Bamberg Conference in 1926, convened by Hitler to curtail dissent in the party and establish himself as undisputed party leader, Goebbels refuses to speak. Several weeks later Hitler invites Goebbels to come to Munich—where he somehow turns the socialist around. And ever since this visit, Goebbels becomes a fervent admirer of Hitler. “I bow to the political genius!” For Hitler, Goebbels’ betrayal of his principles is a stroke of luck, because as Hitler’s propaganda minister he paves the way for the Third Reich—which leads to Europe’s devastation.

JOSEPH GOEBBELS MUNICH 1926 MANIPULATION OF THE MASSES After fully committing himself to Adolf Hitler in 1926, Joseph Goebbels became responsible for developing the “cult of the Führer” for propaganda purposes. The photo above at right shows Hitler at a military parade in his honor in Braunschweig, Germany, in 1931.