Dr.

Joseph Goebbels born on 29 October 1897 in Monchengladbach was a

German politician and the minister of propaganda during the Nazi regime.
He studied literature and philosophy at the Heidelberg University.
He was a close friend of Adolf Hitler. Goebbels stayed with Hitler in the
Fhrerbunker until Hitler's suicide on 30 April 1945.
After Hitler's death, Goebbels was chancellor of Germany for one day
before he and his wife Magda Goebbels killed themselves. Just before she
died, Magda killed their six children with poison.
Goebbels joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party in 1926. In the same year, Hitler
made him a Gauleiter for Berlin and Brandenburg.
In 1927, Goebbels published the first the Nazi newspaper, Der Angriff (The Attack), in Berlin. The
newspaper was printed twice a week
In 1928, he became a member of the German Reichstag. He kept this position until 1945
In 1929, Goebbels saw his first movie with sound, "The Singing Fool". He said it would be the
future of propaganda
In 1930, he became the Reichspropagandaleiter (Chief of the German Propaganda) and the deputy
of Heinrich Himmler. Goebbels married Magda Quand in 1931. Franz Ritter von Epp and Adolf
Hitler were the witnesses at the wedding
At the start of the Second World War, Goebbels ordered to broadcast special announcements at the
cinema and on the radio.
On 26 May 1940, he published the new weekly newspaper Das Reich (The Imperium) for the first
time
In 1942, Goebbels took part in the Wannsee Conference. The conference was to tell leaders of
government departments that dealt with Jews. He was one of the Nazi leaders who planned the Final
Solution to kill all the Jewish people.
In 1943, he gave a well-known speech in the Berlin Sportpalast where he called the Germans to
support total war.
On 22 April 1945, two days after Adolf Hitler's birthday, he arrived in the Fhrerbunker in Berlin.
He was one of the witnesses to the marriage of Hitler to Eva Braun. On the same day, Hitler made
him his successor
After Hitler's suicide on 30 April, he became the Chancellor of Germany. He only held this job for
one day, because on 1 May 1945, his wife poisoned their six children with the help of an SS doctor.
Immediately afterward he and his wife went up to the garden of the Chancellery, where they killed
themselves. The details of their suicides are uncertain.
After the war, Rear-Admiral Michael Musmanno, a U.S. naval officer and judge, published several
accounts apparently based on eye-witness testimony.
According to one account. "While Schwgermann was preparing the petrol, he heard a shot.
Goebbels had shot himself and his wife took poison. Schwgermann ordered one of the soldiers to
shoot Goebbels again because he was unable to do it himself."
One SS officer said they each took cyanide and ordered an SS trooper to shoot them both. According
to another account, Goebbels shot his wife and then killed himself. This version is portrayed in the
movies The Bunker and Downfall.