David Irving’s much-sought 1996 biography of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief. Out of print until now. Now reprinted in better quality than ever with many new black and white and colour photographs.
Tina Rosenberg of the New York Times called it “a Rolls-Royce of a book”
Syndicated columnist Richard Cohen says: “Irving’s Goebbels — No Need to Be Timid”
“Anyone who wants to learn about the political acts of one of this century’s most able and most dangerous men, should remember that what they are reading is one brilliant propagandist writing about another.” Gitta Sereny in The Observer, London
HISTORIAN DAVID IRVING was the first to open and make use of the 80,000 pages of the Goebbels diaries – diaries on microfiches that lay boxed and unrecognized for fifty years in the Red Army’s “Trophy” archives in Moscow. From this extraordinary trove, to which Irving has added six years’ research in the archives of the Western World, he has written the first full-scale biography of Adolf Hitler’s evil genius, Dr. Joseph Goebbels.
The narrative accompanies Goebbels as an impoverished student to Heidelberg, where he wins the university’s most beautiful female student; belying the legends that he later nurtures, he remains sexually immature until his early thirties, as he throws himself into winning Berlin and then all of Germany for Hitler’s rising Nazi movement. In the late thirties, a Czech actress beguiles him, bringing him to the brink of suicide. In a frenzy bordering on delirium, he takes revenge on Germany’s Jews, igniting the Night of Broken Glass in November 1938; later, he hounds them out of Berlin and goads Hitler on toward the Final Solution.
Here, for the first time, are Goebbels’s secret, unpublished writings on the Reichstag Fire, the Night of the Long Knives, the Dollfuss murder, the Saar plebiscite, the invasion of Prague, Pearl Harbor, and scores of other turning points in modern history. Dr. Goebbels faithfully records Hitler’s innermost councils, documenting the hidden methods and strategies of Nazi leadership.
As his country is finally consumed by a rain of fire and slaughter from the air, it is Goebbels whose voice exhorts the people to hold out to the end. When that end comes in May 1945, he takes his wife and six children with him to the Nazi Valhalla with a callousness now revealed in full by the former Soviet archives.
At every turn of this masterful account, David Irving has built up his narrative solidly on the archival record, dispelling many legends about the Third Reich that have endured in the history books until today.
“Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich” is a masterpiece of research, and a compelling story of monstrous evil.
“David Irving is a patient researcher of unrivalled industry and success.” A. J. P. Taylor in The Observer
“Irving has an extraordinary talent for digging up otherwise obscure Nazi sources. He does have a real knack of penetrating the ‘mind’ of Nazism.” Professor Norman Stone in New Statesman
“Irving’s research effort is awesome.” Professor Larry Thompson in the Chicago Tribune
“David Irving, a remarkable researcher, a brilliant discoverer of documents, and a skillful writer, tells the story well.” Hugh Trevor-Roper in the Sunday Telegraph
jrmportelli88@gmail.com –
Great and impressive research by the author.
richardgraham65@gmail.com –
As usual, David Irving provides a concise and very detailed review of this part of history.
His research and sources are second to none.
Mr. Irving also manages to put a human face to the people that were deemed monsters and still are by media.
Mr. Irving puts you back in time, where from his excellent writing you become immersed in this period in history.
Fascinating book, beautifully written, one of the few books you read that you cannot put down.
It is disgraceful the way David Irving has been treated by the media and certain groups, what is it about the truth that scares them so much? Mmm, I could probably hazard a guess.
Hopefully, in time Mr. Irving will get the praise he so rightly deserves in his detailing this account of history. (I wont be holding my breath).
melmere@protonmail.com –
Probably the best book I have ever read. Day by day account of the war. I felt like I was eating electricity.
Somehow Mr Irving’s meticulous research & honesty, (Goebbels is humanised and the good and bad of him laid bare,) and it being from diaries of Goebbels himself result in it inducing a living experience. Quite surreal.
Stig-Ove Madetoja (verified owner) –
I read this and i can say that no one has ever described one of the key persons in The 3:rd reich this accurately.
Also in the end the last day tragedy of the Goebbels family is so well described that If you are of the emotional sort you will be moved. A human tragedy of few equivalents!
All in all a masterwork whatever the world might say. Read and know true history!
Greta –
I received this book as a gift and it is most researched publication on Goebbles I have encountered, free of indoctrinated bias. ALL other authors I have read come with the caveat of ignorant assumptions. They all pay credence to accepted doctrine, terrified to question the many inconsistencies. Irving writes in such an entertaining manor so you are able to picture the scene. He also possesses the extraordinary gift of the ability to assemble an astronomical amount of information and flesh out the most accurate account. You learn the true motives and methods of the most demonised individuals to exist in modern memory and their human element. These books should be essential learning for any student of the subject.
William –
Certainly the best book on Dr. Goebbels written in the English language from the man who discovered and deciphered the Goebbels diaries in Moscow. Even today, when David Irving is treated as a virtual non-person in Germany, this book is still listed in recent German language history books and other books about Goebbels.