Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Evil.

Powerful.

Uncompromising.

Ruthless.

Behind closed doors, a private hell.

- Tyrants often deviate in their sexual behaviour.

- He fantasised about older women

- He puts make-up on.

- He had thousands of concubines.

They were this glamourous, gun-toting, sex objects.

- Fire on designated targets. NARRATOR: The psychological insights

of the degenerate and deviant. - He was obsessed with aphrodisiacs.

- It is typical of somebody who is sexually repressed.

- Power can change somebody.

NARRATOR: 30,000 handwritten pages of bile and self-aggrandisement.

Diaries written by the hand that helped conduct a genocide.

Joseph Goebbels dreamed that his words would one day

be quoted by descendants of the Third Reich.

They mockingly stand today

as testament to the man dubbed the Poison Dwarf.

Tellingly, they also secretly document

his own lecherous abuse of hundreds of German women.

- One of the most sexually powerful people

amongst the leaders in the Third Reich.

NARRATOR: As Hitler's all-powerful Reich Minister of Propaganda,

he was the face and voice of a regime

that slaughtered six million Jews.

- He fervently believed that they are right,

that they are the people who will control the entire world.

NARRATOR: In public,

he was portrayed as the archetypical wholesome Nazi family man.

But in private, Goebbels was a sadistic killer

and sexual predator...

- He would even grab and fondle women in public

In front of his wife.

NARRATOR: ..described as the most prolific Cassanova

in the Nazi regime.

- He wrote in his journal about all of his sexual conquests,

30,000 pages. - Joseph Goebbels

would meet the criteria of what I think is best termed

a sexual athlete. In other words, it was a competition.

So you describe what you're doing, who you're doing it with,

and you tick the box and then move on to the next one.

GOEBBELS: Heil! Heil! CROWD: Heil! Heil!

NARRATOR: Paul Joseph Goebbels was born on 29th October, 1897

in the Rhineland region of western Germany

bordering France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

At the turn of the century,

the Rhineland was the heart of Germany's industrial revolution.

Joseph's father, Fritz Goebbels, was a factory clerk,

a strict Roman Catholic and a harsh disciplinarian.

From his earliest years it was his mother, Katharina,

to whom young Joseph turned for comfort..

- Growing up, Goebbels really didn't like his dad much at all.

But he was very close with his mother.

It's likely that that relationship influenced his future relationships

with women.

- If you look at Goebbel's relationship

with his parents, you see the same thing as with Adolf Hitler.

There's an over-bonded, probably pathological relationship

with the mother, and a distance, even a hostility towards a father

who is perceived as absent, cruel, all those things.

NARRATOR: Joseph, seen here with his brother,

took communion aged 12.

Without money or social standing, he even contemplated the priesthood,

an historical sliding door moment

barely comprehendible with the monster he would become.

But Joseph was not a healthy child.

Smaller than the other kids, he had a club-foot,

believed to be due to polio, osteomyelitis

or perhaps a congenital deformity.

- He was a shrimp, and he was a shrimp with a limp.

- Goebbels suffered from polio, and this caused him

to have a physical disability,

and that of course impacted his psyche growing up.

It caused him to feel insecure, low self-esteem, inferior.

- He had a physical handicap,

and at that time and in that society,

that wasn't easy to live with.

- But he translated that into leaning in

on his sharp intellect. It is here that he garnered the most power.

NARRATOR: Joseph's parents paid for corrective surgery

to his club foot. It failed.

His physical disability would curse Goebbels for life.

He later wrote in his diary...

- "From that moment my youth held little joy for me.

I had to look after myself and could no longer join in

the other children's games. I became lonely and solitary.

My former friends had no affection for me."

- Goebbels' diaries reveal, by their sheer obsessiveness,

the fact that he was preoccupied with his own image,

his self-esteem and how he was perceived by the world.

NARRATOR: But what Goebbels did possess

was a formidable intellect.

- His brain compensated for his physical deformities.

He was very pushy, extremely ambitious,

extraordinarily reaching for heights

that were out of the ordinary.

NARRATOR: Together with this intellectual drive

and physical insecurity went a hyperactive libido.

In his mid-teens, Goebbels began to yearn for sexual encounters

with older women.

- So Goebbel's fantasy about older women

is typical of somebody who's sexually repressed.

So an older women would seem knowledgeable,

sexually experienced, one that, like a sexual mother,

will replace the mother, but work with him sexually.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand

was shot down by a Serbian patriot,

and the greatest war the world had known exploded in Europe.

NARRATOR: In 1914, Germany's territorial ambitions

swept across Europe.

But as thousands of young men marched into the Great War,

Goebbels was rejected by the army due to his club foot.

- When we read accounts of Goebbels, it's obvious that he overcompensated

for his physical disability. He was extremely ambitious.

So he was overcompensating, I believe,

for his physical deformity and his problems as a child

in competitive sports.

NARRATOR: Humiliated at his rejection by the military,

Goebbels instead threw himself into academia, at Bonn University.

- He studied literature first, and that was of course

a very good basis for becoming the world's greatest propagandist.

NARRATOR: Goebbels' appetite for learning, like his sex drive,

was insatiable. He quickly learned that having a sharp intellect

would compensate for his feelings of physical inadequacy

in all sorts of ways.

Then as a student at Freiburg,

Goebbels met pretty, 21-year-old Anka Stalherm.

The attraction was mutual.

But Anka's parents did not approve.

Her well-to-do mother referred to Goebbels

as "Anka's penniless, crippled boyfriend."

When Anka broke off their affair in 1920

and started seeing another man, it is said that Goebbels threatened

to take his own life. In his diary, Goebbels wrote

about the eroticism of death,

and it seemed for a moment as if the world might be spared

the life of this disturbed, malevolent creature.

Four calamitous years of world war

had left much of Europe in ruins

and Germany a pariah.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: The first world war of our time was over.

The news of the Armistice was a bit premature,

but that didn't prevent a full-scale celebration in Times Square.

NARRATOR: But for the Germans,

the cost of peace was pain and poverty.

- Germany was a country that was completely decimated

by the First World War. The victorious Allies

really wanted Germany to pay for the war.

These reparations absolutely bankrupted the country.

NARRATOR: In Germany in the 1920s

there was massive unemployment, hunger and skyrocketing inflation:

the perfect breeding ground for fascism.

- People would go to buy a loaf of bread with one wheelbarrow

full of money and by the time they got there

found they needed another. There was starvation.:

The fledgling Weimar Republic r really was on its knees.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: The inflation ruins the middle classes

and the workers. Hitler holds the Republic responsible

for the distress and misery. NARRATOR: A new political movement

emerged, National Socialism,

its vigorous leader promising to sweep away

the old establishment and to make Germany great

once again. - Here you have Goebbels,

who's looking for some way of finding a meaning in life,

and this fits in perfectly. "We've been betrayed,

I can be one of the people who make us great again.

But the way I am going to do it is with the only thing I've got,

which is my intellect."

NARRATOR: After completing his doctorate,

Goebbels had returned to his home town, Rheydt,

where he worked on novels and journalism.

His interest in nationalism grew, and in 1922

he started a relationship with a schoolteacher, Else Janke.

JANKE: "How great it was yesterday. Today I am so happy.

It is so nice that I can respect you so much, and you should know

that I also want to be good and noble."

NARRATOR: Their relationship flourished

during these turbulent times.

In common with an ever-growing segment in German society,

Goebbels blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat

in World War One and subsequent bankruptcy.

Imagine his horror when he discovered

his new love's mother... was Jewish.

- "She told me her roots. Since then,

her charms were destroyed for me."

NARRATOR: In 1924, Goebbels joined the National Socialist

German Workers Party, Adolf Hitler's Nazis.

Goebbels found a home

when he found Hitler and the Nazi Party.

This was the ultimate way for him to exercise his sharp intellect,

and Hitler recognised that immediately when he met Goebbels.

NARRATOR: Hitler was so impressed by Goebbels' loyalty,

skill and rabid antisemitism that in 1926 he appointed him

the Nazi Party Chief for Berlin.

Goebbels established himself as an impressive speaker,

agitator and master propagandist.

To his delight, he discovered his new-found prominence

also won him new female fans.

- The entire coming of Nazi Germany was because of Goebbels' ability

to draw attention to the agenda of the Third Reich.

- Everybody remembers his comment

that if you repeat a lie often enough,

people will believe it.

NARRATOR: Goebbels preyed upon the hardship of the German people

and tapped into their resentment

to stir up the most ancient of human hatreds.

-They needed a scapegoat. Antisemitism was rife

throughout Europe in the 1930s anyway. So they were just

grabbing onto something that was already in its beginnings,

the seeds of hatred were already there,

and Hitler and Goebbels said that the Jewish people

were responsible for the fact that Germany lost World War I.

NARRATOR: Goebbels weaponised antisemitic tropes

to elevate his own standing and that of the Nazi Party.

- Goebbels did an amazing job of promoting not just Hitler

but the Nazi party and its imagery.

NARRATOR: And it wasn't just the German people in his thrall:

Goebbels soon had the attention of the world's media.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: They said that persons of 'German blood'

were a master race entitled to subjugate

or even exterminate other races. :

- Goebbels had the unique ability to understand

that if you keep telling a lie over and over again,

people will believe it, and because he was already in this position

as the Minister of Propaganda,

those lies were gobbled up by the masses.

ARCHIVE: Scarcely out of kindergarten,

the child must take the place allotted to him

in the great Nazi scheme, and from then on

think and act as he is told.

- So not just targeting unemployment or the financial crisis,

but the racial targets, the slurs on the Jews, for example,

all started to work their way into these speeches,

and soon became the only subject of those speeches,

and people believed them because of how they were delivered.

NARRATOR: But even as Goebbels

skilfully controlled the Nazi message to the masses,

he couldn't control what his own peers were saying

about him behind his back , or indeed

certain sections of the world's media

about the irony of the alleged master race

being led by such un-prepossessing physical specimens.

ARCHIVE: And limping Joseph Goebbels,

plenipotentiary for total war effort,

whipping German morale to further frenzies of resistance,

the man whose mouth utters all of Hitler's lies.

- And the contrast is astonishing, because you can look at Hitler,

this marginal Austrian of no achievement whatsoever

in the past, you look at Goebbels himself, this, uh,

miserable, stunted guy with that limp,

where is the Aryan image there?

But they managed to ride over that.

NARRATOR: The Nazi Party gave Goebbels a voice, a platform,

and power, and he soon realised he could use it

to pursue women for sex.

- So when he starts getting on what we today call

the dating scene, it's not good.

His first relationship reminds him the fact that he's not going to be,

you know, a great lover in women's eyes the way he looks,

and the next few don't get very far. But once he starts

getting into power, he starts learning

not only how to sell propaganda, but how to sell himself,

and that works very nicely for him.

NARRATOR: The lonely and solitary teenage Goebbels,

whose self-pity had been so extensively diarised,

had become an arrogant fanatic who could deliver

a tub-thumbing speech to an enrapt audience.

His distorted message of antisemitic rants cut through.

Hitler loved it, and Goebbels revelled in it.

- So Goebbels found himself moving from a childhood

where he was frail, unathletic, not handsome,

not attractive, to an adulthood

where he was the central cog

in the major political movement in Germany and then the world.

NARRATOR: One of the women who'd been impressed

by those rallies, 29-year-old divorcee Magda Quandt,

went on to work for Goebbels and then fell for him.

- She was desirable to both Goebbels and Hitler,

because she was upper-class, very much upper-class,

wealthy, educated, all the things they weren't.

NARRATOR: Even as they married in 1931,

there were rumours that Magda was more interested in Hitler

than in her new husband.

- Magda was fascinated with Hitler

or maybe even infatuated with him,

and as far as I can tell, didn't really care much at all

about Goebbels, but she wanted to be near Hitler,

and Goebbels knew that she wanted to be near Hitler,

and so he married her,

and this contributed to his open philandering.

- Goebbels was using his wife to get closer to Hitler,

but at the same time he didn't quite know himself

how far that had gone. He didn't know, for example,

how much his wife was attracted to Hitler,

and vice-versa.

NARRATOR: Even though he admired Frau Goebbels,

Hitler would never have countenanced intimacy with her,

and rather than confront his wife,

Goebbels used her infatuation with the Fuhrer

to his political advantage. and to justify

his aggressive pursuit of women.

- : Goebbels' marriage to Magda was ultimately a sham.

This was really to appease Hitler and Magda's bizarre relationship.

We don't see any evidence that Hitler and Magda

actually consummated their relationship in any way,

but they were certainly very friendly,

and this contributed to this bizarre triangle

between Goebbels, Magda, and Hitler

in which everyone was serving a purpose.

There was a need for everyone to fit into that triangle.

NARRATOR: A sham it may have been,

but Magda bore Goebbels six children,

and her popularity with Hitler ensured Goebbels' ascent.

to the pinnacle of Nazi leadership.

Whilst the bizarre love triangle fuelled gossip in Germany,

Hitler's rise to Chancellor in 1933

ignited fear around the globe.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: January 30th, 1933,

Hitler's popularity was increasing by leaps and bounds.

The people greeted the announcement of him becoming Chancellor

with wild enthusiasm. NARRATOR: For his help

in Hitler's ascent to power,

the mastermind of the Nazi propaganda machine,

who was now widely referred to as the Poison Dwarf

by the Fuhrer's entourage, was handsomely rewarded.

- Hitler saw something in Goebbels

and he gave him something that nobody else could: status.

And from that status his power-hungry nature grew

and it was voracious.

NARRATOR: At just 35 years old,

Joseph Goebbels became the youngest minister

in Hitler's cabinet. He wasted no time

using his new-found power to take away liberties, rights

and freedom from those he and his beloved Fuhrer

deemed Untermensch, or sub-human.

ARCHIVE: Fanned by the oratory of Hitler's Minister for Propaganda,

Goebbels, antisemitism has swept Germany like a fire.

NARRATOR: On the 1st of April, 1933,

Goebbels launched the Nazis' official antisemitic campaign

with a boycott of all Jewish businesses.

The following month, he initiated the public burning

of what he termed 'un-German' books.

- So the dichotomy of the 1933 book burnings,

headed up by 'Doctor' Goebbels, is a very interesting one.

And I say 'doctor' in that way

because he was a doctor of literature.

This man was a man of words. He was learned, he was well-read.

Right the way through his education he would have been reading

great works of literature, some of which would be by Jews,

and having a well-rounded education. So the works of Freud

and of Einstein would have been part of his being.

- And this shows you

the intellectually anarchistic nature of Nazism:

it's to destroy the establishment and recreate it on our own terms.

NARRATOR: Goebbels' education was fuelled by Jewish scholars

Friedrich Gundolf and Max Freiherr von Walkberg,

and yet here he was calling on students

to destroy all Jewish literary works.

- Why did he do it? Was he doing it for show,

to tow the party line, to show people

how they should be reacting to the Nazi regime?

Or did he truly believe in what he was doing?

- What made him particularly hideous, I think,

is that he could see the effect of his propaganda,

he could see what it was doing, but he continued.

NARRATOR: Later that same year,

Goebbels became president of the newly formed

Chamber of Nazi Culture. He now had control of the press,

literature, radio, fine arts, theatre and films,

and the biggest casting couch in Germany.

- So he suddenly found himself at the centre of everything,

particularly because his work involved filming,

which involved glamorous women,

and these glamorous women were finding that Goebbels

was at the centre of all the power, and any work was through him.

- You can take the worst Hollywood director

and producers you've ever seen, roll them all into one

and you've got him. He interfered, he poured money in,

but he manipulated, and really saw it

as a celluloid couch on which he could bed anybody and everybody.

- The studios there actually gave him the nickname

the Randy Goat of Babelsburg,

which was the location where the movie studios were.

NARRATOR: Germany's most famous film director was Leni Riefenstahl.

It is said that she only escaped Goebbels' clutches

due to her sway with her number one fan,

Adolf Hitler. Others were not so lucky.

- If the actress wouldn't do what he want,

in other words go to bed with him, he would just get rid of them

and do what could to block their career.

- He created a fabricated world

in which he,

a person with physical disabilities,

a person who was not attractive,

became the centre of attention of beautiful women.

He became the hero. In that fictional world,

he had the ideal family.

NARRATOR: In public, Goebbels presented the image

of the devoted husband and family man.

With Hitler maintaining his singular aloofness,

the Goebbels became the unofficial first family of the Third Reich.

But Goebbels had an affair that not even Hitler knew about.

At least initially. He had become totally besotted

with the young Czech actress Lida Baarova.

- The other issue was with a Czechoslovakian actress

who had some Jewish roots, and this was definitely forbidden.

In fact, she might have been one of the few women

that slipped behind his guard,

because he was very reluctant to give her up.

NARRATOR: When Goebbels first met Baarova,

she was already in a relationship with this leading man,

Gustav Frohlich. But that did not stop Goebbels.

The affair ignited by his power over her career.

- These women stood no chance, that Goebbels was going to take

whomever he wanted, and he did.

NARRATOR: As the young actress became more famous,

so did her fear of their affair being uncovered.

But Baarova was merely another conquest

for the Nazi Minister. His lecherous behaviour

was becoming more brazen.

- He would fondle a woman's breast

or grab a woman's buttocks in public,

and people knew that he was this kind of public creepster.

But because he was so powerful, people had to bow to his needs.

He would even grab and fondle women in public

in front of his wife. He had no qualms

about talking about his sexual conquests.

He wrote in his journal about all of his sexual conquests,

30,000 pages.

- Goebbels' diaries reveal, by their sheer obsessiveness,

the fact that he was preoccupied with his own image, his self-esteem,

and how he was perceived by the world.

NARRATOR: By this time,

Magda Goebbels was openly having an affair

with Goebbels' right-hand man Karl Hanke.

An increasingly concerned Fuhrer felt obliged to step in.

- The relationship between Goebbels, Magda and Hitler

became more complicated as Goebbels became

more and more infatuated

with sleeping with other women

outside his marriage, and eventually

he wanted to leave his wife.

But Hitler intervened and prevented Goebbels

from leaving his wife.

NARRATOR: Goebbels' marriage and his public persona

as the poster boy for Nazi family planning

were simply too important to be sacrificed

for the sake of his prodigious sexual appetite.

- Hitler imply would not tolerate them separating,

because it was bad for the whole Nazi family men,

family image.

NARRATOR: Despite his peccadillos, Goebbels' star continued to rise.

He took control of all newspapers

and handed out millions of cheap radio sets

so the German people could listen to the Nazi message.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: Only those who get behind the scenes know

that this outward cheerfulness is the creation of the fanatic

little Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels

in the most concentrated propaganda campaign the world has ever known.

NARRATOR: By 1938, Germany was on the march.

Hitler's nationalist movement was escalating

with terrifying speed and violence,.

and as the tentacles of his tyranny spread,

the need for Goebbels' stage management

became ever greater. - Hitler needed Goebbels

because he needed propaganda

to fabricate this image of himself

and the Nazi movement.

NARRATOR: On the evening of November 9th, 1938,

rioters destroyed synagogues and Jewish shops throughout Germany

and Austria in what became known as the Kristallnacht',

or Night of the Broken Glass. The Master of Propaganda

had manipulated the emotions of everyday German citizens,

driving them into horrific acts,

and set the stage for the onset of World War Two.

Goebbels had helped craft a new world order

so twisted and perverse that it would soon claim

the lives of millions, even those closest to him.

NARRATOR: In March 1939,

German troops invaded Czechoslovakia.

Six months later, on the 1st of September, 1939,

Germany launched a surprise attack on Poland,

triggering the start of the Second World War.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: Warsaw is bombed, blasted, shelled. Poland in ruins.

NARRATOR: Even as the Nazi war machine

plunged Europe into chaos

and Goebbels appropriated the airwaves

of yet more conquered nations, in secret

he continued to leverage his power and influence for sex.

- Joseph Goebbels would meet the criteria

of what I think is best termed a sexual athlete.

In other words, it was a competition.

. So you describe what you're doing, who you're doing it with,

and you tick the box and then move on to the next one.

And for somebody with very ambivalent feelings

about himself physically, after all he was disabled,

he was deformed, this is his compensation.

It doesn't matter what you do, it's the fact that you've done it

and you're moving on to more.

NARRATOR: And his reaction to rejection was telling.

When young German actress Anneliese Uhlig

rejected his sexual advances, Goebbels cancelled her film.

- Really every day he was gaining more power.

As the Nazi Party was, so was he.

And that allowed him to indulge his sexual interest.

- Grabbing on women in public, having sex with whomever he wished,

that was built into the structure of his status in power

as a result of the Nazi Party.

NARRATOR: The same ruthlessness

was later inflicted on Charlotte Thiele,

even though she had become well-known

for her starring role in the 1943 film 'Titanic.'

Fame was no protection from Goebbels' predation

- He was extremely emotionally manipulative,

maybe one of the most infamous and successful manipulators ever.

NARRATOR: And Goebbels' relentless pursuit of sex

was not limited to actresses. One of his secretaries reported

that Goebbels would proposition the girls in the office,

no matter how young they were.

- Tyrants often deviate in their sexual behaviour

because they can. Because they deviate

in all their other behaviours.

They deviate in the use of power.

They deviate in the use of relationships

generally. Their relationships with their families are deviant.

So the deviation of tyrants in the sexual arena

is just a reflection of their general deviation,

and it is because they can, they have the power to do it.

ARCHIVE: In regimenting German thought,

all radio programmes emanate from the Department For Propaganda.

Every newspaper prints only what the state wants to be read.

NARRATOR: From the safety of his Berlin ministry,

well behind the frontline,

Goebbels became the public cheerleader

for the most horrific genocide the world has ever seen.

- There are some deeply chilling speeches by Goebbels

about the way that the Jews must pay, about their downfall,

what effectively becomes the Holocaust.

And Goebbels is the mouthpiece for this.

- We don't want to forget the fact that Goebbels

is probably the most notorious propagandist

of all of the 20th century, but as a result of his lies,

the lies that he told over and over again

to make sure people would believe them,

that millions of people died at his hand.

NARRATOR: And as the war turned against the Nazis,

Goebbels demanded 'total war,'

a fight to the death by the German people

for the sake of the craven Nazi creed

for which Goebbels and so many had sold their souls.

As the combined might of the Allied forces

started to reclaim Europe, Hitler's dream was fast evaporating

in a cloud of misery and self-destruction.

- (CHEERING)

NARRATOR: His Propaganda Minister's calls to action

were now falling on deaf ears.

- He fervently believed in this thousand-year Reich,

that they are right, that they are the people

who will control the entire world and oversee the downfall

of the people that they want to subjugate or murder.

NARRATOR: Hitler rewarded Goebbels' fanaticism

by giving him even greater powers in running the war effort.

By 1945 he essentially became the second most powerful person

in Germany. - He was extraordinarily good

at being the person who organised all their communications,

who organised their propaganda schemes,

and of course for Hitler's movement, propaganda was central.

- (ARCHIVE NARRATOR SPEAKS IN GERMAN)

- But these words soon turned to poison,

and these words became responsible for the death of millions of people

across the whole world.

NARRATOR: It's a crushing irony that Goebbels' rise to power

was hastened by the Nazis' flailing war effort.

The decimation of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front

and then the successful landing of Allied troops at D-Day

meant that Goebbels' incessant lies were more important than ever

to try and prop up the Nazi myth.

ARCHIVE: Nazis in full retreat.

Less than three weeks after D-Day, crushing defeat for the master race.

Our infantry smashes forward.

NARRATOR: By April 1945, however,

no amount of propaganda could save the dying German war machine.

ARCHIVE: On both sides of the River Spree,

the charred and twisted graveyard of 300,000 Nazis.

In four and a half years, Allied bombs hit Berlin

day and night. Many buildings still standing are mere shells.

NARRATOR: As the Soviet Red Army moved into eastern Germany

and the Allies surged from the west,

the last vestige of the hateful Nazi regime

was caught in a deadly vice.

- So now you have the man who believed in the Nazi ideal

until the very last days.

The Russians are surrounding the bunker.

They can hear the cannon.

They know Hitler's going to kill himself,

and it's impossible to ignore reality any longer.

- They decide that if things aren't going to go their way,

if Germany is going to lose, then Hitler and his partner,

who became his wife, Ava Braun, will commit suicide.

And Goebbels will do the same. He will follow Hitler to the grave.

NARRATOR: On April 30th, 1945. a besieged Hitler,

determined to avoid the very public humiliation

of his longtime ally Mussolini, shot himself,

before his bodyguards carried out his instructions

by burning his and Eva Braun's bodies.

ARCHIVE: Bulletin. Adolf Hitler is dead. He is dead,

and how he died the world little cares.

For Hitler's death millions prayed. Millions are thankful for justice.

NARRATOR: As per the instructions in Hitler's will,

Goebbels became Chancellor of the Reich.

But his time as the supreme leader of Germany

would not only be short-lived, it would also reveal him

as one of history's greatest cowards.

(BOMBS WHISTLING)

Days before Hitler's death on April 30th,

Goebbels, his wife Magda and their six children

had moved into the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery.

- "I will always be proud of having belonged to a family

that, even in adversity and up to the last moment,

has been faithful to the Fuhrer and his pure and holy cause."

NARRATOR: Having served only a day as Chancellor,

Goebbels prepared to follow his beloved Fuhrer to his death.

But he wouldn't go alone.

- What Hitler had done in committing suicide,

they now needed to do as well.

That was their final act of loyalty to him.

NARRATOR: Magda Goebbels tied white ribbons

in her daughters' hair before sedating all six children.

She and Joseph then forced them to drink a lethal dose of cyanide.

- What sort of man decides that because he's done,

because his power is taken away, that also means

that the six children that he has brought into the world

also deserve to die, and so does his wife?

NARRATOR: Having murdered their children,

Magda and Joseph Goebbels then went upstairs

and, with the help of the SS, they committed suicide,

before their bodies were burned.

Only this time there wasn't enough petrol

to do the job properly, so Goebbel's ghastly remains

were visible for all to see.

- Everything was falling apart. It was more painful for him

to face reality than to kill himself

and have all of his family killed with him.

- So he accompanies Hitler even into death.

NARRATOR: Soon after, their remains were found

by Soviet troops. ARCHIVE: Hitler's Chancellery

was captured. Hitler committed suicide here

at the last minute, like a scorpion surrounded by a ring of fire.

These are the ruins of Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda.

He himself will no longer poison the world

with his man-hating invections.

- Goebbels came from nothing.

He achieved power through his gifts as an excellent propagandist,

an orator. But once power was taken away, he didn't believe

there was any point in existing.

- All it would take would be a charismatic leader

saying the same words or lies often enough

that people start to believe them

and preaching to a disillusioned public.

They're really the only ingredients one would need

for this to happen all over again. - Joseph Goebbels left the world

a terrible legacy. and it's summed up by his statement

that if you keep repeating a lie, people will believe it.

And this has been something that's been repeated

time and time again in tyrannical, oppressive regimes,

and we live in a world where the lie

is now almost overriding reality and truth.

That's a pretty awful legacy.

NARRATOR: A legacy cemented by the horrific brutality

his hate-filled invective inspired,

as well as by the hundreds of women he preyed upon and defiled.

(SOMBRE MUSIC)

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