Goebbels

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

An adroit and compelling biography of Hitler's propaganda minister and leading advocate of the extermination of the Jews. (Sept.)

Library Journal

Why another book on the master of propaganda for the Third Reich? According to Reuth, a correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a number of years have passed since there has been a good biography on Goebbels. Furthermore, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, some additional new diaries of the former Nazi and other documentation have come to light. Reuth traces Goebbels's life from a strict, lower-middle class, Catholic family, through his education and eventually his captivation by Adolf Hitler. Reuth's writing style is lucid, which makes the complexities of the Nazi propaganda chief a little easier for the general reader to follow. Still, the student of Nazi Germany will learn nothing new from this book. For public libraries that have no works on Goebbels; in any case, the book should be augmented by the diaries: The Early Goebbels Diaries (1962), Final Entries, 1945: The Diaries of Joseph Goebbels (1978), and The Goebbels Diaries 1939-1941 (1983).-Dennis L. Noble, Eastern Montana Coll., Billings