Goebbels: The Life of Joseph

Goebbels was a small, spindly, highly intelligent man with a clubfoot and an inferiority complex who rose to power with Hitler and was, of all the Nazis, the strongest advocate of the extermination of the Jews.

The author describes Goebbels' childhood in a strict, Catholic, lower-middle-class family; his poverty; his many affairs with women above his station; his political activity and intrigues in Berlin for Hitler; his career in the Third Reich; his wife and children; his suicide. The use of previously unavailable archival information and diaries, and carefully excavated eyewitness accounts, makes this not an important social document, but a fascinating and gripping study of a monster.