Joseph Goebbels

Joseph Goebbels, the son of Fritz Goebbels and Katharina Odenhausen, was born in Rheydt, Germany, on 29th October, 1897. His father was a bookkeeper at the United Wick Factories. Joseph was the third son born to the couple. Two brothers, Konrad and Hans, were two and four years older respectively and two sisters, Elizabeth and Maria, were born later.

Fritz Goebbels continued to make progress in his career and soon after Joseph was born, he was promoted and now earned 2,100 marks a year, with a one-time holiday bonus of 250 marks. Joseph Goebbels later described him as a "starched-collar proletarian". He had a difficult relationship with his father and disliked his "Spartan discipline" and only loved him "as he understands love". He was much closer to his mother who lavished love on her son the love "she withheld from her husband".

Soon after his birth, Joseph Goebbels nearly died of pneumonia. Although he finally recovered he did not enjoy good health. At the age of three he contacted osteomyelitis. As Ralf Georg Reuth, the author of Joseph Goebbels (1993), pointed out: "For two years his family doctor and a masseur struggled to rid his right leg of intermittent paralysis. Finally they had to tell the despairing parents that Joseph's foot was 'lamed for life,' would fail to grow properly, and would eventually develop into a clubfoot. Fritz and Katharina Goebbels refused to accept this prognosis. They even arranged for Joseph to be seen by doctors at the University of Bonn's medical school, a step requiring great courage for people of their humble station.... Later, after the boy had hobbled around for some time with an ugly orthopedic appliance that was supposed to hold the paralyzed foot straight and provide support, the surgeons at the Maria-Hilf Hospital in Monchengladbach agreed to operate on the ten-year-old. The operation proved a failure, putting an end to any hopes that the child might be spared a clubfoot."

Childhood Joseph Goebbels later wrote that because he "could no longer run and jump like them", and now his loneliness sometimes became a torment to him. "The thought that the others did not want him around for their games, that his solitude was not of his own choosing, made him truly lonely. And not only lonely - it also made him bitter. When he saw the others running about and leaping, he grumbled at his God, who had done ... this to him, he hated the others for not being like him, he mocked his mother for still loving a cripple like him." Toby Thacker, the author of Joseph Goebbels: Life and Death (2009) argues: "After this (1907) he walked with a noticeable limp. It is reasonable to assume that he suffered insults from other children, and, in a society which exalted strong military virtues, that this might have caused particular anxiety. At any rate, Goebbels from a very young age was solitary and reclusive, keeping his own company, and becoming an intensive reader... This was an extraordinarily austere childhood, stamped by Roman Catholic piety and a rigorous adherence to Prussian values of thrift, discipline, and hard work. Literally every pfennig was counted in the household accounting, and from an early age Joseph was chosen as the child most likely to fulfil his parents' dreams of upward social mobility. This parental favour derived partly from his disability, but was also due to the academic and artistic potential he displayed from an early age." Joseph Goebbels in 1910.

Ralf Georg Reuth argues that "the suffering of the scrawny, awkward youth with the outsized head and the increasingly misshapen foot did not diminish when he started school in the spring of 1904. The other children disliked him because he kept his thoughts to himself and remained aloof. The teachers disliked him because he was a self-willed, 'precocious lad' whose diligence left something to be desired. Occasionally they would beat him - when he had not done his homework again or when he provoked them. That probably explains why he had mostly bad memories of elementary school, particularly of his teachers." Goebbels described one of his teachers as a "villain and a scoundrel who abused us children," whereas another "spewed out all kinds of ridiculous nonsense." He liked only one teacher, who "told stories with real gusto" that stimulated his imagination.

Joseph Goebbels at School As a result of the operation on his foot he spent a long time in the hospital. During this period he developed an obsession with reading: "My first fairy tales.... These books awakened my joy in reading. From then on I devoured everything in print, including newspapers, even politics, without understanding the slightest thing." He also worked his way through the two-volume version of Meyer's encyclopedia that his father had purchased. "He soon realized that his physical disadvantages could be offset by excellence in learning. His sense of inferiority constantly drove him to overcompensate." He later wrote that he found it unbearable if anyone else knew more than he did, "for he fully expected the others to be cruel enough to exclude him intellectually as well." He explained that this thought "filled him with diligence and energy." His extensive reading eventually had an impact on his academic performance and he claims that he was now "top of the class". His parents were very religious. However, his club-foot caused him to question the existence of God. "Why had God made him this way, so that people laughed at him and mocked him? Why was he not allowed to love himself and life as others did? Why did he have to feel hatred when he wanted and needed to feel love?" After receiving religious instruction by Johannes Mollen, the assistant priest of the parish, at the age of thirteen, he resolved to dedicate his life to God. This pleased his parents as they hoped the Church would pay for their son's university studies. Joseph Goebbels first romantic attachment ended in disaster. Maria Liffers, was his older brother's girlfriend. He wrote her passionate letters that were found by Maria's parents. They visited the Goebbels home and told the family what had happened. This resulted in his brother, Hans Goebbels, threatening to cut his throat with a razor. His next girlfriend was Lene Krage. He described her as "not intelligent" but "very beautiful for her years". When they first kissed he was "the happiest person in the world". He could not believe that this "poor cripple" had allowed him to kiss "this most beautiful girl". Krage was very fond of Joseph Goebbels and wrote to him saying "you deserve to be worshipped" and "I could fall into idolatry". His sexual desire for Krage caused him problems with his religious beliefs. He was disgusted with himself after he succumbed to the temptations of the flesh. He wrote that he could not understand how he could love a girl he found "stupid" and that his love for Krage "had something impure about it".

Joseph Goebbels and the First World War Joseph Goebbels was seventeen on the outbreak of the First World War. He desperately wanted to join the German Army but was rejected for health reasons - he was under five feet tall with a bad limp. Goebbels wrote in a school essay: "The soldier who marches forth to offer his fresh young life for wife and child, hearth and home, village and fatherland, serves the fatherland in the most distinguished and honorable way." Louis L. Snyder has argued: "Throughout his life Goebbels suffered from what he regarded as the stigma of being unable to serve his country in time of war. He was always conscious of his deformity and physical inadequacy." Joseph Goebbels with classmates in 1916.

In a speech delivered at school on 21st March 1917, he told the audience that "the limbs of that great Germany upon which the entire world gazes with fear and admiration" and the current war was an attempt to "become the political and spiritual leader of the world". The speech concluded with a vision that melded religion and patriotism: "Thou sacred land of our fathers, stand fast in Thy hour of need and death... Thy heroic strength and shalt go forth victorious from the final struggle... We trust in the everlasting God, whose will it is that right shall prevail, and in whose hand the future lies... God bless our Fatherland." In April 1917 enrolled at the University of Bonn. On the advice of Father Johannes Mollen he joined a Catholic students' association, Unitas Sigfridia. However, two months later he was called up for alternative military service. Goebbels returned to Rheydt where he became a desk soldier for the Fatherland Auxiliary. The following year Father Mollen arranged for Goebbels to return to university. In May 1918 he met Anka Stalherm, a wealthy young woman studying law and economics. He immediately fell in love with the woman with the "extraordinary passionate mouth" and the "brown-blond hair" that lay "in a heavy coil on her marvelous neck." They gradually grew closer and became a couple. "Mine was a sense of fulfillment infinite and without measure." Their different backgrounds caused Goebbels problems: "Within it (the university) I was a pariah, an outlaw, who was merely tolerated, not because I achieved less or was less intelligent than the others, but simply because I lacked the money that flowed to the others so generously from their fathers' pockets." Anka Stalherm

Toby Thacker, the author of Joseph Goebbels: Life and Death (2009) argues: "She was not his first girlfriend, but this was his first important relationship with women. For all that biographers and historians have pictured Goebbels as a young man filled with repressed hatred because of his disability, he was clearly very able to attract women of his own age. From the age of 15 he was more or less continuously involved with one or more women in intimate relationships. His whole mood and outlook fluctuated in sympathy with the changing fortunes of these relationships, which were invariably stormy, interrupted by difficulties with money, and beset with jealousy and misunderstandings. Goebbels' relationship with Anka Stalherm was characterized, like those that followed, by alternating periods of blissful happiness and bitter reproach." Anka's parents completely disapproved of the relationship. Her mother sent her to confession to rid herself of the sins she had committed with this "penniless cripple". In a letter to Anka, Joseph Goebbels told her that she should tell her mother this letter would be his last: "Perhaps she will forgive you then." His relationship with Anka made him more class-conscious. He became involved in discussions with trade unionists in Rheydt. He explained to Anka: "In this way one at least comes to understand the stirrings among the workers." He added that they have "various problems... really worth examining closely."

The German Revolution On 11th November 1918, the German government signed the Armistice. Goebbels, like most people living in Germany, found the news shocking. Ralf Georg Reuth, the author of Joseph Goebbels (1993), has pointed out: "A number of factors made this event incomprehensible to many Germans: there had been talk of victory to the very last; no shots had been fired on German soil; and the German armies had proved victorious in the east and penetrated deep into the enemy territory in the west. Subsequent developments inside the Reich seemed even more difficult to grasp. Nothing remained of the sense of national unity invoked by Wilhelm II at the beginning of the war, when he had said he no longer saw political parties, only Germans. The kaiser abdicated the day the armistice was signed. In the days preceding his departure, German soldiers had mutinied." Goebbels held right-wing nationalist views and was appalled when Social Democratic Party leader, Philipp Scheidemann, declared a republic in Berlin on 9th November, 1918. Shortly afterwards, Karl Liebknecht, leader of the Spartacus League, proclaimed a "free socialist republic". He noted in his memoirs, "Revolution. Revulsion." He wrote to his friend, Fritz Prang: "Don't you agree that the hour will again come when people will call out for spirit and strength in the lowly, insignificant horde of the masses? Let us wait this hour and not cease to arm ourselves for this struggle." Goebbels and Anka Stalherm began to argue about politics. He wrote a letter to her in April 1920 where he expressed concern about the plight of the workers: "It is rotten and dismal that a world of so many hundred million people should be ruled by a single caste that has the power to lead millions to life or to death, indeed on a whim (for example imperialism in France, capitalism in England and North America, perhaps in Germany as well, etc.). This caste has spun its web over the entire earth; capitalism recognizes no national boundaries (witness the terrible, shameful conditions within German capitalism during the war, whose internationalism created a situation - evidence is available - in which, while battles raged, German prisoners of war in Marseilles were unloading German artillery pieces, marked with the names of German manufacturers, to be used to destroy German lives). Capitalism has learned nothing from recent events and wants to learn nothing, because it places its own interests ahead of those of the other millions. Can one blame those millions for standing up for their own interests, and only for those interests? Can one blame them for striving to forge an international community whose purpose is the struggle against corrupt capitalism? Can one condemn a large segment of the educated Sturmer youth for protesting against education's being made a commodity, inaccessible to those with the greatest ability? Is it not an abomination that people with the most brilliant intellectual gifts should sink into poverty and disintegrate, while others dissipate, squander, and waste the money that could help them... You say the old propertied class also worked hard for what it has. Granted, that may be true in many cases. But do you also know about the conditions under which workers were living during the period when capitalism 'earned' its fortune?" As Ralf Georg Reuth, the author of Joseph Goebbels (1993), pointed out: "As If the difference in the lovers' backgrounds had often created a tension overcome by the euphoria of love, the gulf created by Goebbels's socialistic views now seemed impossible to bridge. Despite the revolutionary turmoil shaking the Reich to its foundations, Anka Stalherm remained true to her bourgeois origins. The world from which she came offered her every advantage. A lover who showed enthusiasm for the Red revolution and actually seemed happy that her sheltered existence was threatened by political terror could not but appear more and more alien to her." Goebbels discovered that Anka was seeing another man. Dr. Georg Mumme, was a lawyer who lived in Freiburg. He wrote to her proposing they get engaged. "If you don't feel strong enough to say yes, we must go our separate ways." Anka rejected the offer and Goebbels noted in his diary: "Grim days. I shall be alone." Goebbels wrote another letter, this time threatening suicide. He told her that "I have suffered enough; how much more shall I have to suffer?" Anka replied that she promised she would remain faithful. Joseph Goebbels also got into debt and could no longer afford his university fees. In October 1920 he decided to commit suicide. He drew up a will, in which he named his brother, Hans Goebbels, as his literary executor. He meticulously enumerated his few possessions - an alarm clock, a drawing, a few books, bequeathing them to friends and members of the family. He instructed Hans that "his wardrobe and other possessions not otherwise assigned" should be sold, and that his debts be paid off from the proceeds. He told Hans that Anka should burn his letters and any other writings: "May she be happy and get over my death.... I part gladly from this life, which for me has become a hell." When his father heard about the will he quickly told him he would borrow the money so that he could finish off his university studies. When he heard the news he withdrew his threat. The following year Joseph Goebbels was offered a place studying for a PhD at Heidelberg University. Working under Professor Max von Waldberg, his dissertation subject was Wilhelm Schutz, a little-known member of the romantic school active as a dramatist in the first half of the nineteenth century. His oral examination took place on 16th November 1921. It was a success and he received his doctoral diploma and later noted that he had felt very proud when Waldberg called him "Herr Doktor" for the first time.

Joseph Goebbels elected to the Reichstag In 1928 Goebbels, Hermann Goering and ten other members of the Nazi Party were elected to the Reichstag. Soon afterwards Goebbels became the party's Propaganda Leader. Hitler was impressed by Goebbels work. He wrote in 1930: "Years ago I dispatched you, dear Dr. Goebbels, to the most difficult post in the Reich, in hopes that your energy and vigor would succeed in creating a tight, unified organization. You have fulfilled this task in such a way that you are assured of the movement's gratitude and my own highest recognition." Joseph Goebbels

Magda Quandt began attending meetings of the Nazi Party. After hearing Goebbels and Adolf Hitler make speeches, she became a member on 1st September 1930. Later that year she went to work for Goebbels. According to Ralf Georg Reuth, the author of The Life of Joseph Goebbels (1993): "Magda Quandt fascinated him. Elegant in appearance and calmly assertive in bearing, she embodied a world that had hitherto remained in Goebbels's inner circle... She had grown up in very comfortable circumstances and had graduated from a convent school." However, Magda's parents both disliked him intensely and she came under "horrendous pressure" to break off the relationship.

Joseph Goebbels marries Magda Quandt Goebbels married Magna on 19th December 1931, in Mecklenburg, with Hitler as a witness. Goebbels spoke about her "entrancing beauty" and her "clever, realistic sense of life". Goebbels claimed that together they spent "completely contented" evenings, after which he was "almost in a dream... so full of fulfilled happiness". Over the next few years they had six children: Helga, Hildegard, Helmut, Holdine, Hedwig and Heidrun. Magda suffered from poor health and on 23rd January, 1933 she was hospitalized. He wrote in his diary: "God keep this woman for me. I can not live without her." Later he added: "To the clinic. Magda much better. The fever has abated. She is so happy that I am there. We talk much of our love, and how good we will be to one another, when she is healthy again. I have grown so with Magda, that I really can not exist without her." Joseph Goebbels in 1932



Magda suffered from poor health and on 23rd January, 1933 she was hospitalized. He wrote in his diary: "God keep this woman for me. I can not live without her." Later he added: "To the clinic. Magda much better. The fever has abated. She is so happy that I am there. We talk much of our love, and how good we will be to one another, when she is healthy again. I have grown so with Magda, that I really can not exist without her."

Minister for Public Enlightenment When Adolf Hitler became chancellor in January, 1933, he appointed Goebbels as Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Goebbels commented on March, 1933: "The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative." Richard Evans, the author of The Third Reich in Power (2005), explained how he took over the German film industry: "By 1936 it was funding nearly three-quarters of all German feature films, and was not afraid to withhold support from producers of whose projects it did not approve. Meanwhile, the Propaganda Ministry's control over the hiring and firing of people in all branches of the film industry had been cemented by the establishment of the Reich Film Chamber on 14 July 1933, headed by a financial official who was directly responsible to Goebbels himself. Anyone employed in the film industry was now obliged to become a member of the Reich Film Chamber, which organized itself into ten departments covering every aspect of the movie business in Germany. The creation of the Reich Film Chamber in 1933 was a major step towards total control. The next year, Goebbels's hand was further strengthened by a crisis in the finances of the two biggest film companies, UFA and Tobis, which were effectively nationalized.... Financial control was backed by legal powers, above all through the Reich Cinema Law, passed on 16 February 1934. This made pre-censorship of scripts mandatory. It also merged the existing film censors' offices, created in 1920, into a single bureau within the Propaganda Ministry. And as amended in 1935 it gave Goebbels the power to ban any films without reference to these institutions anyway.". Joseph Goebbels told people his limp was the result of a wound suffered while fighting in the First World War. The historian, Louis L. Snyder has pointed out: "Despite his piercing intelligence and demagogic brilliance, he resented the stares and the suspected comments. It was especially galling for this crippled little man, with his slight frame and black hair... to appear in public and preach the virtues of a tall, healthy, blue-eyed Aryan race. He was aware that his well-built, feeble-brained comrades... ridiculed him behind his back. It is probable that deep-rooted hatreds stemmed in large part from his resentment because of his physical condition." Traudl Junge, the author of To The Last Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary (2002) claims that women in the ministry found Goebbels attractive: "Goebbels brought verve and wit into the conversation. He wasn't at all handsome, but I could see why the girls in the Reich Chancellery ran to the windows to see the Propaganda Minister leave his Ministry, but took hardly any notice of Hitler.... The ladies at the Berghof positively flirted with Hitler's Minister too. He really did have a delightfully entertaining manner, and his shafts of wit were well aimed, although mostly at other people's expense." Goebbels began to take a close interest in Lida Baarová, a young actress from Prague. Goebbels' biographer, Ralf Georg Reuth, the author of Joseph Goebbels (1993), has argued: "Goebbels showed his interest in the actress more and more obviously, and the ambitious young woman certainly did not object to the attentions of the man who carried the most weight in the German film industry... A dark-haired Slavic type, more like the femmes fatales officially frowned upon by the regime... Lida Baarová in looks was the exact opposite of Magda Goebbels." Lída Baarová said of Goebbels: "There's no doubt that Goebbels was an interesting character, a charming and intelligent man and a very good storyteller. You could guarantee that he would keep a party going with his little asides and jokes." Lida Baarová

The relationship upset Adolf Hitler. According to Heinz Linge, Hitler's valet: "Hitler acknowledged the value of Goebbels as a propagandist to his closest circle, where he often would not spare the blushes in being blunt. On the other hand, he did not always approve of Goebbels's private life. The many little stories circulating about Goebbels concerned him deeply. Because radio, the theatre and the film industry all came under the propaganda Ministry, Goebbels often came into contact with actresses and other female artistes upon whom the minister - and perhaps even more so the genial talker who could help one get ahead in one's career - often made a lasting impression. I often noticed how artistes and starlets of film and theatre would swarm around him, rivals for his favour.... A scandal erupted when the beautiful Czech film star Lida Baarova entered his adoring circle. She exercised such a spell over Goebbels that he quite lost his head and almost wrecked his until then happy marriage with wife Magda... Frau Goebbels wanted a divorce and to emigrate to Switzerland, causing Hitler to envisage for himself a major scandal. He decided to attempt a reconciliation of the couple and invited them both to Obersalzberg. There he received them separately. In individual conversations he explained to them that they must relegate their personal interests to those of the state. The separation was prevented. In the Berghof Great Hall he made them both promise to remain loyal to each other from now on. Happy at having resolved the crisis he brought the reconciled couple himself to the NSDAP guesthouse on Obersalzberg". After her relationship ended with Goebbels, Lida Baarová had difficulty making films. In 1938 her film, A Prussian Love Story, was banned and she fled to Prague

Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler Albert Speer later commented on Goebbels relationship with Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goering: "After 1933 there quickly formed various rival factions that held divergent views, spied on each other, and held each other in contempt. A mixture of scorn and dislike became the prevailing mood within the party. Each new dignitary rapidly gathered a circle of intimates around him. Thus Himmler associated almost exclusively with his SS following, from whom he could count on unqualified respect. Goering also had his band of uncritical admirers, consisting partly of members of his family, partly of his closest associates and adjutants. Goebbels felt at ease in the company of literary and movie people. Hess occupied himself with problems of homeopathic medicine, loved chamber music, and had screwy but interesting acquaintances. As an intellectual Goebbels looked down on the crude philistines of the leading group in Munich, who for their part made fun of the conceited academic's literary ambitions. Goering considered neither the Munich philistines nor Goebbels sufficiently aristocratic for him and therefore avoided all social relations with them; whereas Himmler, filled with the elitist missionary zeal of the SS felt far superior to all the others." Traudl Junge claims that Joseph Goebbels did not like Himmler: "So the chatter round the table went on, and Goebbels aimed his sallies, which hit their mark and were not returned. Curiously enough, Himmler and Goebbels entirely ignored each other. It wasn't too obvious, but still you couldn't help noticing that their relationship was a superficial veneer of civility. The two of them met relatively seldom; they didn't have much to do with each other, and were not, like the warring Bormann brothers, kept on the same leash by their master. The hostility between the Bormanns was so habitual and firmly established that they could stand side by side and ignore each other entirely. And when Hitler gave a letter or request to the younger Bormann to be passed on to the Reichsleiter, Albert Bormann would go out, find an orderly, and the orderly would pass instructions on to his big brother even if they were both in the same room. The same thing happened in reverse, and if one Bormann told a funny story at table all the rest of the company would roar with laughter, while his brother just sat there ignoring them and looking deadly serious. I was surprised to find how used Hitler had become to this state of affairs. He took no notice of it at all. Unfortunately I never managed to find out the reason for their enmity. I think there was a woman behind it. Or perhaps those two fighting cocks had long ago forgotten the reason themselves?" H. Dobhenysk, A Pure-Blooded Aryan, Chicago Daily News (1937) Ernst Hanfstaengel blamed Goebbels for being a bad influence on Adolf Hitler. "The evil genius of the second half of Hitler's career was Goebbels. I always likened this mocking, jealous, vicious, satanically gifted dwarf to the pilot-fish of the Hitler shark. It was he who finally turned Hitler fanatically against all established institutions and forms of authority. He was not only schizophrenic but schizopedic, and that was what made him so sinister."

Second World War During the Second World War Goebbels played an important role in building up hatred for the allies. He had little confidence in the abilities of other ministers in the government and made attempts to have Joachim von Ribbentrop dismissed from office. Goebbels encouraged Hitler to invade the Soviet Union. He wrote in July 1941: "The Führer thinks that the action will take only 4 months; I think - even less. Bolshevism will collapse as a house of cards. We are facing an unprecedented victorious campaign. Cooperation with Russia was in fact a stain on our reputation. Now it is going to be washed out. The very thing we were struggling against for our whole lives, will now be destroyed. I tell this to the Führer and he agrees with me completely." Adolf Hitler, Magda Goebbels and Joseph Goebbels.

Joseph Goebbels also advocated terror bombing of Britain: "He (Hitler) said he would repeat these raids night after night until the English were sick and tired of terror attacks. He shares my opinion absolutely that cultural centres, health resorts and civilian resorts must be attacked now. There is no other way of bringing the English to their senses. They belong to a class of human beings with whom you can only talk after you have first knocked out their teeth."

Joseph Goebbels and the Jewish Question Goebbels argued at a meeting on 12th November 1938: "I deem it necessary to issue a decree forbidding the Jews to enter German theaters, movie houses and circuses. I have already issued such a decree under the authority of the law of the chamber for culture. Considering the present situation of the theaters, I believe we can afford that. Our theaters are overcrowded, we have hardly any room. I am of the opinion that it is not possible to have Jews sitting next to Germans in varieties, movies and theaters. One might consider, later on, to let the Jews have one or two movie houses here in Berlin, where they may see Jewish movies. But in German theaters they have no business anymore. Furthermore, I advocate that the Jews be eliminated from all positions in public life in which they may prove to be provocative. It is still possible today that a Jew shares a compartment in a sleeping car with a German. Therefore, we need a decree by the Reich Ministry for Communications stating that separate compartments for Jews shall be available; in cases where compartments are filled up, Jews cannot claim a seat. They shall be given a separate compartment only after all Germans have secured seats. They shall not mix with Germans, and if there is no more room, they shall have to stand in the corridor." It has been argued by Laurence Rees, the author of The Nazis: A Warning from History (2005) has argued Goebbels took a hard-line of German Jews: "Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister and Gauleiter of Berlin, was one of those who took the lead that summer (1941) in pushing for the Jews of Berlin to be forcibly deported East. At a meeting on 15 August Goebbels' state secretary, Leopold Gutterer, pointed out that of the 70,000 Jews in Berlin only 19,000 were working (a situation, of course, that the Nazis had created themselves by enforcing a series of restrictive regulations against German Jews). The rest, argued Gutterer, ought to be "carted off to Russia... best of all actually would be to kill them." And when Goebbels himself met Hitler on 19 August he made a similar case for the swift deportation of the Berlin Jews. Dominant in Goebbels' mind was the Nazi fantasy of the role that German Jews had played during World War I. While German soldiers had suffered at the front line, the Jews had supposedly been profiting from the bloodshed back in the safety of the big cities (in reality, of course, German Jews had been dying at the front in proportionately the same numbers as their fellow countrymen). But now, in the summer of 1941, it was obvious that Jews remained in Berlin while the Wehrmacht were engaged in their brutal struggle in the East - what else could they do, since the Nazis had forbidden German Jews to join the armed forces?" Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary on 27th March, 1942: "The Jews are now being forced eastwards from the General Government, commencing with Lublin. A pretty barbaric method, not to be described in detail, is being used here, and not much of the Jews themselves remains afterwards.... A judicial sentence is being carried out against the Jews which is certainly barbaric, but which they have fully deserved. What the Führer prophesied in the eventuality of the Jews bringing about a new world war has begun to be realised in the most terrible fashion. In these matters, one cannot let sentimentality prevail. If we did not defend ourselves against them, the Jews would exterminate us. It is a life and death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus. No other government and no other regime could muster the strength for a general solution of this question. Here too, the Führer is the untiring advocate and champion of a radical solution, which the situation demands, and which therefore appears inevitable. Thank God the war affords us a series of opportunities which were denied us in peacetime. We must make use of them. The ghettos in the towns of the General Government which have been made vacant can now be filled with the Jews expelled from the Reich, and then the process can be repeated after a certain time."