Epilogue

Abstract

Goebbels has not had a good press. His hope in the last days of the ‘Third Reich’, to set an example which would impress future generations, has not thus far been fulfilled. Only a few far-right fanatics have been anything other than horrified by the killing of his six children in the bunker, an action for which he must share responsibility with Magda. He has no grave or memorial stone. In the silent forests around what is now Ke˛trzyn in northern Poland, dense layers of moss and lichen thrive on the ruined bunkers where Hitler and Goebbels agreed to murder the Jews of Europe. The Nazi Party which had provided a surrogate religion for Goebbels was ‘completely and finally abolished’ by the Allied Control Council in September 1945;2 the government he had worked for with such energy, including his Propaganda Ministry, had already been disbanded in the ruins of a divided Berlin. Today parts of the building survive, but its underground bunker is covered by some of the 2,711 concrete stellae which form a huge public memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. The Reich Chamber of Culture — Goebbels’ ‘dream’ — was one of over 60 Nazi organizations also abolished by the Allied Control Council in 1945;3 its headquarters building in Berlin is now a hotel. The central control of the arts and media in Germany which Goebbels had supervised has been replaced by deliberately regionalized and pluralistic structures, and there is still no Ministry of Culture or any equivalent in the Federal German Republic. Goebbels certainly did more than any other individual to make ‘propaganda’ a dirty word, forever associated with control, manipulation, and deceit.KeywordsMass MurderNazi RegimeGerman CultureGerman PeopleNazi PartyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.