page_title: Joseph Goebbels
section_title: Antisemitism and the Holocaust
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Goebbels / Antisemitism and the Holocaust
context_page_description: Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German Nazi politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted associates, and was known for his skills in public speaking and his deeply virulent antisemitism, which was evident in his publicly voiced views. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust.
  Goebbels, who aspired to be an author, obtained a Doctor of Philology degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1921. He joined the Nazi Party in 1924, and worked with Gregor Strasser in their northern branch. He was appointed Gauleiter for Berlin in 1926, where he began to take an interest in the use of propaganda to promote the party and its programme. After the Nazis' seizure of power in 1933, Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry quickly gained and exerted control over the news media, arts, and information in Germany. He was particularly adept at using the relatively new media of radio and film for propaganda purposes. Topics for party propaganda included antisemitism, attacks on the Christian churches, and attempting to shape morale.
context_section_description: Goebbels was antisemitic from a young age. After joining the NSDAP and meeting Hitler, his antisemitism grew and became more radical. He began to see the Jews as a destructive force with a negative impact on German society. After the Nazis seized control, he repeatedly urged Hitler to take action against the Jews. Despite his extreme antisemitism, Goebbels spoke of the "rubbish of race-materialism" and of the unnecessity of biological racism for the Nazi ideology. He also described Himmler's ideology as "in many regards, mad" and thought Alfred Rosenberg's theories were ridiculous.
  The Nazi Party's goal was to remove Jews from German cultural and economic life, and eventually to remove them from the country altogether. In addition to his propaganda efforts, Goebbels actively promoted the persecution of the Jews through pogroms, legislation, and other actions. Discriminatory measures he instituted in Berlin in the early years of the regime included bans against their using public transport and requiring that Jewish shops be marked as such.
  In November 1938, the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath was killed in Paris by the young Jewish man Herschel Grynszpan. In response, Goebbels arranged for inflammatory antisemitic material to be released by the press, and the result was the start of a pogrom. Jews were attacked and synagogues destroyed all over Germany. The situation was further inflamed by a speech Goebbels gave at a party meeting on the night of 8 November, where he obliquely called for party members to incite further violence against Jews while making it appear to be a spontaneous series of acts by the German people. At least a hundred Jews were killed, several hundred synagogues were damaged or destroyed, and thousands of Jewish shops were vandalised in an event called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Around 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. The destruction stopped after a conference held on 12 November, where Göring pointed out that the destruction of Jewish property was in effect the destruction of German property since the intention was that it would all eventually be confiscated.
  Goebbels continued his intensive antisemitic propaganda campaign that culminated in Hitler's 30 January 1939 Reichstag speech, which Goebbels helped to write:
  If international finance Jewry in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe! 
  While Goebbels had been pressing for expulsion of the Berlin Jews since 1935, there were still 62,000 living in the city in 1940. Part of the delay in their deportation was that they were needed as workers in the armaments industry. Deportations of German Jews began in October 1941, with the first transport from Berlin leaving on 18 October. Some Jews were shot immediately on arrival in destinations such as Riga and Kaunas. In preparation for the deportations, Goebbels ordered that all German Jews were required by law to wear an identifying yellow badge as of 5 September 1941. On 6 March 1942, Goebbels received a copy of the minutes of the Wannsee Conference. The document made the Nazi policy clear: the Jewish population of Europe was to be sent to extermination camps in occupied areas of Poland and killed. His diary entries of the period show that he was well aware of the fate of the Jews. "In general, it can probably be established that 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated, while only 40 per cent can be put to work. ... A judgment is being carried out on the Jews which is barbaric but thoroughly deserved," he wrote on 27 March 1942.
  Goebbels had frequent discussions with Hitler about the fate of the Jews, a subject they discussed almost every time they met. He was aware throughout that the Jews were being exterminated, and completely supported this decision. He was one of the few top Nazi officials to do so publicly.
caption: Old Synagogue Ohel Jakob [de], Munich, after Kristallnacht
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