Volume 35, Number 12 · July 21, 1988
In Love with Hitler
By John Lukacs
Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente (The Goebbels Diaries: All Entries)
Munich: K.G. Saur, Vol. 4, 741 pp., DM348
The diaries of Joseph Goebbels are an extraordinary find, for many reasons, including their size and their history. Goebbels was a truly compulsive writer as well as speaker—an unusual combination. He began to write a regular diary in July 1924 (there are indications of an irregular diary even earlier) at the age of twenty-six. The last entry is probably that of April 9, 1945, three weeks before his suicide along with his wife and children, and the complete collapse of the Third Reich. The total of the retrieved hand-and typewritten material may amount to more than 60,000 pages. When completed, their publication will comprise ten large volumes, of which the first four have now been published by the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in cooperation with the West German Federal Archives. These four volumes of Goebbels's diaries from July 1924 to July 1941 are a unit by themselves. Goebbels wrote them by hand, often every day, even when he was at his frenzied work as the minister of propaganda and culture in the Third Reich.
Review, 3459 words
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