Fates worse than death (Biographical collage). Joseph Goebbels - the little giant of the big lie Goebbels crash course

Behind During the period of the National Socialist dictatorship, that is, from 1933 to 1945, 1363 full-length films were shot, of which 10 - 15%, that is, 150 - 180 films, were of an overt propaganda nature. So, for example, in 1939 - 1940, five “shock” anti-Semitic films were released: “The Jew Suess”, “The Eternal Jew”, “The Rothschilds”, “Robert and Bertram” and “Canvas from Ireland”.

The first wave of propaganda films began in 1933. Pictures were released on the screens of the Reich that were supposed to strengthen the image of a National Socialist man: these are “Brand Stormtrooper”, filmed by order of the Supreme Headquarters of the SA, and “Hans Westmar - One of Many”, and “Quex of the Hitler Youth”. (The latter, by the way, is very reminiscent of our films about Pavlik Morozov). However, Joseph Goebbels was unhappy with the result. He said that it is more important to make not propaganda films that persistently impose ideology, but films that entertain the population.

The Minister of Propaganda was well aware that, once in power, the Nazis took away a significant amount of freedoms from the Germans. It was necessary to compensate for this with something. Question: what? Entertaining movies. Therefore, the number of “light” films, that is, comedies and melodramas, was significantly greater than propaganda films. At the same time, all these films continued to create, let’s say, a special atmosphere. That is, they showed how good life is in Germany, how selflessly the Germans fought on the fronts of the First World War, and so on.

Of the 1,363 films made in the Third Reich, most are entertainment

As for the anti-Soviet component, special films were made for this. In 1935, the film “Frisian Need” was released on the screens of the Reich. “Frisian” comes from the word “Friesians”, that is, Volga Germans. In his film, director Peter Hagen talks about how hard life is for the Volga Germans in the Soviet Union, what a pathological security officer there is who strives to rape a German girl. In general, everything is very bad. But, in the end, the Frisians manage to return to their homeland, where everything is peaceful and calm.

By the way, an incident later arose with this film: after a non-aggression pact was concluded between the USSR and Germany in 1939, “Frisian Need” was banned. However, it did not last long. In the summer of 1941, the film was released again, albeit under a different title: “The Village in the Red Storm.” Later, two more films appeared: “Runaways” and “GPU”.

Hitler and Goebbels at Ufa studio, 1935

In addition to anti-communist films, a number of films dedicated to British imperialism were released. The most famous is Uncle Kruger, which, according to some estimates, became the most expensive film of Nazi Germany. The Goebbels ministry spent 5.4 million Reichsmarks on it. An absolutely crazy amount, considering that an ordinary, let’s say, ordinary painting cost about 200 thousand marks. And here it’s 5.4...

But the film, we must pay tribute, was made at a very high level. It stars the outstanding German actor Emil Jannings, who completely sided with them when the Nazis came to power. By the way, “Uncle Kruger” was directed by the same Hans Steinhoff, the director of the film “Quex of the Hitler Youth.” The film shows the struggle of the heroic Boers against the evil British imperialism. The film was shot absolutely beautifully. In general, it immediately evokes disgust for English politics.

Dr. Goebbels on Battleship Potemkin: “This is a wonderful film...”

But Soviet films (even during the period of “friendship”) did not reach Germany. Although, it should be noted, Goebbels highly appreciated Sergei Eisenstein’s film “Battleship Potemkin.” Moreover, he considered him, firstly, a genius, and, secondly, absolutely amazing in his ideological influence on people.

Interesting fact: Dr. Goebbels, speaking at a regular meeting of German filmmakers, named three films that made the greatest impression on him and which, in his opinion, became standard films. These are “Anna Karenina” with Greta Garbo, “The Rebel” by Louis Trenker (the film was released in January 1933 and was very suitable for the Nazis from an ideological point of view, since “The Rebel” is a film that tells about the uprising of the Tyroleans against the Napoleonic invaders) and , finally, “The Nibelungs” by Fritz Lang.

“Quex of the Hitler Youth” - one of the first propaganda feature films of the Third Reich (poster), 1933

As already mentioned, many musical and love films were shown in the Third Reich. They relied on beautiful actresses who shone. But before we talk about the divas of German cinema, we note how Dr. Goebbels used propaganda moves in the same lyrical, romantic and melodramatic films.

Always in cinemas, before any picture, whatever it was, there was a chronicle “Die Deutsche Wochenschau” (“German Weekly Review”). And, I must say, they watched it with great interest. Moreover, if before the war, somewhere around 1939, the duration of “Die Deutsche Wochenschau” averaged 12 minutes, then during the war it reached half an hour, and sometimes even more. At the same time, it was supposed (such a small touch) that three minutes (then five) should pass between the newsreel and the film, so that the people would calm down and assimilate everything. In addition, it was strictly forbidden to miss the German Weekly Review. Missed it - forget about the movie.

“Anna Karenina”, “The Rebel”, “Nibelungen” - Goebbels’ favorite films

Well, now about the actresses. Let's start with, perhaps, the most famous - Olga Chekhova, the Fuhrer's favorite. Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova (née Knipper) was born in the Russian Empire (now Armenia). Since childhood, she was interested in theater, so her parents sent her to her aunt, actress Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, wife of Anton Pavlovich. She assigned her niece to the studio at the theater, where she played herself. Olga’s studies did not last long, as she quickly married the rising star of the Moscow Art Theater, Mikhail Chekhov, the nephew of the already mentioned Anton Pavlovich. True, the couple quickly divorced, and in 1920 Olga left Russia for Germany. Chekhov fit into German cinema quite organically: the Aryan appearance of the actress played a role - after all, Olga was one hundred percent German.

Adolf Hitler next to his favorite Olga Chekhova, 1939

Another actress has a story that is absolutely stunning in its intensity - an affair with the Minister of Propaganda himself. It all started with the fact that a new star lit up on the horizon of “Doctor Goebbels’ Hollywood” - the Czech actress Lida Baarova, very pretty and petite. She mainly starred in romance films. By the way, when the Minister of Propaganda drew attention to her, Baarova was playing the main role in a film with the very telling title “Hour of Temptation.” At that time, she was already living in Berlin with the famous actor Gustav Fröhlich.

Czech Lida Baarova was Dr. Goebbels' great love

In general, Goebbels fell in love, so much so that rumors spread that a divorce was coming. In addition, his wife, Magda Goebbels, became interested in the Secretary of State of the Imperial Ministry of Propaganda, Karl Hanke. But then the Fuhrer intervened in the love quadrangle. He summoned Goebbels and gave him a huge scandal. They say that the Minister of Propaganda asked Hitler for his resignation so that, after divorcing Magda, he could go abroad with his beloved. The Fuhrer, whose sympathies were on the side of Magda, did not accept the resignation and forbade Goebbels to see Baarova. Hanke was expelled from the Imperial Chamber of Culture and received the post of Gauleiter of Lower Silesia. Baarova was forbidden to act in films, and she was persecuted. The 1938 film A Prussian Love Story starring her, which Goebbels heavily promoted, was banned from showing. It appeared on the screens of West Germany only in 1950 under the title "Love Legend".

Lida Baarova, Gustav Fröhlich and Joseph Goebbels

Another film star of the Third Reich, the Hungarian Marika Rökk, known in our country primarily for the TV series “Seventeen Moments of Spring,” was in fact not considered the No. 1 star of German cinema, and the films with her participation were not so popular (judging by box office receipts), as is sometimes claimed. But Sarah Leander, Brigitte Horney, Christina Söderbaum, Lil Dagover, Jenny Hugo were stars of the first magnitude in the Third Reich. Moreover, interestingly, the most famous actresses of the Reich, say, the first four, were not born in Germany. Olga Chekhova - in the Russian Empire, Sarah Leander - in Sweden (besides, she was never a German citizen), Ilse Werner was born in Batavia (now Jakarta), Christina Söderbaum, the wife of Veit Harlan, a major director of that time, in Stockholm.

And now, please, an excerpt from a naive sermon I preached at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in New York:

“Today I will talk about the most terrifying consequences imaginable that await us if we abandon the hydrogen bomb. Relax, please. I know you can’t bear to listen to all these stories about how all kinds of different things burn to the ground in a radioactive fireball, crackling living beings. We have known about this for more than a third of a century - from the very day they dropped an atomic bomb on the yellow people living in the city of Hiroshima. They really burned to the ground and crackled as it should.

But, if you look at it, what did this crackling mean? Yes, just our old friend, death, albeit with the help of the most wonderful technology. Remember: St. Joan of Arc in the old days also burned to the ground, crackling, and all it took was some kind of fire. She accepted death on it. And the people of Hiroshima also accepted death. Death is death.

Scientists are a terribly inventive people, but even they cannot figure out how the dead could become even more dead. Which means those of you who are afraid of the hydrogen bomb are just afraid of death. And there is nothing new in it. Well, there won’t be any hydrogen bombs, so death still won’t go anywhere. What is death? Termination of life. And nothing else.

Death is nothing. Why be so worried and nervous?

So, “bet up,” as the players say. Let's talk about fates worse than death. When the Honorable Jim Jones became convinced that a fate worse than death awaited his congregation in Guyana, he gave them a drug laced with cyanide. If our government becomes convinced that we are destined for a fate worse than death, it will rain down a waterfall of atomic bombs on our enemies, and they will rain the same on us in return. These drugs, with your permission, will be enough for everyone when the need arises for them.

But when will it come and what will it all look like?

I won’t bother you with discussions about various trivial options for fate, which are only in some ways worse than death. Well, let's say our country is conquered by an enemy who doesn't understand our wonderful economic system, which means that the air lines will close, the production of wheat for export will cease, and millions of Americans eager to work will not be able to find any service for themselves. Or, let’s assume that this enemy who has conquered us will not care at all about children and the elderly. Or this enemy will use all his resources to develop weapons for the third world war. We could somehow get along with all these deprivations - although God save us from them.

But imagine that we, out of our stupidity, decided to get rid of our nuclear weapons, our favorite drug, and the enemy is right there and will instantly crucify us, that’s all. The Romans believed that the most terrible death was the death of those crucified. In terms of causing suffering, they were as good as we are in terms of genocide. It happened that they crucified a hundred people in one fell swoop. This is how, for example, they treated all the surviving soldiers of Spartacus’s army, which consisted mainly of runaway slaves. They took everyone and crucified them. The crosses stretched for several miles.

And if we are all on the cross, on the cross, and nails are hammered into our feet and into our palms, won’t we be seized by the desire for our hydrogen bombs to be ready to end life everywhere on earth? Well, what doubts can there be, from hoary antiquity only one example of the Crucified One has survived, who, one must think, no worse than us and the Russians, could put an end to life once and for all. But He chose to endure His torment. And he only asked: “Forgive them, Father, for they do not know what they are doing.”

He felt terribly bad, but He decided that life needed to go on, but if he had decided otherwise, we wouldn’t be sitting here, right?

But He is a special case. And one cannot, in fact, demand that Jesus become an example for us when we mortals decide how much suffering and pain can be endured before we desire the end of the whole world.

I don’t think anyone really wanted to crucify us. None of our potential opponents today simply have as many carpenters as they can. Even those from the Pentagon, when the budget is discussed, still keep silent about the fact that we could be crucified. It’s a pity that I suggested such a thought to them. In a year, the authorities from the Joint Staff Committee will begin to assert under oath that if not today, they will begin to crucify us tomorrow, and the blame will be on me alone,

Although the authorities will simply express themselves in the spirit that without sufficient allocations for armaments they will enslave us. And, of course, it will be right. Although the whole world knows what unimportant workers we are, you see, some enemy will be tempted by the prospect of turning us into slavery, and then we will be bought and sold, like kitchen utensils, or agricultural machines, or erotic toys that are inflated with air.

And slavery is certainly a fate worse than death. Here, I’m sure, you and I have nothing to argue about. Let's send a telegram to the Pentagon: "Since Americans are in danger of becoming slaves, now is the time for a drug."

They will understand, don't worry.

Of course, when the drug goes into use, all higher forms of life on Earth, and not just us and our enemies, will die. And even the beautiful, fearless, incredibly stupid seabirds, these defenseless blue-footed boobies from the Galapagos archipelago will also die, because we will not reconcile ourselves with slavery for anything.

By the way, I saw these birds, and very close. If I wanted to, I could wring their necks. Two months ago I went to the Galapagos, in the company of several people, including Paul Moore Jr., the rector of the cathedral where we are now.

This is the company I have now - from abbots to blue-footed boobies. But I have never come across a slave, that is, a person enslaved. Although my grandparents on both sides actually saw slaves. When they came to this country, inspired by dreams of justice and fortune, millions of Americans were slaves. They talk about the need to strengthen military power so as not to turn into slaves, and I remember the invigorating battle song, often performed recently. "Rule, Britannia." I’ll sing it to you now: “Rule, Britannia, the seas,” and so on.

That is, in an exalted style, the demand is stated to acquire such a navy that no one else has a stronger one. Why is it needed? Please, here's the next line: "Never, never, never will the English be slaves."

Some will be surprised that a strong navy and rejection of slavery, it turns out, have been linked into a kind of unity for so long. The song was composed by Scottish poet James Thomson, who died in 1748. About a quarter of a century before such a country appeared - the United States of America. Thomson prophesied to the British that they would never be slaves, and yet in that era it was considered a respectable occupation to turn into slaves those who did not have the best quality weapons. Many were destined to become slaves - that’s what they needed, but the British will never be slaves.

Overall, the song isn't that great. It’s about the fact that you can’t tolerate humiliation, and everything is right here. However, it is also about the fact that it is possible to humiliate others, although from a moral point of view this thesis is questionable. Humiliation of others should not become a national task.

So our poet should be ashamed for having composed such a thing.

If the Soviet Union attacked us and enslaved us, it would not be the first time for Americans to become slaves. And if we attack the Soviet Union and enslave it, it won’t be the first time we become slaves to the Russians.

When both Russians and Americans were still slaves, they showed extraordinary spiritual strength and resilience. People then knew how to treat each other with love. And they believed in God. And they found the simplest, most natural reasons for joy in the very fact of life. And they had the strength not to doubt that in a wonderful future everything would be as it should be. Here's a telling statistic: there were fewer suicides among slaves than among their masters.

So both Americans and Russians are capable of enduring slavery, if forced to do so, without losing faith in life.

So, maybe slavery shouldn’t be called a fate worse than death after all? After all, people are, after all, capable of enduring a lot. And that means you shouldn’t send that telegram to the Pentagon about drugs and slavery.

But let’s imagine that enemies land in huge numbers on our shores, and we are not armed to repel them, and now we are being driven out of our homes, the lands of our ancestors are taken away and forced to live in some swamps and deserts. Imagine that they even ban our religion, saying that the Great Jehovah, or whatever else we call Him, is just a ridiculous dummy, like fake pearls.

Well, so: millions of Americans have already gone through this, and are still going through this today. This means that they will withstand this catastrophe, if it is not avoided, and not only will they survive, but, surprisingly, they will retain dignity and self-respect.

Our Indians have a very difficult life, but they still believe that living is better than dying.

It turns out that I’m not very successful in finding a fate that is worse than death. It’s possible that everyone will start being aspined, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. And no one seems to be going to enslave us, or even treat us the way white Americans treated blacks. And, as far as I know, no potential enemy intends to treat us the way we still treat the American Indians to this day.

Well, what other fate can you imagine worse than death? Maybe the need to live without gasoline?

About a hundred years ago, melodramas were written in which a fate worse than death was the loss of virginity, not sanctified by marriage. It is unlikely that the Pentagon or the Kremlin planned something like this, although who can guarantee?

I myself, perhaps, would prefer to accept death for my inviolable virginity, and not for excess gasoline. Somehow it will come out more literary.

I think I underestimated the racist innuendos associated with the hydrogen bomb, which I tell myself will end all life. By the way, what does it matter to whites whether non-whites suffer or don’t suffer? True, Russian slaves were also white. And the British, who, they say, would never be slaves, were enslaved by the Romans. So even the proud British, if they are now enslaved, will have to sigh: “Here we go again.” The Armenians and the Jews, both in the old days and in our era, were treated worse than ever, but nevertheless they tried so that life would not be interrupted. About a third of our white population after the Civil War suffered from robbery, humiliation and all that. But I also thought about one thing: life needs to move on.

Please show me people who, having endured a lot, nevertheless would not try their best to save and continue life.

Please, I’ll point it out myself: warriors.

Better death than dishonor - this was the motto of several military units in the Civil War: both northerners and southerners. Now the 82nd Airborne Division seems to have adopted the same principle. I don’t argue, it made sense when people fought and died - to your right, to your left, in front, behind. But now death in battle can very easily turn into death for everyone, including - as I said - the blue-footed boobies of the Galapagos Islands.

By the way, the membranes on the feet of these birds are so blue that they couldn’t be brighter. While courting a lady, the gentleman strives to show how dazzlingly blue his paws are.

If you get to the Galapagos Islands and see the extraordinary inhabitants there, you will probably think about the same thing that worried Charles Darwin when he was there: how much time nature has, so it is capable of creating whatever it pleases. Well, okay, we will disappear from the face of the earth, and nature will recreate life. And it will take her only a few million years to do this, a mere trifle, according to her concepts.

But for people, time is already running out.

It seems to me that we will not start disarmament, although it is high time, and we will certainly blow up everything in the world, leaving no stone unturned. History shows that man is a creature malicious enough to dare to commit any cruelty, including the construction of factories whose sole purpose is to kill people and burn corpses.

Maybe we appeared here on Earth in order to leave behind only shards. Maybe when creating us, nature thought that with our help it would create new galaxies. And we were created for this purpose, to improve and perfect weapons with the belief that death is better than dishonor.

And then, lo and behold, the day will come when negotiations on disarmament are being held everywhere on the planet, and then out of the blue - bam! And admire, here it is, the new Milky Way.

So, perhaps, we should worship the hydrogen bomb, and not protest. She is, after all, the embryo of new galaxies.

What could save us? Of course, there is intervention from above - and this is exactly the place to pray for it. Let us pray to be spared our ingenuity, just as dinosaurs might pray to be spared their monumental body proportions.

However, the ingenuity for which we now mourn could, in addition to missiles with warheads, give us a way to achieve what has been considered impossible to this day - to achieve the unity of mankind. I'm mainly talking about television.

Even in my time, it was believed that it was necessary for soldiers to find themselves in the trenches before they became disillusioned with the war. The parents of these soldiers also didn’t really imagine anything, believing that their guys were exterminating monsters. But now, thanks to modern media, in any more or less developed country even ten-year-olds are sick of war. The first generation of Americans, who grew up in a time when everyone had televisions, fought in war and came back - and so, such veterans have never happened before.

Why do Vietnam veterans look at everything so gloomily? Why are they “mature beyond their years,” as they say? Yes, because they had no illusions about the war. These are the first soldiers in history who, since childhood, have seen too much of both real battles and those recreated from documents, have heard too much about the war not to doubt: it is simply a slaughterhouse in which ordinary people like them are exterminated yourself.

Previously, veterans returning home shocked their parents by telling them, as Ernest Hemingway said, that war from beginning to end was an abomination, stupidity, and inhumanity. And the parents of our Vietnam veterans themselves knew everything about the war; many had a very clear understanding of it even before their sons went overseas. Thanks to modern media, Americans of all generations became disgusted with the war even before we got involved in Vietnam.

Thanks to modern media, these poor, unlucky guys from the Soviet Union, who are now killing and dying in Afghanistan, became disgusted with war even before they were sent there.

Thanks to modern media, the same feeling must be felt by the boys from England and Argentina now killing and dying in the Falklands. The New York Post calls them Britons and Args. But thanks to modern media, we know that they are actually nice, not stupid guys at all, and what happens to them there, in the middle of the Atlantic, is much more terrible and shameful than any riots at a football match.

When I was little, Americans, and not only Americans, most often knew almost nothing about other nations. Only those who needed it by profession knew it - diplomats, scientists, journalists, anthropologists. However, they usually only knew about one people, about the Eskimos, for example, or about the Arabs. And even for them, many areas on the world map remained, like for schoolchildren from Indianapolis, an unknown land.

Basically, this is what happened. Thanks to modern means of communication, we have a clear visual and auditory image of almost every corner of the earth on our planet. Millions of us, in fact, have visited the most exotic lands, where even those who specially studied exotic lands did not visit during my childhood. And many of you have visited Timbuktu. And also in Kathmandu. My dentist just returned from a trip to Fiji. He told me about this very Fiji. I would also have told him something about the Galapagos, but at that moment he was digging in my mouth.

So now we know for sure that there are no potential enemies anywhere who are something different from ourselves - they are all the same. They have to get their own food. Wow! And they take care of their children. No, who would have thought! And they obey their leaders. I wouldn't have believed it in my life! And their thoughts are about the same as everyone else’s. Why, it can’t be!

Thanks to modern communications, we now have something we never had before: a reason to deeply regret every death, every maiming, no matter what war—and no matter what flag—he fought under.

Thirty-seven years ago we rejoiced at the death of all the inhabitants of the city of Hiroshima due to the fact that the means of communication were poor then, and even add vile racist prejudice. It seemed to us that these were not people at all, just some kind of worms. And they believed that we were the worms. And one can imagine how they would rejoice, beating their tiny yellow hands, how they would bare their crooked teeth if they managed to burn out, say, Kansas City.

Thanks to the fact that everyone now knows quite a lot about everyone else, no one is drawn to rejoice at the death of their enemies. It became clear to everyone: if we got involved in a war with the Soviet Union, not a single normal person there would experience anything other than horror upon learning that his country had exterminated everyone in New York, Chicago or San Francisco. It’s so bad that everyone here in America will only be horrified if our country exterminates everyone in Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv.

Or Nagasaki, for that matter.

It was often said that people need to change, otherwise world wars will continue. So, I want to tell you good news: the person has changed.

We are no longer the bloodthirsty idiots we were before.

Yesterday I tried to imagine what our heirs will be like a thousand years from now. If you, like Emperor Charlemagne, are driven primarily by the concern of leaving behind more descendants, you will probably have a dime a dozen in a thousand years. After all, in each of you sitting before me, if you are white, there is a drop of the blood of Charlemagne.

In a thousand years, provided that people still live on Earth, in any of them there will be a drop of our blood - the blood of each of us who wished to leave behind offspring.

And I imagined this picture: we have an awful lot of descendants. Some are rich, others are poor, some are the nicest people, others are unbearable.

I ask them: how was it possible, despite everything, to preserve humanity - for a thousand years, there must have been so many threats of its extinction. And they answer - we, they say, and our ancestors firmly decided that life is better than death, and tried to ensure that the possibility of life remained for us, for everyone else, even at the cost of dishonor. They endured many humiliations, sorrows, and disappointments, but they neither sought to kill nor succumbed to thoughts of suicide. Although they themselves also humiliated others, causing them grief and disappointment.

I won them over by thinking of a motto they could adopt for themselves, writing it on their belts, T-shirts, or I don’t know what. By the way, don’t think that they are all hippies. They are not entirely Americans. They're not even completely white.

As a motto, I suggested that they take the saying of Jim Fisk, an outstanding moralist of the last century, who was also an excellent thief and, perhaps, donated something to the needs of this cathedral.

This saying dates back to the time when Jim Fisk particularly distinguished himself in one ugly scam related to the construction of the railroad along Lake Erie. He himself was ashamed, he couldn't help but be. And, after thinking, he shrugged his shoulders, and then said - remember his words if you want to live on our planet further: “You can sacrifice everything, but not honor.”

Thank you for attention".

And I got a pulpit and a broadcast in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist (the largest Gothic church in the world) like this: in the spring of 1983, several of the most famous opponents of nuclear weapons were invited to speak there on Sundays. I found myself among them and was so proud of this that I did not ascend to the pulpit, but directly soared, as if wings had grown. Why? But because I felt a surge of boundless optimism. I felt like a kind of self-taught politician who was free to say what would especially appeal to the local, very specific audience, these Lutheran Americans, tanners, Daughters of the American Revolution, well, I don’t know who else. In front of me sat special people, of whom there are few - determined opponents of war, a marginal group for our exceptionally rich society, which invariably connects all its most daring plans, all its most generally accepted entertainments with war, yes, with war, with nothing else.

Three-quarters of my speech was the truth. But it’s in vain that I was so carried away by the idea that television is a mediator of the world. If someone else started saying this from the pulpit, and I was sitting in the audience, I would immediately get up and leave, loudly slamming the door that weighs two tons. American television, existing in the conditions of the Free Market of Ideas (which for us - I wrote about this somewhere - is beneficial), gathers its huge audience by endlessly offering one of those two things that always, even against their will, attract people , especially young ones: it shows how murder occurs. Television, as well as cinema, tried for many years - and are still trying - to make us feel dispassionate about murder and death: just like Hitler's propaganda, which processed the consciousness of the Germans when feverish preparations were made for the Second World War and the construction of death camps.

And is Joseph Goebbels necessary for murder to be perceived as an ordinary matter - just think, it’s like tying shoelaces. It is enough for the television industry to work, but it does not receive subsidies, it needs to attract millions of viewers, otherwise it will have to close the shop due to lack of funds.

And what should have been said from that pulpit is this: no hell awaits us ahead. We are already in hell, and we owe this to technology, which told us what to do when we ourselves should have decided. And television is not the only one to blame for this. There is also a weapon we have invented that is capable of destroying life even on the other side of the world. Also these automatic cars with remote control - some blurry old woman picking her nose and listening to the radio, and meanwhile moving at a speed of a mile a minute. All sorts of things like that. (The question arises: from a spiritual perspective, how are these remote-controlled cars, these newest Harvey-Davidson models, so different from injecting cocaine, only without a syringe? But we wouldn’t regret anything in the world if only these cars didn’t stop If they suddenly stop, we'll go crazy over it!)

About the extent to which technology has taught us not to fear war: November 11, the day I was born, used to be a holiday because the First World War ended on that day, but now it is the day when army veterans are honored. I remember on this day in Indianapolis, when I was a child, they stopped all activities for a minute (well, maybe they just didn’t stop fucking). This was done at eleven minutes past ten on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year. It was at that moment that the war ended - the one that ended in 1918. (And it wouldn’t start again until 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland, or maybe until 1931, when the Japanese occupied Manchuria. Go figure, they’re not fighting yet or have already started again!) On the day the war ended, the children were told what She was terrible, she brought so much suffering and grief, in general, they told the right things. If we want to perpetuate the memory of some war, the best thing is to smear ourselves with blue paint and roll in a puddle like a pig.

But since 1945, the Day of the End of the War became Army Veterans Day, and by the time I was invited to speak at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, the mood was such that there would be more wars, many wars, but this time we would not be caught by surprise ( as if they had ever caught you!), which means that not only boys, but also girls need to be imbued with the desire to be honored as army veterans in the future (what a nightmare if you don’t end up among them!)

Then we had not yet had time to kill more than a thousand Panamanians in order to forcibly remove their president (a paid CIA employee) suspected of drug transactions - otherwise I would certainly have talked about this. I would remind my peers of what the captain of the battleship Texas, J.W. Philip, said to his crew in Santiago Bay in 1898, when we were at war with the Spaniards. (Previously, our schoolchildren learned his words by heart. Now, I have no doubt, they stopped.) The guns of the Texas turned the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya into a continuous bonfire. And Captain Philip said: “No need to rejoice, guys, these poor fellows are dying.” In those days, war, even if it was inevitable and even, I admit, aroused high feelings, was nevertheless considered a tragedy. She is still a tragedy, and she cannot be any other way. But when we dealt with the Panamanians, all I heard from those who commanded us was: “Great!” or “Well done!”

(When I was finishing this book in the summer of 1990 - it’s about what happened in the 80s - we won a triumphant victory over Iraq. On this occasion, I’ll just quote the words of one woman that I heard at dinner about a week after the raids and rocket attacks ended: “Now our whole country seems to be feasting, having gathered for a holiday in a wonderfully furnished house. And everyone is so polite, behaves so nicely with each other, but there’s a nasty smell coming from somewhere, and it’s getting stronger and stronger. And no one wants to be the first to talk about this smell.")

Ronald Reagan, of course, only saw war in movies or on a film set. Everyone there really likes to fight. The wounds turned out so neatly, and the wounded did not bother anyone with their moans, and no one died like a fool. And George Bush - well, he’s just an exemplary hero-warrior, what can I say. Only he fought in aviation, and from above war is sort of like a sport, a kind of exciting duel in the arena. Those who serve in aviation almost never see the faces of those they kill or wound up close (if they ever see the faces of their victims). For those who fought on earth, it is common to have difficult dreams when they dream about the people they killed. Luckily for me, I didn't kill anyone. Just imagine a pilot or a gunner from a bomber crew: what if he has to admit that he didn’t kill anyone, and he’ll burn with shame.

In addition, in my memory, George Bush - the first president who was elected as a result of a campaign that was openly racist - everyone was intimidated by talk about black psychopaths and rapists. If he had decided to talk about an Armenian rapist, or a Jew, or a Pole, he would have been looked at with the same contempt as Heinrich Himmler, who raised chickens on his farm and then became the head of all the death camps. But Bush studied America better than I did - I never had the courage in my whole life, so he intimidated us with a black rapist, thanks to which he won, just like that, he won! Well, to hell with him! I don't care if it's like that. In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel in which he proposed imagining America as a fascist country - "It's Impossible Here." And I also think: this is impossible here, unless another Depression breaks out.

The rector of the cathedral, Paul Moore Jr., and I have been friends for a long time. Jill knew him as a girl in Morristown, New Jersey. Four of us went to the Galapagos Islands - he and his wife Brenda and I and Jill. One evening, when we were exactly on the equator (and in the waters of Ecuador!), I asked him to show me the Southern Cross, which I can never find in the sky. He would find it, I knew it, because Moore was a marine during the war and fought just south of Ecuador, on Guadalcanal. (He became a believer there. But if I had been a believer, I would have become an atheist there.) The Southern Cross turned out to be a tiny little thing when viewed from the deck of a ship, like a button that is pinned to blueprints.

Small, sorry,” Moore said.

“It’s not your fault,” I responded. He was a priest in Indianapolis for quite a long time, so he knows some of my relatives who have returned to the faith. He is a very nice person, he always stands up for the weak if the strong (mainly from among the subscribers of the Wall Street Journal) offend, infringe on and bully them. One day a woman who was about to give birth turned to me and asked: is it worth giving life to a child, because the world is so terrible? And I answered: for me, life requires almost no justification, because it happened to me to know holy people, - and I named Abbot Moore.

Joseph Paul Goebbels- Minister of Public Education and Propaganda of the Nazi government of Germany, a man who left a mark not only on the history of the Third Reich, but also on world history in general. A brilliant speaker and propagandist, he is called the “father of lies” and “father of PR”, “father of mass communications” and “Mephistopheles of the 20th century”.

His statements became commandments of propaganda and black PR:

“Give me the media, and I’ll turn any nation into a herd of pigs!”

“We do not seek the truth, but the effect.”

“A lie told a hundred times becomes the truth.”

“The information had to be simple and accessible, and it had to be repeated, that is, hammered into people’s heads, as often as possible.”

It can be noted with bitterness that, despite the fall of the fascist empire, Goebbels’ ideas for manipulating consciousness live and win. Their influence is noticeable in a variety of areas of impact on human consciousness:

The need to study the methods, forms and theoretical ideas of Goebbels’s propaganda is currently associated with two problems.

The first is the existence of neo-fascist movements, and, as a consequence, the possibility of them using the propaganda arsenal of Dr. Goebbels. Their current weakness cannot be a source of complacency - the NSDAP was also weak in the early 20s, and the Beer Hall Putsch looked like a parody of the revolution. The effective use of Goebbels' legacy can also be facilitated by the well-known similarity of the situation in the late 20s and early 30s. last century and in the modern world:

• A global economic crisis that is systemic in nature and requires a radical restructuring of the existing economic system.
• The result is a deterioration in the financial situation of large sections of the population.
• Increasing political and social instability, global threats, such as the activity of various revolutionary groups in the last century and terrorism today. These factors lead to a longing for order and a “strong hand” in a significant part of people.
• The growth of activity of left-wing organizations (Although the centers of activity have changed. At the beginning of the 20th century, the main center was Europe, now Latin America.), which can reactively lead to the stimulation of far-right movements by influential political and economic circles.
• Destruction of previous ideological systems and associated systems of moral values.

For Germany at the beginning of the century, this was the fall of the Second Reich and the onset of culture in the 20s. with its cult of money and pleasure, denial of spiritual values, and the flourishing of drug addiction and prostitution. In our time, this is the destruction of traditional Christian culture and the advent of the “MTV civilization” in the West and the destruction of the USSR and the entire socialist system with its rather traditional ethics in the East.

The situation of a “spiritual vacuum” does not seem comfortable to everyone and also pushes some part of the population towards fascism with their clear and intelligible system of values.

Goebbels' techniques in modern politics (direct link to video):

The prevalence of historical ignorance makes it possible to reuse the propaganda methods of "old" fascism. Accordingly, it is important to thoroughly study them and develop information countermeasures, such as:

• maintaining historical awareness of the crimes of fascism, its influence on the fate of Germany and other countries with victorious fascist dictatorships, the fight against pro-fascist falsification of history;
• preventing the glorification of Nazism;
• maintaining the bright memory of the fighters against fascism;
• development of systems thinking, in particular the ability to competently and comprehensively assess the consequences of a particular historical choice on the political, economic, and spiritual life of the country. Ignorance is the breeding ground for demagogues;
• critical thinking, the ability to resist manipulation of consciousness.

The phenomenon of Nazi propaganda in general and the personality of Goebbels in particular attract the close attention of researchers. Let us note several books published in Russian in the last two decades.

As an introduction, we can suggest Lyudmila Chernaya’s book “Brown Dictators,” dedicated to the most important figures of the Third Reich: Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, Bormann and Ribbentrop. Without delving into the topic of Nazi propaganda, the author focuses on the study of the personality of its main creator, Joseph Goebbels. The book is intended for a wide range of readers and is popular in nature, but at the same time provides rich factual material.

A biography of Goebbels is also presented in the book by foreign researchers Bramstedte, Frenkel and Manwell “Joseph Goebbels - Mephistopheles grins from the past.” The authors are especially interested in the oratory skills of the Nazi propaganda minister and his methods of manipulating the masses.

A more in-depth study of Goebbels’ personality is undertaken by Kurt Riess in the book “The Bloody Romantic of Nazism. Doctor Goebbels. 1939-1945". The time frame of the book is limited to the Second World War, but the book is interesting due to its emphasis on the use of primary sources - Goebbels' diaries, stories of eyewitnesses and relatives. It combines ease of presentation with factual accuracy, which is quite rare.

During the war, Elena Rzhevskaya was a translator at the headquarters of the army that marched from Moscow to Berlin. In defeated Berlin, she participated in the identification of the bodies of Hitler and Goebbels and in the initial dismantling of documents found in the bunker. Her book “Goebbels. Portrait against the background of a diary" explores the phenomenon of the fascists coming to power, primarily from the point of view of the impact on human psychology.

An in-depth study of Nazi propaganda was undertaken by A. B. Agapov in his work “Joseph Goebbels and German Propaganda,” published as part of the book “The Diaries of Joseph Goebbels. Prelude to Barbarossa. The publication also includes the full text of Goebbels's diaries from November 1, 1940 to July 8, 1941 and notes to them.

Among the primary sources, the most important are Goebbels’s diaries, which he kept throughout his life. Unfortunately, there is no complete publication in Russian. The diaries of 1945 are collected in the book J. Goebbels “Last Notes,” 1940-1941. – in Agapov’s book mentioned above, there are also journal publications.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to find Goebbels' works in Russian. Some materials can be found on the Internet. Thus, selected speeches and articles by the Minister of Propaganda (translated from English and German) are posted on the website “Thus Spoke Goebbels”. For an extensive collection of speeches and articles in English, see the "Nazi Propaganda by Joseph Goebbels" page on the Calvin College website.

This is enough to start studying the topic.

Goebbels' propaganda methods during and before the Nazi Party came to power

Joseph Goebbels joined the NSDAP in 1924, and initially joined its left, socialist wing, then led by the Strasser brothers and opposed to the right, led by Hitler. Goebbels even said:

“Bourgeois Adolf Hitler must be expelled from the National Socialist Party!” .

From 1924, Goebbels worked in the Nazi press, first as an editor in Völkische Freiheit (People's Freedom), then in Strasser's National Socialist Epistles. Also in 1924, Goebbels made a significant entry in his diary:

“I was told that I gave a brilliant speech. It is easier to speak freely than from a prepared text. Thoughts come by themselves.”

In 1926, Goebbels went over to Hitler's side, becoming one of his most loyal comrades. Hitler reciprocated and in 1926 appointed Goebbels Gauleiter of the NSDAP in Berlin-Brandenburg (However, we note that this position was not easy, since Berlin was considered a “red” city and at the time of Goebbels’s arrival, the local Nazi cell numbered only 500 members.) . It was in this work that Goebbels’ oratorical abilities were revealed at numerous rallies and demonstrations. He also became the founder and (from 1927 to 1935) editor-in-chief of the weekly (from 1930 - daily) Der Angriff (Attack). Since 1929, he has been the imperial director (Reichsleiter) of propaganda for the Nazi Party, and in 1932 he led Hitler's election campaign for the presidency. Here he achieved outstanding success, doubling the number of votes cast for the Nazis.

Goebbels proclaimed the following principles of propaganda:

1. Propaganda must be planned and directed from one authority
2. Only authority can determine whether the result of propaganda should be true or false
3. Black propaganda is used when white propaganda is less possible or produces undesirable effects.
4. Propaganda must characterize events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans
5. For better perception, propaganda must arouse the interest of the audience and be conveyed through an attention-grabbing communication medium.

In life, Goebbels clearly adhered to these principles.

The centralization of the propaganda process was fully realized after the Nazis came to power in the form of the creation of the Ministry of Propaganda. However, even earlier, Goebbels managed to largely concentrate propaganda activities in his own hands, officially becoming the Reichsleiter of NSDAP propaganda.

Boundless cynicism in the choice of means became Goebbels' calling card. It is believed that it was he who came up with the division of propaganda into white (reliable information from official sources), gray (dubious information from obscure sources) and black (outright lies, provocations, etc.). This or that distortion of information is a characteristic feature of any propaganda. But, perhaps, it was Goebbels, for the first time since Ignatius of Loyola, who began to use direct lies constantly, in huge quantities and purposefully. He completely abandoned the criterion of truth, replacing it with the criterion of efficiency.

Let's remember his quote again:

“We do not seek the truth, but the effect.”

Let us note in parentheses that this is strikingly reminiscent of modern advertising textbooks, where all attention is paid to the effectiveness of conveying the message, and ethical issues remain completely behind the scenes. As a journalist from one of the marketing publications noted:

Slogans are a characteristic feature of Goebbels' style. Although a mediocre writer (his youthful works were rejected by all publishing houses), Goebbels was truly talented in the art of slogans. His first exercise in the lapidary style was the 10 commandments of the National Socialist, composed by him shortly after joining the party:

1. Your fatherland is Germany. Love him above all else and more in action than in words.
2. Germany's enemies are your enemies. Hate them with all your heart!
3. Every compatriot, even the poorest, is a piece of Germany. Love him as yourself!
4. Demand only responsibilities. Then Germany will find justice!
5. Be proud of Germany! You should be proud of the fatherland, for which millions gave their lives.
6. He who dishonors Germany will dishonor you and your ancestors. Point your fist at him!
7. Beat the villain every time! Remember, if someone takes away your rights, you have the right to destroy them!
8. Don't let the Jews deceive you. Be on the lookout for the Berliner Tagesblatt!
9. Do what you need to do without shame when it comes to the New Germany!
10. Believe in the future. Then you will be a winner!

Goebbels also skillfully knew how to stir up the interest of the public, putting Nazi propaganda into a bright, attractive form. He was one of the first to understand the attractive power of scandal. At the beginning of his oratorical career in Berlin, he considered a meeting a failure if no one was beaten at it.

Goebbels also discovered one of the principles of the “correct” presentation of information, which today is considered the basics of the journalistic profession - information is better absorbed through specific human images. The public needs victims and heroes. The first experiment of this kind for Goebbels was the formation of the image of Horst Wesel.

Horst Wessel - SA Sturmführer. In 1930, at the age of 23, he was wounded in a street clash with communists and died from his wounds (Opponents of the NSDAP spread a version according to which the fight happened because of a woman and had no political overtones.). From this banal story (hundreds died in street clashes between fascists and communists) Goebbels squeezed everything possible. He spoke at Wessel's funeral and called him the "socialist Christ."

Fascism scholar Herzstein writes about Goebbels's speech:

“The principle of camaraderie in the ranks of the assault troops (SA) was the “life-giving force of the movement,” the living presence of the Idea. The blood of the victim-martyr nourished the living body of the party. When in early 1930 Horst Wessel, an eternal student and a man without any particular occupation, who wrote the words to the Nazi anthem “Higher the Banner!”, died a violent death, Goebbels’ words sounded mourning for a hero and an emotional salute that demonstrated the brilliance of his methods of organizing mourning ceremonies. He made Vesel die with a peaceful smile on his lips, a man who believed in the victory of National Socialism until his last breath,

“... forever remaining with us in our ranks... His song immortalized him! For this he lived, for this he gave his life. A wanderer between two worlds, yesterday and tomorrow, so it was and so it will be. Soldier of the German nation!

Goebbels immortalized the memory of Wessel, who was killed by the Reds; in fact, his death was more like the consequences of a quarrel that arose as a result of a collision with another similar scumbag over a prostitute. It is very possible that in the last weeks of his life Wessel was planning to move away from the party altogether. But all this did not play any role: Goebbels knew what was required of him and acted as expected.”

Song based on Wessel's verses “Higher the Banners!” became the anthem of the SA (and later the unofficial anthem of the Third Reich). Each anniversary of his death was solemnly celebrated, with the Fuhrer personally delivering a speech at the grave, dressed in a brown stormtrooper shirt, despite the cold. The family grave of the Wessel family was re-registered with party money. In memory of the hero, the 5-1 “standard” SA “Horst Wessel” was formed in 1932. The cult of Wessel developed even after the Nazis came to power. Goebbels understood well that the presence of heroes and role models is an important factor in the stability and reproducibility of society, and if necessary, they must be created artificially!

If we talk about the directions of Goebbels’s propaganda at this time, they boil down to increasing the popularity of the NSDAP and its teachings, denigrating its political opponents, harsh criticism of the existing government and anti-Semitism. Goebbels considered the broad masses of people as his audience. He said :

“We are obliged to speak in a language that the people understand. Anyone who wants to speak to the people must, according to Luther’s words, look into the people’s mouth.”

Before coming to power, oratorical speeches, newspaper publications, and election campaign materials were used as forms of propaganda before coming to power.

As is known, before the start of political activity, Goebbels tried to find himself in the writing field, and later he did not give up these attempts. However, his literary works were unanimously rejected by publishers (naturally, before coming to power). They were distinguished by verbosity, pomposity, unnatural pathos, and sentimentality. Here is an example of Goebbels’s style - the hero of the novel “Michael” describes his feelings when returning to his homeland from the front of the First World War:

“The blood stallion no longer snorts under my hips, I no longer sit on cannon carriages, I no longer walk on the clay bottom of trenches. How long has it been since I walked across the wide Russian plain or across the joyless fields of France, pitted by shells? It's all gone! I rose from the ashes of war and destruction like a Phoenix. Motherland! Germany!".

However, the same qualities that caused Goebbels's failure as a writer ensured his success in the field of oratory. Hysterical pathos, hysterical cries, and romanticism had a strong impact on the crowd gathered for a rally or demonstration.

During his speech, Goebbels became extremely excited and “worked up” the crowd. His plain appearance was compensated by his strong and harsh voice. His emotionality was expressed in violent theatrical gestures:

He made sharp attacks on the Berlin city government, Jews and communists, but became sublimely romantic when talking about Germany. Here is an example of Goebbels's speech:

“Our thoughts are about the soldiers of the German revolution who threw their lives on the altar of the future so that Germany would rise again... Retribution! Retribution! His day is coming... We bow our heads to you, the dead. Germany begins to awaken in the reflections of your spilled blood...

Let the marching tread of the brown battalions be heard:

For freedom! Soldiers of the storm! The army of the dead marches with you into the future!

Goebbels conducted his journalistic activity, as mentioned above, in the newspaper “People's Freedom”, where the main target of his attacks were large Jewish publishers (revenge for the rejection of his literary works!). Then there was a short work in the left-Nazi “NS-Brief”. Goebbels really unfolded in the newspaper Angriff, which he founded. The new newspaper was conceived as a “publication for all tastes” and had the motto on the first page:

“Long live the oppressed, down with the exploiters!”

In order to attract attention, Goebbels tried to write in a popular manner, abandoning all objectivity. He was convinced of the unpretentiousness of mass consciousness and the passion of the masses for simple unilateral decisions. Goebbels used modern advertising methods to notify the world about the appearance of his newspaper.

“The public must be intrigued even before the product appears!”, for this purpose, three advertising posters were released, one after another, posted on the streets of Berlin. The first one asked:

“Attack with us?”

the second declared:

and the third explained:

"Attack" ("Der Angriff") is a new German weekly newspaper published under the motto “For the oppressed! Down with the exploiters!”, and its editor is Dr. Joseph Goebbels.

The newspaper has its own political program. Every German, every German woman should read our newspaper and subscribe to it!”

I can’t help but draw parallels with modern advertising again. Now this has become a well-worn technique - placing billboards with incomprehensible content (to intrigue the public) with subsequent explanation.

Novaya Gazeta “attacked” on two main fronts. Firstly, it incited readers to oppose democracy, against the existing Weimar Republic, and secondly, it fueled and exploited anti-Semitic sentiments. So, at first, the main target of attacks was Bernhard Weiss, the chief of the Berlin police and a Jew. Newspaper slogan:

“Germany, wake up! Damn the Jews!" As a result, starting with a tiny piece of paper, the newspaper was a resounding success and became the main mouthpiece of the party.

Goebbels also paid great attention to the production of election campaign materials, especially posters. Poster art truly flourished after the Nazis came to power, but posters had also been widely used before. In election campaigning, two directions can be distinguished: depicting enemies in a satirical form and creating an image "real Germany"- workers, front-line soldiers, women, etc., voting for Hitler:

An important theme of the posters is the unity of the working German people - workers, peasants and intelligentsia; Goebbels tried to unite the broadest possible masses in voting for the Nazis.

Goebbels himself praised the achievements of Nazi poster art:

“Our posters turned out great. Propaganda is carried out in the best possible way. The whole country will definitely pay attention to them.”

Actually, that’s what happened.

Propaganda methods of the fascist state

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Goebbels was appointed Reich Minister of Public Education and Propaganda. Under his leadership, this modest department actually became the second most important after the military. Goebbels turned the ministry into a “propaganda machine,” subordinating all forms of art and all channels of communication to this goal. The essence of the propaganda is gleishaltung, literally “transformation into a monolith” - the unification of the German people under National Socialist slogans.

In addition to the previous types of propaganda - oratory and the press, Goebbels made extensive use of new technical means - cinema and radio. He attached an important role in the “unity of the people” to folk holidays (including sports) and mass rituals. Poster art flourished. No less importance was attached to non-verbal propaganda - architecture, sculpture, and the use of various symbols. However, Goebbels had minimal connection to the latter direction.

Oratory continued to be Goebbels' strong point. He spoke a lot at various public events: party congresses, rallies, and during the war - at ceremonial funerals. At the end of the war, Goebbels remained practically the only one of the Reich leaders who appeared in public. He often visited the wounded in hospitals, the homeless in the ruins of their destroyed homes. And wherever he appeared, he made fiery speeches that restored fanatical faith in German weapons and the genius of the Fuhrer to people who had lost the strength to fight.

Goebbels was the first to emphasize the propaganda power of mass communications. For that era it was radio.

“What the press was in the nineteenth century, broadcasting will become in the twentieth,” Goebbels declared.

Upon becoming minister, he immediately transferred national radio broadcasting from the General Post Office to the Ministry of Propaganda. Mass production of cheap radios (“Goebbels’ face”) and their sale in installments to the population was organized. As a result, by 1939, 70% of the German population (3 times more than in 1932) were radio owners. The installation of radios in businesses and public establishments such as cafes and restaurants was also encouraged.

Joseph Goebbels also experimented with television. Germany became one of the first countries where television broadcasting began. The first experiment occurred on March 22, 1935. Goebbels's subordinate, radio chief Eugen Hadamowski, appeared on the screen as a blurry image and uttered several words of praise about Hitler. During the 1936 Berlin Olympics, there were attempts (not very successful) to broadcast live competitions.

Despite its technical imperfections, Goebbels praised the potential of television:

“The superiority of a visual image over an auditory one is that the auditory image is translated into a visual one with the help of individual imagination, which cannot be kept under control; everyone will still see their own. Therefore, you should immediately show how it should be so that everyone sees the same thing.”

And further:

“With television, a living Fuhrer will enter every home. It will be a miracle, but it should not be frequent. Another thing is us. We, the leaders of the party, must be with the people every evening after a working day and explain to them what they did not understand during the day.”

Goebbels developed a plan for the approximate content of television programs:

* news;
* reports from workshops and farms;
* sports;
* entertainment programs.

Interestingly, Goebbels considered the possibility of building into television a mechanism for feedback from the viewer (now called interactivity), and also using it as a valve for the release of dissatisfaction. The following quotes speak about this:

“We shouldn’t be afraid to immerse the viewer in a political dispute, in the struggle between the good and the best... And the next day, provide the opportunity to express their opinion at their enterprise by voting, for example.”

“If some kind of discontent is brewing in society, we should not be afraid to personify it and bring it to the screen. As soon as we can provide at least half of the population with telefunken (i.e., televisions) of the fifth model, we need to seat our worker leader, Leia, in front of the telegun, and let him sing his songs about the hardships of the working man.”

However, with the outbreak of the war, the technical development of television slowed down, and it did not play a significant role in the propaganda activity of this period.

The press was also placed under strict control. All opposition publications were banned, and liberals and Jews were expelled from their editorial offices. Jewish-owned newspapers were expropriated. The quality of newspaper materials and their severity fell sharply and, accordingly, the interest of the population fell.

Under Goebbels, the organization of mass events rose to the level of art. These included rallies, congresses, parades, etc. Goebbels’ personal invention was the introduction into Nazi circulation of exclusively colorful night torchlight processions that involved thousands of young people.

An example of Nazi propaganda is the 1936 Berlin Olympics, directed by Goebbels. It should be noted that Hitler was initially against holding the Olympics, because he considered it humiliating for “Aryan” athletes to compete with “non-Aryans.” Goebbels made every effort to convince the leader to reconsider his attitude towards the Olympic Games. According to him, holding the Olympics will show the world community the revived power of Germany and provide the party with first-class propaganda material. In addition, the competition will demonstrate the superiority of the Germans.

A monumental sports complex was built especially for the Olympics, decorated with “Aryan” figures:

Both the Olympic complex and the entire city were heavily decorated with Nazi symbols. The opening ceremony of the Olympics was impressive with an artillery salute, thousands of doves released into the sky and a giant Hindenburg airship carrying the Olympic flag.

The talented director Leni Riefenstahl shot the film “Olympia” at the Olympics. Overall, the propaganda campaign was a success. William Shirer wrote in 1936:

“I'm afraid the Nazis have succeeded in their propaganda. First, they organized the Games on a scale and generosity never seen before; Naturally, the athletes liked it. Secondly, they gave a very good reception to all the other guests, especially the big businessmen.”

It was from the Berlin Olympics that the tradition of holding the Games as a monumental celebration began.

Before the Nazis came to power, German cinema was one of the strongest in the world. His fate in Nazi Germany resembles the fate of the press - many talented filmmakers were forced to leave Germany, as a result of which the level of films fell. However, Germany produced 1,300 paintings during the 12 years of the Reich. Some talented artists, such as Leni Riefenstahl, worked for the Nazis, incl. and in propaganda tapes.

Poster art developed greatly after the Nazis came to power.

During World War II, Goebbels' department switched to serving the interests of the war. There are several themes that were actively exploited in Nazi posters.
Leader's theme. Recurring slogan:

"One people, one Reich, one leader."

Poster "One people, one Reich, one leader"

Theme of family, mother and child. Reich advocated "healthy Aryan family":

The theme of the working man. The Nazi Party drew strength from broad sections of the population, and the appeal in the poster to the image of a worker or peasant is no coincidence.

Since 1939, naturally, much space has been occupied by the theme of war, heroism at the front, sacrifices in the name of victory, and the related theme of labor heroism.

The theme of enemies was also widely used in military propaganda: Jews, Bolsheviks, Americans. By the end of the war, this topic acquired a “horror story” connotation -

“It is better to die for the Motherland than to fall into the clutches of bloodthirsty Judeo-communists.”

It is worthwhile to dwell separately on the work of Goebbels’ department during the Second World War, when not only the troops of the opposing sides, but also their propaganda apparatuses clashed in battle. The Ministry of Propaganda worked in two directions: to address the enemy army and population, and for domestic consumption.

External propaganda achieved the following goals.

Convince the population of the friendliness of Germany and the need for an “union” with it. Similar propaganda was used in relation to “racially close” countries: Denmark, Norway, etc. An example is the poster below, in which the silhouette of a Viking recalls the common ancient Germanic past of Norway and Germany:

Convince the civilian population of the friendliness of German troops and a good life under German rule.

This kind of propaganda was used mainly in the Soviet Union. It was assumed that Soviet workers and peasants, who did not live in the best material conditions, would fall for the promise of heavenly life. However, the problem turned out to be a striking discrepancy between the appeals of the leaflets and the actual behavior of German troops in the occupied territory. In the conditions of the atrocities of the occupiers, Goebbels’ propaganda had no effect on the population.

Convince enemy soldiers of the futility of resistance and the need to surrender. In addition to appealing to the natural desire to survive, the technique “Why would you die for this power!” was used. Leaflets, loudspeaker messages, and “Pass to Captivity” were used:

Turning the population against the authorities. Again, widely used in the Soviet Union. The current government was presented as “Jewish-communist”, and the famine of 1932-1933 was recalled. and other fictitious “crimes”.

An attempt to split the ranks of the allies. The most striking episode is the attempt to promote the Katyn affair, which we will consider below.

On the domestic front, the directions of propaganda were as follows.

Conviction of the invincibility of German troops. It worked well at the beginning of the war, but as the number of defeats grew, it stopped working.

Stimulation of labor enthusiasm - “Everything for the front!”

Intimidation of the population by the atrocities of the Bolsheviks. An effective technique that makes people fight even in hopeless conditions. “It’s better to die than to fall into their hands!”

If we talk about forms of propaganda, then in internal practice the same channels were used as in peacetime. To influence the enemy, radio stations, leaflets, and broadcasts through a loudspeaker across the front line were used. The Nazis sought to use traitors from among the local population, preferably famous people, such as popular artists.

Falsification of facts was widely used, from the banal reporting of false information in news releases, to forgery of photographs and film documents, there were even attempts to fake live television broadcasts. For example, it was announced to residents of occupied Krasnodar that a column of Soviet prisoners would be marched through the city and that food could be given to them. A large number of residents gathered with baskets. Instead of prisoners, cars with wounded German soldiers were driven through the crowd - and Goebbels was able to show the Germans a film about the joyful meeting of the German “liberators”. The technique of mixing genuine and false documents was often used. In some cases, historians still cannot separate truth from lies. Such cases include the Katyn affair and the Nemmersdorf murders.

According to the Soviet version, Polish prisoners of war ended up in the hands of the Germans during the 1941 offensive and were shot by the German side.

In 1943, Goebbels used this mass grave for propaganda purposes against the Soviet Union in order to drive a wedge between the allies. A demonstrative exhumation of the corpses of Polish officers was arranged, with the participation of representatives of dependent states and British and American prisoners of war as witnesses. At the same time, a coordinated and controlled propaganda campaign was launched by the dependent press, which was supported by the Polish government in exile from London, despite the lack of opportunity for an independent investigation in the territory occupied by German troops and the efforts of the British, then allies of the USSR in the anti-Hitler coalition, to keep the Poles from hasty and unfounded conclusions. It has now been established that the execution in Katyn was organized by Stalin; Rosarkhiv has published secret documents on this case.

In the village of Nemmersdorf in East Prussia, according to Goebbels propaganda, mass rape and murder of civilians by Russian soldiers took place. Horrible details were reported and bloody photographs were published. The purpose of this action was to persuade the population of the Third Reich to continue their senseless resistance. It is now extremely difficult to establish the truth, but apparently the fire of the Soviet troops on civilians actually took place, and about 3 dozen people died. Goebbels used a real fact, increased the number of those killed several times, added fictitious vile details and fabricated photographs. Nevertheless, it is still Goebbels’ version that is popular in Western publications.

These cases well illustrate the methods of work of the Ministry of Propaganda. However, the streams of lies also brought negative results for the ministry. Often the department rushed things and was caught in fraud. This led to widespread disbelief in any official reports towards the end of the war. Many Germans during this period preferred to listen to English or Soviet radio in search of more reliable information. Goebbels himself admitted his mistakes after the defeat at Stalingrad:

“...propaganda from the very beginning of the war took the following erroneous development: 1st year of the war: We won. 2nd year of the war: We will win. Year 3 of the war: We must win. 4th year of war: We cannot be defeated. This development is catastrophic and should not continue under any circumstances. Rather, it is necessary to bring to the consciousness of the German public that we not only want and are obliged to win, but especially also that we can win.”

Nevertheless, he remained true to himself to the end - and in the last days of the war he bombarded the defenders of Berlin with leaflets with assurances of inevitable victory.

Propaganda is the force that made it possible for the Nazis to come to power in Germany. Along with military power, it is one of the pillars of the Third Reich. The head of the propaganda department, Joseph Goebbels, turned propaganda into a high art. Completely freed from the ethical principle, propaganda has become a powerful tool for manipulating consciousness. Let us list some of the principles introduced into mass circulation by Goebbels:

Sadly, these and other Goebbelsian techniques are widely used in modern advertising, public relations and media work. It is worth recalling a couple more lessons from the life and work of Dr. Goebbels:

the most brilliant lie cannot withstand the collision with reality; sooner or later the lie turns against itself.

This was confirmed in May 1945.

Literature

1. Nazi Propaganda by Joseph Goebbels. // www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goebmain.htm
2. Agapov A. B. Diaries of Joseph Goebbels. Prelude to Barbarossa. M.: "Dashkov and K", 2005
3. Bogatko Y. Joseph Goebbels as the pope of mass communications. // Sostav.ru. URL:www.sostav.ru/columns/eyes/2006/k53/
4. Bramstedte E., Frenkel G., Manwell R. Joseph Goebbels - Mephistopheles grins from the past. Rostov-on-Don: “Phoenix”, 1999
5. Buryak A. Aesthetics of National Socialism. // URL: nazi-aesthetics.narod.ru/Ans0080.htm
6. Goebbels J. Latest entries. Smolensk: “Rusich”, 1998
7. Goebbels, Paul Joseph. // Wikipedia. URL: ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goebbels,_Paul_Joseph
8. Goebbels propaganda 1941-1942. // Blog dr-music. URL: dr-music.livejournal.com/136626.html
9. Hertzstein R. The war that Hitler won. Smolensk: “Rusich”, 1996.
10. Joseph Goebbels 1897-1945. // History of National Socialist propaganda. URL: prop.boom.ru/Goebbels.htm
11. Kara-Murza S. G. Manipulation of consciousness. M.: "Eksmo", 2007
12. Klemperer V. LTI. The language of the Third Reich. Philologist's notebook. M.: “Progress-Tradition”, 1998
13. Mukhin Yu.I. Katyn detective. M.: “Svetoton”, 1995
14. German posters from the Second World War. // URL: trinixy.ru/2007/03/15/nemeckie_plakaty_vremen_v…
15. Patrushev A.I. Germany in the 20th century. M.: “Bustard”, 2004
16. Petrov I. Nemmersdorf: between truth and propaganda. // The Great Slandered War-2. Ed. Pykhalova I., Dyukova A. M.: “Yauza”, “Eksmo”, 2002
17. Rzhevskaya E. M. Goebbels. Portrait against the background of a diary. M.: "AST-Press", 2004
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19. So said Goebbels. So selected speeches and articles by the Minister of Propaganda and Education of the Third Reich. // hedrook.vho.org/goebbels/index.htm
20. Television of the Third Reich. // Radio “Echo of Moscow”. URL: www.echo.msk.ru/programs/victory/53109/
21. Khazanov B. Goebbels’ creative path. // "October". – 2002. – No. 5
22. Chernaya L. Brown dictators. Rostov-on-Don: “Phoenix”, 1999
23. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. M.: “Locked-Press”, 2005

On November 20, 1978, the world was shocked by the Jonestown massacre. From November 18 to 19, 918 US citizens were shot, stabbed and poisoned in this colony in Guyana (South America). However, even now few people know that in fact these people were no longer Americans. De facto, those killed were citizens of the USSR.

Without mentioning that all the facts pointed to murder, the major US media (New York Times, Associated Press, etc.) immediately called the tragedy a “mass suicide.” The official version of the tragedy, set out in the American and then world media, is well known. According to it, a certain Jim Jones declared his prophetic ability to heal and promoted himself to Jesus. This attracted many members to the Peoples Temple community he organized. Any dissent here was suppressed. Anyone who joined the Peoples Temple could not voluntarily leave it. Renegades were punishable by death and damnation. Being totalitarian, the community needed self-isolation, an Iron Curtain. This was the reason for the emigration of the Peoples Temple to Guyana. The colony of Jonestown was founded there - the city of Jones. The colony had a system of subordination. At the foot were the ordinary members of the community, above them stood the “Temple Planning Commission” - followers of Jones, noted for their merits. Even higher were the “12 angels”. Jim Jones himself crowned the pyramid. He had a "personal guard", a "death squad" and a "order service".

Jones's cult flourished, but then his mind began to cloud. At this moment, Congressman Leo Ryan arrives in Guyana with a group of journalists to see on the spot how the rights of American citizens are ensured in the colony. During the visit, he reveals the savage motive, tries to escape and take out a group of colonists, but Jones gives chase, which shoots both the fugitives and the congressman. Jones then orders all the cultists to end their lives. Those who did not want to die were killed. The American army and the CIA tried to save the sectarians, but arrived too late...

This story was offered to the world as an explanation for the shocking footage, where hundreds of corpses of men, women and children lay among tropical vegetation. .

Capitalism with a human face. How they were killed.

You see human bodies. The photo shows an aerial view of Jonestown, the Peoples Temple peasant community in Guyana. On November 18, 1978, at the call of community leader Jim Jones, 918 people committed suicide here. This photograph was one of the first to capture the horrific massacre at Jonestown.

JONESTOWN, GUYANA — NOVEMBER 18: (NO U.S. TABLOID SALES) Dead bodies lie around the compound of the People's Temple cult November 18, 1978 after the over 900 members of the cult, led by Reverend Jim Jones, died from drinking cyanide-laced Kool Aid; they were victims of the largest mass suicide in modern history. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)

On November 7, 1978, a reception was held at the Soviet Embassy in Guyana in honor of the anniversary of the October Revolution. Among the 300 guests were six people from the Peoples Temple. Their presence caused excitement among American diplomats. The reason for the concern is the intention of the leadership of the Peoples Temple to move the entire community to the USSR.

Four days later, Temple functionary Sharon Amos arrived at the Soviet embassy, ​​in great excitement, and reported on the imminent visit of American Congressman Leo Ryan. Trouble was expected from his visit to Jonestown. She inquired whether their request for resettlement in the USSR had been sent to Moscow, and received assurances that everything had been sent immediately. Consul Fyodor Timofeev handed her forms for visas and applications for Soviet citizenship. Sharon left reassured.

On November 17, during her next visit to the Soviet embassy, ​​Sharon was glad that Ryan's first day in Jonestown had gone very well. The congressman said that he had never seen happier people than here in the jungles of Guyana. Sharon also told the Russians that a group of journalists and relatives - 18 people in total - had arrived with Ryan. However, besides them, on the same day, about 60 tourists from the United States, all men, arrived in Guyana. They stayed at the Park and Tower hotels and rented airplanes for their purposes.

The CIA agents and the “group of tourists” introduced into the “Temple” became the first echelon in the act of eliminating people who applied for Soviet citizenship. The first organized a series of provocations and ensured the actions of armed agents. The latter were directly involved in liquidation.

On November 18, Congressman Ryan and journalists arrived at Port Kaituma Airport to fly to the United States, where the following occurred:

“A truck and a tractor with a platform were crossing the runway. Meanwhile, three unknown persons were approaching the planes. Bob Brown and Steve Sang aimed their cameras. And suddenly the shooting started. There were screams."

According to Charles Krause (Washington Post journalist), one of the few surviving witnesses, it went like this:

“I ran around the plane, past the NBC crew filming it, and hid behind the wheel. Someone fell on me and rolled off. I realized that I was wounded. Another body fell on me and rolled off. I lay helpless, waiting to be shot in the back. The shooters did their job well, finishing off the wounded at point-blank range. How I got past death, I will never understand.”

According to Soviet embassy officials, on the evening of November 18, at the height of the tragedy, the Jonestown radio station broadcast its program using a code recorded for the first time. It is unknown what key the encryptor used and to whom the messages were addressed.

Four hours before Congressman Ryan and reporters left Jonestown, a plane rented by American “tourists” took off from Georgetown, ostensibly to inspect Port Kaituma. According to local residents, about two dozen young men got off the plane and went to explore the surrounding area. Obviously, some of these people took part in the attack on the congressman. Journalists took photographs of the attackers, but no one was able to identify the killers. But the residents of Jonestown knew each other by sight...

At the same time, transport planes carrying US Marines took off from airfields in Panama and Delaware and headed for Guyana. Airborne troops were dropped in the vicinity of Jonestown.

Two hours later, three helicopters took off from the territories of Venezuela and the private missions Nuevos Tribos and Resistencia (the “roofs” of CIA bases). The flight time was 1 hour 10 minutes.

The ring around Jonestown has slammed shut. The CIA task force was one of the first to kill Jim Jones. According to Mark Lane, who gave a press interview in Jonestown on November 20, he personally counted 85 shots. "Jones shouted:

“Oh, mom, mom, mom!” Lane recalls, “and then the first shot rang out.”

23 Nov 1978, Jonestown, Guyana - People's Temple Cult mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana. — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

Mass extermination of people began. When the shots stopped, no more than half of the demoralized inhabitants of the commune remained alive, mostly women, children and the elderly. They were gathered around the central pavilion, then divided into groups of 30 people and dispersed throughout the village under escort. Each group was lined up to receive a “sedative,” which was a mixture of tranquilizers and potassium cyanide. After the appearance of the first victims, twisted in convulsions, panic began again, shots were heard again. The children were forcibly injected with poison by holding their noses. Those who remained were put on the ground and injected with syringes containing the same “cocktail” directly through their clothes into their backs. The corpses were then stacked for supposed mass burning...

For two days, the US army and intelligence services were doing “it’s unclear what” in Jonestown. Only on November 20, Guyanese officials and three journalists (including Krause, who was wounded in the thigh) were allowed into the village.

From the testimony of the Soviet consul in Guyana Fyodor Timofeev:

“About 20:00 (November 18), I was called from the hall by an embassy official and I saw Deborah Touchet and Paula Adams (members of the Peoples Temple).

I asked the policeman to let them into the embassy territory. Everyone was extremely excited. Deborah said she received a message from Jonestown:

“Something terrible is happening there. I don't know the details, but the lives of all members of the commune are in danger. The village is surrounded by armed people. Something happened to Ryan. Someone attacked him while he was returning to Georgetown. I ask you to take this for safekeeping.”

And Deborah handed me a heavy case. I asked what was in it.

“Here are very important documents of our Temple, money and tape recordings,” she answered.

I asked how much money. She replied that she didn’t know for sure, since there were cash, checks, and financial guarantees. Due to extraordinary circumstances, they ask to take them for safekeeping, since it is possible that the headquarters in Georgetown may be attacked, or perhaps it has already been destroyed. I could not refuse these people and took what they brought. The case was later handed over to the Guyanese government. When I returned, my wife said Sharon Amos had called. This was around the same time that Paula and Deborah tracked me down. Sharon cried and said that Jonestown was surrounded by armed men. Despite the interference, she received a radiogram reporting that helicopters were circling over the village.

“Help, Jonestown is dying! - she shouted. - They will not spare anyone! Someone is breaking into my apartment! Do everything to save us!

The line has disconnected. My wife immediately called the police, but she was told that a reinforced squad had already been sent to Amos’s house. However, Amos and her three children died. They were stabbed to death by a CIA agent, former Marine Blakey, embedded in Jones' organization. Then he was declared insane and disappeared from view. So, on that terrible night of November 18-19, a terrible massacre took place in Jonestown. The United States committed one of its most terrible crimes - they shot, stabbed, poisoned 918 of its citizens...”

Temple of the Communists.

All organizations of the USSR and the USA related to the Peoples Temple knew very well that the “religious sect” in Jonestown was not religious. Jim Jones was indeed a preacher in his youth, but over time he became disillusioned with religion and became an atheist, moreover, a Marxist socialist, which was no secret to his comrades. Why did he call his organization “Temple”?

The reasons are simple: Jones, being a practical man, took advantage of the tax advantages given to religious organizations by American law. And finally, he decided to use the authority of the church: those who came “just to church”, under the influence of Jones’ sermons, often became a convinced socialist.

By the way, Jones was not alone in this. A month before the tragedy in Guyana, Cardinal Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow, became Pope John Paul II. True, this church leader was a staunch anti-communist.

Jones, under the church roof, allowed himself during sermons to blow his nose on the US national flag, trample on the Bible with statements like how can you pray to a god who blesses the oppression of the poor, etc.

Jones and his wife fostered eight children of all races (including a son of their own). He lived a markedly ascetic life: he dressed only in second-hand stores, to save money, he refused to travel by plane, using only buses owned by the organization, and he never stayed in expensive hotels and restaurants.

All decisions of the Peoples Temple were made by voting at general meetings, and it happened that the decision did not coincide with the opinion of Jones. The number of its parishioners by the mid-70s reached 20 thousand people, the “council” had 50 permanent members. During the existence of the commune in Guyana, it was visited by more than 500 visitors - Guyanese and foreign citizens - officials, journalists, politicians, and embassy employees accredited in Guyana. In the thick book of reviews, according to the Soviet consul Timofeev, all the reviews were positive, “I noticed that the word “paradise” appeared often in these entries. People wrote about the impression they had as if they had been in paradise and saw happy, spiritual people living in harmony with each other and wild, pristine nature.”

Results of the cleanup.International Herald Tribune, December 18, 1978:

Among those who some of Jones' former followers said received political support from him were San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and city official Harvey Milk. They were both shot dead in their offices three weeks ago by “unknown persons.”

Joseph Grigulevich, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, professor:

“The first thousand dissident Americans in the jungles of Guyana were only the head of a huge army of potential political refugees from the United States. The authorities in Washington did not expect such a mass flight from the “capitalist paradise”, and “extraordinary means” were needed to stop this progressive process. The Jonestown massacre was part of a large complex of measures by the US punitive authorities, the goal of which was to eliminate political protest movements: the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, the New Left, and others. Participants in the declared “terrorist” organizations of the Black Panthers and the Weathermen “They killed right on the streets and in apartments, opening fire without warning. Thus, radical movements of political protest were completely defeated."

Dr. Nikolai Fedorovsky, doctor at the USSR Embassy in Guyana:

“Everything that has been written about Jim Jones and his community in the American press and then reprinted on the pages of other Western newspapers is a complete and malicious fiction. “Suicides”, “religious fanatics”, “sectarians”, “depressive maniacs” - these are the labels that propagandists diligently pasted on dreamers-enthusiasts who began to build in the jungles of Guyana a somewhat naive, but honest, disinterested and noble world for all the dispossessed and damaged Americans.

I remember Jim Jones saying that the members of the cooperative had two ships that could accommodate all the members of the commune with their movable property. Jim Jones wanted, together with his like-minded people, to set off on a long voyage and get to our country, which became his ideal. He felt that clouds were gathering over his community, that “someone” was planning a conspiracy and was ready to carry it out at any moment. That's how it happened..."

A natural question arises: why did the USSR government agree to hush up this terrible story? The main reason on the surface - the murder of about a thousand people by punitive forces from the United States, who had already de facto become Soviet citizens, could lead to only one adequate reaction: an ultimatum, which was inevitably followed by the outbreak of the Third World War. And the decrepit Brezhnev was terrified of her.

Documents that members of the Peoples Temple were going to emigrate to the USSR were published only during the period of glasnost in the book “The Death of Jonestown - a CIA Crime” (S. F. Alinin, B. G. Antonov, A. N. Itskov, “ Legal literature", 1987).However, the leaders of the USSR in the late 80s were again unable to inflate this story. The Soviet press has already begun to develop new political thinking and discuss the concept of universal human values. This whole story did not contribute to the formation of the image of the “civilized world” in the West.

The US government also drew its own conclusions from this story. In the States, T-shirts with the inscription “Kill the Commies for the Mammies” are becoming fashionable among young people. There are only 10 years left until the USSR surrenders in the Cold War...

The will of the slain.

"Peoples Temple Agricultural Mission, Johnstown, Port Kaituma, North West Region, Guyana, PO Box 893, Georgetown, Guyana, South America, March 17, 1978:

His Excellency the Ambassador of the Soviet Union.

An urgent request. Peoples Temple, a Soviet-style socialist agricultural cooperative of more than 1,000 US expatriates living in Guyana, is being brutally persecuted by American reactionaries determined to destroy it. Our funds are at risk. We appeal to the Soviet Union through Your Excellency with an urgent request to help us open a special bank account for the agricultural cooperative "Peoples Temple" in a Soviet bank in order to ensure the safety of our funds and in the event that our organization is destroyed, to leave them under Soviet control...«

"PO Box 893, Georgetown, Guyana (South America), September 18, 1978, to His Excellency the Ambassador of the Soviet Union

Georgetown, Guyana.

Dear sir! In the interests of the safety of our cooperative, which is threatened by American reactionaries, for it is a successfully developing socialist collective with a Marxist-Leninist perspective and fully supports the Soviet Union, we declare on behalf of the community (a group of Americans who came to Guyana to help build socialism) about your desire to send a delegation of members of our leadership to the Soviet Union to discuss the issue of moving our people to your country as political emigrants.

Information about the population of the cooperative. Total population:

1,200 (including 200 US residents due to arrive in Guyana soon). Under 18 years old - 450 people; from 18 and older - 750 people...

…Basis for this request: Under the leadership of Comrade Jim Jones, Peoples Temple actively fought against civil rights injustice for 25 years in the United States.

The Peoples Temple has always had deep respect for the Soviet Union. Your impressive successes over the 60 years of building socialism, the victory in the sacrifice-filled war that the Soviet people endured defending their homeland (and thereby the whole world) from fascism, the Soviet Union’s decisive and constant support for the liberation struggle throughout the world have been an inexhaustible source of great inspiration for us . In all his public appearances, Comrade Jones declares complete solidarity with the Soviet Union. At every rally the USSR anthem is played...

For many years, and especially after the Peoples Temple donated several thousand dollars to the Angela Davis defense fund, we were harassed by government agents, especially the intelligence agencies. We then managed to find out that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) decided to punish the Peoples Temple and planned to do away with Comrade Jones, as they did with Martin Luther King...

With fraternal greetings, Richard D. Tropp, General Secretary.

"Peoples Temple is an agricultural community in Johnstown."

Moscow, NKVD of the USSR, Comrade Beria. Memorandum: “On May 2, 1945, in Berlin, a few meters from the emergency door of a bomb shelter on the territory of the Reich Chancellery, the burnt corpses of a man and a woman were discovered, with a short man, a half-bent right foot with a burnt orthopedic boot, the remains of a NSDAP party uniform and a party badge. A gold cigarette case, a gold party badge and a gold brooch were found on the burnt corpse of a woman. At the head of both corpses lay two Walther pistols. On May 3, in a separate room of the bunker of the Imperial Chancellery, six children’s corpses were found on sleeping beds - five girls and one boy - with signs of poisoning.”

It was not difficult to identify Joseph Goebbels. Even the burnt corpse retained his characteristic features: tiny height, narrow chest, crippled leg. And the grimace frozen on his face, which retained the expression of fanatical stubbornness, it seemed that he would now stand up and shout: “Heil Hitler!” And the children looked completely alive - with rosy cheeks and calm smiles on their faces. These were the features of the action of hydrocyanic acid. This picture made a terrible impression on the people who found themselves in the bunker in those days.

Joseph Goebbels

Remembers Elena Rzhevskaya, eyewitness of the events: “There was some kind of overwhelming feeling, very alarming and heavy. And when they asked me: “You were probably scared when you saw Hitler and Goebbels?” I must say that it wasn’t scary, but there was some kind of shuddering... But for the children, it was really scary.”

Berlin, May 10, 1933. Twelve years before the collapse of the Third Reich. Monstrous book bonfires are burning in the squares and streets of the city. By order of Joseph Goebbels, the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Balzac and Zola are thrown into the fire. Goebbels was a well-read man, he was fond of German romantic poetry, and until the end of his life he collected rare editions of the great German poet of Jewish origin. Heinrich Heine. But Heine is also flying into the fire, and no one in Germany will dare to quote the lines from the charred volume: “In a country where books are burned, people will be burned.” The poet's prophecy came true: the ovens of Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald. The last to go into this hellish fire were Goebbels himself and his wife. Their corpses were doused with gasoline and burned by their comrades on April 30, 1945 in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery.

Tells historian Sergei Kudryashov: “In fact, there is only a few hours difference between the death of the Fuhrer and Goebbels’ suicide, but this is the collapse of their value system, the value system of National Socialism, although they did their best to ensure that this system prevailed. These were people, in general, of strong will, including Goebbels. He followed his leader, the Fuhrer, to the end, and shared this collapse with him.”

Dr. Goebbels's show lasted more than 20 years, first only in Germany, then the whole world became his arena. Rallies, torchlight processions, posters, cartoons, actions and provocations - the arsenal of his witchcraft propaganda was inexhaustible. He lied masterfully and selflessly, and carried out his villainous work conscientiously, pedantically and brilliantly. It was at his instigation that the Fuhrer in Germany became a deity, he was the creator of the cult of Hitler, it was to him that the Nazi Party owed its victory in the elections and its rise to power, it was he who maintained the fighting spirit of the Germans until the very end of the war. He was well-mannered, exquisitely polite and hardly ever used his fists, but it was he who convinced the nation that it was possible to kill other people, and only because they were not Germans, and therefore his hands were up to his elbows in blood.

Historian Konstantin Zalessky believes: “He was a genius, but he served a criminal regime, and he served sincerely. Because Goebbels was certainly one of the most talented people in Nazi Germany. Perhaps not even in Germany, perhaps even as a propaganda leader, as a person who laid the foundations of political propaganda, he ranks among the world leaders in this direction. Unfortunately, the propaganda is cynical.”

Joseph Paul Goebbels was born in 1897. At the age of seven he fell ill with osteomyelitis, an inflammation of the bone marrow. He had hip surgery and as a result his right leg shriveled up and became 12 centimeters shorter. However, this is the official version. Goebbels' enemies subsequently insisted that the deformity was congenital, and therefore the all-powerful minister, according to the strict canons of racial theory, was an inferior being.

Be that as it may, this physical disability played a decisive role in his life. He grew up alone, avoided the company of neighborhood children and classmates, was acutely worried about his physical inferiority and therefore tried with all his might to prove his mental superiority. He rejoiced at any opportunity to hurt, humiliate, or expose his peers to ridicule.

Remembers “I worked for 36 years in the central state security apparatus through the KGB, and I had to go on intelligence trips abroad, where I met quite a lot of interesting people. We're talking about my friend from London, Nicholas Reisman. Once in a conversation he said: “But I studied in the same class with Goebbels.” In class he was teased, because children are cruel, they mock such inferior people, they teased him with a toifel (“toifel” is “devil” in German), while hinting at Mephistopheles’ lameness. He was very worried, not only because he was teased, but because he could not play sports. In addition, he had such bright sexual ambitions, erotic ones, he really liked large girls from high school, and he was known among his peers as a master of intrigue, conspiracies and various combinations. There was Magda, the recognized beauty at school, and she was in love with the class leader, Josef. Goebbels not only had his eye on her, but apparently he was secretly burning. He didn't like it and started a rumor that the leader of the next class, Martin, was bragging about making Magda take off her clothes in front of him. It was one hundred percent untrue, but he started this rumor and ruined this couple. He had a favorite expression already in school: “To lead the masses, you need 1 percent of the truth and a respectable mouthpiece.”

His only friend was his diary, to which he confided his thoughts from the age of 12. One of the first entries in a thick black notebook sounded like this: "I must become a great person."

Psychologist Nikolay Chaur makes a graphological examination of Joseph Goebbels' handwriting: “In this situation, the letters are tilted not to the right, as usual in copybooks, but to the left. People who realize themselves as a bright, painful individuality lean in this direction, because when “I” separates myself from “we,” then this is the opposition of my “I” to the universal, that is, “I am not like everyone else, I am the chosen one.” .

During the First World War, Goebbels made an attempt to volunteer for the front. At the recruiting station he was ordered to undress, his crippled leg was examined and he was sent home. He locked himself in his room and cried all night. Did he want to fight and die for Germany? More likely no than yes. He could not help but understand that he would never be accepted into the army, but he had already learned to lie not only to other people, but also to himself.

Speaks Nikolay Chaur: “There is an opinion that handwriting is a kind of cardiogram of the soul. Despite the fact that this person seems to be neat, gentle, pedantic, efficient, but at the same time, in the depths of his handwriting lies precisely this harshness, intolerance of other opinions, intolerance of the opposition, of opponents. A person is calculating, secretive, with internal contradiction, and in order not to show all this painful existence to others, you need to have high artistry, you need to have a high degree of hypocrisy. One man’s handwriting, another’s personality.”

Munich, November 9, 1938, seven years before the collapse of the Third Reich. Celebrating the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. Goebbels is preparing to give a welcoming speech when they bring him a message that in Paris, a 17-year-old boy, Herschel Grünszpan, has attempted to assassinate the adviser to the German embassy, ​​von Rath. Goebbels changed the topic of his speech on the fly. There is a call for Jewish pogroms. The police and SS are ordered not to interfere with the outrages. Overnight, 815 shops were destroyed, 171 houses and 119 synagogues were burned. One hundred people were killed, 20,000 Jews were thrown into concentration camps. Among those arrested were 150 Germans who expressed disapproval of the pogromists. Nazi propaganda called this atrocity “Kristallnacht.”

Elena Syanova recalls: “Once at a gathering at the Berghof, when someone was playing the piano, Hitler drew caricatures of those present - well, that is, when each of them was doing what he loved - Goebbels was expected to read poetry. Since he had not written anything for a long time, he read his opus, written at the age of 20. And there are these words - Kristallnacht. And Funk, who was present there, later inserted them into one of his reports after the Jewish pogrom of 1938.”

In 1942, Goebbels made an inspection tour of prisoner of war camps. The sight of people suffering does not evoke any sympathy in him. And his parents dreamed so much that their Joseph would become a priest! He became a preacher, only he preached not humility and Christian love, but German pride and merciless hatred. In his youth, he read Dostoevsky, “Demons” is his favorite novel. In everything - in thoughts, in words and in actions - he imitated the heroes of this novel, the Russian revolutionaries. They taught that the end justifies the means, and he went towards his goal, regardless of anything or anyone. They said: “There is no morality,” and he refused morality. At that time he wrote in his diary: “I am a German communist, and I am also a hungry pastor.” But there is another novel by the Russian classic that serves as the key to understanding his personality - “The Player”. Finding yourself at a crossroads, Goebbels He tossed a coin on who he should be with - the communists or the Nazis. He bet on red and lost, and then he bet on black and won the pot over and over again, but in the end it came up red again.

Tells Sergey Kudryashov: “In general, he reacted with great sympathy to the October Revolution, he even saw in it that Germany should go the same way. And, let’s say, if we take the years 1921 and 1922, then Goebbels had not even decided on his political sympathies; at that time he was probably more left than right. “Battleship Potemkin generally delighted him, he watched it several times and even wrote in one of his messages: “What a pity that we don’t have the same film.”

People like Goebbels are born in every era, but not at every time they are in demand and raised to the heights of power. They coincided, Goebbels and his time. Germany lost the First World War, was humiliated and trampled, but the Treaty of Versailles and huge reparations were not enough for the victors. In 1923, French and Belgian troops occupied Germany's richest region, the Ruhr.

The greed and self-satisfied arrogance of the triumphants, the petty desire to finish off the downtrodden, to take the last piece from the hungry led to an unexpected result. In all corners of Germany, in all German houses, tears of impotent hatred boiled up, fists clenched. Newspapers wrote that black soldiers of the French army, the Zouaves, raped blonde German girls. The newspapers called it Germany's black shame. And it was then that a feeling of hatred and a thirst for revenge united the German people.

It is often said that the Germans loved Hitler because he gave them bread and work. In fact, Hitler and Goebbels restored the Germans' sense of self-respect, they voiced their secret thoughts and therefore became idols.

But this happened later, and then, in 1923, Goebbels rushed to the Ruhr - he needed to be in the center of events.

Nikolay Chaur sure: “A person has some kind of obsession, some painful source of excitement, and in order to neutralize this painful source of excitement, a form of service is adopted - self-sacrifice, a form of exalting oneself with the help of others. He is afraid that his intrapersonal manifestations will not be accepted by society.”

November 11, 1923, Munich. Twenty-two years before the collapse of the Third Reich. Hitler, surrounded by 600 stormtroopers, announces the beginning of the national revolution and the overthrow of the Bavarian government. The coup failed, Hitler was tracked down and put in the dock. But he turned the courtroom into a one-man show - he did not defend himself, he attacked. Goebbels In a fit of delight, he wrote a letter to Hitler: “Like the morning star, you appeared to us and miraculously enlightened us in the darkness of unbelief and despair, you gave us faith. Someday Germany will thank you." It was the delight of an amateur propagandist before a master of propaganda. But Goebbels studied, he already understood that he could make people believe what he said, that with words, voice, gestures he could convince and subjugate the crowd, and he had already experienced the pleasure of power over the crowd.

Elena Syanova speaks: “A curious characterization was given to Goebbels himself by one of his old comrades, Walter Steness, leader of the Berlin SA. Steness said that Goebbels is something like a mouse; in life he is almost invisible. This mouse rears up on its hind legs, reaches out and sniffs, but when it opens its mouth, it is a tiger, roaring and terrifying, and then we say: “Bravo, little doctor.”

In 1924, Goebbels joined the Nazi Party, not out of conviction, but rather out of material need. He was offered the position of editor of a Saturday newspaper, and he accepted. The newspaper was published by the party, and he became a Nazi, although he remained a socialist at heart. He did not hide his sympathy for the Soviet regime. In his famous speech “Lenin or Hitler?” He, of course, praised Hitler, but he did not spare warm words for Lenin either. And soon the recent adoration of the Fuhrer cooled down noticeably.

Goebbels and Hitler

Goebbels went so far as to propose at one of the meetings that the petty bourgeois Adolf Hitler should be expelled from the party. They lived in different cities and did not know each other personally, but in 1926 Hitler realized that he needed this man with the face of a fanatic and a crazy propaganda temperament. In 1926 they finally met, and Hitler bought his soul. The best way to describe how this trade took place is Goebbels diaries. Since April 1926, they literally ring with delight: "A letter has arrived from Hitler." “Hitler’s car was waiting, a royal reception.” “Hitler called. He talked to me for three whole hours.”

Tells Elena Syanova: « While Hitler listened to Goebbels's speech, probably his first public speech, he almost died of envy. And yet, after this rally, he utters the following phrase: “We need this little Tsakhes.”

Goebbels' crippled soul demanded recognition - not a single success, but daily, minute-by-minute recognition. That’s why he reveled so much in his performances and speeches. Before the eyes of the crowd, the pygmy turned into a giant, and the loser into a leader. Even more important to him was Hitler's approval. The slightest praise was enough to make Goebbels happy, the slightest reproach was enough to make him depressed. The unfortunate disabled boy dreamed that someday he would have a strong and powerful friend who would protect him from his offenders. Hitler became his friend, he opened up fantastic opportunities for him, he appreciated his talent and gave him a chance to prove himself and rise. For this, Goebbels was ready to serve his Fuhrer, friend and master until his last breath.

Nikolay Chaur believes: “This person is good for a certain circle of people, so you can call him kind, caring, neat, attentive, efficient, conscientious. But, since in this situation he has an internal conflict with his personality, a painful conflict, self-affirmation, self-compensation for missing respect in an earlier period, then he has a desire for self-affirmation, that is, to join some very large substrate. For example, a leech attaches itself to a person and, with the help of a person, can get out of the water.”

In 1926, Hitler appointed Goebbels Gauleiter of Berlin. The largest city in Europe lived its own life, and it did not give a damn about the Nazis, their Fuhrers and Gauleiters. Six hundred supporters for the entire multimillion-dollar Berlin was all that Goebbels had. He quickly realized his task - he needed to attract attention, no matter how, no matter what.

Tells Konstantin Zalessky: “First of all, he took his supporters into the streets and went with a demonstration to a working-class district, and not just to some working-class district, but he chose for his demonstration an area in which the communists had always been very strong. Naturally, a verbal altercation ensued. After some time it escalated into a fight. What did Goebbels achieve? The Berlin press immediately began writing about the Nazi Party because there was, as they say now, an informational occasion, that is, a big fight on political grounds. All the newspapers wrote about it. And, accordingly, this aroused public interest in the growing Nazi Party. A sharp influx began, in one day up to 2,000 people joined the party, this is a huge number for Berlin.”

An endless series of famous Goebbels rallies began. He staged each of them like a theatrical performance. The meeting became a ritual, where banners, music, specially selected people and processions served as decoration and played their assigned roles. The rallies did not bring clarity, they further clouded their heads, but the spectators always left the hall very impressed.

These were not just spectacles - these were bloody spectacles. Nazi provocateurs worked in the crowd, each rally ended in a brutal massacre. Newspapers wrote about Nazi massacres, Goebbels became a famous person. In one of the articles he was called an “overbandit,” and he gladly took up this nickname. Now on his posters it was written in huge letters: “Tonight, Dr. Goebbels, the Oberbandit, is giving a speech.”

Elena Syanova reflects: “He replaced, probably, all modern showmen, he was the only one. And you know what's interesting? He could debate with himself. Now, if now, for example, they put him on some modern trash show, where there are two stands and where people converge on the barrier, he would split into two on both sides and put on such a show that it wouldn’t seem like much.”

Goebbels's authority among the Nazis grew significantly during the years of his Gauleitership in Berlin. His rallies attracted hundreds of thousands of new supporters to the Hitler movement. His speech made a particularly strong impression on women. The malicious smile of history - this unattractive gentleman with a height of 154 centimeters turned into a sex symbol, the longed-for dream of many Frau and the object of dreams of many Frauleins. In 1930, Magda Kwant, a young and very beautiful woman, appeared at his rally. She had recently separated from her husband, blackmailed him out of a considerable allowance, and was now thirsty for new thrills.

Konstantin Zalessky says: “She was bored being the wife of the millionaire Kwant, one of the richest men in Germany. She wanted action, she wanted to be close to people who are reshaping the world, and if fate had turned out a little differently, perhaps now we would know Magda not as Magda Goebbels, but as Magda Arlazorov and one of the founders of the state of Israel. She was ready to leave with Chaim Arlazorov for Israel, but their relationship accidentally broke up and she did not marry him. She liked revolutionaries. She liked people who did things, who really tried to change the world. That’s why she was so attracted to Goebbels.”

Goebbels made a strong impression on Magda. His staccato speech, his voice, his soft Rhine accent, his primitive but indestructible logic and deadly irony charmed the young adventurer. After some time, Magda becomes an employee of Goebbels, then Goebbels' mistress and, finally, Goebbels' wife. IN Goebbels's diary These events are marked by eloquent entries: “A beautiful woman named Kvant compiles my personal archive,”– he writes on November 7, 1930. A week later he adds: “Yesterday afternoon the beautiful Frau Quant came to see me and helped me sort out the photographs.” On February 15, 1931, Goebbels reported his victory to his diary: “In the evening Magda Quant comes, stays for a very long time and blossoms in a seductive blond charm. You are my Queen". For posterity, the diarist marked this entry with the number “one”, in memory of their first intimate relationship.

Nikolay Chaur believes: “By nature, he is endowed with ethical character traits, that is, he easily makes contact and is disposed to communicate. But there is a tendency that this person may not be confident in himself as a man, physiologically, then he tends to transform relationships with women into calculated relationships. This woman is a friend, this woman is only a lover... That is, this man clearly knows what kind of relationship to build with which woman. We can say that if this man chooses women for himself, then he chooses women programmed by his will.”

Elena Syanova sure: “Still, all the women who were in Goebbels’ life, except for one, his true and only love, treated him with pity. And in Magda’s feelings there was more pity than passion. But this feeling turned out to be quite strong, and she still stayed with him, despite all his tricks on the love front.”

This is how this strange and unstable union arose, which was supposed to collapse after some time and would certainly have collapsed if there had not been one more force, one more will, one more person. " This woman could play a big role in my life, even if I weren't married to her." those words belonged Hitler and were uttered immediately after they met. “Magda once admitted to me that she married Goebbels to be close to Hitler,”- stated director Leni Riefenstahl, propagandist of the Third Reich.

« I noticed how she looked at Hitler with her big eyes,- echoes her Otto Wegener, Hitler's economic adviser. “Goebbels was a strong personality, he knew how to manipulate people, but Hitler was much stronger, and Goebbels’ manipulations were child’s play for him.”.

Joseph Goebbels loved his Fuhrer, he admired Adolf Hitler and served him zealously. Magda Goebbels loved the Fuhrer no less than her husband, worshiped him and served him. Whether this triangle was a love triangle is unknown - but it was.

Konstantin Zalessky sure: “Magda was a convinced National Socialist, a fierce National Socialist, and in general she was a woman of extremes. She always wanted to take an active part in everything, and she didn’t need, let’s say, a piece of something, she needed everything. And there were persistent rumors - this slips into some memoirs - that Magda tried to court Hitler, but nothing came of it.”

Your ambitious plans Magda Kwant didn't hide it. In one of her letters to her mother, she says: “If the Hitler movement comes to power, I will be one of the first women in Germany”.

Her apartment soon became a meeting place for the brown community. Magda took an active part in discussing plans to seize power in Germany. Her advice was heeded. The scale of the plan and the extraordinary prospects made the young beauty dizzy. Even then, she was ready to pay any price for success.

Speaks Sergey Kudryashov: “When Hindenburg spoke with Hitler on January 30, 1933 and told him about his appointment as chancellor, Hitler immediately informed Goebbels about this. They met and experienced an extraordinary feeling of excitement and joy. Goebbels later wrote in his diary that they were now in power. And Goebbels’ wife was also very happy, she sent him a letter in which she wrote: “Well, now you will show our country and the world what you are capable of.”

In a few hours Goebbels writes in his diary: “It's like a dream. Wilhelmstrasse is ours."

Berlin, January 30, 1933. Twelve years before the collapse of the Third Reich. Hundreds of thousands of people march past the Reich Chancellery. The lights of the torches in the hands of the demonstrators are visible far in the darkness of the night, and their voices echo throughout the city. They go hour after hour. Hitler smiles and salutes them. Behind the Fuhrer stands the inconspicuous Goebbels.

Historian Sergei Kudryashov sure: “You can call Goebbels Hitler’s chief political strategist. If we are talking about all of Hitler's election campaigns, then Goebbels is No. 1 in the preparation of all these campaigns. And, in general, this person made a decisive contribution to these campaigns.”

In 1933, Goebbels became head of the Ministry of Education and Propaganda. He carries out a radical purge of German newspapers, dismisses political opponents of the NSDAP and “racially inferior” employees. During Nazi rule, the number of newspapers in Germany decreased by five times. Goebbels paid special attention to radio - all of Germany became his audience.

He formulates the laws of propaganda and demands their strict observance from his employees. The first law is mental simplification: you can only say and write what the most uneducated of Germans can understand. The second law is the limitation of material: speak and write only what is beneficial to the Nazis. The third law is hammered repetition: a lie repeated many times turns into the truth. The law of subjectivity and the law of emotional escalation. This is how the German nation was zombified.

Goebbels stated: “The peasant and the worker resemble a person who has been sitting for many years in a remote dungeon. After endless darkness, it is easy to convince him that the kerosene lamp is the Sun.”

Sergey Kudryashov explains: “Goebbels wrote in his diary that truth is everything that helps you win. So, if we take this principle in relation to his propaganda activities, then the main distinguishing feature of this propaganda is its external persuasiveness and simplicity. That is, there is a feeling of some kind of lightness, they explain everything, and it’s not so complicated, everything is very clear. The enemy is always known, it could be a Jew, a communist, a Bolshevik, a Russian, anyone, American plutocrats. The way out of the situation is also often explained quite simply: mobilization of the nation, total war, sacrifice, devotion to the Fuhrer.”

Berlin, August 1, 1936. Nine years before the collapse of the Third Reich. At the Olympiastadion, in the presence of 110,000 spectators, to the music of Wagner, Hitler announces the opening of the Olympic Games. Magnificent choreographic performances, new records and German hospitality amazed and enchanted the guests. Goebbels' office did a good job of turning the Olympics into a huge propaganda event. Anti-Semitic slogans were removed, prisoners were hidden, the whole of Germany was licked and cleaned so that it resembled a fairy-tale village.

Speaks Stanislav Lekarev, KGB officer: “He created an empire that united culture, education, cinema, television, and the press. We didn’t have this; all our departments were different even during the period of totalitarianism. But Goebbels managed to do this, and all this acted as a united front.”

Goebbels tirelessly comes up with new propaganda techniques, coded texts for newspapers that affect the subconscious, psychotronic military marches and a system of mirrors in the subway, operating on the principle of the “25th frame.” He uses any, the most eccentric and most dishonest methods of struggle, if they give a chance for success. He uses the “Centuries” of Nostradamus. His prophecies were interpreted in such a way that no one had any doubt about the final victory of the Nazi regime. Abroad, the prophecies were published as a brochure, and in Germany itself they were allegedly distributed illegally, in lists. Goebbels's department was rightly called Ministry of People's Eclipse. The Reich Minister quickly managed to turn his apparatus into an effective instrument of total control over the consciousness of an entire nation.

Sergey Kudryashov states: " I think never before in the history of mankind have so many different leaflets been printed. These are billions of pieces. A colossal quantity, for every taste, and in huge circulations, both for domestic consumption and for foreign ones, all of this was dropped from airplanes during the war or simply distributed through their own newspapers. Some leaflets are simply with an appeal, some with a caricature. Plus non-standard forms of propaganda – for example, through stamps.”

Goebbels was completely immersed in work, and Magda was completely immersed in raising children. There were six of them in total - five girls and one boy, who was born third, in 1935. Goebbels shared his joy at the birth of his son in his diary.

From Goebbels' diary: “Here lies the baby, Goebbels’s face. I am immensely happy, ready to break everything with joy. Boy!"

Elena Syanova says: “The wife of Dr. Goebbels was sentimental and romantic, and the image of Aryan happiness, the beautiful, bright world of Germany, which Hitler and Goebbels were able to draw for her, was too ingrained in her imagination. She wanted her children too much to live in such a country.”

For Goebbels, his own family became excellent propaganda material. He presented his children as an example of purebred offspring without hereditary diseases in the disgusting film propaganda “Victims of the Past,” which justified inhumane discrimination against the mentally ill and disabled. Magda was the first in Germany to receive the German Mother's Cross of Honor from Hitler's hands. The English newspaper "Daily Mirror" calls Magda Goebbels the ideal woman in Germany.

But the private life of the Goebbels couple was far from ideal. They cheat on each other. Josef uses his power over German cinema and German actresses, Magda, in retaliation, sleeps with his deputies. This is typical for Goebbels entry in his diary: “Every woman attracts me like a flame. I wander around like a hungry wolf, but at the same time like a timid boy. Sometimes I refuse to understand myself.”

Psychologist Nikolai Chaur states: “If a person does not love himself, and in this situation we are seeing exactly this, then he needs a lot, a lot of love to make sure that he is finally worthy of this love, that he is really a good person.”

Goebbels learned about the war against the USSR only when Hitler sent him to the microphone to address the nation. Goebbels understood that the generals would now come to the fore, but he did not intend to remain in the shadows for long.

Speaks Elena Syanova: “During the period when Hitler was victorious, he did not really need Goebbels. Goebbels speaks about this himself: “Now he is a winner, he is a god, he is a pharaoh, he doesn’t need me, but that’s okay, defeats will come, and he will call on me again.” And so it happened.”

Goebbels became an innovator in military propaganda and information warfare. The Wehrmacht created special propaganda troops. The propaganda companies were staffed by reporters who owned weapons and military personnel who possessed reporting skills.

The full power of Goebbels's propaganda machine fell upon the Soviet people. They were told that the Nazis came to free the peoples of the USSR from Stalin’s yoke, that the SS was a humane organization, and that the leaders of the Reich were filled with love for Russia and the Russians. Often the propaganda achieved its goal. In 1942, the number of defectors from the Red Army was about 80,000 people, in 1943 - more than 26,000 people, and even in 1944 - about 10,000. But neither Hitler nor Goebbels ever told their soldiers about their love for the Russian to the people and about the liberation mission of the German army.

In 1942, a brochure with the eloquent title “Subhuman” was published. The book was originally intended for the SS men who fought in Russia as a reference guide on eastern peoples. This document was widely circulated within the Reich. "Sub-Man" became an anthem of racial hatred, urging German soldiers to view civilians as harmful germs that should be exterminated.

Sergey Kudryashov believes: “The propaganda in this case was quite primitive and generally narrow-minded. Here we can talk about significant miscalculations. They did not quite understand the system of relations within the Soviet Union, its multinational character, the role of Soviet power in the modernization of the country, the fact that another layer had appeared - youth, the intelligentsia. It was not entirely clear to them, so the leaflets that were dropped in the occupied territories often caused laughter and played practically no role. “Beat the Jew, the political instructor, his face is asking for a brick” - well, this was generally perceived anecdotally by soldiers, even poorly educated ones, and these leaflets were often used by Red Army soldiers to roll cigarettes and smoke tobacco.”

The witchcraft of Goebbels’s propaganda supported the morale of the Wehrmacht, but it was not able to decide the outcome of the grandiose battle of nations.

After the Battle of Stalingrad turned into a disaster for the Nazis, Hitler ordered Goebbels organization of total war. “Do you want total war?”- he asks the audience. "Ja, ja!"- thousands of throats answer. "Yes!"- rushes from the crowded Sports Palace. This is his best performance, his finest hour.

In April 1945, Goebbels escorted Volkssturm columns towards Soviet tanks. He again speaks of a great mission, of sacrifice, of weapons of retribution. But the old men and boys do not applaud, but go away to die with gloomy faces. At the last operational meeting in the dilapidated building of the ministry Goebbels asked the assembled officials: “Why did you cooperate with us, gentlemen? Now you will pay for this with your heads."

Tells Elena Syanova: “Literally a few days before his death, his eldest daughter, 13-year-old Helga, began writing a letter and wrote almost to the end. The letter was addressed to a boy, her friend, probably her first love. And that in itself is very interesting. When you read it, you understand that in this family there grew up an early matured, very strong, very kind and good person.”

From a letter Helga Goebbels to his friend Heinrich Ley: “I managed to come down to your father for a minute and ask: do I need to tell you in a letter something that they say when they know that they will not meet again? He said: “Tell me just in case. You have already grown up, you understand that neither the Fuhrer, nor your father, nor I - none of us can be responsible for our words as before. This is no longer in our control.” He kissed me. I understood everything.

I'll say goodbye to you just in case. Now I need to give the letter. Then I’ll go upstairs to the little ones. I won't tell them anything. Previously, we were we, and now, from this moment, there is them and me.”.

They took their children with them to the Fuhrer's bunker. Magda dressed them in white dresses and combed their hair: “Don’t be afraid, children, you will get an injection, like all soldiers.” They were given sleeping pills and then injected with hydrocyanic acid. The children's names were Helga, Helda, Helmut, Holda, Hedda, Haida. They were taken out into the garden and covered with sheets.

After this, Goebbels shot himself, and Magda took poison.

From a farewell letter Magda Goebbels: “I gave birth to them for the Fuhrer and the Third Reich. Last night the Fuhrer took off his gold party badge and pinned it on me. I'm proud and happy."

Igor Stanislavovich Prokopenko
On both sides of the front. Unknown facts of the Great Patriotic War