Final Entries, 1945; The Diaries of Joseph Goebbels

xliii, [5], 368, [2] pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. Map, Appendices. Chronology. Gazetteer. Place Index. Name Index. DJ somewhat soiled. Scuff on fep. Includes The Story of the 1945 Goebbels Diaries by Peter Stadelmayer. Translator's Note. Edited, Introduced and annotated by Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, this is a remarkable account from within of the crumbling of the Nazi empire by its arch-apologist. Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton, FBA (15 January 1914 26 January 2003) was an English historian. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Trevor-Roper was an historical essayist on a range of topics, particularly England in the 16th and 17th centuries and Nazi Germany. In the view of John Kenyon, "some of [Trevor-Roper's] short essays have affected the way we think about the past more than other men's books". This is echoed by Richard Davenport-Hines and Adam Sisman in the introduction to One Hundred Letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper: "Some of his essays are of Victorian length. All of them reduce large subjects to their essence. Many of them . have lastingly transformed their fields." Trevor-Roper's most successful book was The Last Days of Hitler. It emerged from his assignment as a British intelligence officer in 1945 to discover what happened in the last days of Hitler's bunker. From interviews of witnesses and study of surviving documents, he demonstrated that Hitler was dead and had not escaped from Berlin. He showed that Hitler's dictatorship was not an efficient unified machine but a hodge-podge of overlapping rivalries. German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism. He played a hand in the Kristallnacht attack on the German Jews, which historians consider to be the beginning of the Final Solution, leading towards the genocide of the Holocaust. Goebbels earned a Ph.D. from Heidelberg University in 1921, writing his doctoral thesis on 18th century romantic drama; he then went on to work as a journalist and later a bank clerk and caller on the stock exchange. He also wrote novels and plays, but they were rejected by publishers. Goebbels came into contact with the Nazi Party in 1923 during the French occupation of the Ruhr and became a member in 1924. He was appointed Gauleiter (regional party leader) of Berlin. In this position, he put his propaganda skills to full use, combating the local socialist and communist parties with the help of Nazi papers and the paramilitary Stormtroopers, aka, Brownshirts, SA. By 1928, he had risen in the party ranks to become one of its most prominent members. Goebbels rose to power in 1933 along with Hitler and the Nazi Party and he was appointed Propaganda Minister. One of his first acts was the burning of books rejected by the Nazis. He exerted totalitarian control over the media, arts and information in Germany. From the beginning of his tenure, Goebbels organized attacks on German Jews, commencing with the one-day boycott of Jewish businessmen, doctors, and lawyers on April 1, 1933. His attacks on the Jewish population culminated in the Kristallnacht assault of 1938, an open and unrestrained pogrom unleashed by the Nazis all across Germany, in which scores of synagogues were burned and hundreds of Jews were assaulted and murdered. Goebbels used modern propaganda techniques to psychologically prepare the German people for aggressive war and the annihilation of civilian populations. During World War II, Goebbels increased his power and influence through shifting alliances with other Nazi leaders. By late 1943, the tide of the war was turning against the Axis powers, but this only spurred Goebbels to intensify the propaganda by urging the Germans to accept the idea of total war and mobilization. Goebbels remained with Hitler in Berlin to the end; just hours after Hitler's suicide.…