Death of Joseph Goebbels

Joseph Goebbels died on 1 May 1945 in Berlin, aged 47. A German Nazi politician, Goebbels served as Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda from 1933 until the end of the regime. A doctor of philology and an early member of the party, he became Gauleiter of Berlin and built a vast system of control over the press, film, radio and the arts, and he promoted the cult of Hitler. He helped organize the boycott of Jewish businesses, the book burnings of 1933 and the Kristallnacht pogrom, and he was a fierce advocate of total war after Stalingrad. In the last days of the war he stayed in Hitler's bunker and killed himself together with his wife Magda, after they had poisoned their six children.

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