Joseph Goebbels

Josef Goebbels, the twisted maestro of Nazi propaganda, didn’t just shape the message—he all but invented the playbook. Born in the Rhineland to strict Catholic parents, Goebbels grew up short and frail, walking with a club foot and a chip on his shoulder. He tried to join the army in WWI, got turned down for being “crippled,” then bounced into politics after Germany got shellacked. He landed in the Nazi party, drawn by the chaos and promise of power, even though he originally hated Hitler’s guts for being too capitalist (ironic, right?). But, seeing which way the wind was blowing as Hitler climbed the ranks, Goebbels switched sides and got rewarded with a gig running Berlin’s Nazi operations—burning through cash and running wild political campaigns. He married Magda Quandt, a high-profile divorcée, as the Nazis clawed their way up, but they couldn’t get much traction in Berlin. That changed when the Great Depression smacked Germany upside the head, leaving folks desperate and ready for a demagogue. Hitler seized control, and Goebbels got handed the keys to Nazi media: books, film, radio, the whole circus. He famously offered film legend Fritz Lang the top job at UFA studios (Lang ran for his life), then tapped Leni Riefenstahl as the Nazis’ go-to filmmaker. They pumped out “Triumph of the Will,” a propaganda monster, and filmed the 1936 Olympics—where Jesse Owens, a Black American, blew up the Aryan myth by winning again and again, right in front of Goebbels and the Nazi elite.