German Leaders Of The Nazi Era/Goebbels
NOTE: I really liked the suggestion by one of the readers to do this, and, to keep some balance, I've decided to also do some important Allied leaders in the near future.
Part One/B "Joseph Goebbels"
Joseph Goebbels (also "Göbbels, but less frequently) was from the Rhineland in western Germany. He became an important part of Hitler's march to power and to the consolidation and expansion of that power once Hitler was in office. Highly intelligent, he understood personality and psychology, and this made him a very dangerous man. He was a little guy, only like five feet in height, and he had a deformity in his one foot/lower leg, which caused him to wear a special brace, although he still walked with a slight limp. Some have attributed Goebbels militaristic behavior to his handicap.* Hitler sent him to Berlin in the earlier days of his rise to power to win converts to the growing Nazi Party and to combat the "red" influence in Berlin; that is, to defeat the Communists in Berlin, and street battles between the two groups were not uncommon. Goebbels loved movies and film making. Not long after Hitler became chancellor, he appointed Goebbels to be the head of the new "Propaganda Ministry." In this new position, Goebbels came to control every aspect of news read or heard by the German people. He used films to influence the public, putting a "Nazi touch" on movies about famous Germans, like Bismarck and Frederick the Great. He and his wife, Magda, had six children, and he had the family portrayed in newsreels as the exemplary family for Germans.** Interestingly however, Goebbels liked the ladies, especially some of the actresses he came into contact with because of the German film industry. He got into hot water due to an affair with a Czech actress, Lida Baarova, in the mid 1930s, which brought a reprimand from none other than Hitler himself, who ordered the affair ended; after all, Hitler was spouting off about how bad the Czechs were, and here his own Propaganda Minister was involved with one. While he didn't like it and threatened to resign, Goebbels followed Hitler's order.
Goebbels was also responsible for much of the open Nazi persecution of Germany's Jews, including the infamous "Night of the Broken Glass" ("Kristallnacht"), when many Jewish businesses and religious institutions were ransacked or burned, and many Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. During the war, Goebbels helped keep Germans fighting to the bitter end with his appeals to German patriotism and with a major dose of fear, both of Nazi informants and of Germany's enemies. His famous speech at the Berlin Sportpalast, just a couple of weeks after the German surrender at Stalingrad, created a frenzy among his listeners present at the arena and those listening on the radio, especially after the intense build up to the question he asked the audience, "Do you want total war?" Those in attendance answered with a resounding "Ja!" (The Allies and Soviets responded with bombs and victories.) Late in 1944, Hitler put Goebbels in charge of the "Volkssturm," the equivalent of the German home defense, consisting of older men and young boys. As the Soviets stormed into Berlin in April 1945, Goebbels and his family (they lived in Berlin) moved into Hitler's bunker. Some reports say that Hitler wanted Goebbels to take his family and leave Berlin for safety, and that, upset to the point of tears by Hitler's order, Goebbels refused to go. Goebbels may have been intelligent, but he didn't use his intellect when it came to Nazi nonsense, and he and his wife poisoned all six of their children, before then taking their own lives not long after their "master," Hitler, had committed suicide ("Selbstmord").*** The Soviets found the bodies and displayed them for cameras.****
I had intended to combine Goebbels and Martin Bormann into one article, but Bormann will be in the next article, perhaps with Albert Speer.
* This makes him similar to Kaiser Wilhelm II, the ruler of Germany during World War One, who had been born with a deformity of his one arm/hand. The Kaiser loved military matters, and his militarism may well have been the result of his handicap, but please don't think that every person with a physical handicap is apt to want to start a war or turn into a Nazi.
** His wife had been married previously, and she had one son by that marriage, who survived the war.
*** Literally "self murder," and you can see the similarity of the words to their English counterparts.
**** Goebbels and his wife were partially burned, per his order. The children were found separately, and unburned.
WORD HISTORY:
Swelter-This is another word of uncertain origin, but with a presence in Old Germanic, as "sweltanan," which passed the word onto its offspring, English; actually more specifically, to the Germanic dialects which evolved into English. Its meaning in Old Germanic was "to die." In Old English it was "sweltan," also meaning "to die," but later a variation, "swelten," meant "to be faint with heat, to be overcome by heat." Later this became "swelteren," before the modern version, which has retained the notion of "oppressive heat," but not really the "fainting" part. Icelandic has "svelta," which means "to starve, or to starve someone;" Swedish has "svälta," also with that meaning, so in North Germanic, the word took the "to die" meaning in the direction of "starving to death,"^ while English, a West Germanic language, took the direction of "fainting from the heat," perhaps from the idea that a person who "faints" appears to be dead. Other Germanic languages once had forms of the word too (Old High German had "swelzan," for instance, and it also meant "to die"), but apparently they have died out (no pun intended), just as the old form and the "die" meaning died out in English. German has been prone to tacking prefixes on to many old base words, and they may still have a form of the word, but a bit disguised, and I'm "almost" certain I've encountered it in German before.
^ Danish and Norwegian both have "sulte," for "starve" (both are North Germanic languages), but whether these are related to "swelter," I cannot say for certain.
Part One/B "Joseph Goebbels"
Joseph Goebbels (also "Göbbels, but less frequently) was from the Rhineland in western Germany. He became an important part of Hitler's march to power and to the consolidation and expansion of that power once Hitler was in office. Highly intelligent, he understood personality and psychology, and this made him a very dangerous man. He was a little guy, only like five feet in height, and he had a deformity in his one foot/lower leg, which caused him to wear a special brace, although he still walked with a slight limp. Some have attributed Goebbels militaristic behavior to his handicap.* Hitler sent him to Berlin in the earlier days of his rise to power to win converts to the growing Nazi Party and to combat the "red" influence in Berlin; that is, to defeat the Communists in Berlin, and street battles between the two groups were not uncommon. Goebbels loved movies and film making. Not long after Hitler became chancellor, he appointed Goebbels to be the head of the new "Propaganda Ministry." In this new position, Goebbels came to control every aspect of news read or heard by the German people. He used films to influence the public, putting a "Nazi touch" on movies about famous Germans, like Bismarck and Frederick the Great. He and his wife, Magda, had six children, and he had the family portrayed in newsreels as the exemplary family for Germans.** Interestingly however, Goebbels liked the ladies, especially some of the actresses he came into contact with because of the German film industry. He got into hot water due to an affair with a Czech actress, Lida Baarova, in the mid 1930s, which brought a reprimand from none other than Hitler himself, who ordered the affair ended; after all, Hitler was spouting off about how bad the Czechs were, and here his own Propaganda Minister was involved with one. While he didn't like it and threatened to resign, Goebbels followed Hitler's order.
Goebbels was also responsible for much of the open Nazi persecution of Germany's Jews, including the infamous "Night of the Broken Glass" ("Kristallnacht"), when many Jewish businesses and religious institutions were ransacked or burned, and many Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. During the war, Goebbels helped keep Germans fighting to the bitter end with his appeals to German patriotism and with a major dose of fear, both of Nazi informants and of Germany's enemies. His famous speech at the Berlin Sportpalast, just a couple of weeks after the German surrender at Stalingrad, created a frenzy among his listeners present at the arena and those listening on the radio, especially after the intense build up to the question he asked the audience, "Do you want total war?" Those in attendance answered with a resounding "Ja!" (The Allies and Soviets responded with bombs and victories.) Late in 1944, Hitler put Goebbels in charge of the "Volkssturm," the equivalent of the German home defense, consisting of older men and young boys. As the Soviets stormed into Berlin in April 1945, Goebbels and his family (they lived in Berlin) moved into Hitler's bunker. Some reports say that Hitler wanted Goebbels to take his family and leave Berlin for safety, and that, upset to the point of tears by Hitler's order, Goebbels refused to go. Goebbels may have been intelligent, but he didn't use his intellect when it came to Nazi nonsense, and he and his wife poisoned all six of their children, before then taking their own lives not long after their "master," Hitler, had committed suicide ("Selbstmord").*** The Soviets found the bodies and displayed them for cameras.****
I had intended to combine Goebbels and Martin Bormann into one article, but Bormann will be in the next article, perhaps with Albert Speer.
* This makes him similar to Kaiser Wilhelm II, the ruler of Germany during World War One, who had been born with a deformity of his one arm/hand. The Kaiser loved military matters, and his militarism may well have been the result of his handicap, but please don't think that every person with a physical handicap is apt to want to start a war or turn into a Nazi.
** His wife had been married previously, and she had one son by that marriage, who survived the war.
*** Literally "self murder," and you can see the similarity of the words to their English counterparts.
**** Goebbels and his wife were partially burned, per his order. The children were found separately, and unburned.
WORD HISTORY:
Swelter-This is another word of uncertain origin, but with a presence in Old Germanic, as "sweltanan," which passed the word onto its offspring, English; actually more specifically, to the Germanic dialects which evolved into English. Its meaning in Old Germanic was "to die." In Old English it was "sweltan," also meaning "to die," but later a variation, "swelten," meant "to be faint with heat, to be overcome by heat." Later this became "swelteren," before the modern version, which has retained the notion of "oppressive heat," but not really the "fainting" part. Icelandic has "svelta," which means "to starve, or to starve someone;" Swedish has "svälta," also with that meaning, so in North Germanic, the word took the "to die" meaning in the direction of "starving to death,"^ while English, a West Germanic language, took the direction of "fainting from the heat," perhaps from the idea that a person who "faints" appears to be dead. Other Germanic languages once had forms of the word too (Old High German had "swelzan," for instance, and it also meant "to die"), but apparently they have died out (no pun intended), just as the old form and the "die" meaning died out in English. German has been prone to tacking prefixes on to many old base words, and they may still have a form of the word, but a bit disguised, and I'm "almost" certain I've encountered it in German before.
^ Danish and Norwegian both have "sulte," for "starve" (both are North Germanic languages), but whether these are related to "swelter," I cannot say for certain.
Labels: English, etymology, German History, Germanic languages, Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Nazi leaders
posted by Randy at 5:45 PM
2 Comments:
I've seen lots of documentaries about Goebbels.
I love it when youo put the German words in there. I want to learn more.
Goebbels has become the model for much of the right wing crap over the last couple of decades. I'll let you guess the names of the people I mean. Ruthless and shameless.
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