Peter Longerich. Goebbels

Seventy years after the fall of the Third Reich, biographical writing of leading Nazi leaders has its own history. Initially, top Nazis were portrayed as diabolical sadists set apart from the rest of humanity. After the publication of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil in 1963, many historians adhered to the “banality of evil” thesis, which suggests that leading Nazis were ambitious, unthinking, and largely apolitical cogs in the wheels of a Nazi bureaucratic machine. More recently, historians have focused on the deep ideological passions that animated their subjects. Neither Goebbels: A Biography nor Speer: Hitler’s Architect sits comfortably with current trends. Peter Longerich advances a psychological interpretation: in Goebbels, we find a narcissist whose need for recognition could be satisfied only by Adolf Hitler. Martin Kitchen offers a throwback to Arendt: in Speer, we see a calculating, cold-hearted man whose ambition knew no end.

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