Goebbels’ early letters reveal start of anti-Semitism

The love letters, school papers, and dramatic works of a college-age Joseph Goebbels reveal a romantic young man beginning to show signs of anti-Semitism and egotistical behaviour, according to a Connecticut auction house selling the pre-war writings of Adolf Hitler’s propaganda chief.

Alexander Historical Auctions plans to sell the collection on Thursday in Stamford, saying it may provide historical and psychological insights.

“It sums up the formative years of the number two man in the Third Reich,” said Bill Panagopulos, AHA president. “In my opinion, it shows how this rather simple, shy and love-struck college student really just became radicalised.”

The thousands of pages include Goebbels’s college dissertation, report cards, dozens of poems, essays, and letters from relatives, friends, and girlfriends.

“You get a feel for what’s going on in his head,” Panagopulos said. “There’s a lot of information if somebody wants to dig into the mind of this man who grew into a lunatic.”

In the later years of the collection, Goebbels starts to show anti-Semitic tendencies, Panagopulos said.

The sale sparked concerns in a leader of a Holocaust survivors group, who criticised AHA’s sale last year of the journals of Nazi death camp doctor Josef Mengele.

“Alexander Auction House is making a business out of selling Nazi artifacts,” said Menachem Rosensaft, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.