Das Goebbels-Experiment

HE GOEBBELS EXPERIMENT lets the Nazi propaganda mastermind behind Hitler talk directly to you as actor Kenneth Branagh reads pages of the diary he kept without interruption from 1924 to 1945. Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) was a symbol of Germany's Nazi regime and a twentieth-century icon of maniacal cruelty. His name has been synonymous with cynical, unscrupulous, and at times successful, propaganda. The life of Goebbels is far more complicated and disturbing than labels like 'genius of spin' or 'Reich Liar-General' would suggest. In their documentary, Lutz Hachmeister and Michael Kloft show for the first time how Goebbels continually 'restaged' and reinvented himself, from his early days as a radical 'popular socialist' to his tragic end. The film lets Goebbels speak for himself through the diaries he kept, as never before seen historical footage from German archives traces the life of the second most powerful man of the Third Reich, detailing his initial attraction to the Nazi party and his adoration of Hitler. The result is a fascinating psycho-gram of a man who careened extravagantly between self-pity, wild extermination fantasies, and political excesses.