The British historian Ian Kershaw wrote in the preface to his biography of Hitler:* “For all the caution which must naturally be attached to Goebbels’s regularly reported remarks by Hitler … the immediacy as well as the frequency of the comments makes them a vitally important source of insight into Hitler’s thinking and action.”*
Excerpts between 1942-43 are available in English, however the diaries as a whole cover the 1920’s until the last days of the war.
Is an accurate translation from German to English covering 20+ years of daily entry such a daunting task that publishers don’t think it would be financially worth the effort? As much interest as there is in that period in history, i’d think it’d almost be assured of having a market if translated.
It’s not only translation; the diaries have to be annotated and this takes substantial time for research. For example he refers to a meeting with Quintas and his views on the Jewish question. It matters a great deal to the reader if Quintas is a high ranking Nazi official or instead a drinking buddy from high school…
That’s what i’m talking about. Publishing a complete translation. The Third Reich isn’t some obscure subject that only academics are interested in. A day by day account, even if biased, by one of the inner circle would be fascinating to WW2 buffs like myself and i’m sure many others.
They’ve been published in entirety in German and French. If they were annotated in those languages then it should just be a translation and no additional research. If they were simply published ‘as is’ then why not the same in English?
A lot of untranslated things get grass roots efforts, but I would guess that a grass roots effort to get this translated would not work as well. People would question your motives. Only academics could do it, and they apparently aren’t all that interested.
The situation with the Goebbels diaries is a mess and had been for quite some time.
Portions were recovered by the western Allies, preserved and published with much fuss in the postwar period. These bits have long since been available in English.
Then, in the early 90s, it turned out that a copy of the diaries were preserved in Moscow. The huge controversy at the time was that the Sunday Times in London had employed the, even then, notorious Holocaust denier David Irving to transcribe them. (With the irony that the Sunday Times had previously famously discredited him a decade or so earlier. And let’s not mention the Hitler Diaries, when they had all managed to discredit each other.)
With that all in the past, the current mess is all about the Goebbels family claiming copyright over the passages quoted by Peter Longerich in his, just published in English, biography.
At this point, I doubt any English-language publisher would touch a complete translation of them with a bargepole.
I’d also assume that most academics who are interested in the material prefer to read it in its original German.
History courses often assign readers or annotated excerpts of primary sources for classes. I am sure there market for an abridged or condensed version.
Hitler’s “Table Talk” and his military conference briefings have received this treatment.
How many people would be interested? WWII is now 70 years ago-and the ravings of a committed Nazi are probably of limited interest. Not a NYT best seller.
I don’t know, but it could be enough. There are a lot of history nerds out there, and a lot of WWII history nerds (myself included). And there are a lot of obscure history books out there. I have to concur with the OP. Does seem hard to believe that some PhD for a middle of the road college or university somewhere didn’t take a stab at it (the legal issues up thread not withstanding).
As far as I know, there isn’t even a complete German version of Goebbels’ diaries available (in a printed version). There is a 5 volume, condensed German version which is (as I understand it) heavily edited. I don’t think the complete version (which consists of thousands and thousands of pages) would be of any particular interest to anyone except professional historians.
Don’t forget the copyright issues. Under most modern copyright systems, protection lasts for 70 years after the author’s death, and of course Goebbel’s diaries are a work covered by copyright. That means they will fall into the public domain at the end of this years, just like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the copyright of which is held by the State of Bavaria. It ended up in the possession of Bavaria because the publishing company that published the book during the Third Reich was located in Munich and conficated after the war, and the Bavarian government so far used this position to prevent the book from being published. I have no idea who is, until the end of this year, the copyright holder for Goebbel’s works, but unless you get that person’s consent, there’s no way of (legally) publishing them, even in a translated version.
Copyright resides with the Goebbels estate, and his (presumably distant, since he killed all his direct ones) relatives have recently sued, successfully, over breach of copyright in the Longerich biography.
But Harald Quandt is not related to Joseph Goebbels, and did not inherit from him. Goebbels’ current heirs are the descendants of his five brothers and sisters.
