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Joseph Goebbels' Estate Sues Publisher Over Diary Excerpt Royalties
wabrandsma writes with this from The Guardian: The estate of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's minister of propaganda, is taking legal action against the publisher Random House over a new biography, claiming payment for the use of extracts from his diaries. Peter Longerich's biography of Goebbels is to be published in May (Random House/ Siedler). Longerich, who is the professor at Royal Holloway's Holocaust Research Centre, maintains this case has important censorship implications. 'If you accept that a private person controls the rights to Goebbels' diaries, then – theoretically – you give this person the right to control research,' he said.
'Initially, he feared that Schacht would take out an injunction against the book, preventing its publication altogether. Determined to avoid the destruction of any books “on the grounds of a claim from Goebbels”, he agreed to pay her 1% of the net retail price.
He said: “When she wanted to cash in on that agreement, I said that agreement is null and void It’s against the moral rights You haven’t been entitled to sell me any words as those words lie within the Bavarian government.”'
The author agreed to pay a 1% royalty and then reneged when the heir tried to collect. Of course that triggered a lawsuit.
Certainly he had a place of power in the Nazi elite, and he used that place to drive home a pet project:
During 1942,[1] Goebbels continued to press for the "final solution to the Jewish question" to be carried forward as quickly as possible now that Germany had occupied a huge swathe of Soviet territory into which all the Jews of German-controlled Europe could be deported. There they could be worked into extinction in accordance with the plan agreed on at the Wannsee Conference convened by Heydrich in January. It was a constant annoyance to Goebbels that, at a time when Germany was fighting for its life on the eastern front, there were still 40,000 Jews in Berlin.[2] They should be "carted off to Russia," he wrote in his diary. "It would be best to kill them altogether."[3] Although the Propaganda Ministry was not invited to the Wannsee Conference, Goebbels knew by March what had been decided there.[4] He wrote:
The Jews are now being deported to the east. A fairly barbaric procedure, not to be described in any greater detail, is being used here, and not much more remains of the Jews themselves. In general, it can probably be established that 60 percent of them must be liquidated, while only 40 percent can be put to work ... A judgment is being carried out on the Jews which is barbaric, but fully deserved.[5]
1. Jewish Virtual Library
2. Kershaw, Hitler, II, p 519
3. Kershaw, Hitler, II, p 473
4. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, p 415
5. Kershaw, Hitler, II, p 494
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
This goes well past any notion of free speech and well into advocating and driving on the process of genocide
Wherever You Go, There You Are
60 million is the number now?
Yes, 60 million is the number "now". Are you implying that at some point in the past almost 70 years, fewer people were thought to have died in WWII?
Let me guess, if I don't believe your statements
There are 5 references to the original crime, and a sixth to the definition of the actual definition of the crime committed. You gave 0 references.
Here's some more references for the specific number of 60 million deaths broken down by country:
http://www.nationalww2museum.o...
http://necrometrics.com/20c5m....
If you want to propose your own number, cite or shut up.
I should be thrown in jail?
Quit being a drama queen. You are literally the only person on this thread to mention jail or prison in this entire thread as of the time of writing. We get it; you're offended that people aren't neutral on the subject of Joseph Goebbels. You can get over it.
If you don't care about him orchestrating war crimes, maybe you will accept he's a criminal due to him murdering six children (his own children) before his sucide? Cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.... Those were by his own hand.
Here's a philosophical question. What's worse, murdering your own children by your own hand, or intentionally causing the deaths of 60 million people (the vast majority of whom should be presumed innocent of any crime), but at arm's length? I'd go with the latter, but they are both pretty damned bad.
The only reason he wasn't tried for war crimes was he was already dead:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/ar...
The IMT decided not to try them posthumously so as not to create the impression that they might still be alive.
It's not like it's unusual to not press charges on dead people. It doesn't do much good to anybody. Pretty safe bet he'd have been convicted.
It's not like this was an accident, that he couldn't have known what he was doing. It's certainly not thought crimes. We don't know Goebbels' thoughts, we know his actions.
Maybe the poster was confused* about Holocaust deaths versus "general WW2" deaths (including soldiers, etc).
If you want to limit it to just the Holocaust, then Goebbels was guilty of (at least) being a co-conspirator in the deaths of 12 million people. This includes 6 million Jews and 6 million other people (political prisoners, gypsies, etc.).
* Chances are, the poster wasn't confused. Especially if one looks to the poster's previous posts. There's one calling evolution "not established science" there so I wouldn't be surprised if he would think that the Holocaust isn't "established history" either.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
His remains were already exhumed, burnt to ash, and the ashes thrown down the Elbe by the KGB, personally I think they should have been glassified in porcelain and placed in a toilet in the main synagog in Berlin so that the jews could piss on him for the rest of eternity, but I like symbolism like that =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.