Paul Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) was an early member of the Nazi Party and reputedly had the highest IQ in the party. He obtained a PhD from Heidelberg University in 1921 with a thesis in nineteenth century Romantic School Literature; he then went on to work as a journalist. By 1924, he had joined the NSDAP and two years later was appointed leader of the party in Berlin to wrest political control of that city from the Communist Party-an objective in which he succeeded. Elected to the Reichstag in 1928, Goebbels took an active part in Hitler's coming to power in 1933, and was appointed minister of information (then called propaganda), a position he held until the end of the war, when he committed suicide rather than fall into Allied captivity.
