To understand the mindset of Goebbels you need to understand his way of thinking. Goebbels was a firm believer in using psychological techniques to sway his audience; he even placed his view of academic propaganda in a book during his early years in Berlin. He felt those who utilized academic propaganda were wasting their time because the deception should not be discussed, just done. This was all in accordance with Hitler’s writings in Mein Kampf where he states, “For an agitator who shows himself capable of expounding ideas to the great masses must always be a psychologist…” Goebbels embraced this sentiment whole-heartedly and made it his personal way of conducting business so to speak.
Hitler was himself a propagandist during his time with the German Labor Party, and he wrote about it quite often in Mein Kampf. Here is where things start to get a little convoluted; think of Mein Kampf as the Nazi playbook, or Bible. Many in the upper echelons of the Nazi party used it as a sort of reference when determining if they were on the right path, in particular Goebbels paid close attention to Hitler’s frequent mentions of propaganda and how it should be used; in particular how a big lie was often more believable than a small lie. For an example telling you that Farmer Bob poisoned all of the fish in his pond because his wife left him is easily verifiable or debunked; however if I was to tell you that all of the fish in the oceans are going to die because of the waste runoff from Amish farms is making its way out to sea where it is causing mercury poisoning, that is harder to debunk. This is the same thought process used by Goebbels and Hitler to get the German people to turn on the Jews in such a visceral way. To prove his point Goebbels made the comment at the 1934 Nuremburg Rally:
“Good propaganda does not need to lie, indeed it may not lie. It has no reason to fear the truth. It is a mistake to believe that people cannot take the truth. They can. It is only a matter of presenting the truth to people in a way that they will be able to understand.”
After the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad Goebbels gave his famous Total War speech in February, 1943 at the Berlin Sportpalast to an invite only crowd (. This effectively rallied the German nation to begin ramping up efforts to fight back against the Western forces. It was pretty obvious to anyone who knew the actual numbers that the war was all but over for the Nazis, but Goebbels propaganda efforts that day definitely prolonged the war in Europe.
Hitler's crusade : Bolshevism and the myth of the international Jewish conspiracy
Bending Spines : The Propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic