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Master propagandist of the Nazi regime and dictator of its cultural life for twelve years, Joseph Goebbels was born into a strict Catholic, working-class family from Rheydt, in the Rhineland, on 29 October 1897. He was educated at a Roman Catholic school and went on to study history and literature at the University of Heidelberg.With the skill of a master propagandist he transformed the Berlin student and pimp, Horst Wessel, into a Nazi martyr, and provided the slogans, the myths and images, the telling aphorisms which rapidly spread the message of National Socialism.Hitler was deeply impressed by Goebbels's success in turning the small Berlin section of the Party into a powerful organization in North Germany and in 1929 appointed him Reich Propaganda Leader of the NSDAP. Looking back many years later (24 June 1942), Hitler observed: "Dr. Goebbels was gifted with the two things without which the situation in Berlin could not have been mastered: verbal facility and intellect.. . . For Dr. Goebbels, who had not found much in the way of a political organization when he started, had won Berlin in the truest sense of the word.During World War II relations between Hitler and Goebbels became more intimate, especially as the war situation deteriorated and the Minister of Propaganda encouraged the German people to ever greater efforts. After the Allies insisted on unconditional surrender, Goebbels turned this to advantage, convincing his audience that there was no choice except victory or destruction.Following the Fuhrer's suicide, Goebbels disregarded Hitler's political testament, which had appointed him as Reich Chancellor, and decided to follow suit. He had his six children poisoned with a lethal injection by an SS doctor and then himself and his wife Magda shot by an SS orderly on May 1, 1945. With characteristic pathos and egomania he declared not long before his death: "We shall go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time, or as the greatest criminals."

Goering's aristocratic background and his prestige as a war hero made him a prize recruit to the infant Nazi Party and Hitler appointed him to command the SA Brownshirts in December 1922. Nazism offered the swashbuckling Goering the promise of action, adventure, comradeship and an outlet for his unreflective, elemental hunger for power.Following Hitler's appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933, Goering was made Prussian Minister of the Interior, Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian Police and Gestapo and Commissioner for Aviation. As the creator of the secret police, Goering, together with Himmler (q.v.) and Heydrich (q.v.), set up the early concentration camps for political opponents, showing formidable energy in terrorizing and crushing all resistance.On 1 March 1935 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force and, with Udet and Milch, was responsible for organizing the rapid build-up of the aircraft industry and training of pilots. In 1936 his powers were further extended by his appointment as Plenipotentiary for the implementation of the Four Year Plan, which gave him virtually dictatorial controls to direct the German economy.During his trial Goering, who had slimmed in captivity and had been taken off drugs, defended himself with aggressive vigour and skill, frequently outwitting the prosecuting counsel. On 15 October 1946, two hours before his execution was due to take place, Goering committed suicide in his Nuremberg cell, taking a capsule of poison that he had succeeded in hiding from his guards during his captivity.

Deputy Führer and considered to be the number 3 man in Hitler's Germany after Göring. Hess was a somewhat neurotic member of Hitler's inner circle best known for his surprise flight to Scotland on May 10, 1941 in which he intended to negotiate peace with the British, but which resulted in his capture and long term imprisonment. Rudolf Hess was born in Alexandria, Egypt, April 26, 1894, the son of a prosperous wholesaler and exporter. He did not live in Germany until he was fourteen. He volunteered for the German Army in 1914 at the outbreak of World War One, partly to escape the control of his domineering father who had refused to let him go to a university but instead persuaded him into an unwanted career in the family business. At the University of Munich, Hess studied political science and came under the influence of the Thule Society, a secret anti-Semitic political organization devoted to Nordic supremacy. At the University of Munich, Hess studied political science and came under the influence of the Thule Society, a secret anti-Semitic political organization devoted to Nordic supremacy. In 1923, Hess took part in Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch in which Hitler and the Nazis attempted to seize control of Germany. Hess was arrested and imprisoned along with Hitler at Landsberg prison. While in prison, Hess took dictation for Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, and also made some editorial suggestions regarding Lebensraum, the historical role of the British Empire, and the organization of the Nazi Party. After his release from prison in 1925, Hess served for several years as Hitler's personal secretary in spite of having no official rank in the Nazi Party. In 1932, Hitler appointed him Chairman of the Central Political Commission of the Nazi Party and SS General as a reward for his loyal service. On April 21, 1933, he was made Deputy Führer, a figurehead position with mostly ceremonial duties. He was granted titles such as Reich Minister without Portfolio, member of the Secret Cabinet Council, and member of the Ministerial Council for Reich Defense. In 1939 Hess was even designated to be Hitler's successor after Göring.

Reichsfuhrer-SS, head of the Gestapo and the Waffen-SS, Minister of the Interior from 1943 to 1945 and organizer of the mass murder of Jews in the Third Reich, Heinrich Himmler was born in Munich on 7 October 1900. The son of a pious, authoritarian Roman Catholic schoolmaster who had once been tutor to the Bavarian Crown Prince, Himmler was educated at a secondary school in Landshut. He served as an officer cadet in the Eleventh Bavarian Regiment at the end of World War I, later obtaining a diploma in agriculture from Munich Technical High ScAfter marrying in 1927, Himmler returned to poultry farming for a time but was singularly unsuccessful in the business of raising chickens. In January 1929, he was appointed head of Hitler's personal bodyguard, the black-shirted Schutzstaffel (SS), at that time a small body of 200 men which was subsequently to become under his leadership an all-embracing empire within the Nazi State.hool where he studied from 1918 to 1922. In March 1933, Himmler was appointed Munich Police President and shortly afterwards he became Commander of the political police throughout Bavaria. In September 1933 he was made Commander of all political police units outside Prussia and, though formally under Goering, became head of the Prussian Police and Gestapo on 20 April 1934. The turning-point in Himmler's career was his masterminding of the purge of 30 June 1934 which smashed the power of the SA and paved the way for the emergence of the SS as an independent organization charged with "safeguarding the . . . embodiment of the National Socialist idea" and translating the racism of the regime into a dynamic principle of action. By June 17, 1936, Himmler had successfully completed his bid to win control of the political and criminal police throughout the Third Reich, becoming head of the Gestapo in addition to his position as Reichsfuhrer of the SS. A very able organizer and administrator, meticulous, calculating and efficient, Himmler's astonishing capacity for work and irrepressible power-lust showed itself in his accumulation of official posts and his perfecting of the methods of organized State terrorism against political and other opponents of the regime.

But then there was Albert Speer, Hitler's principal architect and, later, the efficient organizer of the German war machine. While the rest of his cohort were case studies in every human weakness (and looked it), Speer's handsome face exuded cultivation and inner serenity. In fact, filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, the director of "Triumph of the Will," said that it was a glimpse of him in a newspaper photograph that helped quell her doubts about the Nazis. "When I saw that photograph," Riefenstahl told Speer biographer Gitta Sereny, "I thought how extraordinary that a man with a face like that should be for Hitler -- if he was, I thought, then there had to be something to it all."