Curt Riess was a Jewish Berlin journalist who fled to the USA in 1936. He was a noted war correspondent and returned to Germany in 1945 to witness the collapse of the Third Reich. Towards the end of 1945 he worked day and night on this biography, and a year later was able to benefit from the discovery of the Goebbels diaries, which were edited by his friend Louis Lochner. Riess said to Lochner 'Goebbels to me is the most outstanding man of the Nazi regime, not even barring Adolf Hitler himself'. Riess rendered a real service by meticulously putting together, in a readable and graphic way, the story of one of the most fascinating, albeit vilest, characters of the twentieth century. Goebbels is bound to have his permanent place in history, even as Mephisto has his in mythology.