Goebbels

This is a repellent book, and not only because of its subject. Irving (Goering) has been increasingly under fire for exploiting seemingly indefatigable research to distort history. In the book in hand, he uses enough pejoratives to sustain the illusion of objectivity regarding Hitler's propaganda chief, yet suggests that the admittedly bad man had a cause not entirely bad in itself. Nazi brutality is almost always retaliation for the plots of international Jewry and the criminality of domestic Jews. Even the books notoriously burned are ""decadent and anti-German."" The term Redakteur (editor) ""to Goebbels' sensitive ear had a Jewish ring."" Protesters in Saarbrucken are ""a clamoring ragbag of communists, Jews, freemasons and disgruntled emigres."" There is always, in Irving's own words, a ""Jewish problem"" that Goebbels struggles to solve. Much of the book, heavily indebted to the self-serving Goebbels diaries, is in such a vein. There seems always to be an agenda to Irving's documentation, and the language of camouflaged admiration suffuses his pages amidst his ritual scolding of the Nazis for their excesses. The real insidiousness of the biography is that its formidable documentation will gain it acceptance as history. Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)