Once, Goebbels aspired to be a writer. In 1921, at the age of twenty-four, Goebbels received a PhD (he wrote his dissertation on an obscure nineteenth-century playwright), and he struggled for several years to build a respectable career. He wrote a novel that no publisher would publish, two plays that no producer would produce, and when he turned his attention to journalism, no newspaper would hire him. When he encountered his idol Hitler, his luck began to change.
