Joseph Goebbels
1897 – 1945 · 48 years · Rheydt · Europe
From 1933 he brought the press, radio and cinema under Nazi control, and in 1943, in a speech at the Berlin Sportpalast, called for "total war". On 1 May 1945 he and his wife killed themselves in the bunker after poisoning their six children.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 23 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 18 years older
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 16 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 8 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 30 years older
- Bertrand Russell — British philosopher, logician and public intellectual, 25 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 19 years older
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 1 year older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 27 years older
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 69 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 37 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 63 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 16 years older
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 2 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 1 year younger
- Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 4 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 36 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 21 years younger
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 21 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 5 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 28 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 53 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 22 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 9 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 28 years older
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 4 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 8 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 7 years older
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 36 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 4 years younger
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 8 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 41 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 50 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 32 years younger
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 33 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 34 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 26 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 1 year younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 22 years younger
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 15 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 3 years younger
- Albert Namatjira — painter, 5 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — aged 0, Africa
- 1898 Battle of Omdurman — aged 1, Africa
- 1899–1902 Second Boer War — aged 2, Africa
- 1901 First Nobel Prizes — aged 4, Europe
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — aged 6, Americas
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — aged 7, Africa
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 8, Europe
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — aged 8, Middle East
- 1905 Battle of Tsushima — aged 8, Asia
- 1906 San Francisco earthquake — aged 9, Americas
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 11, Middle East
- 1908 Tunguska event — aged 11, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — aged 11, Middle East
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — aged 13, Americas
- 1910 Japan annexes Korea — aged 13, Asia
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — aged 14, Asia
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — aged 14, Oceania
- 1912–1913 Balkan Wars — aged 15, Europe
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 17, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 17, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 17, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 18, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 19, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 20, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 20, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 21, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 22, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 31, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 32, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 32, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 36, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 39, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 39, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 42, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 44, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 44, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 45, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 48, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 48, Eastern Europe & Russia