Did Nazis like Goebbels face any challenges because of their appearance?

i think, like so many even more humane humans, they were blind to the discrepancies between their own reality and the “ideals” they espoused.

This is a great question. I always wondered how Goebbels explained his deformity and his almost classic Jewish appearance. I have no idea if it was even ever addressed as he was a pretty powerful Nazi, but there must have been some inside jokes up at the Eagle’s Nest, knowing the type of jerks who hung out there. Goering comes to mind. He was said to have a pretty cruel sense of humor.

Just found this here:

“Goebbels had been rejected for military service during World War I because of a crippled foot – the result of contracting polio as a child – and a sense of physical inadequacy tormented him for the rest of his life, reinforced by resentment of the reactions aroused by his diminutive frame, black hair and intellectual background. Bitterly conscious of his deformity and fearful of being regarded as a “bourgeois intellectual,” Goebbels overcompensated for his lack of the physical virtues of the strong, healthy, blond, Nordic type by his ideological rectitude and radicalism once he joined the NSDAP in 1922.

The hostility to the intellect of the “little doctor,” his contempt for the human race in general and the Jews in particular, and his complete cynicism were an expression of his own intellectual self-hatred and inferiority complexes, his overwhelming need to destroy everything sacred and ignite the same feelings of rage, despair and hatred in his listeners.”

And this:
”... He had a deformed right leg, the result either of club foot or osteomyelitis. William L. Shirer, who worked in Berlin as a journalist in the 1930s and was acquainted with Goebbels, wrote in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) that the deformity was from a childhood attack of osteomyelitis and a failed operation to correct it. Goebbels wore a metal brace and special shoe because of his shortened leg, but nevertheless walked with a limp. He was rejected for military service in World War I, which he bitterly resented. He later sometimes misrepresented himself as a war veteran and his disability as a war wound. He acted as an ‘office soldier’ from June to October 1917 in Rheydt’s ‘Patriotic Help Unit.’ ”

I find it so funny that Hitler was short fat and dark!

If they had all looked like Gods the Nazi leadership might not have appealed so strongly to the man in the street. They looked ordinary but the promises they made were extraordinary. The average German could identify with them and would not be critical of their appearance. The Nazi leadership weren’t saying you can be like us they were saying together we can be something better.