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Goebels' estate would have got it through inheritance. Goebels' wife and children were all killed in the bunker, so there are no direct descendants. Brothers. maybe, nephews, or if no descendants or relatives under local inheritance law, the State.
Copyright is copyright and a contract is a contract under law. If you are going to abandon the law on moral grounds you are back to book burning, from the Alexandria Library to the present day.
My position is, if they didn't want to pay the royalties don't do the deal; they could confine themselves to the small extracts of "fair dealing". If they are using large amounts, which is what it sounds like, then they pay the royalties they agreed on. Or wait until the diaries go into the public domain in 2016.
Cheating a source because you disapprove of their morals/past etc is still cheating.
I have never read Goebels' diaries, can't imagine wanting to, but there are extracts, for those curious to see the style, in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L Shirer.
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