Joseph Goebbels' Children - Killed Without Cause

Joseph Goebbels. Nazi Propaganda Minister. Magda Goebbels, his wife. The setting, Germany in the Second World War.

Imagine growing up in Germany in World War Two. Then, imagine that you're the child of a major Nazi minister. Then, imagine you're Joseph and Magda's child.

You'd be living a sheltered life, not knowing fully who he is, but still, knowing he's doing the noble job of telling your country how the filthy 'Jude' (Jews) have infiltrated said country, and are stealthily trying to dominate the world by breeding too much.

You would be living in close quarters with Hitler himself, going to see him maybe once every couple of weeks. However, this would not be a bad thing; you rather enjoy visiting -or being visited by- him, because he plays with and teases you, and takes you on his lap when he does one of his big speeches to people who come to hear them. With four sisters, one full-blooded brother, and a half brother, you have plenty of playmates. Your mother plays with and loves you, but you prefer your father and love when he has time off from his work to play with you. The world is going to pieces, and you can see this even though you're an innocent child, but as long as family life keeps on going as perfectly as it does now, you don't think you need to take much notice of it.

Yes, I'm describing Joseph and Magda's eldest daughter, Helga. Her siblings (Hildegard, Helmut, Holdine, Hedwig, and Heidrun) and she were killed. The only child who wasn't was Harald Quandt, Magda's son from a previous marriage, who later became a Lieutenant in the Luftwaffe.

Helga, the eldest of Joseph's children, was only twelve when she was murdered by her own parents. Hilde was eleven. Helmut was nine, Holde was eight, Hedda almost seven, and Heide just four.

Things first started to go south when the Red Army moved closer in January, 1945. Goebbels ordered his family's removal from the Lanke Castle to the relative safety of Schwanenwerder. The children were kept innocent, and wondered why "rain never followed the 'thunder'." (Wikipedia).

By the end of April, the Red Army entered Berlin. Goebbels took his family to the Vorbunker, connected to the lower Fuhrerbunker in the Reich Chancellery Gardens. Hitler was also living at this time in the Fuhrerbunker, directing the Final Defense of Berlin. Even into Hitler's last week, he still gave them chocolate and the use of his bathroom, it being the only one available with a bathtub. Any wonder why they loved him so much?

As stories of brutality and rape were following the advancing Soviets in Berlin, and as the Soviets would undoubtedly kill them if they found them, there was much talk in the Bunker about suicide as an escape method.

Letters were sent out with pilot Hanna Reitsch (having left on April 29) and Traudl Junge (Hitler's secretary, who left on May 1) to the outside world. One was a letter from Magda to her son Harald, who was in an Allied POW Camp. This is the letter:

"My beloved son! By now we have been in the Führerbunker for six days already — daddy, your six little siblings and I, for the sake of giving our national socialistic lives the only possible honorable end ... You shall know that I stayed here against daddy's will, and that even on last Sunday the Führer wanted to help me to get out. You know your mother — we have the same blood, for me there was no wavering. Our glorious idea is ruined and with it everything beautiful and marvelous that I have known in my life. The world that comes after the Führer and national socialism is not any longer worth living in and therefore I took the children with me, for they are too good for the life that would follow, and a merciful God will understand me when I will give them the salvation ... The children are wonderful ... there never is a word of complaint nor crying. The impacts are shaking the bunker. The elder kids cover the younger ones, their presence is a blessing and they are making the Führer smile once in a while. May God help that I have the strength to perform the last and hardest. We only have one goal left: loyalty to the Führer even in death. Harald, my dear son — I want to give you what I learned in life: be loyal! Loyal to yourself, loyal to the people and loyal to your country ... Be proud of us and try to keep us in dear memory ..."

The following day, the children all received an injection of morphine, strong enough to knock them out. Once unconscious, a crushed ampoule of cyanide was put in their mouths by dentist Helmut Kunz. According to Kunz, he administered the morphine, but Magda and Hitler's personal doctor, Ludwig Stumpfegger, gave them the deadly cyanide. Magda had before reassured the children about the morphine by telling them that they needed innoculations, as they were staying in the Bunker for a long time. Magda is recorded to have speculated about killing her children at least a month in advance.

Moreover, Rochus Misch, a radio operator, recalled seeing Helga "crying softly" as she was getting ready for bed the night before, and that Magda had to push her to the upstairs bunker for bed. Heide, the youngest, turned to him and teasingly said to him, "Misch, Misch, du bist ein fisch." ("Misch, Misch, you are a fish.") Misch said afterwards that he had an inkling of what was coming and would always regret not interfering. Also, Helga is reported to have asked what would happen to them after the war, and is said to have sensed that the adults were lying to her about it.

These suspicions are confirmed when you think of the Soviet autopsy of Helga's body. Helga had black and blue bruises all over her body, but mostly on her face. Her jaw was also broken. All of this says that Helga somehow woke up from the morphine, struggled with her killer, and, as a twelve-year-old, wasn't strong enough to stop the poisonous cyanide from penetrating her bloodstream, thereby stopping her heart very painfully.

Afterwards, Magda and Goebbels committed suicide in the gardens outside the Bunker. Although reports vary as to how they did so, one is certain: their bodies were doused with petrol, and were partially burned. They were not buried. In 1970, their bodies were taken out of their secret burial site and cremated; afterwards, the cremated remains (Hitler and Eva Braun, too) were scattered in the Elbe River.

Rochus Misch, forever regretting his part, later wanted a memorial of the six children. As a reply to critics who said that it would be dishonourable to the Holocaust victims to honour the children, he retorted that, even though their parents were one of the war's most evil criminals, their children were innocent.

"Straight after Hitler's death, Mrs. Goebbels came down to the bunker with her children," Mr Misch recalls. "She started preparing to kill them. She couldn't have done that above ground — there were other people there who would have stopped her. That's why she came downstairs — because no-one else was allowed in the bunker. She came down on purpose to kill them. The kids were right next to me and behind me. We all knew what was going to happen. It was clear. I saw Hitler's doctor, Dr Stumpfegger give the children something to drink. Some kind of sugary drink. Then Stumpfegger went and helped to kill them. All of us knew what was going on. An hour or two later, Mrs. Goebbels came out crying. She sat down at a table and began playing patience. This is exactly how it was."

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” --Joseph Goebbels

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over." --Joseph Goebbels