Magda Goebbels

Johanna Maria Magdalena Goebbels née Behrend (November 11, 1901 – May 1, 1945) was the wife of Joseph Goebbels and First Lady of the Third Reich. She is known to have murdered their six children as Berlin was overrun by Red Army troops in May 1945.

Childhood and youth

Magda was born in Berlin, Germany, to twenty-year-old Auguste Behrend, a servant to a family in the Bülowstrasse. Her father's identity was unknown, but he was likely an engineer, Oskar Rietschel (sometimes spelled "Ritschel"). When Magda was five, her mother sent her to stay with Rietschel in Cologne. He took her to Brussels, Belgium, where she enrolled at a convent school. At ten, Magda is said to have been "intelligent, gifted and precocious," with a taste for Schopenhauer. She also had an early interest in Buddhism. Magda's mother Auguste may have married Jewish hotel and restaurant worker Max Friedländer (who later died at the Buchenwald concentration camp), moving with him to Brussels. They all lived there until the outbreak of World War I, when Germans were forced to leave and the family spent time at a refugee camp in East Prussia.

Marriages and family with Joseph Goebbels

Main article: Goebbels children

After the war her family moved to Berlin where she attended Kollmorgen Lycée, receiving three hundred marks a month spending money from Rietschel. In 1919 Magda was enrolled in the prestigious Holzhausen Ladies' College near Goslar. At nineteen she is said to have had remarkable poise and presence. While returning to school on a train she met Günther Quandt, a wealthy German industrialist twice her age whose holdings later grew into VARTA batteries among other businesses, with large stakes in BMW and Daimler-Benz. She soon dropped out of college to spend time with him. While they contemplated marriage, her birth certificate was legally altered to make her Rietschel's daughter, which changed her name from Friedländer (a social liability in the anti-Semitic climate of early twentieth century Germany). She also converted from Catholicism to Protestantism. She and Quandt were married on January 4, 1921 and her first child Harald was born November 1, 1921, the only child of hers who survived the war.

Magda is said to have grown bored in her marriage with Quandt who didn't spend much time with her and at the age of 23 she became attracted to her 18 year old stepson Helmut Quandt (who died tragically of complications from appendicitis in 1927). She and Günther Quandt then went on a six month automobile-tour of America in a red Maybach. There were unsubstantiated rumors she had a relationship with a nephew of U.S. president Herbert Hoover. In Berlin, one of her closest friends was Lisa Arlosorov (whose parents were Russian Jews) and Magda started a long affair with Arlosorov's brother (Chaim Arlozorov), an ardent Zionist who was later assassinated in Palestine. Quandt is said to have hired detectives and he was ultimately generous with the divorce settlement in 1929.

Young, blonde and attractive with no need to work, on the advice of a friend she attended a meeting of the NSDAP (Nazi party) where she was impressed by one of the speakers, Joseph Goebbels. She joined the party on 1 September 1930 and did some volunteer work, although she has not been characterized as politically active. From the local branch she moved to the party headquarters and became secretary to Dr Hans Meinshausen, Goebbels' deputy as gauleiter.

Later she found herself attracted to Hitler, who apparently was mutually impressed. Her marriage to Joseph Goebbels seems to have been somewhat arranged. Since Hitler intended to remain unmarried (fully half the voters who supported him were women), it was suggested that as the wife of a highly visible, leading Nazi official she might eventually act as first lady of the Third Reich. Magda's social connections and upper class bearing may have influenced Goebbels' own enthusiasm.

She married Goebbels on December 19, 1931 at Günther Quandt's farm in Mecklenburg with Hitler as their witness.

They subsequently had six children:

Helga Susanne
Hildegard (Hilde) Traudel
Helmut Christian
Hedwig (Hedda) Johanna
Holdine (Holde) Kathrin
Heidrun (Heide) Elisabeth

Joseph Goebbels had many affairs with other women during his marriage with Magda. One of the most widely known was with the popular Czech actress Lída Baarová. Joseph was so smitten he contemplated leaving Germany to be with her (perhaps as German ambassador to Japan). When faced with the possibility of divorce, Magda resorted to asking Hitler for help and Baarova was eventually sent away. Magda also had affairs (including one with Joseph's deputy Karl Hanke) and there is evidence that at some point they had agreed to have an open marriage.

War years

Both Magda and Joseph Goebbels are said to have been disappointed when Germany went to war, believing it to be dangerous for the country. However they derived vast personal benefits and social status from their close association with Hitler. Joseph (as propaganda minister) and Magda (as "First lady of the Reich") remained loyal to the Fuehrer and publicly supported him. Privately, Magda expressed doubts, especially after the war began to go badly on the eastern front. On November 9, 1942, during a gathering with friends listening to a speech by Hitler, she is said to have switched off the radio exclaiming, "My God what a lot of rubbish."

In 1944 she reportedly said of Hitler, "He no longer listens to voices of reason. Those who tell him what he wants to hear are the only ones he believes."

Murder and suicide

By late April 1945 the Red Army was entering Berlin and the Goebbels family had taken refuge in the Führerbunker beneath the now bombed out Reich Chancellory (one of the rooms they occupied had been recently vacated by Hitler's personal physician Theodore Morell). By all accounts, the children were optimistic and playful, even bringing a smile to Hitler's face now and then. Meanwhile, rumours of marauding Russian troops looting and raping as they advanced were circulating in Berlin (some of these turned out to be true). Hitler and his bride Eva Braun committed suicide on the afternoon of April 30.

On the 28th of April Magda wrote a farewell letter to her son Harald Quandt, who was in a POW encampment in North Africa. This letter is her only handwritten bequest.

"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 ..."

One account holds that a distraught Magda interrupted Hitler and Braun's suicide preparations. However, this was reported by only a few witnesses. Most of the people standing in the conference room said Magda did not show up at all.

Josef's last testament, dictated to Traudl, said that Magda and their children supported him in his refusal to leave Berlin, and to die in the bunker. But it later reneged and said that the children would support the decision if they were old enough to speak for themselves.

The following day, on May 1, 1945, Goebbels' six children were drugged with morphine, and killed with cyanide capsules broken in their mouths.

There is speculation as to how involved Magda was with the murders of her children. Some witnesses claimed SS doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger crushed the cyanide capsules into the children's mouths, however no living witnesses to their murder survived. O'Donnell concluded that although Stumpfegger was probably involved in drugging the children, it was Magda who killed them. He suggested that witnesses blamed the deaths on Stumpfegger because he was a convenient target, having disappeared (and died, it was later learned) the following day. Moreover, as O'Donnell recorded, Stumpfegger may have been too intoxicated at the time of the deaths to have played a reliable role.

Magda appears to have contemplated and talked about murdering her children at least a month in advance, and Joseph seems to have acquiesced. She also refused several offers from others, such as Speer, to spirit the children out of Berlin. There was evidence (in the form of bruises) that the eldest child, twelve year old Helga, had awakened and struggled before she was killed. The children's pajama-clad bodies were still in the two-tiered bunk beds they were murdered in when Russian troops entered the bunker a day later.

After their children were dead, Magda and Joseph had walked upstairs to the bombed out garden (she is said to have been shaking uncontrollably), avoiding the need for anyone to carry their bodies. The details of their suicides are uncertain. One SS officer later said they each took cyanide and were then shot by an SS trooper. An early report said they were machine-gunned to death at their own request. According to another account, Joseph shot Magda and then himself (this idea is presented in the movie Downfall). Their bodies were doused in petrol, only partially burnt and not buried. The charred corpses were found on the afternoon of May 2, 1945 by Russian troops and a photograph of Joseph Goebbels' incinerated face was widely published. Their remains and those of their children were later secretly buried (together with those of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun) by the Soviets and in April 1970 all were reburned and scattered in the Elbe river.

Quotes

This woman could play an important role in my life, even without being married to her. In all my work, she could represent the female counterpart to my one-sidedly male instincts. Too bad she isn't married. Indeed, if she were... the Führer... so wedded to politics, could be permitted a platonic intimacy with her of a depth impossible with a single woman. - Adolf Hitler, 1931

Love is meant for husbands but my love for Hitler is stronger, I would give my life for it... When it became clear Hitler can love no woman, but as they say, only Germany, I consented to the marriage with Dr. Goebbels, because I can now be close to the Fuhrer. - Magda Goebbels

We will go through with it, because they are too beautiful and too good for the world to come... no, no I must also take the children, I must! ...if she is sleeping soundly, then an Evipan syringe will be sufficient. - From a discussion with Ello Quandt, spring 1945

There is no other solution ... I cannot imagine that life would be possible for the children after the Führer. - talking about the possible murder of her children according to Traudl Junge

She was a very clever woman, on a higher level than most people... You have to understand that we were living outside normal reality... But I still didn't understand how she could kill six children... The kids were so charming. They played with each other... They had nothing to do with what was going on... But she (Frau Goebbels) didn't want it. She said: "I belong to my husband and the children belong to me." Not to spare one or two of the children was madness, dreadful. - Erna Flegel (a nurse who was present in the Fuhrerbunker), from a 2005 newspaper interview

Flegel's comment refers to her opinion that it would have been impossible to safely evacuate all six children from the bunker during those final days, that they would have indeed fared badly if captured by the Russians but it may have been possible to get one or two of them out of harm's way.

References and further reading

E. Ebermayer, Hans Roos: Gefährtin des Teufels - Leben und Tod der Magda Goebbels, Hamburg 1952
Joseph Goebbels: Tagebücher 1945 - Die letzten Aufzeichnungen, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-40401-368-9
Anja Klabunde: Magda Goebbels - Annäherung an ein Leben München 1999, ISBN 3-57000-114-8
Hans-Otto Meissner: Magda Goebbels - Ein Lebensbild, München 1978
James O'Donnell. The Bunker. De Capo Press, 1978, ISBN 0-306-80958-3
Erich Schaake: Hitlers Frauen, München 2000
Wolfgang Schneider: Frauen unterm Hakenkreuz, Hamburg 2001
Anna Maria Sigmund: Die Frauen der Nazis. Band 1, Wien 1998, ISBN 3-80003-699-1
Spiegel Nr35/04 Hitlers Ende Spiegels (H. 35, 2004)
Robert Wistrich: Wer war wer im dritten Reich. Frankfurt a.M. 1987
Dieter Wunderlich: Göring und Goebbels, Regensburg 2002

In popular culture

She was portrayed by Corinna Harfouch in the 2004 German film Der Untergang.
In the 1999 Alternative History story "The Prime Minister's Wife" (Hebrew: אשת ראש הממשלה) by Israeli Science Fiction writer Moshe Ayalon, Magda marries Chaim Arlozorov instead of Goebbels. She converts to Judaism and goes to live with Arlozorov, who in this history avoids assassination, in Tel-Aviv. During the Second World War she distinguishes herself as an anti-Nazi activist and organises relief for survivors of the Holocaust. In 1948, Arlozorov becomes Israel's first Prime Minister instead of Ben Gurion, leading the country to independence with Magda as an active and highly-popular wife at his side. During the 1950s, a mudraking journalist publishes the rumor that the Prime Minster's wife had in her youth an affair with arch-Nazi Joseph Goebbels; this is taken as malicious gossip aimed at undermining her husband's political position, and Magda wins a highly-publicised libel suit. In 1980 she dies in Jerusalem, mourned as Israel's "Grand Old Lady" and is given a massive state funeral at the Mount Herzl National Cemetery with her children by Arlozorov - a son who serves as an Israeli Army general and a daughter who is a distinguished Tel-Aviv actress - walking in front of the bier. (The story actually begins with the funeral; converastions among the mourners as well as various flashbacks gradually let the reader understand who "The First Prime Minister's Wife" actually is.)

1901 births | 1945 deaths | Female Nazis