Magda Goebbels: First Lady of The Third Reich

During the war, Magda lived up to her reputation as the first lady. She trained as a Red Cross nurse, travelled to work on public transport, and like her husband remained highly visible throughout the war. Magda, was no fool, however. She had been heard to remark as early as 1942, that the war was lost. But she confined her criticisms to private conversations and remained in public steadfastly loyal. She was a good Nazi. Once, when asked, given her background, about her husband’s rabid anti-Semitism, she replied “The Fuhrer wants it so. Josef must obey”.

By late April, 1945, Magda, Josef, and their 6 children were living in the Fuhrerbunker beneath the bombed out Reich Chancellery. Hitler adored Magda’s children and would often balance young Heidrun on his knee and tell him stories. Magda liked to look on. Even at a time of great stress and with the Russians but a few hundred yards away, to be so close to the Fuhrer was for Magda a joy. On hearing of Hitler’s intention to take his own life she was distraught. She rushed to his room and banged relentlessly on the door until he opened it. She tearfully, some say hysterically, begged him not to do it. He listened but said nothing before slowly closing the door. She had to dragged away. Was it now that she decided to die also, and take her children with her? She was known to have discussed killing her children earlier. Indeed, Albert Speer, the Armaments Minister, and Hitler’s pet architect, fearing for the life of the children, had earlier asked that he be allowed to take the children out of Berlin. Magda had told him, “My life belongs to Josef. The children belong to me”.

Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide on 30 April, 1945. Magda and Josef Goebbels now resolved to do the same. In his Last Will and Testament, Goebbels wrote that his wife had determined to die alongside him in the Bunker and that the children would do the same if they were old enough to decide for themselves. Magda could not bear the thought that the children would grow into adulthood in a world without Hitler. Writing to her son Harald, now a prisoner of war in North Africa, she said “Our glorious idea is ruined and with it everything marvellous I have known in my life. The world that comes after the Fuhrer and National Socialism is no longer worth living in and I therefore took the children with me, for they are too good for the life that would follow, and merciful God will understand me when I give them their salvation.”

The Children

No one knows for certain who administered the poison, small cyanide tablets broken in the mouth. It has been claimed that it was the SS Doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger, but he was reportedly drunk at the time. So it may well have been Magda herself. She had earlier drugged the children with morphine. The bruises found on the body of 12 year old Helga seems to refute the idea that they all died willingly. Following the poisonings Magda was seen sitting in tears playing patience, she rarely looked up from the table and declined to speak to anyone. Later that same day Magda and Josef Goebbels walked out into the Bunkers bombed out garden. Magda was shaking uncontrollably. They then committed suicide, how exactly is uncertain. Their bodies were then dumped in a shallow grave and partially burned.