Magda Goebbels

Prominent Nazi

• Born: November 11, 1901
• Birthplace: Berlin, Germany
• Died: May 1, 1945
• Place of death: Berlin, Germany

Cause of notoriety: Held up by Hitler as the wife and mother of the premier family of the Third Reich, Goebbels was a powerful force in spreading Nazi propaganda. As Germany’s defeat in World War II loomed, she murdered her six children in Hitler’s bunker.

Active: 1930’s-1945

Locale: Germany

Early Life

Magda Goebbels (MAHG-duh GURB-uhlz) was born on November 11, 1901, in Berlin, Germany, to Auguste Behrend and Oskar Rietschel. Her mother was a servant to a private family, and her father was an engineer. Magda’s parents divorced when she was three years old, and two years later her mother married Richard Friedlander, a Jewish man who would later die in a Nazi concentration camp. After the marriage, Magda was sent to live with her father in Cologne. Rietschel took her to Brussels, and she was enrolled in the Ursuline convent of Sacré Cœur, an extremely strict Catholic boarding school. Goebbels’s mother and stepfather moved to Brussels as well and lived there until the outbreak of World War I, at which point all Germans were deported and the family was relocated temporarily to a refugee camp in East Prussia. During the war, the highly intelligent and precocious Magda became deeply interested in Buddhism.

After World War I, she returned to Berlin, where she attended Kollmorgen Lycée, followed by the prestigious Holzhausen Ladies’ College near Goslar, Germany. While in school, she met industrialist Günther Quandt, a millionaire who was nearly twice her age. Magda dropped out of college to marry Quandt on January 4, 1921. The marriage lasted until 1929, and the couple had one son, Harald, who would be Magda’s only child to survive World War II.

Criminal Career

Encouraged by a friend to attend a Nazi rally, Magda Quandt became spellbound by the attractive, charismatic, and engaging speaker, Joseph Goebbels . Although she was not particularly interested in politics, Goebbels joined the Nazi Party on September 1, 1930, and began volunteering where needed, quickly being promoted from the local branch to party headquarters. She became the secretary of Dr. Hans Meinshausen, who was a close associate of Joseph Goebbels. Once thoroughly ensconced in the party, Magda acquired a reputation as a valuable presence and attracted the attention of top officials, including Goebbels and Adolf Hitler.

Because Hitler would not marry, partly because his vast support and admiration came from German women, he arranged for Magda and Joseph Goebbels to wed, promoting the Goebbelses as Germany’s premier family and thus elevating Magda Goebbels to the status of the first lady of the Third Reich. The Goebbelses were married December 19, 1931, in Mecklenberg, Germany, with Hitler serving as their witness. Magda willingly did anything that would win her favor with Hitler. She was quoted as saying “Love is meant for husbands, but my love for Hitler is greater, I would give my life for it. . . . [W]hen 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 be close to the Führer.”

The Goebbelses, in fact, did not have a loving marriage, partially because of Joseph’s notorious womanizing. At one point Magda asked Hitler to grant her a divorce but was refused. Although it is reported by eyewitnesses and close friends that Magda did not agree with the philosophy of her husband and the Nazis, she fulfilled her title and position perfectly and, in doing so, promoted Nazi propaganda and agendas.

In 1945, with the Russian army closing in, Magda, Joseph, and their six young children, who ranged in age from four through twelve, took refuge in Hitler’s underground bunker in Berlin. With defeat at hand, Hilter and his recent bride, Eva Braun, committed suicide on April 30. The next day, May 1, Goebbels drugged her five daughters and one son with morphine. While the children were in a drug-induced sleep, she fed them cyanide capsules, killing them all. She was said to have reverted to her Buddhist beliefs before killing her children, believing that because they died innocent, they would be born into a better life through reincarnation. Goebbels had talked of killing her children in the event of Germany’s fall in the months leading up to that day—refusing offers to smuggle the children out of Germany. Bruises on the eldest daughter suggested that she might have resisted her mother’s plan.

Accounts vary regarding how the Goebbelses killed themselves. Some say they, too, took cyanide capsules and then had Schutzstaffel (SS) troops shoot them. Others say they were shot with machine guns at their request, and still others say they shot each other. Their bodies were found in an open field above the bunker, partially burned. Their bodies, along with their children’s, were cremated and scattered over the Elbe River.

Impact

The shock that followed the discovery of the murdered Goebbels children added to the horrors of the Holocaust. The murders affected Germans and non-Germans alike on a basic human level, causing them to wonder what could cause an educated woman from a good family to lose herself so completely in Hitler’s ideology and, more haunting, how she was able to commit the inconceivable act of murdering her own children.

Magda Goebbels’s crime strengthened Germany’s and Europe’s resolve to create and uphold strict laws regulating neo-Fascist and neo-Nazi policies, including banning the publication and distribution of materials deemed pro-Fascist or pro-Nazi and creating very harsh laws against denying that the Holocaust occurred.

Theories behind what led Goebbels to murder her children have become the foci of many books and films, as well as psychological studies. She has been the subject of several books about Hitler and the Holocaust and the subject of many biographies. In film, Magda Goebbels has been portrayed by Corinna Harfouch, Barbara Jefford, Piper Laurie, Eva Mattes, Hanna Schygulla, Emma Buckley, and Elke Sommer.

Bibliography

Klabunde, Anja. Magda Goebbels. New York: Time Warner Trade, 2004. Klabunde’s well-researched account of Goebbels’s life traces how an extremely intelligent and well connected woman fell so deeply into the propaganda consuming Nazi Germany.

Knopp, Guido. Hitler’s Women. New York: Routledge, 2003. A detailed look at the lives of Goebbels and five other women closely associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

Meisner, Hans-Otto. Magda Goebbels: First Lady of the Third Reich. New York: The Dial Press, 1980. A comprehensive biography of Goebbels, beginning with her childhood and continuing with her involvement in the Nazi Party. Well researched and filled with first-person accounts.

Sayer, Ian, and Douglas Botting. The Women Who Knew Hitler: The Private Life of Adolf Hitler. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004. Filled with eyewitness testimonies, interrogation reports, and government documents, this work examines the personal dimension of the Nazi Party.

Sigmund, Anna Maria. Women of the Third Reich. Richmond Hill, Ont.: NDE, 2000. A personal look at the top women of the Nazi Party. The book explores their involvement in the movement and the circumstances that led them there.