Darf man MAGDA GOEBBELS bewundern ?
Ich bin der festen Meinung: JA !
Man kann und sollte sie bewundern:
als deutsche Frau, als Mensch – und als besorgte, liebevolle Mutter !

Magda Goebbels hat in allem nur das Beste gewollt.
Daran glaube ich und danach handle ich, indem ich diese tapfere deutsche Frau in Schutz nehme und fé¼r sie einstehe !

Frage: was hé¤tten die Russen mit den unschuldigen Kindern getan ?
Wer die russischen Greuel von Nemmersdorf und Gumbinnen kennt, weiéŸ die Antwort !
Und dann in Berlin ! Zehntausende von Mé¤dchen und Frauen, von 8-80 Jahren, wurden viehisch vergewaltigt…oder ermordet.

Stellen wir uns die Frage, was mit den Kindern von Magda und Joseph Goebbels geschehen wé¤re, so ist die “Auswahl” vielfé¤ltig.
Hé¤tte man die unschuldigen Kinder in Moskau ausgestellt und der Moskauer Bevé¶lkerung wie Tiere vorgefé¼hrt ?
Hé¤tte man die Mé¤dchen vergewaltigt oder auf sonstige Weise miéŸbraucht ?
Hé¤tte man sie einem gewaltigen “Umerziehungsprogramm” unterworfen ?
Wir wissen es nicht.

Aber ich glaube, die unschuldigen Goebbels-Kinder hé¤tten keine gute, ansté¤ndige und kindgerechte Zukunft gehabt !
Ihr Tod war eine Erlé¶sung.
Es war der bessere Weg.

Viele Gré¼éŸe

Karl Kuhn

“Goebbels was never truly a fascist: he always remained a socialist at heart (worth remembering that the second element in “Nazi” was “Socialist”). The defining moment in his life was not meeting Hitler, but reading Lenin. “What a lamentable figure is the Duce, for example, in comparison to Stalin!” he wrote in 1945, and Franco was “a veritable turkey.””

Has it never come to your mind that Goebbels always, well, let us say “disliked” Musso? I think it was clear to all who knew him that he would gladly meet Stalin if he could get rid of a meeting with the “Duce”… And he wrote that in 1945 you say. By that time the Italian corps (needless to say, under the wise leadership of the great Mussolini…) had been smashed to the ground, whereas Stalin turned out to be one of the victors of the 2nd World War… Goebbels was an intelligent man, and had respect, sometimes even admiration, for those who deserved it. That doesn’t mean, however, that he loved and shared the views of all he respected or admired…

Although there is one thing I must correct: Harald was, in fact, Magda’s biological son. It is true, that she helped raise her first husband’s two sons from his first marriage, but they were born long before Harald and were called Hellmuth and Herbert. Harald was Gé¼nther Quandt’s third, and Magda’s first son, born on 1. Nov. 1921. The two got married in Feb. 1921, and at that time Gé¼nther’s first wife had already been dead for almost 3 years – this leaves no doubt about the fact that Harald couldn’t have been Magda’s stepson. You must have mixed it up with a sentence like “Harald Quandt, the stepson of Joseph Goebbels..”

I’ve sent you an email some time ago concerning this little correction, but no reply have I received since then.

Once again, thank you for going deeper into it than most would go (if at all) and not sticking to cliches. I also appreciate it when you say perhaps you (and we) will and/or may never truly understand her. Thank you!

That I can readily believe. Goebbels was never truly a fascist: he always remained a socialist at heart (worth remembering that the second element in “Nazi” was “Socialist”). The defining moment in his life was not meeting Hitler, but reading Lenin. “What a lamentable figure is the Duce, for example, in comparison to Stalin!” he wrote in 1945, and Franco was “a veritable turkey.”

I thought these two posts of mine were already long enough, so I didn’t add the following: Magda had mentioned killing the children in a much earlier conversation with her friend Ello, in the context of a discussion about her husband’s multiple affairs. I think her motivation was a mixture of despair and shame (and perhaps even a Medea-like desire to punish him, who knows?) But it was not really about the Russians coming, at least not at that time. Later, yes, there was that rational overlay, but I am convinced that it could have been resisted and the children saved, if the motivation to do so had been there.

Another very interesting fact left out of the essay was that the children apparently received no Nazi indoctrination, at least in the formal sense. Unlike most of the children in Germany, they never joined any of the Hitler Youth-type movements.

But I’m afraid I come down on the side of the folks who think that, by 1945, the Goebbels’ decision to kill their children was an understandable one. Ever since the Russians crossed the East Prussian frontier, they unleashed a campaign of savage brutality on average Germans.

Like the bombing of cities, it was an inhuman tactic the Nazis pioneered, wich then was revisited on the German people with redoubled fury.

The first place the Red Army took in Germany proper was a little peasant farming village in East Prussia. A Wehrmacht outfit retook it a few days later and found not a living soul, but women crucified to barn doors and old men disemboweled and babies with their heads smashed.

Goebbels knew all about this, and at first made hay of it as propaganda, till he saw the demoralizing effect it had on Berliners.

The Red Army’s use of rape as a collective punishment tactic was well known via the testominy of refugees long before the Russians reached the Oder. German women began to carry suicide capsules with them when the front lines approached.

In that light, I can understand the reaction of parents who know their children will be recognized as the very embodiment of this hated Nazi regime.

Escape to the west (Sweden probably was a better choice than Switzerland) may have been possible, in theory, but it was Goebbels who had urged Hitler to stand in Berlin and win glory or die.

The Nazis repeatedly refused to take any steps to spare average Germans from the devastation of war, which instead Goebbels (always the most socialistic of the big Nazis) celebrated as a destruction of the “bourgeois” culture of the 19th century. To have sent one’s family to safety, even in the face of the Russian juggernaut, was to embrace defeatism, and Hitler never would countenance that. Goebbels was with him to the end, in that stinking underground bunker, reading Carlyle’s multi-volume “Life of Frederick the Great” and casting astrology charts while the aretillery thundered outside.

But there’s one flaw in that line of reasoning: there were many opportunities for her to have sent them totally out of harm’s way, for example, into Switzerland. Many informants are quite clear on that matter. And it was even possible until not too long before the end.

That’s why I mentioned that this sort of murder by parents did not happen to the children of any other Third Reich principles, as far as I know.