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Johanna Maria Magdalena Goebbels (November 11, 1901 - May 1, 1945) was the wife of Joseph Goebbels and First Lady of the Third Reich.

Childhood and youth

Magda was born in Berlin, Germany to twenty year old Auguste Behrend, a servant working for a family in Bülowstrasse. The identity of her father was unknown but was likely an engineer named Oskar Reitschel. When Magda was five her mother sent her to stay with Ritschel in Cologne. He took her to Brussels and enrolled her in a convent, where Magda found it difficult to make friends with other students. Her mother Auguste married businessman Max Friedländer, moving with him to Brussels, Belgium where they lived until the outbreak of World War I when Germans were forced to leave. In her adolescence she reportedly drawn to Zionist ideas after a relationship with Victor Arlonsoroff, who eventually left her for another woman. She also had an early interest in Buddhism.

She soon escaped into marriage (January 4, 1921) with German entrepreneur Günther Quandt, a widower with two sons, for whom she changed her religion from Catholicism to Protestantism. Not long after, she bore Quandt her first child Harald (born November 1, 1921), the only child of hers who survived the war.

She reportedly grew bored of marriage with Quandt and divorced him. After joining the NSDAP (the Nazi party) she found herself hypnotised by Hitler. Joseph Goebbels was immediately attracted to her. Magda's high society connections and bearing may have influenced him. As the highly visible propaganda minister's wife, since Hitler was unmarried, she was often referred to as first lady of the Third Reich.

Marriage and family with Joseph Goebbels

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 (born, Sep 1 1932 † 12)
• Hildegard (Hilde) Traudel (born Apr 13, 1934 † 11)
• Helmut Christian (born Oct 2 1935 † 9)
• Hedwig (Hedda) Johanna (born Feb 19, 1937 † 8)
• Holdine (Holde) Kathrin (born May 1, 1938 † 7)
• Heidrun (Heide) Elisabeth (born Oct 20, 1940 † 4)

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 with her that he contemplated resigning from the government or even leaving Germany to be with her. When faced with this possibility of divorce, Magda resorted to calling Hitler for help and Baarova was eventually sent away.

Murder and Suicide

By late April 1945 the Red army was entering Berlin and the Goebbels family had taken refuge in Hitler's bunker beneath the now bombed out chancellory. Hitler and his bride Eva Braun committed suicide on the night of April 30 and on the following afternoon, May 1, 1945, Magda poisoned all six of her children by Goebbels with cyanide, possibly believing (in a highly distressed state of mind) they would be reincarnated into better lives if they died innocent. There was evidence the eldest, twelve year old Helga, had awakened and struggled before she was killed and the children's bodies were still in the two-tiered bunk beds they were murdered in when Russian troops entered the bunker.

Later Magda and Joseph went upstairs to the garden (avoiding the need for anyone to carry their bodies), where they were shot by an SS trooper at their own request. Afterwards 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 advancing Russian troops and a photograph of Goebbels' incinerated face was widely published. Their remains, along with those of their children, were later secretly buried by the Soviets with those of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun and in April 1970 all were reburned and scattered in the Elbe river.

Quotes

• "I hold it as my duty to appear as beautifully as I possibly can. In this respect, I will influence German women. They should be beautiful and elegant. One has assigned to me the highest leadership of a German fashion institute. In this capacity, I will try through my own example, to make the German woman into a true, genuine type of her race. The men are very masculine in Germany; therefore the women must be as feminine as possible. The German woman of the future should be stylish, beautiful and intelligent. The Gretchen type is finally conquered" from 1933 Newspaper interview

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
• 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

• Female Nazis
• 1901 births
• 1945 deaths