Goebbels children
This claim is supported by Magda's mother, Auguste Behrend, who stated that the family made an innocent hobby of searching for new baby names beginning with "H" for each successive child.
From the local branch, she moved to the party headquarters in Berlin and was invited to take charge of Goebbels' own private papers.
[7] Harald not only attended his mother's wedding to Goebbels but also formed quite an attachment with him; sometimes accompanying him to gatherings, standing on the platform near to "Uncle Joseph", wearing his Hitler Youth uniform.
[11] Bruises found on her body postmortem (mostly on her face) led to wide speculation that she had struggled against receiving a cyanide capsule, which was used to kill her by crushing it between her teeth.
[11] In 1934, in search for privacy for himself and his family, Goebbels bought an imposing house in its own grounds on Schwanenwerder, an island in the River Havel.
[18] Later, the City of Berlin placed a second lakeside house at his disposal, Lanke am Bogensee, as an official residence, which was only large enough for the family to use as a weekend retreat.
[18] The marriage reached crisis point in the late summer of 1938 over Goebbels' affair with Czech actress Lída Baarová.
Hitler himself intervened, for he was unwilling to put up with a scandal involving one of his top ministers, and demanded that Goebbels break off the relationship.
[22] Hitler negotiated an agreement whereby the actress would be banished and the couple would keep up public appearances, subject to any reasonable conditions Magda might make.
If, after that year, Magda still wanted a divorce, Hitler would allow it, with Goebbels as the guilty party, and she would retain Schwanenwerder, custody of the children, and a considerable income.
[24] Goebbels abided scrupulously by the agreement, always calling for permission before visiting and expressing his regret at missing Magda if she was not there, or taking his place, amiably, with his family at the tea table, if she was.
[26] During 1942, the children appeared 34 times in the weekly newsreels, going about their lives, helping their mother, playing in the garden or singing to their father on his 45th birthday.
German Red Cross leader SS-Gruppenführer Karl Gebhardt wanted to take the children out of the city with him, but was dismissed.
[29] General Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven later described the children as "sad", but nurse Erna Flegel, with whom they had much contact in the bunker, characterised them as "charming" and "absolutely delightful".
The children are said to have sung in unison while in the bunker, performing for both Hitler and the injured Robert Ritter von Greim, as well as having been conducted in play-song by pilot Hanna Reitsch.
[32] Joseph Goebbels added a postscript to Hitler's last will and testament, stating that he would disobey the order to leave Berlin: "For reasons of humanity and personal loyalty" he had to stay.
[31] On the following day, Magda and Joseph Goebbels arranged for an SS dentist, Sturmbannführer Helmut Kunz, to inject their six children with morphine so that, when they were unconscious, ampules of cyanide could be crushed in their mouths.
[12] According to Kunz's later testimony, he gave the children morphine injections, but it was Magda and SS-Obersturmbannführer Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler's personal doctor, who administered the cyanide.
[12] Rochus Misch, the bunker telephone/radio operator, stated that Werner Naumann told him that he had seen Hitler's personal physician, Dr Stumpfegger, give the children something "sweetened" to drink.
[34] Naumann also stated that the children were told they would be leaving for Berchtesgaden in the morning, and Stumpfegger provided Magda with the "soporific drug" to sedate them.
[35] Nurse Erna Flegel claims that Magda reassured the children about the morphine by telling them that they needed inoculations because they would be staying in the bunker for a long time.
[38] On 3 May 1945, the day after Soviet troops led by Lt. Col. Ivan Klimenko had discovered the burned bodies of their parents in the courtyard above, they found the children down in the Vorbunker dressed in their night clothes, with ribbons tied in the girls' hair.
Thereafter, the remains of the Goebbels family, General Krebs, and Hitler's dogs (thought to be Blondi and her offspring, Wulf) were repeatedly buried and exhumed.
[43] On 4 April 1970, a Soviet KGB team used detailed burial charts to exhume five wooden boxes at the Magdeburg SMERSH facility.
He reasoned that to treat them as criminals like their parents and thus deserving of the world's collective posthumous opprobrium was wrong, given that no one has a choice as to who they are biologically related to.
