Magda Goebbels

Nazi party and regime Fascism and National Socialism 1901–1945 ✕ Suicide

Joseph Goebbels's wife, held up as the regime's model mother, who killed her six children in the Führerbunker and then herself

In the Führerbunker she confided to Traudl Junge: "I would rather have my children die, than live in disgrace, jeered at. My children stand no chance in Germany after the war."

Born in Berlin, she was raised partly by her Jewish stepfather Richard Friedländer, who later died in Buchenwald. In 1921 she married the industrialist Günther Quandt, with whom she had her son Harald, and divorced him in 1929. She joined the Nazi Party on 1 September 1930, led a local Nazi women's group and then took charge of Joseph Goebbels's private papers; they married in December 1931 with Hitler as a witness. Close to Hitler, she acted as an unofficial representative of the regime, and propaganda presented her as the model mother of the Third Reich. Privately she voiced doubts as the war turned. In late April 1945 she moved into the bunker under the Reich Chancellery with her six children, refused offers to get them out of Berlin, and on 1 May she and her husband had the children killed with cyanide before both committed suicide in the Chancellery garden.

Also known as: Johanna Maria Magdalena Goebbels · Magda Quandt · Magda Ritschel · Magda Friedländer · Magda Behrend