Re-examining Key Aspects of the Goebbels Suicide & Filicide
by
Peter David Orr
In his biography of Goebbels, British historian, David Irving, asks:
Why would Joseph and Magda have joined Hitler in Berlin, also choosing free-death (and euthanizing their children) on May 1, 1945, if Hitler...had escaped to South America?
Irving's suggestive question, or one similar to it, is often repeated in non-question form by defenders of the standard narrative of Hitler's 'last days’ in the following manner: Joseph and Magda Goebbels were so distraught over Hitler's suicide that they decided to follow their master's example.
Closer examination reveals the above-mentioned telling of the Goebbels' filicide and suicide is misleading and chronologically backwards.
Misleading? Yes, the idea that Goebbels decided to join Hitler in Berlin is entirely inaccurate.
Months before Hitler began debating about remaining in Berlin, Goebbels had decided to stay. Goebbels siblings, Hans, Konrad and Maria (see photos, below), were interrogated after the war. Each said Joseph and Magda had been determined to remain in Berlin—no matter what. During the war Goebbels was in Berlin more often than Hitler. He wasn't just the Propaganda Minister of Nazi Germany, Goebbels was Gauleiter of the capital of the Third Reich and the Reich Commissioner for Berlin. He didn't need encouragement from Hitler to stay in Berlin until the bitter end. While Goering, Bormann, Himmler, Jodl, Keitel, Ribbentrop, Dönitz and Schörner encouraged Hitler to leave Berlin when its defense became untenable, Goebbels was recorded strenuously arguing for Hitler to remain. The only other high ranking Nazi to make a similar argument was Albert Speer (according to Speer, anyway).
But how is Irving's suggestive question chronologically backwards?
Goebbels' decision to remain in Berlin, and, if necessary, commit suicide, came months prior to Hitler's suicidal nadir, which supposedly began April 22, 1945, and culminated on May 1, 1945.
In February of 1945 Goebbels asked DAF chief, Robert Ley, to obtain enough potassium cyanide to kill himself and his wife and six children. Goebbels asked Ley because he was aware that Ley's DAF associate, Dr. Werner Bockhacker, could secure cyanide.
Dr. Bockhacker provided Ley with 20 doses in powder form—each tucked into small druggist envelopes. Ley personally delivered these envelopes to Goebbels in March. Ley is the source of this account. The timing of the delivery fits, too, considering what is found in the Soviet records of the interrogation of SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer, Wilhelm Eckhold. Eckhold was head of Goebbels' personal SS security detail - not to be confused with adjutant, Günther Schwägermann. Eckhold told his Soviet captors that the decision for the entire family to remain in Berlin, no matter what, and die by poison if Berlin's fall was certain, was made on or about March 31, 1945. That day, Eckhold had been ordered to go to Goebbels' Schwanenwerder lakeside estate. There, same day, Eckhold was part of a serious conversation, in which Magda declared, and her mother (Auguste Behrend) agreed, that they planned to "move into Hitler's bunker" if the Soviets threatened to overrun the area.
When Robert Ley last spoke with Hitler, on 19 April, Hitler ordered Ley's immediate departure for Bavaria. At that time, Hitler told Ley he'd be following in the near future. Hitler did not speak of suicide. On the other hand, when Ley spoke with Goebbels for the last time, on April 20, Goebbels told Lay that he and his family had made the firm decision to remain, and, if necessary, die in Berlin. What reason did the chief propagandist give for this decision? According to Ley, Goebbels remarked, “These generals are incapable of defending Berlin. I will have to do it myself", which makes sense considering Goebbels established a HQ for himself to direct Berlin's defenses in the command center of the massive, virtually impregnable, two-part fortress - the Tiergarten (Zoo) Flakturm (AA Tower).
The well-worn tale of Goebbels and his family moving into the bunker on April 22, to convince Hitler that all was not lost and to guilt him into leaving for the safety by of southern Germany, is also wrong. How so? The Goebbels family moved into the Vorbunker on the evening of 22/23 April, and Joseph Goebbels moved into the rooms directly across the main hall from Hitler's rooms in the Fuehrerbunker that night, but, according to most witnesses, Magda and the children had been living in the most comfortable and well appointed rooms in the basement bunker of New Reich Chancellery for weeks. In other words, Hitler had daily contact with Magda and the children prior to the 22/23 April move-in. It was only Joseph Goebbels who moved in for the first time, late that night, establishing an office in Dr. Morell’s former quarters in the Führerbunker. Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger moved in, too, taking over Morell's clinic because Hitler had ordered Morell to be flown to Bavaria after Morell suffered a stroke.
Consider the record of what Goebbels said at his daily military conference, the day prior. The OKW log for Goebbels’ April 21 meeting shows he was in all-out panic after learning of Zhukov’s breakthrough into Berlin proper. He proclaimed that the end had come. He berated the German people. He said they had lost the will to fight. He said the plans and ideals of National Socialism had been too lofty and noble for them and they deserve the fate which now awaits them.
Goebbels’ words probably sound familiar, because depictions of Hitler’s ‘last days’ put his words in Hitler’s mouth. Although Hitler may have said such things, Goebbels said them first.
The Goebbels suicide & filicide was not the result of Joseph and Magda's despondency over Hitler’s suicide and their determination to follow his ‘heroic’ example. Their decision to remain in Berlin to the bitter end and commit suicide was made before their oft-dramatized 'arrival' at the Fuehrerbunker.
