With his Führer dead, all the stuffing had gone out of Bormann. The colonel later
said that while Bormann was falling apart, he saw no sign of fear in Goebbels. ‘Goebbels
was calm, clear spoken, and polite. I did notice red blotches in his face—they betrayed
his emotions.’
Goebbels asked how long ‘Berlin’ could hold out.
‘Two days, maximum,’ replied the colonel. ‘Just pockets of resistance after that.’
‘Do you think Krebs has any chance of doing a deal?’
‘I believe not,’ said the colonel, and repeated: ‘The Soviets are insisting on total
surrender.’
‘Never!’ exclaimed Goebbels. ‘I shall never, never, never give them that.’
Toward eleven A.M. he ordered: ‘Fetch Krebs back. I want to hear what he has to
say.’
The record shows that Krebs left the Soviet HQ at 1:08 P.M. It must have been after
two o’clock before he arrived in the chancellery bunker. He found officers scurrying
hither and thither, many smoking cigarettes and clutching bottles in their hands.
Goebbels accused Krebs of having failed to state his terms forcefully enough to the
Russians. Instead he had allowed them to take him in with worthless assurances about
treating any prisoners according to the conventions.
That was his last official conference. For a while he sauntered up and down, softly
whistling two Nazi marching songs.14 He had given up hope. Krebs’ negative report
had been the death sentence on the Goebbels family. He authorized the remaining
bunker occupants and propaganda ministry staff to stage their mass breakout attempt
after dark, around nine P.M. To Dönitz he sent this explicit message at three
P.M.:
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 931
Führer deceased yesterday at 3:30 P.M. Testament of April 29 confers office of
Reich President on you, office of Reich Chancellor on Reich minister Dr Goebbels,
office of party minister on Reichsleiter Bormann, office of Reich foreign minister
on Reichsleiter Seyss-Inquart. Upon Führer’s orders copies of the testament were
despatched to you, to Field Marshal Schörner, and conveyed out of Berlin for
public safekeeping. Reichsleiter Bormann will try to get to you today to explain
the situation. Manner and time of announcement to public and troops are at your
own discretion. Acknowledge receipt. GOEBBELS.15
He and Bormann sent an officer to tell the Russians that their terms were refused
and to repudiate any assurances that General Krebs might have given them.16
Magda phoned her young S.S. dentist friend in the other bunker. ‘Time’s running
out,’ she said.
Kunz hurried over though not bringing any ‘medicines’ with him yet. He arrived
outside the Goebbels’ quarters as Axmann was asking, ‘Have you decided, Herr Reich
minister?’ Magda replied for her husband: ‘The gauleiter of Berlin and his family are
staying in Berlin and will die here.’
‘Doctor,’ said Goebbels in a matter-of-fact way to the dentist. ‘I’d be grateful if you
would help my wife to put the children to sleep.’17
It was about five P.M.18 Magda had changed into a yellow and brown knitted dress,
she had her platinum blonde hair swept up, and held in place with hairpins and clips.
Anxious to get the awful deed behind her she plucked at the dentist’s sleeve. ‘Our
troops are pulling out,’ she said. ‘The Russians may get in at any moment. We’ve got
to hurry.’ She selected a syringe from a cupboard, and handed it to Kunz. ‘Morphium,’
she explained, and led the way to the other bunker.
‘Not to worry,’ Magda said brightly to her children, giving each a chocolate. ‘The
doctor here is going to give you each a little jab that all the other children and soldiers
are getting.’19
932 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
That was all. Choking, she turned and left the room. Rach the chauffeur stepped in
briefly to say good-bye to the children: lying, he told them he was going on a journey.
Helga, the oldest, wearing a light blue nightdress with lace trimmings, would be
first. Hands trembling, the dentist began to inject the narcotics—into Helga, twelve,
Hilde eleven, then nine year-old Hellmut who was wearing white pyjamas decorated
with a turquoise and red flowered pattern, and the three little sisters Holde, Hedda,
and Heide, aged eight, seven, and four.20 It took nearly ten minutes.
‘We’ll have to wait ten minutes until they’re asleep,’ the dentist told Magda outside.
But there was one hitch—he refused to administer the actual poison himself.
She snapped at him to fetch Dr Stumpfegger.21
Three or four minutes later the S.S. surgeon found her in the children’s room
silently watching over her drugged family. Stumpfegger, a family man himself, meticulously
laid out six ampoules—each a phial of bluish glass with a red dot in the
middle. While Magda gently prized open each mouth, Stumpfegger gingerly crushed
the phial with his long, slender fingers and tipped it and its contents in. Young Hellmut
still had the wire brace around his upper teeth—they had always protruded just like
his father’s.22
She would have had a heart of ice not to be riven asunder by what she had done.
She rushed outside as soon as the sixth child, the youngest, was dispatched and threw
her arms around Günther Schwägermann’s neck. The burly six-footer steadied her
in his strong arms for a moment. Stumpfegger came out and nodded to her meaningfully.
She fainted in their arms.23 When Rach came in a few minutes later he found
her closing the dead children’s eyes and kissing each one tenderly on the forehead.
‘It’s so wretched for me,’ she said, sobbing loudly. ‘It was so painful bringing each
one into the world.’24 They led her downstairs to her husband. ‘It’s done,’ she said.
‘The children are dead. Now for ourselves.’
IN the other bunker Günsche and Mohnke briefed the several hundred people who
had gathered for the breakout. The women buckled on helmets and side arms too.25
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 933
At first the new chancellor instructed Rach and Schwägermann to bury their bodies
properly in the gardens; reluctant to risk lives needlessly in such an effort, the
adjutant talked him out of it and promised to see that the bodies were completely
cremated.26 Goebbels told Naumann that he and Magda would kill themselves as
soon as the mass breakout began: ‘I don’t want to survive just to put my signature on
a surrender document,’ he said.27 It was 7:55 P.M. when Naumann returned to the
ruined ministry building.28
For the next half-hour Joseph Goebbels paced restlessly up and down smoking,
like a party host discreetly waiting for his last guests to leave. Hitler’s remaining staff
said their farewells. He pulled a wry grin at Traudl Junge and wished her well. ‘You
might just make it,’ he appraised. He told Hans Baur, the pilot, ‘If you should reach
Dönitz, tell him of our life down here these last few days.’ At eight-fifteen he called
in Schwägermann, as the last squads of men and women, bristling with machine
pistols, carbines, and grenades, made their way past to the breakout assembly point
in the coal bunker, a
nd told him, ‘We’ve got to hurry now, there’s very little time.’
He added, ‘Schwägermann, this was the worst treachery of all. The generals have
betrayed our Führer. It’s the end of everything.’ Again he implored his adjutant, ‘You
will burn our bodies—are you capable of that?’ He gave him the silver-framed Hitler
portrait that had stood on his desk for nearly twenty years. Magda took the S.S.
Hauptsturmführer’s hand and said, ‘If you ever see Harald again, greet him from us
and say that we went honourably to our deaths.’29
Schwägermann directed Rach to fetch the gasoline. The stocky, dark-complexioned
driver returned with an orderly, probably S.S. Scharführer Ochs, carrying
several canisters and a small swastika flag.
Magda turned to her husband. ‘Don’t let’s die down here in the bunker,’ she said.
‘No, of course not. We’ll go up into the garden.’
With a greater sense of history than of the realities of the situation outside, Magda
said: ‘Not the garden. Wilhelm Platz—that’s where you have spent your working
life.’
934 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
He went to the coat-rack, took his trench coat, adjusted the dark blue spotted scarf
round his neck, carefully pulled on his yellow-leather gloves, and donned his light
grey snap brimmed fedora. He put the pistol into his pocket, offered Magda his arm.
The couple emerged wordlessly from their room and passed Schwägermann and
Ochs as though already ghosts.
THE rest can only be pieced together from the uncertain evidence of the Soviet autopsies.
30 These afford no real clue as to who died first or even how. The Russians
found the splinters of a poison phial in the right side of Dr Goebbels’ jaw. Magda too
had swallowed poison. Like Hitler, he had probably also shot himself. Schwägermann
certainly heard one shot—others heard two; on Schwägermann’s orders Ochs fired
two coups de grace into the motionless bodies.31 The S.S. officers made only cursory
attempts to burn the remains. A Walther pistol was found near them a few days later
when the Russians tipped the two corpses onto a red and gold door ripped out of the
chancellery building. The corpses were loaded onto a truck and driven away.
There was one feature about the little doctor, even in death, that caught the Soviet
pathologist’s attention. His fists were raised, as though spoiling for a fight.32 Perhaps,
somewhere, for Dr Joseph Goebbels the dialectical battle was already beginning anew.
1 Author’s interview of Günsche, and letter, Oct 16, 1968; and Statement by Erich Kempka,
chauffeur, on Hitler’s last days, Berchtesgaden, Jun 20, 1945 (Pennsylvania Univ. Libr.,
No.46M–15).
2 USFET MISC special interrogation of SS Hauptsturmführer Günther Schwägermann,
Jun 20, 1946 (NA file RG.332, Mis-Y; and Trevor Roper papers, IfZ, Irving collection).
3 Interrogation of Axmann, Apr 27, 1948 (Hoover Libr., K Frank Korf papers).
4 USFET special interrogation of Gerda Christian, Apr 25, 1946 (Trevor Roper papers,
IfZ, Irving collection; and NA file RG.319, IRR, XE.009487).
5 The Krebs/Chuikov/JG negotiations are well researched in Erich Kuby, Die Russen in
Berlin, 1945 (Munich, 1965); Der Spiegel, No.24, 1965; there is further detail on them in
Bezymenski, op. cit.—On Krebs, formally Chef der Führungsgruppe des Generalstabs des
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 935
Heeres, see CSDIC(UK) report SIR.1593, Apr 1, 1945. On May 12, 1945 ‘Franz’ stated that
‘Pfiffi’ Krebs spoke fluent Russian and ‘has been received by Stalin personally umpteen times.’
CSDIC(UK) report, GRGG.292.
6 British interrogations of Else Krüger Sep 19, 1945 and Mar 27, 1945 (Trevor Roper
papers, IfZ, Irving collection).
7 Statement by Erich Kempka, chauffeur, on Hitler’s last days, Bechtesgaden, Jun 20, 1945
(Pennsylvania Univ. Libr., No.46M–15); SS Brigadeführer Johann Rattenhuber, chief of Hitler’s
security, told Hugh Trevor-Roper on Oct 30, 1955 that SS Stubaf Franz Schädle had
buried the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun (IfZ, ZS.637). Schädle, injured in one foot, killed
himself soon after.
8 Axmann.
9 Kempka.
10 USFET CIC interrogation of Gertrud Junge, Aug 30, 1946 (Trevor Roper papers, IfZ,
Irving collection).
11 Originals and code-strips of these telegrams are in BA file R.62/8, and see NA film T77,
roll 867.—Cf. Walther Lüdde-Neurath, Regierung Dönitz. Die letzten Tage des Dritten Reiches
(Göttingen, 1964), 130.
12 The clothing was listed in the Soviet autopsy report on JG, May 9, 1945; Bezymenski,
op.cit., 111ff.
13 Else Krüger, cited by Associated Press, Jun 1, 1946, and British interrogations of Sep 19,
1945 and Mar 27, 1946 (Trevor Roper papers, IfZ, Irving collection); USFET special interrogation
of Gerda Christian, Apr 25, 1946 (Ibid.; and NA file RG.319, IRR, XE.009487);
14 Interview of Axmann, May 7, 1991.
15 JG to Dönitz, May 1, 1945, rec’d 3:18 P.M. Dönitz’ file copy is in BA file R.62/8, and see
PRO file FO.371/46914.
16 British interrogations of Else Krüger Sep 19, 1945 and Mar 27, 1945 (Trevor Roper
papers, IfZ, Irving collection); and statement of General Antonov, commanding 301st Guards
divisions, publ. in Der Spiegel, No.24, 1965.
17 Soviet interrogation of SS Sturmbannführer Helmut Kunz, May 7, 1945. Hans Bauer, in
Ich flog Mächtige der Erde (Kempten, 1956), 273, wrote that Magda had told him she had
selected a dentist to give her children the fatal injections.
18 At the time that Gerda Christian left, 5 P.M., the children were dead but JG still alive.
19 Soviet interrogation of SS Sturmbannführer Helmut Kunz.
20 Besymenski published the autopsy reports (with details of the nightdresses, etc.)
21 In his first interrogation Kunz was less specific than in his second (on May 19) about
Stumpfegger’s role as the actual killer, not wanting to incriminate him; Stumpfegger had
however killed himself on May 2, 1945 (the next day). An indirect version of Kunz’s testimony
was given by Soviet colonel Ivan Klimenko, who interrogated him, in Der Spiegel,
No.19, May 5, 1965.
22 Autopsy report on Hellmut.
23 Heinz Linge, interrogated at Hamburg magistrate’s court, May 31, 1956 (IfZ, F82,
Heiber papers).
24 SS HStuf Alfred Rach, interview publ. in Pinguin (Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg) May 1949
(in IfZ archives).
936 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
25 Statement by Erich Kempka, chauffeur, on Hitler’s last days, Bechtesgaden, Jun 20,
1945 (Pennsylvania Univ. Libr., No.46M–15); USFET CIC interrogation of Gertrud Junge,
Aug 30, 1946 (Trevor Roper papers, IfZ, Irving collection); and USFET special interrogation
of Gerda Christian, Apr 25, 1946 (Ibid.; and NA file RG.319, IRR, XE.009487).
26 USFET MISC special interrogation of SS Hauptsturmführer Günther Schwägermann,
Jun 20, 1946 (NA file RG.332, Mis-Y; and Trevor Roper papers, IfZ, Irving collection).
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 153
