Hitler's Women - Women In Hitler’s Inner Circle

Magda Goebbels

Magda Goebbels was the wife of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. They probably married for reasons of mutual self-advancement rather than love, but Magda gave her husband six children. The marriage was troubled. Goebbels was almost pathologically unfaithful to Magda and was also jealous of her closeness with Hitler. Equally, Magda herself had at least two lovers.

While it has always been supposed that Magda was a fervent supporter of the Third Reich up until the very end, there is some evidence to suggest that she had started to have doubts about Hitler when the war started to go wrong. During one of the fuhrer’s radio broadcasts, she apparently switched off the radio in frustration, saying, “What a load of rubbish.”

Nevertheless, following Hitler’s suicide in the bunker, Magda and Joseph also chose to take their own lives. They murdered their six children, first by giving them morphine to make them sleep and then by breaking a cyanide capsule in each of their mouths. Their deaths were avoidable because Magda was given ample opportunities to have them spirited out of Berlin. Magda and Joseph killed themselves that same day.