8. All of Joseph Goebbels’ six children were killed by their parents in a supposed act of mercy
Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda Goebbels had six children, five girls and one boy: Helga Susanne (b. 1932), Hildegard Traudel (b. 1934), Helmut Christian (b. 1935), Holdine Kathrin (b. 1937), Hedwig Johanna (b. 1938), and Heidrun Elisabeth (b. 1940). It is claimed, but unproven, that each child was given a name beginning with “H” as a tribute to Adolf Hitler, who was extremely close to the Goebbels’ and routinely doted on the children, especially Helga whom he was photographed holding and would repeatedly stay up into the night with.
On April 22 1945, the day before the Red Army entered Berlin, the Goebbels and their children moved into the Vorbunker, a bunker underneath the Reich Chancellery and connected to the lower Führerbunker which housed Hitler and his remaining loyal personal staff. German Red Cross leader SS-Gruppenführer Karl Gebhardt argued against this course of action and instead petitioned to remove the children from the city, but was ordered to depart alone by Goebbels. With the Red Army approaching, the Goebbels decided upon their own fates and Joseph concluded his children would unquestionably support the decision to also commit suicide if they were old enough to understand. Acquaintances of Magda Goebbels later revealed she had contemplated the murder of her children previously, telling her former sister-in-law she did not want her children growing up hearing their father was one of the century’s foremost criminals and instead believed reincarnation offered them a better chance.
On May 1 – the day after Hitler’s own suicide – the Goebbels arranged for the children to be injected with morphine by SS Doctor Helmut Kunz as a sedative and then subsequently fed cyanide by Magda and SS-Obersturmbannführer Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler’s personal surgeon. The children were found by Soviet soldiers on May 3, with an autopsy of Helga Goebbels revealing bruising to her face and a suspected broken jaw; it is believed the twelve year old awoke and fought back, with the cyanide capsule forcibly crushed in her mouth by her mother.