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hildelittlemousee · 7 days ago

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HELMUT

The long awaited son, Helmut Christian, was born on October 2, 1935. “There the little chap lies: he looks like a Goebbels. I’m happier than I could imagine. I could go round smashing things out of sheer joy. A boy!” proud Joseph wrote into his diary.

On the day of Helmut’s first birthday, Joseph bought his wife a costly ring.

In October 1937, when two-year-old Helmut answered him back, Goebbels paddled the lad, though reluctantly. “He doesn’t give in”, Joseph noted indulgently on his diary. “Not a bad sign!”.

In the summer of 1938, Goebbels described his son as a “stubborn little ne'er do-well”. However, the same day of Helmut’s fifth birthday (1939), Joseph described him as a “nice, clever boy. He gives us all such a huge amount of fun.” In his diary, he called his son a "Clown”.

Helmut studied a great deal of history and his father lectured him at length on the interrelation of historical events, although the boy was altogether too young to grasp its meaning. When his teacher at the Lanke primary school reported to his parents that his promotion to a higher form was doubtful, the atmosphere at home became very stormy, This for his father was unthinkable. He shouted angrily at the little boy and made him tremble, threatening him with dire punishment unless he did better. Magda intervened. She herself and the governess took the little dreamer in hand two, three, four, five hours a day. Both understood him and managed to shake him out of his dreamy ways into reality, with the remarkable result that he was not only promoted but gained astonishingly good marks. Käthe Hubner, Helmut’s 1943-1945 governess remembers “Helmut had once received from my lessons. It was only a few weeks, where I gave him private tuition”.

Once in 1942, the newsreel camera found him in the classroom of the village school. ‘Twelve birds sitting in a row, Helmut Goebbels!’ the teacher challenged. ‘A huntsman shoots one dead. How many are left?’ After much coaxing and flubbing while a forest of young hands waved around him, Helmut eventually arrived at a plausible answer: ‘Eleven?’ ‘Wrong!’ answered the teacher triumphantly. ‘None! The rest all fly away when the gun goes off!’ Helmut offered a goofy smile through his protruding upper teeth.

In this newsreel footage, Helmut appeared sitting on his school desk with his best friend, Georg Schertz. Georg, who was Helmut’s age, was also his neighbor in Schwanenwerder. They both attended the elementary school in Nikolassee in 1941 and then in Wannsee. The two boys were very good friends and used to play together after school. In fact, Georg was the only boy of the same age in Schwanenwerder. However, Georg’s mother was worried about her son’s close friendship with Helmut. Therefore, she once told Magda: “My husband was dismissed by your husband’s government from his civil servant job.“ Magda Goebbels smiled: "Yes, do you think we didn’t know that? But the children have nothing to do with it.”

“Once,” says Georg, “I was with Helmut at an early evening film screening at the Goebbels estate. A propaganda strip was shown in which Russian soldiers were mowed down by German machine guns in Winter, and the snow was stained with Russian blood.” Georg believes it was a color film. And he can’t forget that Magda Goebbels asked her husband if that was something suitable for children. To which he replied: "If you can’t see it, you should close your eyes.”

Georg invited his friend Helmut to his tenth birthday on April 24, 1945. For fear of hostilities, his parents had decided to hold the party earlier on April 20. But on this day, Hitler’s last birthday, the Goebbels family moved out of Schwanenwerder, to the Fuhrerbunker. “We didn’t believe they murdered their own children at first. My parents thought it was a ruse, Helmut and his sisters had been secretly taken away to South America…”. More than 70 years after Helmut’s death, Georg remembered him through tears: “Helmut was a highly introverted, a slightly shabby boy. He has been with me, inside me, all my life.”

In 1940, Goebbels described his son as “still the plump, phlegmatic little chap”. In fact, he seemed worried about his only son, who in comparison with his elder sisters was more distracted. However, it is curious that in October, 1941, Goebbels blamed her daughters for this: “Helmut has reached the age of 6 (…) It is essential for him to be in contact with other group of boys, because nothing good comes out from a boy that is always surrounded by girls”.

In July 1942, Joseph took advantage of an official trip to Bavaria, to visit a Nazi Party school close to Felfading and decided that he would “enroll Helmut when he is old enough”.

Käthe Hübner, said Helmut’s character “was especially dear to my heart. Perhaps because he was a little girlish and was not enough for the demands of his father to him”. Helmut was considerate and sensitive, a dreamer. This did not suit his father. In fact, Auguste Behrend, Magda’s mother, recorded on her memmoirs that Helmut had no greater ambition than to become a Berlin subway driver. Mrs. Behrend also remembered how once Joseph found Magda had dressed Helmut in a frilly silk blouse, and he snapped at her “That’s not right for a boy,” sending his son off to change. “We are not the Ribbentrops or Görings. People expect different of us!.”

According to his autopsy, Helmut had blue-gray eyes, was 1'36 meters tall and had the wire brace around his upper teeth (they had always protruded just like his father’s). Helmut was nine years old at the time of his death.

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hildelittlemousee · 7 days ago

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HILDE

After having their first child in common, a daughter, Joseph and Magda were hoping their second child to be a boy. “Let’s hope it will be a boy”, Goebbels wrote into his diary. But actually, it would be a second girl.

Hildegard Traudel was born on April 13, 1934. That same day, the second-time-disappointed-father wrote into his diary: “She is a girl and her name is Hilde. Firstly, she brought disappointment. Later joy and happiness… Once more the Führer has proven right. It’s a little girl". It was said that at first, Jospeh sulked, refusing to send flowers or even visit the hospital. “I’ve now got enough women around me”, he grumbled, though not in Magda’s hearing. But finally he agreed to visit the newborn, and at the end of the visit he hissed at Magda through clenched teeth “Next time it’s going to be a boy!”.

When Hitler came to congratulate him, Joseph suggested that condolences might be more appropriate. But Hitler found a suitable consoling thought: “Just think, my dear Goebbels, how unhappy your sons would one day be always finding themselves overshadowed by a great father. Geniuses should only have daughters”.

Regarding the birth of Hilde, Magda’s mother, Auguste Behrend, told that “When the birth became known in the Ministry, the whole company of adjutants became nervously excited. Who would be men enough to be the first one to congratulate the Doctor on his second daughter? Schamburg expressed his congratulations in extremely cautious terms. Goebbels rallied, with sparkling eyes: “If fate believes it has done me wrong, then I will teach fate some manners!””.

On 11 November, 1935, as Joseph did with Helga months before, he noted on his diary having punished Hilde: “In the afternoon worked at home. "Taught” Hilde".

Hilde was photographed with her older sister Helga presenting Hitler with flowers on his birthday in April 20, 1936.

In July 1938, Joseph wrote she was a “little moppet”. She had her first school day in April, 1940. In a 1941 diary entry, Joseph referred to her as “a little mouse”.

Magda once described the temperaments of five of her children to her sister-in-law Eleanore (Ello) Quandt by describing how each would react to learning they had been deceived by their spouse: “Hilde would collapse altogether, sobbing and weeping, but would soon appear to be reconciled if her husband expressed remorse and swore to be faithful in future.”

Hilde had brown hair, was good-natured and very fond of animals. She was eleven years old at the time of her death.

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hildelittlemousee · 7 days ago

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HELGA

On September 1st 1932, Magda Goebbels went into labor with her second child. That same day, Joseph wrote: “Today Magda has gone into labor. She is really brave. We have gone straight to hospital. I beg everything goes well and the baby to be a boy. I am a bit frightened, but Destiny will have mercy of us”.

Hours after this diary entry, a girl was born. “Unfortunately, it has been a girl” the disappointed father wrote into his diary. “But my heart is full of happiness. We may name her Helga. Everything has turned out well. At 14:20 she was here. Magda and the baby are fine (…) As I wished so much the baby to be a boy, it has been a disappointment.”

Magda had also hoped for a boy to call Helmut, to fill the hole left in her heart by her stepson’s tragic death in Paris years before. But it was a girl, finally named Helga Sussane.

In spite of the relative happiness the baby-girl brought to their lives, the new parents’ family life wasn’t easy at all. In fact, the infant’s nocturnal wails kept the household awake. According to Joseph’s diary entry from 19 September, 1932, he, a novice in the art of parenthood, complained unfeelingly and left Magda in tears. On the other hand, when Helga was few months old and Joseph returned home from Vienna, he reported to have had an argument with Magda, in which she had reproached him justifiably his impatience with their daughter.

Nevertheless, Joseph was proud of his child. Although it was invariably late at night when he returned from the office, he would always go straight to the nursery, take his little daughter out of her cot and balance her carefully on his knee, while surrounded by his guests. Helga was reported to be a lovely baby; she never cried, was never impatient, but just sat listening uncomprehendingly to the Nazi officials with her “blue eyes sparkling”. It was not unusual for Hitler, who was especially fond of this child, to take her on his own lap while he talked late into the night. Meanwhile, Magda would sit happily by, but anxious at the same time for a break in the conversation which would enable her to seize the baby and take her back to bed.

When Helga was 9 months old, Magda betook her to fashionable Heiligendamm for the summer, leaving Joseph in Berlin for a while.

In spite of Joseph’s first disappointment, Helga fast became the apple of his eye and a “daddy’s girl”.

In June, 1935, Helga went on holidays along with her parents to the spa of Heiligendamm. Those holidays gave Joseph the opportunity to take up more actively little Helga’s education. According to one of Joseph’s biographies, against the sporadic acts of rebelliousness of his daughter, he used to apply a method that, in his own words, was infallible: physical punishment. In July of that same year, Joseph noted that after having given her some slaps, Helga was “a model of charm and friendliness”; and in August he wrote “Sweet hours with Helga. Obedience trained”. However, on Hans-Otto Meissner’s biography on Magda Goebbels, he assured that neither Joseph nor Magda believed in corporal punishment and never hit the children.

Helga was photographed with Hilde presenting Hitler with flowers on his birthday on April 20, 1936. She spent that year’s holiday with her grandmother in Peenemünde. According to one of Joseph’s diary entry from June, Helga fast became the apple of Hitler’s eye too. In February 1937, Hitler was indescribably glad with the photos that showed Helga in Obersalzberg: “He says that if little Helga were twenty years older, and he twenty years younger, she would have made the ideal wife for him”. On the other hand, in September 1940, while Joseph was in Cracovia, Magda phoned him explaining that Hitler had visited her and the children in Schwanenwerder, due to Helga’s birthday and he had lavished the girl profusely.

Joseph’s diary entries make very clear that at least during the first years, Helga was his favourite child. In January, 1937, while being in Berlin far from his family, he wrote: “I miss both: Magda and Helga”, without mentioning his two other children. And in October, 1938, he recognised in his diary that “of all the children, she is my dearest”.

Despite being overall very proud and happy with his eldest daughter, in August 1937, Goebbels recorded on his diary having put little Helga across his knee when she began to fib. On the other hand, he liked watching movies with his children, so no matter how late he arrived when visiting his family in Schwanenwerder, he wrapped his toddlers in blankets and showed them the latest movie. “He acts so well that you can’t even tell he is acting” said Helga once about film star Otto Gebühr. She also praised for Mussolini when he paid a state visit to Berlin during the last months of 1937: “The other Führer is quite nice too!”.

On a diary entry written during the first months of 1939, Joseph described her as “so sweet and clever” and months later, he wrote she was “astonishingly calm and graceful”. That same year, Helga had an operation on her throat.

In April 1940, Joseph wrote her eldest daughter had become a quite mature girl for her age, with whom he liked to “talk wisely” during walks.

Magda once described the temperaments of five of her children to her sister-in-law Eleanore (Ello) Quandt by describing how each would react to learning they had been deceived by their spouse: “Helga would seize a revolver and shoot the unfaithful husband out of hand, or at least try to”. In 1942, Helga once emphasized that “I want just two children when I marry. Otherwise I won’t have a moment to call my own!”.

Although on most of his diary entries Joseph praised his eldest child, in November 1944 he admitted having conversed “seriously with our Helga”, as she was “lazy at school and was being carried along”. However, one must wonder up to what point was Helga affected by the growing schizophrenia atmosphere that had settled in Lanke. Despite no one would tell her what was going on, according to many testimonies, Magda was more and more depressed as she realized, along with Joseph, that there wasn’t any hope for future.

Rochus Misch, who lived together with Helga and her siblings during their last days, described her as the “tallest, oldest and brightest (…) a definitely Daddy’s girl, with no great fondness for her mother”.

Helga played the piano taught by a young woman and loved reading. Although Traudl Junge described her as a girl with “big brown eyes”, her autopsy reveals her eyes were blue, with long lashes. Her hair, as well as her eyebrows, was dark blond. She was 1,58 meters tall. Helga was 12 years old when she died.

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hildelittlemousee · 7 days ago

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FAMILY LIFE

After having married on December 19, 1931, Joseph and Magda’s first daughter, Helga, was born on September 1, 1932. Their second child in common, Hilde, was born on April 13, 1934. That same year, in search of privacy for himself and his family, Joseph bought an imposing house in its own grounds on Schwanenwerder, an island on the River Havel. He also bought a motor Yacht Baldur for use on the river. Harald, Magda´s first son from her previous marriage, had his own nursery on the first floor while Helga and Hilde shared another.

While years were passing, more children joined the family: Helmut (October 2, 1935), Holde (February 19, 1937), Hedda (May 5, 1938) and Heide (October 20, 1940). In the births of all her children in common with Joseph, Magda was helped by the gynecologist Walter Stoeckel, to whom Mrs. Goebbels along with her offspring used to congratulate every 14 of March, on his birthday.

Soon after their first children’s births, the Goebbels family became the Nazi model family. Magda (helped by Jenny Hugo or Henz Rühmann) shot films in which her children appeared and which were projected in Joseph’s birthdays (during 1942, for example, the children appeared 34 times in the weekly newsreels, going about their lives, helping their mother, playing in the garden or singing to their father on his 45th birthday). The illustrated magazines also had permission to publish photograph after photograph of the apparently ideal and close family. However, the reality was very different. Käthe Hübner, who was the nanny of Goebbels’ three eldest children for two years, admitted the parents never had time for their children. “Joseph Goebbels remained most of the time in Berlin, away from the children, devoting all his time to oil the machinery of Nazi propaganda, and Magda, when she wasn’t in Berlin with her husband and Hitler, spent mornings and afternoons having tea meetings with friends, discussing the future of the Nazi project.”

On the other hand, Hans-Otto Meissner, described him as a good, loving and proud father. On Meissner’s biography on Magda Goebbels, he assured that neither Joseph nor Magda believed in corporal punishment and never hit the children. This contrasts with one of Joseph Goebbels’ biographies.

Nevertheless, it seems the children were Joseph’s major treasure (at least, this is what he expressed continuously on his diary). In fact, in 1926, years before being father for the first time, he already wrote that children were “good thoughts of God”, because only with them one could talk “without having the perpetual impression of being deceived”.

As time passed, Joseph showed pride and joy for his daughters: ‘What a delight it is to see the clever, pretty little lasses slowly getting bigger,’ he wrote in April 1940, unconsciously excluding his slow-witted infant son from his sentiments.

Despite a Goebbels family friend remembered that Joseph “adored the children and they him” and how “he played divinely with them”, Joseph’s press expert Rudolf Semler found himself already in 1941, wondering sometimes whether the minister really did love his children. He seldom showed them true affection, noticed Semler, and only rarely saw them now. “He refused to lower himself to play trains with little Helmut, and with his precocious oldest daughters, Helga and Hilde, the minister either flirted outrageously or tested their intellect to the point of tears. The others he virtually ignored except for photo calls”. According to Bernard Shaw, Joseph once chaffed Magda that ‘Our children have inherited your good looks and my brains. How awful it would have been the other way around.’

According to their governess Käthe Hubner, although Joseph practically idolised his children, all six of them had one great drawback in his eyes: they were too well-behaved. He would have preferred them to be a bit wild, a bit unruly, more quarrelsome. He used to go out of his way to provoke them, mocking them and making all sorts of outrageous statements, in the hope of getting them to react strongly. He was delighted when one or other child took him up on something. On the other hand, he was greatly disappointed when they all calmly accepted what he said (which was particularly the case with peace-loving Helmut).

In spite of the little time spent with his offspring, Joseph tried to reward them buying them many things. The children not only had cats, dogs and ponies, with which they could play, but also a little carriage to ride in around the gardens. Käthe Hübner explained that foreign children came rarely for a visit. She told the six siblings could play very nicely with each other and didn’t miss so directly not having friends. The older girls also thought up with pleasure their own games. Thus Helga and Hilde had a favorite game which Käthe remembers: “I still remember, in the evening we sometimes had drawn up the drawer of the bureau, when their mother was in Berlin. All sorts of photos were in it. We laid on the floor and looked at all the photos. Among them, there were photos of Günther Quandt, Magda’s first husband, who was already a little older. Helga and Hilde could make pretty fun of the photos of the old grandpa Günther Quandt”.

On the other hand, according to Meissner, no matter how late Joseph arrived home, he would always rouse his children from their beds and take them with him to the saloon, ins spite of Magda’s complaints. She would wring her hands in vain while the children jumped for joy, as their father shepherded them in their night clothes into the cinema, sat them in the front row, covered them up and let them watch a film, even foreign films of which they could not understand a single word. Afterwards he would get each child to describe exactly what he or she liked about the film and the individual actors.

The children’s nanny described the everyday life of the family as quite unspectacular:

“The children woke up at seven o’clock in the morning and after having breakfast they went to school in a carriage pulled by horses. Helga, Hilde and Helmut went to the public elementary school at Wandlitz. When they came back, we had lunch and after, the school work was done. Lunch was prepared by a cook. In the house, there was stuff enough for all the work.(…) Each child had a space for her/him in the fridge, in which they lied down their things. There you could actually see the character of each one. One said: “Oh, I am saving for myself a peace on the bread” which meant that she/he wanted then one thick slice of bread with thick butter and grease and so on.(…)

During the few occasions the whole family was together, Joseph made the children pray before having lunch, even though they did not receive religious education (It is very probably that they had not been baptized). The custom came from the minister of Hitler, who belonged to a Catholic family in the Rhineland. Magda, however, had been raised in the German Protestant tradition, but she was close to Buddhism. She believed in reincarnation and that the children would have a more beautiful life after death.”

Goebbels children’s behaviour is described as “exemplary” at all times. Kathe Huber said the kids “without exception were enchanting, in appearance as well as character”. According to Hans-Otto Meissner, when there were no guests at home, the children ate with their parents, who allowed them to chatter as much as they liked. Both parents would listen with interest to what they had to say. They were diligent without being coerced, learned quickly, and were not in the least stand-offish with other children. Although Joseph was extremely vain, he would not allow his children to consider themselves better than their playfellows. For this reason they went to the local school at Schwanenwerder. During the last year of the war when, owing to the bombing, they lived at Castle Lanke, they were taken by pony cart to the primary school at Wandlitz.

Hübner also recalled that the atmosphere in the house was a mixture of discipline and ideology, although neither Joseph nor his wife were very much on the education of their children. During the few time Joseph spent with his family, he expressed especial fondness for his only son, Helmut, to whom he liked to chase playfully under tables and beds in the rooms. Joseph had always wanted his son to be “proud and fighter.” The other five daughters did not receive so much attention from the father, who however, behaved affectionately. According to a diary entry from May 1939, when he could he also played with the children and regaled them with bedtime stories of Germany’s decline and resurgence; his little treasures “listen with gleaming eyes”.

Although Magda and Joseph weren’t sport-followers, their children loved romping around in the garden. Sport was very high on their daily program. This included ball games which offered the children many opportunities to fight boredom.

On the other hand, Brunhilde Pomsel, who was Joseph Goebbels’ secretary from 1942 to May of 1945, keeps a good memory of the children: “Sometimes, his children came to visit and were so excited to visit Daddy at his work. They would come with the family’s lovely Airedale. They were very polite and would curtsy and shake our hands”. Pomsel also remembers how “they used to play with my typewriter on Sunday afternoons”. "The children often came around lunchtime, not all of them, usually just two and the large dog. They came to pick up their father and make their way home together. They were very well behaved. It was very exciting for them to be in Papa’s office. We had lots of typewriter there:

-Is that a typewriter?

-Yes! Have you ever seen one before?

-Not so close up. Can I have a go?

Of course they could. So we would go and insert a sheet of paper so they could write something. Happy children. The father came, and they ask went home "Goodbye!” and off they were.“

As WW2 drew on, Joseph had less and less time to spend with his offspring. Magda also used to spend much time away from home, especially in Dresde, because she was ill or convalescing. However, the couple continued acquiring new properties and the same day of Heide’s birth, Joseph moved to one of them in Hermann-Göring-Strasse in the center of Berlin.

On February 18, 1943, Joseph gave his famous speech about the “Total War” in the Sportpalast, and he felt especially pleased because in that occasion, apart from Magda, his eldest daughters Helga and Hilde were present for the first time. Two days later, he would admit “I feel happy that our children are introduced in politics from an early age”.

The summer and autumn of 1944 was for the Goebbels children a happy, carefree time. They remained in Lanke and life there was just like being on an island. At Lanke there was no sign at all of war. The family did not listen to the news on the radio or read the newspapers. The kids had no idea why their parents were so low-spirited, no presentiment of approaching doom; they were completely unaware of the advancing of the Soviet troops.

On Magda’s birthday in November 1944, on the stroke of midnight, all the children suddenly appeared in her bedroom. The little girls were dressed in long white party dresses, Helmut in a dark suit. They carried nosegays in their hands and packages tied with ribbon containing simple gifts they had made themselves. Magda, surprised and deeply moved by this unexpected demonstration by her family at such a time, dissolved into tears of joy.

Towards the end of 1944, Goebbels sent Magda and their two eldest daughters into a military hospital to be filmed for the weekly newsreels, but abandoned the project on realizing that the terrible injuries of the soldiers were too traumatic for their daughters.

The six siblings remained at the Lanke Castle estate until the end of January 1945. After Joseph phoned them from Berlin, they were moved to Schwanenwerder.

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