the Goebbels parents took the opportunity to write a last letter to Harald in British
captivity.64 Magda’s was defiant. ‘Our magnificent ideology is all for naught,’ she
wrote, ‘and with it everything beautiful, admirable, noble, and good that I have come
to know in my life. Since there will be nothing to live for in the world that will
endure after the Führer and national socialism, I am taking the children with me.
They are too good for the kind of life that will ensue, and a merciful God will understand
me for delivering them.’ The rest of the letter betrayed a no less hardy fanaticism.
‘We have only one aim—to keep faith with the Führer unto death. That we are
to be allowed to end our lives together with him is a favour from Fate that we never
dared to hope for.’
Dr Goebbels’ own farewell letter to his stepson was couched in the same unrepentant
vein. ‘We are confined to the Reich chancellery’s Führer bunker, fighting for
our lives and honour… I think it unlikely we shall ever meet again.’ Justifying the
cruel pact that he had agreed with Magda, he continued, ‘We do not have to be
present in flesh and blood to have an impact on the future of our country. It may well
be that you are left alone to continue the family tradition. Germany will survive this
terrible war, but only if our people have examples they can look up to for inspiration.’
Seized by his own distorted sense of history, he added: ‘The lies shall one day
come tumbling down, and truth shall triumph over all.’ ‘Farewell, my dear Harald,’
the letter ended.65
THAT afternoon the news agencies announced that Heinrich Himmler had offered to
the Allies the unconditional surrender of Germany.66 To Hitler and Goebbels it now
seemed obvious why there was still no news of the relieving armies. They had been
betrayed.
The six children came as usual to see ‘Uncle Führer’ and stroke his Alsatian, Blondi;
as they filed back to their room Schwägermann heard them call Eva Braun ‘Frau
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 919
Hitler’ in passing, which rather startled him.67 But Hitler had already revealed to
Goebbels and his adjutants his intention to marry the mistress who had shared his
isolation for fourteen years.68 ‘At her own wish,’ Hitler dictated that night, ‘she will
meet death with me as my wife.’69 He asked Goebbels to find an official empowered
to solemnize the marriage—no easy charge, given that Russian snipers were now
only a few hundred yards away. Presently however a short, slim, fair-haired official of
thirty-four wearing the brown party uniform with a Volkssturm armband was brought
down into the bunker. 70 Goebbels, Naumann, and Bormann acted as witnesses at the
little ceremony in the tiny map room. Goebbels described it to Traudl Junge afterwards
as ‘very moving.’71 The official quietly said, ‘In the presence of the above named
witnesses I ask you, mein Führer, whether you are willing to take Miss Eva Braun in
marriage.’ Momentarily forgetful, she began signing with a ‘B’, then crossed it out
and wrote Eva Hitler instead.72
Afterwards Hitler invited Goebbels, Magda, and Naumann to an intimate champagne
dinner along with a few others.73 For a while he reminisced about the First
World War. Fourteen years before, he then recalled, he had been best man at the
Goebbels wedding. ‘What a contrast!’ he wryly observed. ‘For me, marriage and
death and to be somewhat more closely linked in time.’74 he confirmed once more
that he did not intend to fall into Soviet hands alive. Death would be almost welcome,
he said, now that so many had betrayed him.75
Hitler went next door to dictate his Political testament to Traudl Junge. After a
while he called in Goebbels to discuss a new Cabinet. The most important question
was who should succeed Hitler as head of state? Himmler had disqualified himself.
Göring was in disgrace. For weeks Goebbels had been selflessly canvassing the name
of Grand Admiral Dönitz—he was upright, military, and incorruptible.76 Hitler agreed
that the admiral should be the nominated as Reich President and Supreme Commander.
He named the trusty Dr Goebbels himself as his successor as Reich Chancellor,
and Bormann as party minister. Werner Naumann would succeed Goebbels as
propaganda minister.77 The rest of this document, like a final shuffling of non-existent
armies across long-obsolescent maps, was a global settling of scores. Himmler,
920 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
Göring, Speer, and even Ribbentrop—Hitler’s ‘second Bismarck’—were all dismissed
from office. Probably at Goebbels’ recommendation Hitler appointed Karl Hanke,
still holding out in Breslau, as the new Reichsführer S.S. The testament ended with a
final gratuitous outburst against the Jews and those international statesmen who had
sold out to Jewish interests. Hitler rejoiced that the ‘culprits’ had paid for their sins,
‘albeit by more humane means than war’—whatever that might mean. He signed at
four A.M. and Goebbels and the others witnessed his signature.
The document had formally commanded Goebbels and his family to leave Berlin
‘to take part in the nation’s struggle.’ But the minister knew that even as Reich Chancellor
his miserable existence would be prolonged only by as many weeks as would
separate his capture and the opening of the gallows trapdoor beneath his feet. He
exclaimed that as Defence Commissioner for Berlin he could not in conscience leave.
Weeping profusely he rushed next door and interrupted Traudl Junge’s typing of the
document to dictate his own defiant ‘annexure’ to it.
‘For the first time in my life,’ he declaimed, as her pencil flew across the pad, ‘I
must categorically refuse to obey an order of the Führer. My wife and children join
me in this refusal.’ It was not just that he could not bring himself to desert the Führer
in his hour of need—‘I should appear for the rest of my life as a dishonourable
turncoat and common scoundrel,’ he wrote, with no right to the respect of his fellow
citizens. ‘In the delirium of treason which surrounds the Führer in these most
critical days of the war there must be some people at least willing to abide by him
unconditionally until death.’ He ended, ‘For this reason, together with my wife and
on behalf of my children who are too young to speak for themselves but would, if old
enough, approve this decision unreservedly, I utter my unalterable decision not to
leave the Reich capital even if it falls, and at the side of the Führer to end a life which
will be of no further value to myself if I cannot spend it in the service of the Führer
and next to him.’
By five-thirty A.M. all the documents had been signed. Three couriers slipped out
of the bunker at noon-fifteen, carrying copies to the outside world. Hitler told
Goebbels that he would wait for word that at least one copy had reached its destina-
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 921
tion before departing on his own, more distant, journey. Shortly he was brought a
news agency report describing the ugly end of Benito Mussolini and his mistress,
‘hanging from the Standard Oil kiosk in [Milan’s] Piazzale Quindici Martiri.’ A d
ozen
of the Duce’s staff had been ‘shot in the back’ as well.78
Hitler handed out cyanide capsules. Goebbels had sent Schwägermann back to the
deserted No.20 Hermann-Göring Strasse a few days earlier to fetch the 6·35-millimetre
pistol with which he intended to kill himself; he kept this and his poison capsule
with him all the time.79 He gave to Heinz Lorenz copies of Hitler’s testament
and his own annexure. ‘Make for British or American-occupied territory,’ he briefed
him, ‘and publish the testaments as and when you think fit for the purpose of the
historical record.’80 Hitler held three more situation conferences that day. Sharpshooters
of the Russian 301st Guards Division were less than five hundred yards
from the barricaded windows of the chancellery. At one-thirty A.M. on April 30, the
Soviet high command ordered heavy artillery to bear on the building. Within minutes
the upper floors were ablaze. There were no more conferences. Fifty feet below
ground Goebbels heard toward mid-day that the Russians had broken into the subway
system between the ruined Kaiserhof and Potsdamer Platz, and had overrun the
Tiergarten bordering on the chancellery.
At lunch time he glimpsed Hitler and Eva going into their private quarters. She
was wearing a dark blue dress with white trimmings. They invited only the two
secretaries—but neither Goebbels partner—to join them. After a while Traudl Junge
slipped out to see Magda and smoke a cigarette. Magda was in even more sombre
mood than Hitler. ‘I prefer my children to die rather than survive as the objects of
mockery and scandal,’ she woodenly said. Around three-thirty P.M. Hitler and Eva
emerged for one last time, shook hands wordlessly with Goebbels, and then retired
closing the padded doors behind them. Artur Axmann arrived to request orders for
his young tank-killer squads. Goebbels intercepted the one-armed Hitler Youth leader
and told him curtly that the Führer was ‘seeing no-one.’81 In the old bunker Traudl
Junge found the children waiting restlessly and giggling each time the bunker shook.
She busied herself spreading bread and butter until a shot rang out, so close that their
922 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH
giggling stopped. It echoed through the concrete labyrinth, and Hellmut exclaimed,
‘That sounded like a direct hit.’82
Otto Günsche went to investigate. He returned to the map room where Goebbels
and the others were waiting. ‘Der Führer ist tot,’ he announced 83.
Thus, if only by fiat of the departed Führer, Joseph Goebbels became the last chancellor
of the Third Reich. His brief dominion extended one mile from north to south,
from the Weidendamm Bridge to Prinz-Albrecht Strasse, and rather less than that
from east to west.
1 The remark was provoked by the behaviour of the congregation who had chattered during
the eulogy at Justice Minister Gürtner’s state funeral (diary, Feb 2, 1941).
2 Diary, Mar 30, 1945.
3 Ibid., Jan 16, 1940.
4 ‘Robert Ley as described by his mistress,’ SAIC.40, Jun 4, 1945 (NA file RG.165, entry
79, box 756). Ley had obtained seven envelopes with cyanide crystals from Prof Bockacker,
chief of the Labour Front’s health department.—And see NYT, Oct 27
5 Diary, Feb 1; and similar on Feb 2, 1943.
6 Oven, ‘Oct 3, 1943’; Krämer, 229.
7 Semler, ‘Nov 16, 1943.’
8 JG to Hitler, Jul 18, 1944 (BA file NL.118/107).
9 E.g., in JG’s speech to officers, Jul 17 or 18, 1943: ‘You only have to read the correspondence
of Frederick the Great and you’ll find that, uh, he, uh, rolled that poison phial to
and fro in his pocket, and was strongly tempted to have a swig.’ (VfZ, 1971, 83ff).
10 Diary, Mar 3, 1945.
11 SS Gruppenführer Gottlob Berger, Chef des SS Hauptamtes, remarks on Jun 13, 1945,
reported in CSDIC(UK) report SRGG.1299C (PRO file WO.208/4170).
12 Bella Fromm diary, May 6, 1933 (Boston Univ., Mugar Memorial Libr., Fromm papers,
box 1).
13 Naumann interrogation, Nuremberg, Oct 10, 1947 (IfZ, ZS.361).
14 Hausintendant Rohrssen, 59, had trained at the court of first the Kaiser, then the Duke of
Dessau. Leo Barton to Capt Smith, G–2, USFET MISC, Mar 12, 1946 (Trevor Roper papers,
IfZ, Irving collection); interview with Gault McGowan, in New York Sun, Aug 4, 1947
(Hoover Libr., Julius Epstein papers, box 26). The story reappears in Auguste Behrend,
‘Meine Tochter Magda Goebbels,’ in Schwäbische Illustrierte, No.22, May 31, 1952.
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 923
15 Krosigk diary, Apr 13, 1945. USFET document DE.443/DIS.202 (Hoover Libr. Lerner
papers; and Trevor Roper papers, IfZ, Irving collection.)
16 Krosigk to JG, Apr 14, 1945, in PID report No.34 (Hoover Libr., Daniel Lerner papers,
box 5).
17 By their ignoble allegation on Jul 3, 1992 that I had stolen items from the Moscow
microfiche collection the Munich institute of contemporary history (IfZ) achieved its premature
closure before I could test this theory. See Author’s Acknowledgements.
18 Hitler’s desk diary, Apr 1945, was found in his bunker’s ruins by British Intelligence
officers in Sep 1945. It is now in the Cabinet Office Historical Section, London (Transcript
in IfZ, Irving collection).
19 Baur, lecture, ca.1950 (IfZ, ZS.683)
20 His diary is quoted in Borresholm, 186.
21 JG, ‘Der Einsatz des eigenen Lebens,’ in Das Reich, No.15, Apr 15, 1945.
22 Oven, ‘Apr 19, 1945.’
23 Naumann testimony, May 18, 1950 (IfZ, ZS.274).
24 Oven, ‘Apr 18, 1945.’
25 BBC Monitoring Report, Apr 19 (IWM archives); DNB text of broadcast in Hamburger
Zeitung, No.92, Apr 20, 1945.
26 US Seventh Army interrogation of Dr Robert Ley, SAIC.30, May 29, 1945 (NA file
RG.332, Mis-Y, box 73).
27 Ibid., and Else Krüger (Bormann’s secretary) MS, ‘Die letzten Tage … im Führerbunker
der Reichskanzlei,’ written in British captivity, Itzehoe, Jul 22, 1945 (Trevor Roper papers,
IfZ, Irving collection.)
28 Hans-Leo Martin, Unser Mann bei Goebbels (Neckargemünd, 1973), 157ff.
29 JG told this to Krosigk on Apr 24. Krosigk diary, Apr 24, 1945. USFET document
DE.443/DIS.202 (Hoover Libr. Lerner papers; and Trevor Roper papers, IfZ, Irving collection.)
—Kritzinger’s own report on the evacuation of the ministries is in Jodl’s papers,
captured in Flensburg (British FO Libr.)
30 From an MS of Fritzsche’s ‘Notes on Hitler’s last days’ in the papers of Field Marshal
Erhard Milch (IfZ, Irving collection).
31 Otto Günsche, Soviet interrogation (IfZ, Irving collection); and see Koller diary, Apr
21, 1945. ADI(K) report 348/1945, Jul 12, 1945 (ibid; and author’s film DI–39)
32 Fritzsche, op.cit.; Oven, ‘Apr 21, 1945,’ 650f.
33 Borresholm, 187f.
34 Naumann testimony, May 18, 1950 (IfZ, ZS.274). Dr Schultz von Dratzig of the Personnel
dept. committed suicide that same Saturday.
35 Author’s interviews of Curt Gasper, who accompanied the ‘burial party,’ Jul 1, 1970,
Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death Page 151