He was a close friend of Adolf Hitler. Goebbels stayed with Hitler in the Führerbunker until Hitler's suicide on 30 April 1945. After Hitler's death, Goebbels was chancellor of Germany for one day,[1] before he and his wife Magda Goebbels killed themselves.[2] Just before she died, Magda killed their six children with poison.[3]
Early life
Joseph Goebbels was born as Paul Joseph Goebbels in Mönchengladbach on 29 October 1897. His father, Friedrich Goebbels, was a bookkeeper and his mother was Maria Goebbels (born Oldenhausen).[source?] He was the third child of the family and grew up with five siblings.[4] Due to an illness in his childhood in 1901, Goebbels' right foot was malformed and he was 165 cm (5 ft 5 in). He went to a Roman Catholic school in Rheydt in 1908. In 1914, Goebbels went to high school in Rheydt.[5] When the First World War started in August 1914, he volunteered to be part of the Army. This was refused because of his limp.[4]
At the start of the Second World War, Goebbels ordered to broadcast special announcements at the cinema and on the radio.[source?] On 26 May 1940, he published the new weekly newspaper Das Reich (The Imperium) for the first time.[4][5] In 1942, Goebbels took part in the Wannsee Conference. He was one of the Nazi leaders who planned the Final Solution to kill all the Jewish people. In 1943, he gave a well known speech in the Berlin Sportpalast where he called the Germans to support total war.[2] The coup on 20 July 1944 failed, because of Goebbels' quick thinking. He broadcast on radio that the coup had failed, before the plan of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg could succeed.[5]
On 22 April 1945, two days after Adolf Hitler's birthday, he arrived in the Führerbunker in Berlin. He was one of the witnesses to the marriage of Hitler to Eva Braun.[source?] On the same day, he took over the leadership from Hitler.[5] After Hitler's suicide on 30 April, he became the Chancellor of Germany.[1] He only held this job for one day, because on 1 May 1945, his wife poisoned their six children with the help of an SS doctor.[3] Immediately afterward he and his wife went up to the garden of the Chancellery, where they killed themselves.[source?] The details of their suicides are uncertain. After the war, Rear-Admiral Michael Musmanno, a U.S. naval officer and judge, published several accounts apparently based on eye-witness testimony: According to one account. "While Schwägermann was preparing the petrol, he heard a shot. Goebbels had shot himself and his wife took poison. Schwägermann ordered one of the soldiers to shoot Goebbels again because he was unable to do it himself."[source?] One SS officer said they each took cyanide and ordered an SS trooper to shoot them both. According to another account, Goebbels shot his wife and then himself. During his last days of his life Goebbels compared Franklin Roosevelt’s death to Elizabeth of Russia’s death from the Seven Years' War in 1762 from the 18th century hoping that Stalin would withdraw his Soviet Red Army Forces from Berlin during the Battle just like Peter III of Russia did in the Seven Years' War in 1762/63 who loved the Prussians . But Stalin would never make a mistake that Hitler and Goebbels hoped and Goebbels compared Stalin’s Russia to the Mongol Empire from the 13th/14th centuries as NaziPropaganda in 1945 .
↑ 3.03.1Beevor, Antony (2003) [2002]. "Chapter 25: Reich Chancellery and Reichstag". Berlin: The Downfall 1945. Penguin History. London: Penguin Books. p. 380. ISBN0-140-28696-9. Kunz said that he could not face giving poison to the sleeping children... Together with Stumpfegger, she [Magda Goebbels] opened the mouths of the sleeping children, put an ampule of poison between their teeth and forced their jaws together.
All ministers were NSDAP members except where indicated ("ind" = nominally independent). Most of them later became NSDAP members, except Von Papen, Hugenberg and Von Eltz-Rübenach.
