Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The Goebbels could have tried to escape to the west, they had the chance. In late April that opportunity was just about gone as the escape routes were cut off.
If she had stayed in the Bunker her and her children would have been safe. Regular Russian troops were working under the direction of Stalin's intelligence officers when the bunker fell - SMERSH. I had to revisit sections of Beevor's "Fall of Berlin" for this. Naturally SMERSH wanted to secure all intelligence documents and prisoners, and most importantly verify the fate of Hitler. The women left in the bunker were treated in a civil manner (contrasting the wholesale rape and murder that was happening outside), prisoners were separated almost immediately. Generally, the final fate of those remaining in the bunker resulted in them not being harmed by soldiers, but it did mean imprisonment and extensive questioning by Russian intelligence. After a period of months, the women would be released. The military men would end up in Siberia as a POW and either die or maybe be released a decade or so later. Mr. Goebbels would no doubt have been executed after interoggation. The children I would venture to guess would have been given to relatives until Mrs. Goebbels release.
Hilarious that the topic has devolved to "think of the childrens." I'm sure that at the time the predominant feeling was that "that woman is so eaten up with Nazi ideology that she'd rather see her children dead than to live in a post-Nazi Germany." She was not alone among Germans in thinking that way toward the end of the war. I doubt it had little or nothing to do with which Allied army was going to conquer them. Only the living had to concern themselves with that. The true believers preferred a Wagnerian end, as did their "Fuhrer."
^^^^^^ This.
She didn't kill them because she was afraid of what the Soviets would do to them, she killed them because the world she wanted them to live in was lost and she didn't see the point in their further existence.
Btw, while the Russian army did commit many rapes and other atrocities, this was done in revenge for the mass murder, industrial scale looting and rape that the Nazis had committed in the occupied Soviet territories where burning alive the total population of an entire village - old people and children included - because of suspected partisan ties was commonplace and the numbers of such villages were in hundreds.
I am not sure that the British or American armies would behave any better had parts of their countries been occupied by the Nazis. The French were surely very vindictive and committed many murders. And the Nazi occupation of France was really soft compared to what they did in Poland or Russia.
She didn't kill them because she was afraid of what the Soviets would do to them, she killed them because the world she wanted them to live in was lost and she didn't see the point in their further existence.
Btw, while the Russian army did commit many rapes and other atrocities, this was done in revenge for the mass murder, industrial scale looting and rape that the Nazis had committed in the occupied Soviet territories where burning alive the total population of an entire village - old people and children included - because of suspected partisan ties was commonplace and the numbers of such villages were in hundreds.
I am not sure that the British or American armies would behave any better had parts of their countries been occupied by the Nazis. The French were surely very vindictive and committed many murders. And the Nazi occupation of France was really soft compared to what they did in Poland or Russia.
German occupation of France was "soft" I suppose if you weren't Jewish or any one else rounded up and sent to Drancy. Nearly 70,000 went into that place including 6,000 children; barely 1000 remained there or alive at various concentration camps by the end of war.
That France suffered *less* from Nazi occupation probably has much to do with the fact a large population largely rolled over and cooperated with whatever plans the Germans hatched. Yes, there was the resistance movement, and or individuals/groups did what they could to save Jews or anyone else wanted by the Nazis, but by and large it was every man and woman for themselves. This cooperation at worst or merely failure to act at best likely goes a long way to explain why to this day the French are not comfortable with the subject of Nazi occupation and what happened to the Jews. It also could explain why in the face of increasing anti-Semitic attacks Jews are fleeing Paris and France in general for Israel or anyplace else they can go.
As for Russia to this day it refuses to acknowledge their military basically raped, looted and pillaged its way eastward through Poland to Germany and into Berlin. Nor will they accept the fact during occupation much more of the same went on.
This kills me
what cowards...its bad enough to wage war, genocide, but your such a coward you wont face what you've done????
killing here kids was just another bad mistake in a long line of bad mistakes this woman made...its a shame...
Am going to agree with others who say Frau Goebbels simply didn't want to live in a world that didn't include the dream of Germany's Third Reich, nor for that matter her children either, so she made the decision for them all.
Then again it takes a special sort of woman to marry and remain with a monster like Goebbels. The man's secretary was captured by the Russians from the bunker and apparently lived a long life afterwards to tell the tale (100), so perhaps there is some truth to the fact women in the bunker (and presumably the children) would have been treated differently than what the Russians were doing to everyone else in Berlin. Goebbels' secretary, 100, breaks her silence about the cold and distant monster who made Germans hate Jews | Daily Mail Online
That France suffered *less* from Nazi occupation probably has much to do with the fact a large population largely rolled over and cooperated with whatever plans the Germans hatched. Yes, there was the resistance movement, and or individuals/groups did what they could to save Jews or anyone else wanted by the Nazis, but by and large it was every man and woman for themselves. This cooperation at worst or merely failure to act at best likely goes a long way to explain why to this day the French are not comfortable with the subject of Nazi occupation and what happened to the Jews. It also could explain why in the face of increasing anti-Semitic attacks Jews are fleeing Paris and France in general for Israel or anyplace else they can go.
Actually, the entirety of the occupied territories in the west suffered less (no asterisks are needed - they did, and quantifiably) because of the Nazi attitude toward them and intents for them. The Slavs of the east were considered subhuman by the convoluted logic of the racial 'theorists' of the regime, such as Alfred Rosenberg. They were to be slaughtered en masse, except for such populations that could be retained as slave labor until they were worked to death. In addition, in the west the conflict was simply about eliminating military rivals to Germany, whereas in the east the intent was to actually seize vast swaths of territory for German settlement on a permanent basis. The latter obviously requires the annihilation of the citizenry itself, whereas the former does not. This is why, from Norway to the Netherlands, to France, civilians suffered far less than those in Poland and the USSR. POWs from the western countries were more likely than not to survive their unpleasant time in German captivity - those from the east weren't.
I question the understanding of World War II, and specifically Nazi policy, of someone who thinks that the French suffered less than the Poles because they just rolled over and collaborated.
Oh, and Jewish emigration from France? That probably has something to do with the face that France has the third-highest Jewish population in the word (after Israel and the United States) and by far the highest number of Jews in Europe (2.5x as many as the much-bigger Russia).
All of the occupied countries in the west generally adopted a 'do what we have to in order to survive' methodology. The Danes, while renowned for their saving of the Jews in 1943, were otherwise so compliant that Germany basically let them carry on much as before the war until that time - they were, in Hitler's words, the 'model protectorate'. Note that I am not criticizing the Danish for this. I am sure it is quite easy to sneer from behind a keyboard at the lack of personal risk others undertake in situations very different that the keyboardist has ever known.
German occupation of France was "soft" I suppose if you weren't Jewish or any one else rounded up and sent to Drancy. Nearly 70,000 went into that place including 6,000 children; barely 1000 remained there or alive at various concentration camps by the end of war.
That France suffered *less* from Nazi occupation probably has much to do with the fact a large population largely rolled over and cooperated with whatever plans the Germans hatched. Yes, there was the resistance movement, and or individuals/groups did what they could to save Jews or anyone else wanted by the Nazis, but by and large it was every man and woman for themselves. This cooperation at worst or merely failure to act at best likely goes a long way to explain why to this day the French are not comfortable with the subject of Nazi occupation and what happened to the Jews. It also could explain why in the face of increasing anti-Semitic attacks Jews are fleeing Paris and France in general for Israel or anyplace else they can go.
As for Russia to this day it refuses to acknowledge their military basically raped, looted and pillaged its way eastward through Poland to Germany and into Berlin. Nor will they accept the fact during occupation much more of the same went on.
The Jews were being hunted down and murdered everywhere regardless of the country.
The designs for the Reich dominated Europe were openly outlined in Hitler's book and many speeches. The western countries would become part of the Reich and their populations would eventually become citizens, once the sufficient levels of "Germanization" were achieved. The majority of Western occupied countries were Germanic in origin (the Dutch, the Scandinavians), and the French were considered to have high percentage of Germanic blood and thus Aryan. (Despite Hitler calling the French "degenerate" and "decadent" on some occasions, he was really in awe of their culture and history).
The only Slavic group that the Nazis were more or less willing to incorporate in their future plans were the Czechs, although the question of their "Aryan" origin was left open. The rest of the Slavic people were to be eventually reduced in numbers via starvation and sterilization, suitable "Aryan" looking children taken away at an early age and sent to German orphanages to be raised as good Nazis, with remaining population serving as slaves to the "proper Aryans".
The Russians and Belorussians were especially seen as "Mongoloid", evil, "Bolsheviks" and having "too much of Jewish blood".
Basically, the further East you go, the more terrifying atrocities were being committed by the Nazis and their collaborators. (Although I've never read of any atrocities committed on the Eastern front by the Spaniards or Italians).
So while the behavior of the Soviet troops in Germany was indeed terrible, there was a good explanation for it. When you spend four years slowly liberating your own territory and all you see are the signs of mass murder, starvation, indiscriminate annihilation of your people, you want revenge. It was up to the Soviet leadership to stop the troops from raping and pillaging once they reached Germany, but they clearly believed that the Germans deserved it.
I also have a theory on why there were so many rapes. I believe this was a deliberate (although probably not coordinated from the top) response to the Hitler's racial theory - "you called us subhuman, now your women will bear our children".
The children could have been airlifted to the West and may very well still be alive today. Her decision was selfish because she knew she was going to die (rather than end up in prison or be executed by the Allies) and she didn't want to die alone or in captivity so she murdered her children. Pure evil.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Unsettomati
After Hitler, most of the leading Nazis were more than willing to have a go at life in a world after National Socialism. Goering, Himmler, Bormann, Speer - even though the first two ultimately committed suicide, they did so only after first trying to negotiate some sort of life for themselves after the war. But the Goebbels were different creatures. Both were completely and totally committed to Hitler and had no interest in living in a world that did not include either him or the promise of the Nazi dream fulfilled.
To the end, flights were coming and going to and from the Fuehrerbunker via makeshift runways created on the streets around the complex (Speer, chief architect of the regime, was annoyed that trees lining the streets were being chopped down to this effect). There were abundant opportunities to bundle the six children onto a plane and send them off to life in the West. It may have been an unpleasant life in some ways for a time, but millions of people suffered worse fates during the war and came through to live productive and fulfilling post-war lives.
The murder of the children was not about the children - it was all about Joseph and Magda.
I agree with both of you.
The Goebbels choose their faith in Nazi ideology and their loyalty to Hitler over their love and protection of their own children. In that, they failed their first duty as human beings.
Did Magda Goebbels make the right decision to kill her children?
Totally meaningless question.
They died 71 years ago and they're never coming back.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Did Magda Goebbels make the right decision to kill her children?
