Court papers shed light on killing of Goebbels children

AHitler and his new bride Eva Braun were already dead and the couple knew they were in the final moments of the Third Reich.

They had already taken the decision to murder their five daughters and one son to save them from a world "without their Fuehrer to lead and guide them".

The children were knocked out with morphine by an SS doctor and then had cyanide capsules crushed between their teeth. Afterwards Goebbels shot his wife and then himself.

The episode has long been seen as an example of the fanaticism of senior figures in the Nazi regime – but only limited amounts were known about the events leading up to the killings.

Now German researchers have shed new light on the murders by uncovering previously unseen accounts of the post-war trial of the doctor.

Public prosecutor Maik Wogersien, found an account the court case in 1959 which included a confession by Dr Helmut Kunz who helped with the killing of Helga, 12, Hildegard, 11, Helmut, nine, Holdine, eight, Hedwig, six and Heidrun, four – all names starting with H in honour of Hitler.

In Kunz's testimony before the Hamm Upper State Court, he said: "Towards the end of April, Magda came up to me and said 'I need your help in the killing of the children'. I refused her, saying that was not my responsibility. I thought of my own two daughters who had been killed in an air raid by the Americans a few months previously.

"But Magda Goebbels insisted and shortly afterwards declared to me that it was no longer a request for help but a direct order from Hitler."

Kunz was originally a dentist with the notorious SS panzer division Totenkopf – Death's Head – but became a trusted friend of Hitler after being wounded in the field and transferred to a desk job in the Reich's Chancellery

He told the court he escaped the bunker but was tracked down by Magda hours later who said he must return or "you will be a dead man".

On the evening of May 1 he was forced to carry out his grim duty.

"The children were all in one room," he recalled. "But they were not asleep. 'Have no fear,' said Magda Goebbels. 'The doctor here is going to give you an injection of the sort that all children and soldiers get'.

"She left the room. I injected them with morphine – the eldest daughters first, then the son, then the other daughters. It took around ten minutes.

"When the children were off, Magda Goebbels went into the room, the cyanide capsules in her hand. She was in there for several minutes, then stepped out, crying, saying 'Doctor, I cannot do it. You must'.

"I answered immediately: 'No, I cannot'. Then she cried: 'Well, if you cannot do it, then get Stumpfegger'."

Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger, a physician close to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, was the one who would eventually murder the children.

After the killing, Kunz left eh bunker and was later arrested by the Soviets and flown to Moscow where he was convicted of membership of the SS and the Nazi Party.

In 1959, back in Germany, two judges, both of them former Nazi party members, stopped a trial against Kunz saying he had "no choice" but to obey orders.

He died in his bed in 1976. The ashes of the Goebbels children were scattered, along with those of their parents and the Fuehrer she thought they could not live without, by the Red Army in a river near Berlin.

Researcher Mr Wogersien said the papers had given the world a dramatic new insight into the last moments of Goebbels and his family and also post-war justice.

"They throw light on the mild punishments of Nazis at the time and how the law was opaque, with a judiciary composed of many former Nazi judges," said Mr Wogersien.

"They also show how a mother became so corrupted by Nazism that she would allow this to happen to innocent children."