Magda Goebbels

Johanna Maria Magdalena "Magda" Goebbels (11 November 1901 – 1 May 1945) was the wife of Nazi Germany's Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. A prominent member of the Nazi party, she was a close ally and political supporter of Adolf Hitler.

As Berlin was being overrun by the Red Army at the end of World War II, with Goebbels she murdered her six children and then she and her husband committed suicide.

Biography

Childhood and youth

Magda was born in 1901 in Berlin, Germany to 22-year-old Auguste Behrend, and was the acknowledged daughter of engineer Oskar Rietschel (sometimes spelled 'Ritschel'). Rietschel and Behrend married later that year and divorced in 1904. Some sources, including Hans-Otto Meissner (son of Otto Meissner) suggestMeissner, Hans Otto, Magda Goebbels, First Lady of the Third Reich, p. 13

When Magda was five, her mother sent her to stay with Rietschel in Cologne. Rietschel took her to Brussels, where she was enrolled at the Ursuline Convent in Vilvoorde.Meissner, Hans Otto, Magda Goebbels, First Lady of the Third Reich, p. 16 At the convent, she was remembered as "an active and intelligent...
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