Joseph Goebbels was born on 29 October 1897 in Rheydt, a town in the Rhineland of Germany. He was the third of five children in a Catholic working-class family. His father, Friedrich Goebbels, worked as a factory clerk, while his mother, Maria, raised the children and emphasized traditional values. Goebbels suffered from a clubfoot that left him with a lifelong limp, a condition that influenced his sense of inferiority and contributed to his fierce ambition.

As a boy, he excelled academically and later studied literature and philosophy at several German universities. He completed his doctorate in 1921 with a dissertation on 18th-century drama. In the early 1920s, he struggled to establish a career as a writer, working as a journalist and author without much success. His early diaries show a man searching for purpose and direction.

In 1924, Goebbels was introduced to National Socialism and quickly became captivated by Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric. He joined the Nazi Party in 1924, eventually finding his calling in propaganda. His intelligence, charisma, and writing talent propelled him to prominence within the party. By 1926, Hitler personally appointed Goebbels as Gauleiter of Berlin, entrusting him to grow the Nazi influence in the city.

Goebbels’ rise mirrored the party’s ascent. When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, Goebbels was appointed Minister of Propaganda and Enlightenment. His control over newspapers, radio, cinema, and the arts allowed him to craft the myth of the Third Reich, demonize its enemies, and build Hitler’s cult of personality. Throughout the 1930s and into World War II, he played a central role in promoting antisemitism, especially through the production of hate-filled films and publications.

On the home front, Goebbels presented the image of a loyal family man. He married Magda Quandt in 1931, and together they had six children whose names all began with the letter “H.” To the public, they were the perfect Nazi family, frequently appearing in newsreels and photo spreads. Behind closed doors, however, their marriage was marred by infidelity and political calculation. Goebbels had numerous affairs, the most notorious being with Czech actress Lída Baarová. Hitler himself intervened to force Goebbels to end the affair in order to maintain the party’s image.

By 1945, as Germany’s defeat became inevitable, Goebbels remained fanatically loyal to Hitler. His diaries reveal a man consumed by bitterness and fanaticism, convinced that the German people deserved their downfall for failing to fulfill the Nazi vision.

In the final weeks of April 1945, with the Red Army encircling Berlin, Joseph and Magda Goebbels moved their six young children into the Vorbunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. Hitler, increasingly delusional, remained in the deeper Führerbunker to command phantom armies. Although several high-ranking Nazis fled the collapsing capital, Goebbels refused to leave Hitler’s side, declaring that loyalty required him to stay and die in Berlin.

The children—Helga (12), Hilde (11), Helmut (9), Holdine (8), Hedwig (6), and Heidrun (4)—remained largely unaware of their impending fate. As the days passed, they played in the bunker hallways and sang songs, occasionally visited by Hitler or other officials. Some in the bunker tried to convince Magda to evacuate the children. She declined, stating she could not imagine life without National Socialism, nor could she allow her children to grow up in a world that condemned their father’s name.

According to testimony after the war, Magda and Joseph Goebbels had decided long before that the family would not survive the fall of the Third Reich. On 1 May 1945, Magda and SS doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger sedated the children by injecting them with morphine as they lay in their beds. Once they were unconscious, cyanide capsules were crushed in their mouths. Some witnesses later reported that the eldest child, Helga, struggled against her mother, evidenced by bruises found on her face during autopsy.

While the children were being killed, Joseph Goebbels composed his final statements and made arrangements for his own death. He and Magda then ascended to the Chancellery garden. According to several accounts, Joseph shot Magda before taking poison and shooting himself. Their bodies were hastily doused in petrol and set on fire by adjutants.

The next day, Soviet troops discovered the bunker. The Goebbels children lay arranged in their beds, dressed in nightgowns with ribbons in their hair. Even in the chaos of Berlin’s fall, the image of six murdered children shocked the soldiers and later the world. Their deaths symbolized the pathological loyalty and nihilism of the Nazi elite.

Joseph Goebbels never faced trial or formal conviction for his crimes. His life ended in the wreckage he helped create, with the deaths of his own children a final act of twisted devotion to a monstrous ideology.