H children

I've never seen this picture, I tried tracing it back but only found 2 sources that were both posted 4 days ago.

It's from the same session as the image below:

Holdine Kathrin was born 2 months prematurely, on February 19, 1937. That same day, Joseph wrote into his diary that the birth (as well as the pregnancy) had been very complicated. It is claimed that Holde got her first name when the doctor who delivered her, Stoeckel, bent over her and exclaimed “Das ist eine Holde!” (“That’s a pretty one!”). 

Goebbels described the little one as a “small” baby who “did not weigh much” but was “cute and sweet”. According to her father, baby Holde was “just like Helga!”. Four weeks later, when the children saw the baby, Helga yelled “just what I wanted… It came down from the sky!”. After Holde´s birth, doctors warned Joseph that Magda did not have to get pregnant in two years. Despite being sickly at first, Holde grew to be a healthy baby.

Apparently, Holde was the “least lively” of the children. Quiet by nature, she was somewhat “pushed aside” by the others to her considerable distress. Little Holde was spurned by her sisters as ‘slow-witted and boring". “You are silly and nuisance“ her siblings teased her. She suffered from all this until eventually it was noticed that she would creep away by herself and cry. Her father, touched, responded to this by making her something of a favorite, to which she responded with devotion. In fact, on a diary entry Goebbels made in the early months of 1939, he wrote Holde was “like a little angel”.

Magda once described the temperaments of five of her children to her sister-in-law Eleanore (Ello) Quandt by describing how each would react to learning they had been deceived by their spouse: Holde would never quite get over the infidelity, but would be too proud to reproach her husband. Finally, through the breach of confidence on the part of her husband, she would go to pieces altogether.

Holde was eight years old at the time of her death.

The long awaited son, Helmut Christian, was born on October 2, 1935. “There the little chap lies: he looks like a Goebbels. I’m happier than I could imagine. I could go round smashing things out of sheer joy. A boy!” proud Joseph wrote into his diary.

On the day of Helmut’s first birthday, Joseph bought his wife a costly ring.

In October 1937, when two-year-old Helmut answered him back, Goebbels paddled the lad, though reluctantly. “He doesn’t give in”, Joseph noted indulgently on his diary. “Not a bad sign!”.

In the summer of 1938, Goebbels described his son as a “stubborn little ne'er do-well”. However, the same day of Helmut’s fifth birthday (1939), Joseph described him as a “nice, clever boy. He gives us all such a huge amount of fun.” In his diary, he called his son a "Clown”.

Helmut studied a great deal of history and his father lectured him at length on the interrelation of historical events, although the boy was altogether too young to grasp its meaning. When his teacher at the Lanke primary school reported to his parents that his promotion to a higher form was doubtful, the atmosphere at home became very stormy, This for his father was unthinkable. He shouted angrily at the little boy and made him tremble, threatening him with dire punishment unless he did better.  Magda intervened. She herself and the governess took the little dreamer in hand two, three, four, five hours a day. Both understood him and managed to shake him out of his dreamy ways into reality, with the remarkable result that he was not only promoted but gained astonishingly good marks. Käthe Hubner, Helmut’s 1943-1945 governess remembers “Helmut had once received from my lessons. It was only a few weeks, where I gave him private tuition”.

Once in 1942, the newsreel camera found him in the classroom of the village school. ‘Twelve birds sitting in a row, Helmut Goebbels!’ the teacher challenged. ‘A huntsman shoots one dead. How many are left?’ After much coaxing and flubbing while a forest of young hands waved around him, Helmut eventually arrived at a plausible answer: ‘Eleven?’ ‘Wrong!’ answered the teacher triumphantly. ‘None! The rest all fly away when the gun goes off!’ Helmut offered a goofy smile through his protruding upper teeth.

In this newsreel footage, Helmut appeared sitting on his school desk with his best friend, Georg Schertz. Georg, who was Helmut’s age, was also his neighbor in Schwanenwerder. They both attended the elementary school in Nikolassee in 1941 and then in Wannsee. The two boys were very good friends and used to play together after school. In fact, Georg was the only boy of the same age in Schwanenwerder. However, Georg’s mother was worried about her son’s close friendship with Helmut. Therefore, she once told Magda: “My husband was dismissed by your husband’s government from his civil servant job.“ Magda Goebbels smiled: "Yes, do you think we didn’t know that? But the children have nothing to do with it.”

“Once,” says Georg, “I was with Helmut at an early evening film screening at the Goebbels estate. A propaganda strip was shown in which Russian soldiers were mowed down by German machine guns in Winter, and the snow was stained with Russian blood.” Georg believes it was a color film. And he can’t forget that Magda Goebbels asked her husband if that was something suitable for children. To which he replied: "If you can’t see it, you should close your eyes.”

Georg invited his friend Helmut to his tenth birthday on April 24, 1945. For fear of hostilities, his parents had decided to hold the party earlier on April 20. But on this day, Hitler’s last birthday, the Goebbels family moved out of Schwanenwerder, to the Fuhrerbunker.  “We didn’t believe they murdered their own children at first. My parents thought it was a ruse, Helmut and his sisters had been secretly taken away to South America…”. More than 70 years after Helmut’s death, Georg remembered him through tears: “Helmut was a highly introverted, a slightly shabby boy. He has been with me, inside me, all my life.”

Magda once described the temperaments of five of her children to her sister-in-law Eleanore (Ello) Quandt by describing how each would react to learning they had been deceived by their spouse. "Helmut would never believe that his wife would deceive him.”

In 1940, Goebbels described his son as “still the plump, phlegmatic little chap”. In fact, he seemed worried about his only son, who in comparison with his elder sisters was more distracted. However, it is curious that in October, 1941, Goebbels blamed her daughters for this: “Helmut has reached the age of 6 (…) It is essential for him to be in contact with other group of boys, because nothing good comes out from a boy that is always surrounded by girls”.

In July 1942, Joseph took advantage of an official trip to Bavaria, to visit a Nazi Party school close to Felfading and decided that he would “enroll Helmut when he is old enough”.

Käthe Hübner, said Helmut’s character “was especially dear to my heart. Perhaps because he was a little girlish and was not enough for the demands of his father to him”. Helmut was considerate and sensitive, a dreamer. This did not suit his father. In fact, Auguste Behrend, Magda’s mother, recorded on her memmoirs that Helmut had no greater ambition than to become a Berlin subway driver. Mrs. Behrend also remembered how once Joseph found Magda had dressed Helmut in a frilly silk blouse, and he snapped at her “That’s not right for a boy,” sending his son off to change. “We are not the Ribbentrops or Görings. People expect different of us!.”

According to his autopsy, Helmut had blue-gray eyes, was 1'36 meters tall and had the wire brace around his upper teeth (they had always protruded just like his father’s). Helmut was nine years old at the time of his death.

On September 1st 1932, Magda Goebbels went into labor with her second child. That same day, Joseph wrote: “Today Magda has gone into labor. She is really brave. We have gone straight to hospital. I beg everything goes well and the baby to be a boy. I am a bit frightened, but Destiny will have mercy of us”.

Hours after this diary entry, a girl was born. “Unfortunately, it has been a girl” the disappointed father wrote into his diary. “But my heart is full of happiness. We may name her Helga. Everything has turned out well. At 14:20 she was here. Magda and the baby are fine (…) As I wished so much the baby to be a boy, it has been a disappointment.”

Magda had also hoped for a boy to call Helmut, to fill the hole left in her heart by her stepson’s tragic death in Paris years before. But it was a girl, finally named Helga Sussane.

In spite of the relative happiness the baby-girl brought to their lives, the new parents’ family life wasn’t easy at all. In fact, the infant’s nocturnal wails kept the household awake. According to Joseph’s diary entry from 19 September, 1932, he, a novice in the art of parenthood, complained unfeelingly and left Magda in tears. On the other hand, when Helga was few months old and Joseph returned home from Vienna, he reported to have had an argument with Magda, in which she had reproached him justifiably his impatience with their daughter.

Nevertheless, Joseph was proud of his child. Although it was invariably late at night when he returned from the office, he would always go straight to the nursery, take his little daughter out of her cot and balance her carefully on his knee, while surrounded by his guests. Helga was reported to be a lovely baby; she never cried, was never impatient, but just sat listening uncomprehendingly to the Nazi officials with her “blue eyes sparkling”. It was not unusual for Hitler, who was especially fond of this child, to take her on his own lap while he talked late into the night. Meanwhile, Magda would sit happily by, but anxious at the same time for a break in the conversation which would enable her to seize the baby and take her back to bed.

When Helga was 9 months old, Magda betook her to fashionable Heiligendamm for the summer, leaving Joseph in Berlin for a while.

In spite of Joseph’s first disappointment, Helga fast became the apple of his eye and a “daddy’s girl”.

In June, 1935, Helga went on holidays along with her parents to the spa of Heiligendamm. Those holidays gave Joseph the opportunity to take up more actively little Helga’s education. According to one of Joseph’s biographies, against the sporadic acts of rebelliousness of his daughter, he used to apply a method that, in his own words, was infallible: physical punishment. In July of that same year, Joseph noted that after having given her some slaps, Helga was “a model of charm and friendliness”; and in August he wrote “Sweet hours with Helga. Obedience trained”.  However, on Hans-Otto Meissner’s biography on Magda Goebbels, he assured that neither Joseph nor Magda believed in corporal punishment and never hit the children.

Helga was photographed with Hilde presenting Hitler with flowers on his birthday on April 20, 1936. She spent that year’s holiday with her grandmother in Peenemünde. According to one of Joseph’s diary entry from June, Helga fast became the apple of Hitler’s eye too. In February 1937, Hitler was indescribably glad with the photos that showed Helga in Obersalzberg: “He says that if little Helga were twenty years older, and he twenty years younger, she would have made the ideal wife for him”. On the other hand, in September 1940, while Joseph was in Cracovia, Magda phoned him explaining that Hitler had visited her and the children in Schwanenwerder, due to Helga’s birthday and he had lavished the girl profusely.

Joseph’s diary entries make very clear that at least during the first years, Helga was his favourite child. In January, 1937, while being in Berlin far from his family, he wrote: “I miss both: Magda and Helga”, without mentioning his two other children. And in October, 1938, he recognised in his diary that “of all the children, she is my dearest”.

Despite being overall very proud and happy with his eldest daughter, in August 1937, Goebbels recorded on his diary having put little Helga across his knee when she began to fib. On the other hand, he liked watching movies with his children, so no matter how late he arrived when visiting his family in Schwanenwerder, he wrapped his toddlers in blankets and showed them the latest movie. “He acts so well that you can’t even tell he is acting” said Helga once about film star Otto Gebühr. She also praised for Mussolini when he paid a state visit to Berlin during the last months of 1937: “The other Führer is quite nice too!”.

On a diary entry written during the first months of 1939, Joseph described her as “so sweet and clever” and months later, he wrote she was “astonishingly calm and graceful”. That same year, Helga had an operation on her throat.

In April 1940, Joseph wrote her eldest daughter had become a quite mature girl for her age, with whom he liked to “talk wisely” during walks.

Magda once described the temperaments of five of her children to her sister-in-law Eleanore (Ello) Quandt by describing how each would react to learning they had been deceived by their spouse: “Helga would seize a revolver and shoot the unfaithful husband out of hand, or at least try to”. In 1942, Helga once emphasized that “I want just two children when I marry. Otherwise I won’t have a moment to call my own!”.

Although on most of his diary entries Joseph praised his eldest child, in November 1944 he admitted having conversed “seriously with our Helga”, as she was “lazy at school and was being carried along”. However, one must wonder up to what point was Helga affected by the growing schizophrenia atmosphere that had settled in Lanke. Despite no one would tell her what was going on, according to many testimonies, Magda was more and more depressed as she realized, along with Joseph, that there wasn’t any hope for future.

Rochus Misch, who lived together with Helga and her siblings during their last days, described her as the “tallest, oldest and brightest (…) a definitely Daddy’s girl, with no great fondness for her mother”.

Helga played the piano taught by a young woman and loved reading. Although Traudl Junge described her as a girl with “big brown eyes”, her autopsy reveals her eyes were blue, with long lashes. Her hair, as well as her eyebrows, was dark blond. She was 1,58 meters tall. Helga was 12 years old when she died.

The two daughters Helga and Hilde of Reich Minister Dr. Goebbels thank Santa Claus. Next to the children is Mrs. Goebbels.

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Thank you very much, dear Santa Claus!

The Christmas tree in the “Doctor’s” house is decorated

As already reported, Thuringian children have come from the former emergency area of southern Thuringia and are decorating the Christmas tree in the Goebbels house with the products of their homeland. The kids are decorating the tree with Dr. Goebbels’ children. Helga Goebbels, Hilde and Hellmut can be seen.

Thuringian Children Decorated the Christmas tree for Dr. Goebbels

Helga and Hilde Goebbels closely follow the activities of the Thuringian children who, once again this year, are decorating the Christmas tree for the Reich Minister.