← Back to the front page

Women of Peace and Those Sided the Wrong of World War II

Khalid Elhassan November 20, 2020 32 min

World War II - Italian resistance movement — Women of the resistance in Italy. Wall Street Journal

8. A Horrific Death for the Model Nazi Child

On May 1^st, 1945, one day after Hitler committed suicide, Magda Goebbels with the help of an SS doctor, administered morphine to her kids, then killed them with cyanide. A few hours later, she and Joseph Goebbels committed suicide. The most horrific of the Goebbels children’s deaths was that of Hitler’s favorite girl, Helga. It seems that the morphine she was given did not knock her out, or at least failed to keep her under for long.

Helga became aware at some point that her siblings were being murdered by having cyanide capsules crushed between their teeth. She resisted having the same done to her. Helga’s last moments were spent in a ferocious fight, as her mother and an SS member forced poison into her mouth. An autopsy was conducted after the bunker was captured, and photographs taken of her face, showed heavy bruising. Her jaw also seems to have been broken during the struggle to force cyanide into her mouth.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.