The Nazi regime officially promoted a conservative vision of marriage and family. German women were expected to be mothers and housewives above all, and the state even awarded medals to women who bore large numbers of children. Divorce was frowned upon, and Germany lagged far behind its enemies in mobilizing women for war work or armed service.
Yet many of the leaders who preached loudest about marriage and family failed to follow their own rules. Hitler never married but lived with a secret girlfriend for decades. Heinrich Himmler, who spoke strongly about marriage and family life, separated from his wife for his secretary and fathered two illegitimate children. Martin Bormann had ten children with his wife but still had affairs with various actresses.
The only senior figure who appeared to remain faithful was Hermann Göring, Hitler's nominated successor and head of the Air Force. He remarried only long after his first wife's death and seemed devoted to his second wife, an actress, and their young daughter.
The worst offender was probably Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister. His affairs had a sinister and manipulative quality, and it can be argued that he abused his position to fulfill his sexual desires.
On the surface, Goebbels had married above his station. His wife, the attractive blonde Magda Goebbels, was often called the unofficial first lady of the Third Reich because of her close relationship with Hitler. She was a divorced single mother when she married Goebbels in 1931, drawn to his oratory, wit and charisma. She also had the social contacts and upper-class bearing that he wanted in order to elevate his own status. The couple went on to have six children together.
Goebbels was serially unfaithful throughout the marriage. He was, in the words of the source, sex mad, and he had access to the most desirable women in Nazi Germany: famous actresses. As propaganda minister he controlled the German film studios and theaters, so he could literally make or break a star. Any young actress who tried to resist the doctor's charms did so at her peril.
Psychiatrists have explained his behavior partly through his physical shortcomings. He was short, standing only 1.65 meters, or five foot five, well below the average for a male Caucasian of the period. He was disabled, with an inward-turning deformed right foot that required a leg brace and caused him to visibly limp. That disability had kept him out of the Army in World War I, setting him apart from almost all the other Nazi leaders, who had chests full of medals and often heroic war records. He also had a sickly, thin, rat-like countenance.
The only things he had going for him were his mind, his charismatic oratory, his caustic wit and his powerful position. He was not liked by the other leaders or by his own staff. One of his nicknames, the poison dwarf, was quite apt, for he was thin-skinned, cold, dispassionate and held grudges. He misused Nazi party funds to support a luxury lifestyle but made himself indispensable to Hitler, who protected him. His increasingly neglected wife aided him as well.
In other words, his inferiority complexes over his looks and disability manifested as an exaggerated masculinity. He constantly bragged to other men about his sexual conquests. At the heart of his objectionable behavior was clearly a strong feeling that he did not measure up. He was about as far removed as possible from the Aryan superman his propaganda constantly promoted. He was, in the source's words, a thoroughly nasty piece of work, a view held by many senior Nazis.
Goebbels obtained his sexual conquests through two avenues. The first was young secretaries and administrative staff of the propaganda ministry. The second was his position as overlord of the German film and theater industries.
He was extremely manipulative. His secretary recalled how he preyed on attractive young female members of his staff, pursuing them, bedding them, and then threatening suicide if they tried to break off the affair. Many of them were virgins and little more than teenagers.
His main diversion, however, appears to have been actresses. One in particular held his attention for many years: a Czech actress named Lída Baarová. They first met in 1936 and began an affair in 1937. Magda Goebbels found out and complained to Hitler in 1938, prompting the Führer to rebuke Goebbels and order him to stop, particularly as Hitler was about to annex the Czech Sudetenland. Baarová's living boyfriend eventually found out and famously slapped her across the face in public, causing a scandal. Baarová herself was finished as an actress in Germany and was labeled a harlot.
Goebbels's affair with Baarová appears to have been quite consensual, but that was not the case with all of them. His then male secretary, Karl Hanke, who would later become a powerful Gauleiter in the Nazi regime, sided with Magda Goebbels over the Baarová relationship. He produced a list of 36 actresses and other stars that he knew Goebbels had had affairs with. For good measure, Magda also had an affair of her own with Hanke.
Apart from the poison dwarf, another of Goebbels's nicknames was the Randy Goat of Babelsberg, a reference to the Babelsberg studios in Berlin, on account of his predilection for young actresses. He was supposedly given this nickname by the actress Baroness Irina von Meyendorff, who had famously rejected his advances. She was famous enough that her career was not particularly damaged by the encounter, and in the postwar period she went on to marry British star James Robertson Justice.
Others were less fortunate in their dealings with Goebbels. One up-and-coming actress who resisted his casting couch was Anny Ondra, whose new film was pulled from cinemas after her refusal to sleep with him. It destroyed her career. Not all established stars were safe either. Charlotta Tila was blacklisted in 1944 after refusing Goebbels's advances, specifically after sending back an expensive gift.
Goebbels used his lakeside villa at Bogensee, 25 miles north of Berlin, a 70-room mansion, to conduct many of his seductions of various actresses.
At the end of the war, Goebbels positioned himself at Hitler's side and was the only Nazi leader to stay with Hitler to the very end, apart from Martin Bormann. Goebbels succeeded Hitler as Reich Chancellor after the Führer's suicide on April 30, 1945. He held the position for about one day. Realizing the situation was hopeless, he and his wife determined to die. They first poisoned their six children, then Goebbels shot Magda, and then shot himself in the Reich Chancellery garden.