At the end of the day, the Nazi party leadership were politicians, and like politicians in any era, they often preached one rule for the masses while living by another. Officially, the Nazis presented themselves as traditionalists, conservative in their views on women’s rights and marriage. They believed German women should be mothers and housewives first, and the state even handed out medals to women who produced large numbers of children for the Führer’s future armies. Germany lagged far behind its enemies in mobilizing women for war work or military service, and marriage was championed while divorce was frowned upon.
It is therefore hardly surprising that the leaders who shouted loudest about marriage, family, and womanly virtue failed to uphold their own standards. Almost all of them chased women, cheated on their wives, or engaged in illicit relationships, including fathering illegitimate children. Hitler himself never married but lived for decades with his secret girlfriend. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, who voiced strong opinions on marriage and family life, separated from his wife for his secretary and produced two illegitimate children.
Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, had ten children with his wife yet still found the energy for affairs with various actresses. The only leading figure who seemed to remain faithful was Reich Marshal Hermann Göring, Hitler’s nominated successor and head of the air force, who married again only long after his first wife’s death and appeared devoted to his second wife, an actress, and their young daughter. But the worst offender was almost certainly Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. His affairs carried a sinister and manipulative quality, and it can be argued that he abused his position to satisfy his sexual desires.
On the surface, Goebbels was already punching well above his weight with his choice of wife. The attractive, blonde Magda Goebbels was often called the unofficial first lady of the Third Reich because of her very close relationship with Hitler. She was a divorced single mother when she married Dr. Goebbels in 1931, having become impressed by his oratorical skill, his wit, and his charisma.
Magda also possessed the social contacts and upper-class bearing that Goebbels desired to elevate his own status. The couple would go on to have six children together. Despite that, Goebbels was serially unfaithful throughout his marriage. He was, by all accounts, obsessed with sex, and he had access to the most desirable women in Nazi Germany, particularly famous actresses.
Because he controlled the German film studios and theaters as propaganda minister, he could literally make or break a star, and woe betide any young actress who tried to resist the doctor’s charms. Why Goebbels behaved this way has been explained by psychiatrists. He stood only 1. 65 meters, or five foot five, well below the average height for a Caucasian male of the period.
He was also disabled, with an inward-turning, deformed right foot that required a leg brace and caused him to limp visibly when walking. This disability had kept him out of the army during the First World War, setting him apart from nearly all the other Nazi leaders, who wore chests full of medals and often possessed heroic or distinguished war records. He also had a sickly, thin, rat-like countenance. The only assets he possessed were his mind, his charismatic oratory, his caustic wit, and his powerful position.
Goebbels was not liked by the other leaders, nor 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 maintain his luxury lifestyle but made himself absolutely indispensable to Hitler, who protected him. In other words, his inferiority complexes over his looks and disability manifested as exaggerated masculinity, and 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, and he was about as far removed as it was possible to be from the Aryan superman that his own propaganda endlessly promoted. He was a thoroughly nasty piece of work, a view held by many senior Nazis. Goebbels obtained his sexual conquests through two avenues. The first was the 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 women on his staff, pursued them, bedded them, and then, if they tried to break off the affair, threatened suicide. Many of them were virgins and little more than teenagers.
His main diversion, however, appears to have been actresses. One actress 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 discovered the affair and complained to Hitler in 1938, prompting the Führer to rebuke Goebbels and order him to stop it, particularly because Hitler was about to annex the Czech Sudetenland.
By then the affair had already become a scandal. Baarová’s live-in boyfriend had found out about it and famously slapped her across the face in public. Baarová was finished as an actress in Germany and was labeled a harlot. Goebbels’ affair with Baarová appears to have been largely consensual.
That was not the case with all of them. Goebbels’ then male secretary, Karl Hanke, who would later become a powerful Gauleiter in the Nazi regime, sided with Magda Goebbels over his boss’s relationship with Baarová. He produced a list of 36 actresses and other stars he knew Goebbels had had affairs with. For good measure, Magda herself had an affair with Hanke.
Goebbels had another nickname besides the Poison Dwarf: 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 that name by the actress Baroness Irina von Müffling, who famously rejected his advances. She was famous enough that her career was not particularly damaged by the encounter, and in the postwar period she married the British actor 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 she refused to sleep with Goebbels. It destroyed her career. Even established stars were not always safe. Charlotte Thiele was blacklisted in 1944 after refusing Goebbels’ advances, specifically by sending back an expensive gift.
Goebbels used his lakeside villa at Bögen, twenty-five kilometers north of Berlin, a seventy-room mansion, to conduct many of his seductions of young actresses. At the end of the war, Goebbels positioned himself at Hitler’s side and was, apart from Martin Bormann, the only Nazi leader to remain with Hitler to the very end. Dr. 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 resolved to die. They first poisoned their six children.
Then Goebbels shot Magda dead in the Reich Chancellery garden and shot himself.