Frauleins of the Fuhrer: What kind of women could wed such men as senior Nazis ... trends now

The savagery of the senior Nazis is infamous. So what possessed any woman to wed such men and bear their children? In this series from James Wyllie's chilling book, we reveal the women behind Hitler's henchmen — and, in the second instalment, we look at Joseph Goebells' wife Magda, Martin Bormann's wife Gerda and Hermann Goering's wife Emmy...

As Hitler's infamous propaganda minister from 1933 to 1945, the rabidly anti-Semitic Goebbels seized control of the media and the arts, including theatre and film. But his wife — chiefly remembered for the killing of their six children — led an extraordinary secret life at the heart of the Third Reich.

From the moment Magda met Joseph Goebbels, the erotic charge between them was intense. She'd started working at his Nazi propaganda department in 1930, and it wasn't long before they became lovers.

Goebbels was enraptured by the stunning and sophisticated blonde: 'It's like I'm dreaming. So full of satisfied bliss,' he wrote. What she saw in him was harder to imagine: short and born with a club foot, he was prone to making clumsy passes at good-looking women, who often reacted with revulsion.

Still, Magda had been electrified by his rhetoric at a Nazi rally, which doubtless fuelled her desire.

Magda, a rich divorcee, also had a much younger lover. She tried to end that relationship, but the besotted student turned up one day with a gun, threatening to kill her if she didn't take him back.

There were further complications when Magda was introduced to Hitler in 1931. He confided to an aide that she'd made such a big impression that he wanted her to play 'an important role in my life'.

But there was a problem: as leader of the Third Reich, he believed he must be single, dedicated only to the welfare of his people — hence any relationship with an unmarried woman would have to be clandestine. The solution was obvious: Magda needed to become Mrs Goebbels.

What Hitler wanted was a woman who could be like a wife — an intellectual, emotional and spiritual partner, though not a lover.

And Magda, already infatuated with him, was only too willing — even if that meant having to marry Goebbels, who was intensely jealous. 'Magda loses herself a bit around the Boss . . . I am suffering greatly . . . I didn't sleep a wink,' he wrote in his diary.

However, after a series of meetings with Hitler and Magda, he agreed to get married. The benefits were huge: in return for Hitler seeing Magda whenever he wanted, the couple would be cemented into his inner circle.

They married in December 1931, with Hitler as best man. When Magda thanked him with a kiss, Hitler's eyes were full of tears.

By the following year, the Goebbels apartment had become Hitler's unofficial HQ. Magda fed him his favourite vegetarian food and delivered meals to his hotel. She may have hoped to seduce him. Hitler's chauffeur certainly thought so. He once caustically remarked that when Magda was with his boss, you could 'hear her ovaries rattle'.

Her marriage was already starting to founder.

Each of Magda's successive pregnancies aggravated an existing heart condition and she was often ill, which left Goebbels free to chase women again.

Once the Nazis had seized power, Magda — as Hitler's quasi wife — gave the first Mother's Day radio address, proudly declaring that the German mother 'instinctively' understood Hitler's 'noble spiritual and moral goals'. Afterwards, she received so many letters from women that she had to hire two secretaries to deal with them all. Always impeccably groomed and made up, she was often photographed with her children for magazines as an example of the perfect Nazi family. And Hitler frequently dropped in to see her, celebrating birthdays, sharing trips to the coast and having discussions late into the night.

By 1937, Goebbels — now also in charge of the movie industry — was making liberal use of the casting couch and had plunged into a steamy affair with a 22-year-old actress, Lida Baarova. At first, Magda turned a blind eye and had the odd dalliance of her own.

It was her husband's assistant Karl Hanke who told her that the infatuation with Lida was serious. Moreover, Hanke — who had a crush on Magda — produced a dossier detailing many of Goebbels's other infidelities.

For her, these revelations coincided with a period of doubt. In conversations with a confidante, she expressed her concerns about the direction Nazism was taking.

She objected to the militarisation of German society, which was robbing it of its 'culture', its 'mirth' and its 'joy' and replacing them with 'blind obedience, regulations and 'commands' — and she questioned Hitler's judgment, especially the way he let the regime treat women as second-class citizens.

She'd certainly had enough of Goebbels, telling Hitler in 1938 that she wanted a divorce. He was appalled and told his propaganda chief to dump Lida. In the end, the actress was sent back to Czechoslovakia and her films banned.

As for Magda, she'd started sleeping with her husband's helpful assistant, and wasn't at all sure she wanted Goebbels back.

During this period, she came close to a breakdown, and henceforth spent much of her time in clinics. There was at least enough of a reconciliation, however, to result in another pregnancy.

The truce didn't last: after Magda gave birth to their sixth child, Goebbels cheated again. Unable to stop him, she played tricks on his girlfriends. One used a special key to enter a passageway, so Magda had the locks changed. She prank-called another, telling her that Goebbels would send a car to meet her at a crossroads in the Grunewald forest at 11pm. Magda let her wait there for an hour before telling her husband what she'd done.

She became even more depressed when Goebbels described what was going on in the death-camps — even though Hitler had instructed his lieutenants not to tell their wives.

'It's terrible, all the things he's telling me now,' Magda told her confidante. 'I can't bear it any more. You can't imagine the awful things he's tormenting me with.'

Shocked by what she'd learned, Magda was having doubts about Hitler: 'He no longer listens to reason. It's all going to end badly — it can't possibly end otherwise.'

In February 1945, she asked one of Hitler's doctors for poison for herself and her six children. Although according to the doctor, she 'could not bear the thought of ending the lives of her children'; the idea drove her 'crazy with grief and pain'. However blinded she may have been by her faith in Hitler, Magda was no fool. She knew that what had been done in Hitler's name would never be forgiven, and the Soviets were unlikely to show her family any mercy.

Both she and Goebbels chose to join Hitler at his bunker in Berlin. Twenty-four hours after the Fuhrer's suicide, their children were given cocoa laced with a powerful sedative.

Several accounts maintain that Magda poisoned her children herself. This seems unlikely: since moving into the bunker, she'd been trying to avoid them.

One of Hitler's secretaries recalled that Magda 'hardly had the strength to face her children with composure. Every meeting with them made her feel so terrible that she burst into tears'.

Hitler's valet remembered seeing her waiting 'nervously' outside the room 'until the door opened and the doctor came out. Their eyes met, Magda Goebbels stood up, silent and trembling. When the SS doctor nodded emotionally without speaking, she collapsed.' Afterwards, Magda sat in her room, ashen-faced, playing solitaire and chain-smoking. At 8.40pm on May 1, 1945, she and Goebbels walked arm-in-arm into the garden.

Magda bit on her cyanide capsule. Her husband shot her in the head, swallowed his poison and turned the gun on himself. After their bodies were doused in petrol, the fire burned all night.

Known for his brutality, coarseness and virulent anti-Semitism, Bormann wielded enormous power as Hitler's private secretary. He controlled access to the Fuhrer and was also in charge of Nazi party promotions and appointments.

Few women epitomised the Nazi ideal of womanhood better than Gerda Bormann. She wove her blonde hair into a plait, eschewed cosmetics and wore traditional Bavarian dress — as did all nine of her children. In the few images of them that survive, they look as if they've just stepped off the set of The Sound Of Music.

Yet Gerda was an unquestioning Nazi, programmed to obey her thuggish husband. So thoroughly had she been brainwashed by Nazi ideology that she never complained about his

read more from dailymail.....