The Goebbels Family – The Story of Hans Goebbels

The story of Dr. Goebbels’ brother Hans is the story of Nazi nepotism. Relatives of the Nazi party leadership, rose to positions of great power and influence on the coattails of their more famous siblings, and many like Hans Goebbels ended up paying the price for that association at the end of the war.

Dr. Joseph Goebbels is primarily remembered today as the brilliant propaganda minister, who assiduously sold Nazism to the german people from the movement’s wilderness years to its 12 years in power.

Goebbels used his position as a Reich Minister in charge of Germany’s film industry among other things to bed a series of glamorous movie stars.

Hitler tolerated Goebbels’s extracurricular activities because he was so effective as a communicator and propagandist.

In the end, Goebbels’ loyalty to Hitler was pathological and he moved himself and his wife and young children into Hitler’s Berlin bunker, to ultimately perish alongside their beloved Führer, while most of the other leaders sought to escape the final collapse of Nazi Germany.

Less than two weeks before Dr. Goebbels’ suicide in Berlin, his older brother Hans fell into American hands. It was a U.S. propaganda victory that was fully exploited.

Born in 1895, Hans Goebbels was two years older than Joseph. While Joseph pursued an academic path Hans had trained as an insurance salesman working in Bonn and Cologne, until the outbreak of World War One.

Hans was held as a prisoner of war until 1920. Forced to labor on farms in vineyards and in factories. His resentment and not being able to return home earlier was immense.

Hans was small like his brother only five foot four inches or 167 centimeters tall. He worked as a lowly insurance salesman until Hitler came to power in January 1933.

Being the Propaganda Minister’s brother was a distinct advantage. He had already joined the Nazi party and in 1931 had become an officer in the SA (Sturmabteilung, The Brownshirts).

Sturmabteilung, The Brownshirts

Under his brother’s influence, Han’s station in life improved dramatically. Residing in the Düsseldorf area where the family originated, Hans was appointed an official in the Propaganda Ministry with the rank of Kreisleiter or District Leader and became chairman of the district party arbitration court, of more significance Hans went from run-of-the-mill insurance salesman to general director of all fire and life insurance institutions in the Rhineland and state commissioner for insurance in Rhine province.

The sudden elevation meant that Hans could implement his long-cherished rather socialist ideas. Sharing his brother Joseph’s interest in creating a true Volksgemeinschaft or People’s National Community. Hans wanted nothing less than a social insurance policy for all Germans. A very expensive undertaking and of course the nationalization of the German insurance industry perhaps under his control.

His position in the party was further burnished by promotion to SA Standartenführer or Colonel in 1934 and elevation to SA Oberführer in 1942.

The Sturmabteilung (SA) had been smashed following the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 when Hitler had feared the SA was plotting to replace him.

Most SA men ended up conscripted for military service during the war. But the original organization continued to exist at all levels of the Nazi State.

An Oberführer a strange rank somewhere between colonel and Brigadier made Hans Goebbels a very visible party leader in his brown and gold uniform and red party armband. But by April 1945 Hans Goebbels, like all the other Nazi leaders was facing oblivion.

U.S. forces had managed to encircle the Ruhr industrial region and Düsseldorf was cut off. The city already heavily damaged by years of the allied bombing was expected to resist the Americans.

The SA assisted the Volkssturm (The Home Guard) with defense preparations backing up what regular army troops there were to conduct a defense. But the citizens of Düsseldorf were not prepared to simply sit back and watch their city become a battleground. A resistance movement was preparing to seize control.

Gauleiter Friedrich Karl Florian whom Hans Goebbels knew well, had ordered all utilities and transport infrastructure in Düsseldorf to be blown up along with the Rhine bridges.

Days before the resistance rose up they met with local police commander Lieutenant Colonel (Oberstleutnant) Franz Jürgens to try and persuade him and other officials to help them stop Florian. Jürgens had just turned down command of an ad hoc battle group of armed police and local Volkssturm to be used to help fight the Americans. He agreed to help them.

Codenamed Aktion Rheinland the resistance rose on the 16th of February 1945 to enact their operation. By now units of the U.S. 97th Infantry Division had encircled Düsseldorf and were preparing to capture the city. Ominously the assault was to be preceded by an 800 bomber raid that would have obliterated most of the city and killed much of its population.

Colonel Jürgens and the plotters managed to capture the Düsseldorf police chief SS-Brigadeführer August Korreng, emissaries were then sent to the Americans. In the meantime, Gauleiter Florian and army troops recaptured Korreng and captured some of the resistors as well.

The role of Hans Goebbels in all of this is not clear. He was captured in full SA uniform perhaps at SA headquarters a large building in the city subsequently looted by locals and U.S. troops.

Due to the nature of the U.S. encirclement, none of the Nazi big wigs could flee east and the Americans nabbed not only Goebbels but Gauleiter Florian as well.

Surprisingly Florian was acquitted at his trial for the murders of the five resistors but in 1949 received a six-year sentence for having been a Gauleiter. Being released early in 1951. He died in 1975 aged 81.

As for Hans Goebbels, his propaganda value was obvious his brother Joseph was still alive and living in Hitler’s bunker as the Soviets closed their ring around the city of Berlin. Arrested and held in a local prison, Hans Goebbels was interviewed and questioned by Captain Edward Levy of the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) on the 26th of April 1945.

The Americans had removed Hans’s jackboots and tie and his medal ribbon bar and golden party badge, a high Nazi decoration he had received in 1943. But he nonetheless appeared to retain much of his arrogant demeanor.

Dr. Joseph Goebbels died by his own hand in Berlin on the 1st of May 1945 along with his wife, less than 24 hours after Hitler’s own suicide. His six children had been poisoned on their parents’ orders such was their fanaticism to the Führer.

As for Hans Goebbels, he was ironically handed over to the French once more and interned in a camp at Dietz (Ost-) in the French occupation zone of Western Germany. According to stories the French enjoyed humiliating Dr. Goebbels’ brother. In late 1946, Hans became seriously ill but was probably denied treatment until it was too late. He was eventually moved to a hospital at Katzenelnbogen, where he died of sepsis on the 1st of January 1947, age 52.

His son was a student at Bonn University just after the war but after graduating his family history prevented him from finding suitable employment. The dark legacy of Dr. Goebbels lay across the next generation as well and Lothar Goebbels killed himself in 1951.

Hans Goebbels’ brother Conrad who was the eldest of the three Goebbels boys who had been a Kreisleiter a mid-ranking Nazi official just below a Gauleiter was released from his internment on the 10th of July 1949. He was found dead in the woods a few hours later.

So ended the story of Dr. Goebbels and his brothers.