Dr. Goebbels’ Billionaire Stepson JJ
On the 28th of April 1945, Magda Goebbels, the wife of Reich Minister of Propaganda and Gauleiter of Berlin, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, sat in one of the tiny concrete rooms allotted to the couple within Hitler’s bunker located beneath the Reich Chancellery Garden in central Berlin. Above, the final stages of the battle for the city raged with much of the center reduced to badly damaged or burning buildings.
The once attractive boulevards piled high with rubble or blocked with makeshift barricades. The end in Berlin was fast approaching, the military situation hopeless. It was also too late now to safely escape, especially with six young children in tow, as Magda had bore for Goebbels. Not that Magda or her husband intended to abandon their beloved Fuhrer.
Goebbels was constantly at the ailing Hitler’s side in those last days, pumping him full of hope or discussing his legacy should Berlin fall to the Soviets. Magda was also a fanatical Nazi and she and Hitler were very close. He considered her the ideal German woman. Now, Magda sat and wrote out a letter to another of her children, not any of the six youngsters who played inside the bunker, largely oblivious to the danger above, but to her son from her previous marriage, who in April 1945 was languishing in a British prisoner of war
camp in Benghazi, Libya. His name was Oberleutnant Harald Quandt and he wore the uniform of the Luftwaffe, his arm of service being the paratroopers, the famed and highly respected Green Devils, who had earned such a stellar reputation for dash and ilan early in the war, and later for stubborn and dogged defensive fighting on all fronts against Germany’s enemies.
Harold would not receive his mother’s letter for some months after the war, but she had written that with the end of the war imminent, she and Harold’s stepfather, Dr. Goebbels, saw no future for themselves or their children. When the time came, Magda wrote, she would poison the six children and then die with her husband by their own hands.
And that is exactly what happened. Hitler had ended his life on the afternoon of the 30th of April 1945, leaving Magda completely distraught. Her husband had been promoted to Reich Chancellor in Hitler’s will, and he spent the 1st of May attempting to negotiate a ceasefire with the Soviets and permission for himself and his family and staff to go to the new seat of German government at Flensburg in Schleswig-Holstein, presided over by the new Reich President, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, to begin surrender negotiations
for all of Nazi Germany. The Soviets sensibly refused, and Goebbels and his wife died by their own hands in the Reich Chancellery Garden that very afternoon. Berlin surrendered the next day. Born in 1921, when his mother, Magda, was married to German industrialist Günther Quandt, his father had a large fortune based on manufacturing uniforms for the German army in World War I.
Günther had used his fortune post-war to purchase AFA, a battery manufacturer, a company today called Varta. He also invested in metalworking companies and potash mining, and acquired large stakes in BMW and Daimler-Benz. In 1929, Harald’s parents had divorced and 2 years later, Magda had married Goebbels, the propaganda leader for the Nazi Party.
Harald had lived with his father. Magda remained on friendly terms with Günther, who joined the NSDAP in 1933 and would expand his business empire greatly with Hitler’s patronage. In 1934, Harald moved in with his mother and stepfather and remained there until he turned 18. Magda, in the meantime, birthing a brood of children, six between 1932 and 1940.
Despite being Goebbels’ stepson, Harald received no special favors concerning military service, all young men at the time having to perform it if they were medically capable. Indeed, Harald volunteered for the military. In fact, German leaders who had adult children during the war all saw them serve in some capacity or other.
For example, Karl Dönitz, who would head the navy and ultimately be Reich President of Germany for 23 days in May 1945, had two sons serving in the navy during the war. His son Peter was killed aboard the submarine U-954 in 1943 and his son Klaus was killed in action on an E-boat in May 1944. Likewise, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop’s son Rudolf would end up as a highly decorated Waffen-SS Panzer officer, surviving the war.
Even younger Nazi leaders in Hitler’s government had been required to complete their military service despite their exalted party ranks. For example, the Hitler Youth leader from 1931 to 40, Baldur von Schirach, served as an infantryman in the 1940 French campaign, earning the Iron Cross second class. And his successor as Hitler Youth Leader, Arthur Axmann, had lost his right arm on the Eastern Front in 1941, serving in the 23rd Infantry Division.
18-year-old Harald Quandt was influenced in his choice of arm of service by his stepfather’s former adjutant, Herbert Hajduchka, who volunteered for the paratroopers, the Fallschirmjäger, where he served as a junior officer in a pioneer battalion. The pioneers in this sense being combat engineers. In 1939, Harald went down the same route, joining the paratroopers, and following basic training, was commissioned as a second lieutenant, or Leutnant, joining Fallschirmjäger Pioneer Battalion Eins of the elite First Parachute Division.
His first action came in one of the most infamous paratroop operations of World War II, the invasion of Crete in 1941. After the Allies had been driven out of Greece, the British and Commonwealth forces had evacuated to the big island of Crete. It was strategically vital that Germany take Crete, and a joint airborne amphibious operation, code-name Mercury, was launched.
The airborne landings commenced on the 20th of May, 1941. The Germans suffered extremely high losses against offensive British, New Zealand, Australian, and Greek troops, but after extremely hard fighting, and aided by some big tactical blunders committed by the Allied High Command, they seized their objectives.
But the cost to Germany’s prize parachute arm was horrific. Some 4,000 to 4,500 German paratroopers were killed or injured, and among them was Dr. Goebbels’ adjutant, Hajduchka. Harald, however, survived, and was decorated for bravery. He would go on to fight on the Russian Front and in the Italian campaign.
Whence the green devils once more came to prominence. By 1944, Harald was an Oberleutnant or first lieutenant and held the Iron Cross first and second class for gallantry and leadership in battle. His combat engineer unit next fought in the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy, where the German paratroopers managed to hold off all comers for weeks in the ruins of the famous monastery and in the town of Cassino.
The long and bloody battle took a toll on both sides and on the 18th of May 1944, Polish troops finally captured the ruins. Among the German paratroopers taken prisoner was Harald Quandt, severely wounded. He was hospitalized by the British and following recovery was transferred to a POW camp outside the Libyan city of Benghazi in North Africa, where he would remain until 1947.
During the war, Harald’s father Günther had done very well manufacturing batteries for U-boats and another of his firms had manufactured small arms and ammunition for the German forces. Following his release from a POW camp and being repatriated to West Germany in 1947, Harald joined his half-brother Herbert Quandt in the family business at AFA.
Günther in the meantime was found not guilty of any crimes and also released from an internment camp. Though subsequent investigations decades later found that he had indeed used slave and forced labor in his manufacturing plants. Günther died in 1954, leaving his two sons stakes in two big companies, a potash mining company and the car manufacturer Daimler-Benz.
The brothers increased their stake in Daimler-Benz and in 1960, Herbert acquired a large block of shares in BMW, effectively saving the company. The Quandts were immensely wealthy. Harald married and had five daughters, but would die at the age of only 45, killed in a plane crash outside Turin, Italy in 1967.
He had apparently struggled post-war over the deaths of his mother and his six siblings, to whom he had been close. He had become in effect a rich playboy. His widow, Inga, had inherited an 11.2% share in Daimler-Benz, which she sold in 1974 to Kuwait for a billion Deutsche marks. The two main beneficiaries of the giant empire built by the two Quandt half-brothers are Susanne Klatten, the daughter of Herbert Quandt.
She is the richest woman in Germany today with a net worth of between 24 and 28 billion dollars, owning 21.7% of BMW and many other companies. The other is Stefan Quandt, Susanne’s brother, who is worth 22 to 23 billion dollars and owns 26.8% of BMW. Harald Quandt’s four daughters today keep a low profile.
They inherited a fortune today worth around 17 billion dollars. The low profile is understandable due to investigations. For example, in 2007, a German documentary revealed the extent to which the Quandt empire had been built on World War II on slave labor. The Hanover AFA plant even had its own concentration camp run by Herbert Quandt.
An investigation completed in 2011 found that the Quandt empire had employed over 50,000 forced laborers during the war. The fact that the Quandt descendants of both half-brothers are so wealthy today off the backs of that forced labor is the reason why the family keeps such a low profile. The events of World War II and of Harald’s connection to Dr.
Goebbels continues to linger over the family like a shadow even today. >> [music] >> Many thanks for watching. Please subscribe and share and also visit my audio book channel War Stories with Mark Felton. You can also help to support both of my channels on PayPal and Patreon. Details in the description box below. >> [music]
