Murder in Hitler's Bunker: Who Really Poisoned the Goebbels Children?

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After Kunz had spent 10 years in Russian captivity, the Kremlin finally released him on Oct. 4, 1955. A short time later, the death of the Goebbels children became a case for the public prosecutor, but only because the district court in the Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden was conducting obligatory proceedings to verify Hitler's death. One of the many witnesses was Harri Mengershausen, a former assistant inspector and SS official, as well as a former prisoner of war.

Mengershausen first testified about Hitler's suicide, and then the judge, Heinrich Stephanus, began to probe into the Goebbels case: "The death of the children is still a complete mystery. We don't know who did it and what exactly was done… Dr. Kunze was once mentioned in this context." Neither the judge nor the witness knew Kunz's correct name.

"Dr. Kunze refused three times to poison the children," Mengershausen said, "and then Goebbels … pointed out to him that he still had the power to issue orders, and that he (Dr. Kunze) could be punished for disobeying a order. After that, he administered the injections…"

"But you only know this from hearsay?" Stephanus asked.

"I know it because he told me himself," Mengershausen replied.

Six Counts of Murder

By that point, Kunz had settled in the northwestern German city of Münster, where he was working as a "voluntary assistant" at the university dental clinic, and as a contract physician with the new German armed forces, the Bundeswehr. Chief prosecutor Theodor Middeldorf launched a preliminary investigation against Kunz for six counts of murder, under case No. 6 Js 1041/56.

During the coming months, Middeldorf examined many witnesses who had persevered until the end in the Führer's bunker -- Hitler's last confidants. They included his secretary Traudl Junge, his valet Heinz Linge, his driver Erich Kempka and his chief pilot Hans Baur.

Some had never heard of Kunz, while others were familiar with him and his story. But Middeldorf had, in fact, no need for a classic incriminating witness. In the first hearing, the dentist confessed that he had administered morphine to the children, and he stated that his fellow doctor, Stumpfegger, and Magda Goebbels had been alone in the room. When Goebbels emerged from the room, Kunz testified, she was weeping and said: "Everything is over now!"

In January 1959, the public prosecutor's office in Münster brought charges, not for murder, but for aiding and abetting a homicide "through six independent actions." From the very beginning, the prosecutors had ruled out the possibility that the 1954 amnesty law could be applied in the Kunz case.

First, they argued, the "request to participate in the killing of the children" was not a "binding order" for Kunz, even if Magda Goebbels had insisted that it had come directly from either her husband or Hitler. And even if Kunz had believed Magda Goebbels, he ought to have refused, the prosecutors argued, because "killing the children was nothing but a crime."

Members of the Nazi Party

After examining the records for only three weeks, the First Criminal Chamber of the Münster State Court closed the proceedings, at the government's expense. "Anyone who incurred guilt in a situation which was not under their control should, as a rule, receive immunity from prosecution," the court suggested.

And this was to apply to a doctor who felt threatened by the regime in the form of the wife of a minister? The immunity law had not been enacted for a case like Kunz's, no matter how it was interpreted. Perhaps that was why the judges wrote, in the grounds for their decision, that it was time to finally draw a line "under the confusing circumstances."

Three months later, the regional appeals court in Hamm upheld the lower court's decision, while emphasizing how dangerous the situation had been for Kunz. Magda Goebbels, the court argued, had "made it clear to him that he would be killed if he refused to perform the task that was intended for him."

Describing the act of being an accomplice to the killings of six children as a "task that was intended for him" is a bitter way of phrasing it. These are the words of lawyers, and it is hardly surprising that both the presiding judge, Gerhard Rose, born in 1903, and the president of the regional appeals court, Gerhard Ahlich, born in 1905, had been members of the Nazi Party. Rose's membership number was 4 413 181, and Ahlich's was 4 079 094. Both men had joined the Nazi Party on May 1, 1937.

Coincidentally, it was the same day Kunz joined the party.

Scattered in the Elbe

The dentist died in Freudenstadt in southwestern Germany in 1976. He had been highly regarded in the community and had kept working until his death. He is buried in the municipal cemetery, division R, double grave 10/11.

According to the Russian account, after the autopsies the bodies of the children, as well as those of their parents and of Hitler and Eva Braun, were hastily buried near Buch in northeastern Berlin. They were moved again twice before the politburo in Moscow ordered their "final" destruction, "under strict orders of secrecy," because the Russians wanted to avoid attracting attention. The KGB was instructed to perform the clandestine mission, code-named "Operation Archive."

According to a secret document, on the night of April 4-5, 1970, a KGB unit disinterred "skulls, bones, ribs, vertebrae and so on." The agents threw everything they found onto a bonfire, and the "remains" were "burned completely" and "together with pieces of charcoal, were pounded into powder."

The ashes were scattered in the Elbe River.

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• Part 1: Who Really Poisoned the Goebbels Children?
• Part 2: Orders from Hitler
• Part 3: Judicial Scandal