Secretary to Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels dies at 106
January 30, 2017
A former secretary to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels has died, aged 106. Brunhilde Pomsel was one of the last remaining people who knew members of the Nazi leadership in person.
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The men who led Nazi Germany
The German National Socialist Workers' party profoundly affected the course of 20th-century world history with their ideology, propaganda and crimes. Who were the key leaders of the movement?
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Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)
As Hitler's Propaganda Minister, the virulently anti-Semitic Goebbels was responsible for making sure a single, iron-clad Nazi message reached every citizen of the Third Reich. He strangled freedom of the press, controlled all media, arts, and information, and pushed Hitler to declare "Total War." He and his wife committed suicide in 1945, after poisoning their six children.
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Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
The leader of the German National Socialist Workers' Party (Nazi) developed his anti-Semitic, anti-communist and racist ideology well before coming to power as Chancellor in 1933. He undermined political institutions to transform Germany into a totalitarian state. From 1939 to 1945, he led Germany in World War II while overseeing the Holocaust. He committed suicide in April 1945.
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Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)
As leader of the Nazi paramilitary SS ("Schutzstaffel"), Himmler was one of the Nazi party members most directly responsible for the Holocaust. He also served as Chief of Police and Minister of the Interior, thereby controlling all of the Third Reich's security forces. He oversaw the construction and operations of all extermination camps, in which more than 6 million Jews were murdered.
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Rudolf Hess (1894-1987)
Hess joined the Nazi party in 1920 and took part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, a failed Nazi attempt to gain power. While in prison, he helped Hitler write "Mein Kampf." Hess flew to Scotland in 1941 to attempt a peace negotiation, where he was arrested and held until the war's end. In 1946, he stood trial in Nuremberg and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died.
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Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962)
Alongside Himmler, Eichmann was one of the chief organizers of the Holocaust. As an SS Lieutenant colonel, he managed the mass deportations of Jews to Nazi extermination camps in Eastern Europe. After Germany's defeat, Eichmann fled to Austria and then to Argentina, where he was captured by the Israeli Mossad in 1960. Tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity, he was executed in 1962.
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Hermann Göring (1893-1946)
A participant in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Göring became the second-most powerful man in Germany once the Nazis took power. He founded the Gestapo, the Secret State Police, and served as Luftwaffe commander until just before the war's end, though he increasingly lost favor with Hitler. Göring was sentenced to death at Nuremberg but committed suicide the night before it was enacted.
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Brunhilde Pomsel's death was confirmed by Christian Krönes, the director and producer of a documentary film featuring the centenarian. Krönes said that Pomsel had been coherent when he last spoke to her on her birthday, January 11, and added that she had died in her sleep at her Munich home on January 27.
In the documentary "A German Life," Pomsel talks about the years that she spent working for Joseph Goebbels, who was in charge of spreading Adolf Hitler's ideology in newspapers and broadcasts as the Third Reich's official Minister of Propaganda. Pomsel accompanied the propaganda minister for three years - almost up to the point of his death.
Goebbels and his wife Magda famously poisoned their six children before committing suicide on May 1, 1945, which Pomsel recalled in an interview in 2011:
"I will never forgive Goebbels for what he did to the world or for the fact that he murdered his innocent children," Pomsel said about the events.
Joseph Goebbels was one of Hitler's most loyal advisorsImage: dpa/everettcollection
A life in obscurity
In the years preceding her job as Goebbels' secretary Brunhilde Pomsel was employed in the news division of the German government broadcasting corporation for nine years, which required her to join the Nazi party.
After the war, she returned to broadcasting, working for national broadcasters in West Germany until reaching retirement. She never married or had children.
Pomsel spent most of her life after World War II living in relative obscurity until a German newspaper published an interview with her in 2011. The feature prompted a great deal of interest in one of the last surviving members of the Nazi leadership's inner circle, eventually leading to the production of the documentary on her life.
