By\u00a0Mikale Olson,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler\u2019s Minister of Propaganda and one of his most loyal disciples, died by suicide on May 1, 1945 \u2014 just one day after the F\u00fchrer took his own life in the bowels of the Berlin bunker. But before Goebbels followed his master into death, he and his wife Magda carried out one final, unspeakable act of devotion to the crumbling Nazi regime: the deliberate murder of their six children, all under the age of 13.
They drugged them with morphine, placed cyanide capsules in their mouths as they slept, and watched as their young lives were extinguished. Then, they turned their violence on themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the approaching Soviet Red Army was notorious for committing heinous atrocities \u2014 rape, torture, mass executions, and the brutal treatment of civilians \u2014 it\u2019s crucial to understand that this fear, real as it was, was not the primary motivator for the Goebbels\u2019 murder-suicide. The idea that Joseph and Magda Goebbels were \u201cprotecting\u201d their children from rape or torture has become a grotesque and historically illiterate myth, now shamefully repeated by a new and deeply disturbed sect of self-identified \u201cChristian\u201d nationalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several of these voices \u2014 most notably Wesley Todd of Right Response Ministries (Joel Webbon\u2019s right-hand man) and Corey Mahler of the Stone Choir podcast \u2014 have praised Goebbels\u2019 actions as righteous and necessary. Mahler boldly declared, \u201cThis was his Christian duty under those circumstances. If you do not understand this fact, then you are no man and should remain silent.\u201d Todd agreed<\/a>, tweeting, \u201cIt\u2019s a tragic situation but I would do the same if my family was going to be brutalized by the Red Army.\u201d When challenged by another user who asked if that meant murder was now justifiable, Todd responded, \u201cKilling is not the same as murder.\u201d He later elaborated<\/a>: \u201cOnce the option of fleeing had passed, in this situation you have two and only two options: 1. Your wife and four daughters (including one as young as four) are raped and tortured to death by hundreds of men. 2. They die painlessly by your hand. That\u2019s it. No third option.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this entire premise \u2014 that there was \u201cno third option\u201d\u2014 is false. Magda Goebbels herself\u00a0admitted\u00a0that she could have fled. In her final letter to her 12-year-old son Harald (from a previous marriage), she wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou shall know that I stayed here against daddy\u2019s will, and that even on last Sunday the F\u00fchrer wanted to help me to get out. You know your mother \u2014 we have the same blood, for me there was no wavering.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She wasn\u2019t cornered. She wasn\u2019t without options. She chose to stay \u2014 chose to murder her children \u2014 because she could not imagine a world without Hitler. Her letter continues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur glorious idea is ruined and with it everything beautiful and marvelous that I have known in my life. The world that comes after the F\u00fchrer and National Socialism is not any longer worth living in and therefore I took the children with me, for they are too good for the life that would follow, and a merciful God will understand me when I will give them salvation (death) \u2026 We only have one goal left: loyalty to the F\u00fchrer even in death and to be able to end our lives with him is an honor.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This was not a desperate act of mercy. It was a deliberate<\/a>, cold, and theologically blasphemous murder-suicide \u2014 a final offering to the idol of Nazi ideology. And it is utterly sickening that anyone claiming the name of Christ would excuse, defend, or glorify it. The Goebbels children were not saved from brutality. They were slaughtered by their own parents because those parents believed Hitler was the world\u2019s savior, and his fall marked the end of anything good or meaningful. This was child sacrifice, pure and simple. And now, shockingly, some Christian nationalists are defending that sacrifice in the name of some perverse version of masculine duty and theological righteousness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJoseph fought to save the White race and preserve Christianity. He and his children are martyr’s for both causes and are being comforted in paradise\u201d (<\/em>Another delusioned Nationalist on Twitter<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The comparison here to modern radical pro-abortion rhetoric is not a stretch \u2014 it is disturbingly accurate. The pro-abortionist says, \u201cBetter for the child to die now than to suffer later.\u201d Magda Goebbels said the same: \u201cThey are too good for the life that would follow.\u201d The pro-abortionist says, \u201cThe world is broken and unfair \u2014 bringing a child into it is cruel.\u201d Magda said, \u201cThe world after the F\u00fchrer and National Socialism is not any longer worth living in.\u201d Both rationales are rooted not in faith, but in fear, unbelief, and narcissism. Both elevate human judgment over God\u2019s sovereignty and presume the right to decide who lives and dies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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