Helmut Kunz was an SS dentist who, after the suicide of Adolf Hitler, was ordered to administer anesthetic to the six children of Joseph Goebbels before they were killed.
Early years
Kunz was born in Ettlingen, Germany. He first studied law, then dentistry. He wrote his doctoral thesis on "studies of dental caries among school children as related to their feeding in infancy". In 1936, he opened a dental practice in Lucka, south of Leipzig. He also joined the SS, unit Sturm 10 of the 84. SS-Standarte in Weißenfels, Sachsen.
Unlike many other leading Nazis by April 1945, Joseph Goebbels showed his strong support for Hitler by moving himself and his family into the Vorbunker, that was connected to the lower Führerbunker under the Reich Chancellery garden in central Berlin. Magda Goebbels was Kunz's first patient in the Chancellery. She had developed an abscess under a bridge in her lower jaw. On 27 April 1945, Magda took Kunz aside to ask his help in killing her children. After meeting the children, he left and returned to his duty post at the Chancellery. On 1 May, Magda telephoned and requested he come to the Vorbunker. Once there, she told him that Hitler was dead and there were groups attempting to break out of the Soviet ring, but the Goebbels had decided it was time to die. Magda and her husband, Joseph Goebbels, insisted that Kunz help them. According to Kunz, he injected the Goebbels children with morphine which Magda obtained from Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger to render them unconscious before cyanide capsules were administered.
Kunz returned to work at the emergency casualty station, where he remained until taken prisoner by Soviet Red Army troops on 2 May. Dr. Werner Haase, along with two nurses, Erna Flegel and Liselotte Chervinska were also taken prisoner with him. He spent ten years in Russian captivity, then returned to Münster. In 1955, a former Waffen-SS sergeant and prisoner of war, Harri Mengershausen, implicated Kunz in the children's deaths. In his testimony, Kunz said that he injected the children with morphine but it was Magda Goebbels,, or Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger, who slipped the children cyanide capsules. This contradicts the testimony of SS-OberscharführerRochus Misch, a member of Hitler's Führerbegleitkommando bodyguard and head of communications in the Führerbunker, and statements by Goebbels State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry, Werner Naumann. Naumann and Misch both stated it was actually Hitler's surgeon SS Dr. Stumpfegger who mixed a sweetened narcotic drink to put the Goebbels children into a deep sleep before Magda Goebbels placed cyanide capsules into their mouths. The Germancourts refused to convict Kunz, and he remained in dental practice, highly regarded until his death. He died in Freudenstadt in 1976, and is buried in the Städtischer Friedhof.
