Working for Goebbels

Brunhilde Pomsel is 105, and the last surviving member of the Nazis’ inner circle. As Joseph Goebbels’s secretary, she was at the heart of his propaganda machine – yet she insists she had no idea about Nazi atrocities, including “the matter of the Jews”. “I know no one ever believes us nowadays – everyone thinks we knew everything,” she told Kate Connolly in the The Guardian. “We knew nothing – it was all kept well secret.” Goebbels, she says, always had a “gentlemanly countenance”. He wore “suits of the best cloth, and always had a light tan. He had wellgroomed hands – he probably had a manicure every day. There was really nothing to criticise about him.” She fondly recalls watching him walking into the office: “He’d trip up the steps like a little duke, through his library into his beautiful office.” Only once did she glimpse something frightening behind the façade: when she saw him on stage in 1943, calling on the German people to wage “total war”. “No actor could have been any better at the transformation from a civilised, serious person into a ranting, rowdy man. In the office he had a kind of noble elegance, and then to see him there like a raging midget – you just can’t imagine a greater contrast.” Still, she insists her own conscience is clear. “Those people nowadays who say they would have stood up against the Nazis – I believe they are sincere in meaning that, but believe me, most of them wouldn’t have. The idealism of youth might easily have led to you having your neck broken.”