Early Life
Harald Quandt was born in Charlottenburg, the son of industrialist Günther Quandt and Magda Behrend Rietschel who had married in 1921. Although the couple divorced in 1929, they remained on extremely friendly terms. Magda later married Goebbels at a property owned by Günther Quandt. Adolf Hitler was Goebbels' best man.
After his mother's re-marriage, Quandt remained with his father who became a prominent business leader in the Third Reich. Nevertheless he paid regular visits to his mother, who had become "the First Lady of the Third Reich", and to his stepfather, who was minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda from 1933. After 1934, he returned to his mother and lived with the Goebbels family until passing his school-leaving examination in 1940.
He served as a lieutenant in the Luftwaffe during World War II. He was injured and later captured by Allied troops in Italy in 1944; he was released in 1947. Magda and Joseph Goebbels committed suicide after murdering their six children in the Führerbunker in May 1945. Harald was the only one of Magda's children to survive.
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
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