Heinrich Himmler

Mother Crosses were presented to S.S. wives who had given birth to seven or more children. The Reichsfuhrer S.S. concerned himself deeply in all matters of maternity, carefully vetting the pedigree of girls who were said to be pregnant by S.S. men before he would grant them the necessary permit to marry. Himmler never ceased to be obsessed by the problems of fine breeding. Hours passed throughout the war while he sat poring over the individual pedigrees of girls with whom S.S. men were involved. What about reviving the old Teutonic myth that copulation conducted on the gravestones of one’s ancestors was once said to endow any child so conceived with the brave Teutonic spirit of his forefathers? Special leave was to be given to married S.S. men to encourage procreation, though not necessarily on gravestones. If the men could not be sent back to their women, then the women were to be brought to their men. It is typical that a substantial file survives in which a case of adultery between an S.S. man and a soldier’s wife is weighed most carefully; Himmler finally decided in favour of the young couple, and sent the woman who had informed on their activities to learn her lesson in a labour camp.

In his conduct of the Lebensborn movement, Himmler’s racial obsessions combined with his genetic fantasies and reflected the strange humanitarianism that always lurked in Himmler’s nature and which he satisfied through his relations with children, beginning with his own and extending to his nation-wide family of godchildren. The parents of German children of pure race who shared his birthday were encouraged to invite Himmler to become a godfather. Special two-page forms were issued so that the stringent scrutiny that preceded the conferring of this honour could be conducted. But Himmler’s desire to be the godfather of future generations of pure Germans was also developed through the Lebensborn movement. In Himmler’s eyes children of sound racial background should be rescued from parents who for political or other reasons were undesirable, and placed in the rehabilitation centre of a Lebensborn home.

These homes were staffed by women leaders most carefully chosen for their disciplined and devoted nature; they combined the character of nurses, welfare officers and political educators for the mothers and children in their care. Mothers in the Lebensborn homes were not allowed to entertain men, though, wrote Himmler in an order dated 11 January 1941, on very special occasions they could entertain male guests who ‘might be offered a cup of coffee, but be given no opportunity for intimacy’. All cases of extreme indiscipline had to be brought to Himmler’s personal notice. The mothers were also required in 1941 to eat porridge and fruit for breakfast, and Himmler ordered statistics to be compiled about their resulting blood pressure. The consumption of porridge, said Himmler, was a status symbol in Britain. When the women complained that the porridge would make them fat, Himmler wrote on 12 December 1941:

‘I want them to be told that Englishmen, and particularly English Lords and Ladies, are virtually brought up on this kind of food… To consume it is considered most correct. It is just these people, both men and women, who are conspicuous for their slender figures. For this reason the mothers in our homes should get used to porridge and be taught to feed their children on it. Heil Hitler!’

He instanced the slim figures of Lord Halifax and Sir Nevile Henderson as proof that porridge did not fatten such men of breeding. The regular health statistics of both mothers and children became required reading at Himmler’s office. ‘Any racially good mother is sacred to us’, wrote Himmler.

The Lebensborn movement which had begun to provide welfare centres for orphans and unmarried mothers with their children, was extended during the war. Himmler established special S.S. homes and institutions to take over young children in the occupied territories who had the right racial characteristics. Writing in June 1941, Himmler outlined his plan in a letter to one of his officers:

‘I consider it right and proper to acquire racially desirable infants of Polish families with a view to educating them in special (and not too large) kindergartens and children’s homes. The appropriation of these children could be explained on the grounds of health. Children not turning out too well would be returned to their parents.

‘I suggest starting in a small way, perhaps with two or three homes at first to gather some practical experience. As for the children who turn out satisfactorily, we should get precise details about their ancestry after six months or so. After a year of successful education we might consider putting such children into the homes of racially good German families with no children of their own.

‘Only exceptional men and women, particularly well versed in racial matters, should be considered as heads of institutions such as I envisage them.’¹³

Childless families worried Himmler. In a letter written in April 1942 he advocated the infertile partner in a childless marriage allowing the potentially fertile one to copulate outside the marriage for the sole purpose of begetting children. But these childless families became of increasing importance from 1942 as centres of adoption for the large numbers of children with Germanic characteristics stolen by the S.S. from the occupied territories.

In a later speech given on 14 October 1943, Himmler felt free to go much further. He said, speaking of the Slav nations: ‘Obviously in such a mixture of peoples there will always be some racially good types. There I think it is our duty to take their children, to remove them from their environment, if necessary by stealing them… Either we win over any good blood that we can use for ourselves and give it a place in our people or… we destroy this blood.’ The political purpose of this aggregation of German stock was quite clear:

‘For us the end of this war will mean an open road to the East, the creation of the Germanic Reich in this way or that… the fetching home of 30 million human beings of our blood, so that still during our lifetime we shall become a people of 120 million Germanic souls. That means that we shall be the single decisive power in Europe. We shall expand the borders of our German race 500 kilometres further out to the East.’

The number of children up to the age of twelve who were removed in this way will never be known. Though most came from Poland, there were cases of adopted children from Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Russia. This wholesale Germanic adoption was limited by the scale of the organization that could be set up in wartime to deal with it, but an affidavit sworn after the war by Dr Hans Hilmar Staudte, a lawyer attached to the Lebensborn movement, claimed that between two and three hundred children were adopted for Germanization in the Warthegau administrative district of Poland. After testing they were placed with German foster parents whose name they were given, their own first names being kept as far as possible in their German form. The children, of course, were taught to speak German, and in effect became Germans. The problem of tracing individual cases still continues to this day in the International Tracing Centre at Arolsen.

Early in 1943 Himmler’s fancy was taken by two blond and blue-eyed Russian boys he saw in Minsk. These children were in effect adopted for a while by Himmler and his aides: after having been cleaned and schooled a little, they were sent by air to join Himmler on his train. They travelled for a while with him and there was much S.S. correspondence over the loss of one of their overcoats in Munich. Then they were placed in a school to be trained in the proper ways of the Reich.

The national reaction to Lebensborn was often critical. Because the homes were full of unmarried mothers many people thought they were brothels set up for the S.S. The Church in particular opposed the homes. In a speech given to an intimate circle of high officials much later in the war, during May 1944, Himmler spoke informally about the Lebensborn movement and the attacks that had been made upon it, and on himself for advising his S.S. men to procreate:

‘…At first these Lebensborn homes, like every new idea, became the object of scandalmongers by the score. They called them breeding-grounds, human stud-farms and so on. In fact, in these homes we merely look after mothers and the children, some of them legitimate, some not. I would say the ratio is about fifty-fifty, more likely sixty-forty in favour of the legitimately born babies.

‘In these homes every woman is addressed as Frau Marta, or Frau Elisabeth, or whatever her name happens to be. No one bothers whether their babies are legitimate or illegitimate. We look after mother and child, protect them, help them in their problems. There is only one thing unforgivable in these homes: if a mother fails to care for her child as a mother should.

‘Towards the end of 1939, after the Polish campaign, as soon as we knew that the war would go on in the West — the British and French having turned down the Fuhrer’s peace offer after the Polish campaign — I issued an