Excerpt from "Lebensborn e.V.", by Georg Liliehthal, pp. 150-155, (1985)
[AMAZON BLURB]
Der ' Lebensborn e.V.': Ein Instrument nationalsozialistischer Rassenpolitik [THE LEBENSBORN E.V.: AN INSTRUMENT OF NATIONAL SOCIALIST RACIAL POLICY] by Georg Lilienthal
[Amazon blurb]
Even today, the Lebensborn e.V., founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1935, is surrounded by a mesh of legends. The truth is: the homes permitted unmarried mothers to give birth to their children in secrecy, and were then allowed to raise them themselves – in the National Socialist sense. A total of over 8,000 children were born in these homes. The action was later extended to “racially valuable” children from the occupied territories
[book not available in English; amazon book blub translated by C.W. Porter].
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From Georg Lilienthal, „Lebensborn, e.V.”
Lilienthal, exceprt, pp. 150-155
The Lebensborn association functioned in accordance with the ideological principles of an aggressive birth rate policy propagated by Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess. Gregor Ebner expressly confirmed this fact -- once again -- in correspondence with advisory medical consultant Prof. Becker, justifying the encouragement of extramarital procreation and adultery on the grounds of the need to compensate for the drop in the birth rate due to the war. “We must not forget”, he declared, “that, as a result of the serious shortage of men caused by the war, large numbers of women will have to remain unmarried after the war, and we should be glad if these women can play their part in the field of population policy, too”.
Even if details were concealed from the public – just think of the Lebensborn secrecy precautions! – the public was not unaware that there was a connection between the radical propensity in the birth rate policy and the association. It is not therefore surprising that, during this period of the suppression of news, rumours began to spread around the slogan “To Give the Führer a Child”. These rumours resulted from popular knowledge of the population policy promoted by the NS leadership relating to the idea of “controlled breeding”, in which the Lebensborn occupied centre stage (59).
That a great many rumours were current about the association – even in Party circles and even in the SS was well known to the SS leadership. Thus, the SS was informed that it was being whispered in Munich that “In the Lebensborn there were SS men who were being made available to women who wished a child” (60).
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58) Letter of 30.3.1942. ITS: L-file 25, sheet 85.
59) Hans Peter Bleuel: Das saubere Reich. (Die verheimlichte Wahrheit. Eros und Sexualitat im Dritten Reich.) Bergisch Gladbach 1979, p. 220 ff.
60) Letter from Ebner to a member of the Wehrmacht, 13.7.1943.
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p. 151]
They also knew that among women followers of the NSDAP, doubts as to the association were growing and the question was often asked whether it was a „bordello for the SS“ (61). “Accusations, both open and covert, were received from the ranks of the SS leadership to the effect that SS men were being “urged to procreate children at any price, and were perhaps even paid a bounty for it” (62). In May 1945, shortly before the capitulation, the young mothers in a Lebensborn home allegedly told an English journalist that they had been voluntarily prepared to bear the children of unknown SS men, in order to give them to the State (63). 33 years after the war, the woman former leader of a Christian women’s association claimed to have been told by a high-ranking SS leader that the Lebensborn was an installation for girls and women selected “to give the Führer children”. The women were said to have been housed in homes during the period prior to delivery and that is was then a question of “helping them to joy” (64).
How did the SS and Lebensborn react to the rumours of controlled extramarital procreation, with which they were frequently confronted or connected by insinuation? Towards the end of the war, SS units were forwarded a paper on “ideological defence”, briefly summarising the “rumours of population policy-related special intentions of the SS”, according to the heading (65). The SS was thus alleged to possess the right to impregnate girls and women -- even the brides and wives of front-line soldiers. Every mother was alleged to receive “a one-time lump sum in the amount of 6,000 RM for every boy born of an SS man, and 4,000 for a girl”. Girls and women wishing to conceal their pregnancy were sent off for rest and recovery, and if they wanted to conceal the child’s birth from their husbands or fiancés, “the State was said to take charge of the child for purposes of care and education”. The author of the letter branded these rumours as “infamous enemy propaganda and deliberate defamation of the entire SS by our ideological enemies”, intended to undermine the fighting morale of the front-line troops. As a countermeasure, he quoted Himmler’s order of 28 October 1939 in full, with the instruction that the
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61) Report from the Party Chancellery, forwarded to Max Sollman by the Reichsführer Personal Staff on 10.9.1943. Ibid, sheet 56.
62) “Über die Lebensbornarbeit”. Speech by Ebner, spring Fruhjarh 1942. ITS: L-file 21, sheet 143.
63) Judy Barden: Freundin und Candy: In: Das ist Germany. Published by Arthur Settel. Frankfurt am Main, 1950, pp. 148-161, here [?] p. 149 ff.
64) Marianne Hamm von Sahr: Von Deutschland nach Deutschland. Wege und Umwege. Frankfurt am Main 1978, p. 77 ff.
65) Letter from the HSSPF, Gau of Danzig-West Prussia, 13.10.1944,relating, in extract form, to a copy of the “Information for purposes of Ideological Defence”. BA: NS 2/model 49.
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page 152]
honour and dignity of the family” stood centre stage in the entire education of the SS. The author was obviously unaware that the very order itself might have been interpreted as indicating that there was a certain kernel of truth to the rumours.
Just how uncertain and helpless the SS really were basically in relation to the rumours becomes likewise clear from the case of Lisamaria Kräntzer, who, in the summer of 1944, asked the HSSPF Elbe in Dresden for information on the “breeding homes” which had allegedly been set up by the SS (66). The HSSPF, overwhelmed by such inquiries, turned to SS-Standartenführer Brandt of the Personal Staff of the Reichsführer SS for assistance. Brandt was reluctant to issue any statements as to the objectives of the Lebensborn. Instead, Brandt wished to make an example and bring the rumours to silence by means of the police. But the final collapse prevented him from carrying out his design.
Himmler personally prohibited publications about the Lebensborn on the grounds that he only intended to public after the success of the “Lebensborn work” when its success could be evaluated in terms of numbers (67). Behind this argument lay the fear that unrestricted information on the objectives of the Lebensborn in the eyes of the general public would have done little to detract from its notoriety. This is also the real reason why SS counter measures were a failure and the whispering campaign was able to continue unabated. The fear of negative public opinion -- the principal vehicle of which, under the conditions of totalitarian rule, consisted of rumours, among other things -- led Himmler to distance himself from a proposal to organise extramarital procreation during the war (68).
Nor did the Lebensborn leadership issue any official declarations. Specific glimpses into the Lebensborn’s overall activity were only permitted by Ebner to select groups of SS men only, while more far-ranging suspicion was simply brushed off (69). Inquiries as to the provision of “procreation assistants”, addressed to the
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66) Letter from the HSSPF Elbe to SS-Standartenführer Brandt, Personal Staff Reichsführer SS, dated 20.7.1944, enclosing letter from Lisamaria Kräntzer in annex. BA: NS 19 new/204.
67) Letter from Ebner to a Gefreiter in the Wehrmacht dated 13.7.1943. ITS: I./file 18, sheet 52.
68) Letter from Himmler to the Lebensborn dated 31.7.1944 with comments on a copy under the title “Honorary Mother” and the creation of [Mutterhöfe] “Mother Farms” [?] Reichsführer!... Doc. 332, p. 275.
69) See Ebner’s speeches a) on 20.1.1937 before the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler BA: NS 178 LSSAH/85; b) on the occasion of the SS-Gruppenführerbesprechung of 25.1.1939 on “Two Years Lebensborn Work”. ITS: L-file 21, sheets 1-13; c) “On the Work of the Lebensborn”, spring 1942. Ibid, sheets II, 140-144.
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Page 153]
Lebensborn directly were answered curtly in the negative without additional comment (70). Only when information on the nature and objectives of the association were expressly requested did Ebner reply in greater detail (71). When he did so, he mentioned the above mentioned rumours and called them a “product of our black enemies”. Thus, it was “nonsense” that the Lebensborn was accused of taking the children away from unmarried mothers in order to have them raised by the SS (72). He assured that “everything the SS does is clean and pure and we can withstand any criticism”. How serious these assurances were to be taken may be measured by the fact that the public was never clarified about the association and the greater part of its documents were destroyed upon the capitulation (73) [Note: the files of the Lebensborn central office in Munich were destroyed by the Americans. –CP].
Thirty years after the war, two French journalists, Marc Hillel and Clarissa Henry, believed they had finally found proof that “controlled procreation” had actually occurred in the Lebensborn” (74). Perusing the population registry office records for the former “Hochland” maternity home in Steinhörung, they discovered four addresses repeatedly given by the expectant mothers as their place of residence: Kurfürstenplatz 1, Adelheidstrasse 26, Boschetsrieder Strasse 10 and Ismaninger Strasse 95. To them, this seemed mysterious, and they hinted that the addresses provided support to the alleged testimony of an alleged witness that the houses had been used as assignation addresses organised by the Lebensborn at which SS men could procreate children with selected girls and women of “Nordic” ancestry (75).
In reality, the repeated mention of these four addresses had a much more commonplace explanation. We have already indicated that the convenience addresses were provided by the Lebensborn to enable the mothers to conceal their whereabouts during their stay in the Lebensborn maternity homes. The addresses repeatedly listed in the birth register of the Steinhörung II registry
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70) Thus, Ebner wrote to the head physician at one women’s clinic on 11.12.19 saying: “At your request, I must inform you that the SS maintains no installations such as indicated by yourself. I am unable to provide you with any such addresses”. ITS: L-file 26, sheet 133.
71) Letter from Ebner to a Gefreiter in the Wehrmacht, dated 13.7.1943: ITS: L-file 18, sheets 51-53.
72) In a letter to Max Sollmann dated 27.2.1941, Ebner advised Sollman simply to refuse to accept mothers who left the homes shortly after their confinement and who wished to leave their children in the homes, since “the Lebensborn homes are not simply birth-giving installations, in which one can deposit a child like laying an egg”. ITS: L-file 54, sheet 258.
73) Before the Nuremberg Tribunal, Sollmann asserted that the Lebensborn homes were not “breeding establishments”. Stenographic transcript dated 23.1.1948, p. 4095. Former Lebensborn employee Dr. Erich Schulz also firmly denied that the association had any occasion for extramarital procreation. Stenographic transcript dated 15.11.1947, p. 1028 ff.
74) Hillel, p. 122.
75) Ibid, pp. 132-135.
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Page 154]
office (...) are merely confirmation of this simple statement of fact (76). Two orders from the Lebensborn central office expressly advise to use Adelheidstrasse 26 as a convenience address in 1938 and 1939 (77). The same address often appears in the birth registers for the year 1940. [Lebensborn official] [Guntram] Pflaum had his residence at this address during that same year (78).
Two other addresses also belonged to Lebensborn employees. Boschetsrieter Strasse 10, occupied by [Wilhelm] Tietgen (79), was only used by the expectant mothers for registry office registrations until the beginning of 1941, when Tietgen took over the Lebensborn work in Norway in early 1941; after that time, the address no longer appears in the birth registry records. The Kurfürstenplatz 1 address, occupied by Inge Viermetz until 15 February 1942, appears in the birth registry records until 1942, when Viermetz moved to Isabellastrasse 13 (81). This new address – Isabellastrasse 13 -- promptly begins to appear in the birth registry records at this exact same time, until 1943, when Viermetz left the Lebensborn. Ismaninger Strasse 95, the address of certain Lebensborn administrative departments between 1941 and the end of 1943 appears to have been used only after the evacuation of the Lebensborn central offices to Steinhöring in the summer of 1944 (82). Entries in the births registry using the Ismaninger Strasse 95 address do not appear in the birth registry records before 1944.
Accordingly, Lebensborn employees not only made their personal addresses available
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76) The birth register is now located in the registry office of the municipality of Steinhöring.
77) See above, p. 80.
78) See the letter dated 24.4.1940. BDC: SS personal files, Guntram Plflaum.
79) See BDC: SS personnel files for Wilhelm Tietgen.
80) Sworn statement of Rosa Spinrad, former Lebensborn employees, dated 12.12.1947. Viermetz, doc. no. 3, p. 10.
81) Ibid, with sworn statement of Rosemarie von Faber, former Lebensborn employee and subsequent tenant at Mrs Viermetz address at Kurfürstenplatz 1 after 10.12.1942. Viermetz doc. no. 24, p. 79.
82) Circular letter from Sollman on the opening of the “Offices at Ismaningerstrasse 95” dated 24.6.1941. ITS: L-file 32, sheet 138. See also the circular letter from Frau Viermetz dated 10.9.1941. Ibid, sheet 158. Sollmann, Gregor Ebner and Tesch all resided temporarily but officially at this address at the same time. Sworn statement of Konrad Hartl, former Lebensborn work leader, dated 9.12.1947. Sollman doc. no. 29, p. 13 ff, and sworn statement of Karl Birkel, former Lebensborn head department leader, dated 5.1.1948. Sollman doc 55, p. 6. Ebner lived at Ismaningerstrasse 95 from 18.12.1942 until 4.4.1943. Letter from Ebner dated 22.12.1942. ITS: L-file 56, sheet 159, and two letters dated 5.4.1943. ITS: L-file 62, sheets 274 ff. Tesch continued to occupy the house until its complete evacuation due to bomb damage in mid-1944. Sworn statement of Konrad Hartl dated 8.12.1947. Tesch doc. 16, p. 40 ff. The construction of offices of the central office and service dwellings for the Lebensborn leaders also explains why the married couple from the neighbourhood, who became the “star witnesses” for the two French authors, saw both men and SS men together in house no. 95. It hardly needs to be stated that a great many rumours were going around about the mother’s residences of the association in Munich to the effect that they were “bordellos” and the like. Ebner had heard that they were “SS bordellos” and the like. See his letter to a Gefreiter in the Wehrmacht dated 13.7.1943. ITS: L-file 18, sheet 52.
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page 155]
to unwed Lebensborn mothers for their personal correspondence (83), but also permitted these same women to use these same private addresses when reporting to the police, in order to avoid having to mention the maternity home as their place of residence. This is how these addresses came to appear in the birth register records of what were in fact illegitimate children. The mysterious thing about these four addresses is not that they were secret assignation addresses for purposes of controlled breeding, but rather that, with their help, unmarried pregnant women were permitted to their whereabouts and, therefore, the fact of their pregnancy from their home authorities.
The last remnant of reserve on the part of the NS leadership in their birth rate policy were based on tactical considerations only and not on moral considerations. If the war had ended in victory, Hitler and the NSDAP would have abandoned all consideration of foreign reaction to their policies as well as of the sensitivities of the German people and all self-restraint. Now, Himmler appears to contradict the allegation that the Lebensborn only accepted women who were already pregnant. In May 1943, in particular, over the course of a long conversation with his astonished physician and masseur, Felix Kersten, Himmler mentioned the association in connection with “controlled breeding”: “I secretly allowed it to be understood that any unmarried woman, who was alone, but who longed for a child, could turn confidingly in the Lebensborn. [...] This was a revolutionary step, as I was very well aware. An unmarried women, according to existing moral views, must not long for a child. [...] How often can they not find the suitable man or cannot marry for professional reasons, but their wish for a child is still there. There I intervened and created the possibility of enabling such women to have he desired child. [...] That we would only recommend valuable, racially impeccable men as ‘procreation assistants’, you can easily imagine” (84).
Kersten himself provides the key to an understanding of these remarks when he comments on this, and others, subsequent conversations relating to future birth rate policies, in which Himmler appeared to him to be speaking as a “trained theoretician” and a “prophet” who had apparently fallen for a “Fata Morgana” ...
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83) See above, p. 80 ff.
84) Felix Kersten: Totenkopf und Treue. Heinrich Himmler ohne Uniform. Hamburg 1952, p. 320.
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[COMMENT BY C. PORTER: With regards to the last reference, Kersten's book is not a particularly reliable source of information; it contains much that is true, as well as much that is obviously false, including -- incredibly enough -- the "cremations by atomic bomb at Auschwitz" [!] and a number of other ridiculous fairy tales. It is important to obtain the first edition of Kersten's book and read it all the way through.
The "atomic bomb" quote is as follows:
“Kriminalrat Obersturmfuehrer Goering, a trustworthy man (unlike his homonym) told me something about ‘the secret weapon’, I believed him.
He said that a village had been built near Auschwitz for experimental purposes. They wanted to ‘try out’ the new weapon. For the purpose, twenty thousand Jewish men, women and children had been brought to live in this village. A single shell had been fired on the settlement. It had caused six thousand degrees of heat, and the whole village – houses, human beings, and animals included – was burnt to ashes.
Obviously, as I see it now in retrospect, the Germans had nearly completed their atomic bomb and were almost ready to use it on the enemy when the encirclement of Berlin was complete.”
[QUESTION: If it could be delivered by means of a single artillery shell, why was it never used?]
Source: The Memoirs of Dr. Felix Kersten, 1st English edition, published by Ljus-Esselte, printed in the USA at The Country Life Press, Garden City, NY, 1947, pp. 257-58).
Most people believe that the first edition appeared in the 1950s. Instead, it appeared in 1947. The later editions appear to have been slightly edited (for example, the words quoted above -- speaking as "Prophet" who had fallen for a "Fata Morgana" etc. -- are simply missing, i.e., they were added later).
The book contains a great of other material which is equally lurid or ridiculous, and is generally riddled with claims known to be untrue, or which are, to say the least, highly implausible, including a great deal of bragging on Kersten's part. I shall have a bit more to say on this.
END OF COMMENT BY -C.P.]
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LINKS
Excerpt from introduction to "Der Lebensborn, e.V,", by Georg Lilienthal (translated by C.W. Porter) click here
Excerpts from pp 150-155 of "Der Lebensborn, e.V,", by Georg Lilienthal (translated by C.W. Porter) click here
Excerpts from “Deutsche Mutter, bist du bereit” ["German Mother, Are You Prepared?"] by Dorothee Schmitz-Köster (translated by C.W. Porter) click here
Excerpt from Chapter 1 of “Dem Führer ein Kind Schenken” by Volker Koop (translated by C.W. Porter) click here
Excerpt from pp. 232-34 of “Dem Führer ein Kind Schenken” by Volker Koop (translated by C.W. Porter) click here
Excerpts from "Master Race: The Lebensborn Experiment in Germany" by Catherine Clay and Michael Leapman -- click here
"Master-Race"/Lebensborn Internet World Lie Championships FIRST PRIZE -- I Am a Lebensborn Child -- click here
"Master-Race"/Lebensborn Internet World Lie Championships SECOND PRIZE -- "Master Race Baby" Olaf Schmedermann -- click here
"Master-Race"/Lebensborn books on amazon.com, amazon.de and amazon.fr (with translations) click here
"Master-Race"/Lebensborn World Championship Lie Videos on youtube.com (with translations) click here
Review of History Channel's "History's Mysteries: The Lebensborn (reviewed by C.W. Porter) click here
Filmography of Arthur Brauner, "German" producer of world's first "terrifying" trash film epic about "Nazi sex farms" (completed in 3 weeks) -- click here
The Non-Existence of any Nazi "Doctrine" of the "Master Race" -- click here
The "Master Race" accusation at Nuremberg -- click here
Jewish Racism - click here
Excepts from "Myth of the Twentieth Century" -- Use of word "Herrenvolk" by Alfred Rosenberg -- click here
Use of word "Master Race" in standard literature -- click here
Anti-Nazi "Master Race" sexploitation pics -- click here
Nazi "Sex Farms" -- The Lie... and the Reality... click here
Explanation of remarks on William L. Shirer -- click here
Not Guilty at Nuremberg
Made in Russia -- The Holocaust
For atomic bomb cremations at Auschwitz, click here
Civilization: now you see it...
...now you don't.