Lebensborn (loosely translated “Spring of Life”) was a secret breeding program established by Adolf Hitler in 1935. In keeping with Hitler’s Aryan master race concept, German Women of “pure” blood bore blond, blue-eyed children in its clinics. Fourteen of the clinics were located in Germany, nine more in Norway. Until the early 21^st century, little was known about their existence because the Nazi officers, who had fathered the children, and the women who had born them, were too ashamed to admit to their role. I only learned about it 15 years ago.

What Prompted the Establishment of Lebensborn Clinics?

During World War I, over two million German soldiers lost their lives. Consequently, there was an acute shortage of marriageable men during the period between WWI and WWII. The abortion rate, on the other hand, was as high as 800,000 annually because women chose abortions to avoid the social stigma attached to bearing children out of wedlock.

Hitler wanted every family to have at least four children, but most married couples produced smaller families. Therefore, to increase family size, he created an incentive for high-ranking Nazi officials with desirable Aryan traits. The more children they had, the less taxes they paid. Lebensborn was to kill two birds with one stone: It was to (1) increase the number of children born while decreasing the rate of abortions and (2) enable unmarried pregnant women to give birth anonymously away from home.

How did the Program Work?

To start with, the Nazis worked on changing peoples’ views about illegitimate children. Hitler declared that as long as there was an imbalance in the population of childbearing age, people “shall be forbidden to despise a child born out of wedlock”. Moreover, leaders of the German Girl’s League were instructed to recruit young women with the potential of becoming desirable breeding partners for Nazi officers. One Lebensborn mother, Hildegard Koch, described how the program worked. https://spartacus-educational.com/Hildegard_Koch.htm The women were introduced to several Nazi officers at the clinic and were given about a week to pick the man they liked best. They were never told the names of any of the men. When the women had made their choice, they had to wait until the tenth day after the beginning of their last mensis. Following a medical examination they received permission to receive the men in their rooms at night.

The Lebensborn (loosely translated “Spring of Life”) Program was established by Adolf Hitler in 1935 in Nazi Germany. www.walled-in-berlin.com

Result of the Lebensborn Program

Some 8,000 children were born in Lebensborn clinics in Germany and another 12,000 in Norway. In many cases, the fathers were married Nazi officers who complied with Hitler’s directive to spread their Aryan seeds. If the mother did not want to keep the child, Lebensborn offered adoption services. The identity of the fathers was kept secret and most documents were burnt at the end of the war.

Lebensborn Aftermath

After the war, many Lebensborn mothers were too ashamed to tell their children about their participation in the program. As a result, these children were unable to discover the identity of their father. They had been bred to become the elite of Hitler’s imagined 1,000-year Reich and ended up cowed by shame, alienation and uncertainty.

The children born in Norway suffered even more. Because the Nazis had encouraged German soldiers to produce children with women of Viking blood, the children born to these hand-selected women of “pure” blood were ostracized and mistreated for many years after World War II had ended. Many never recovered from the stigma of having a German father. Some of the children were even put in mental asylums because Norwegians did not want their German genes to spread.

Why didn’t Hitler have Any Children?

Why did Adolf Hitler want every German family to produce four children while he himself never married (except for the last few hours before he committed suicide in his bunker) and never had any children at all? Most likely, the reason was that there was incest and mental illness in Hitler’s family, a fact that he kept to himself. At a time when his party euthanized people with mental and/or physical ailments, he had no desire to father children who may not have fit the Nazi ideal.

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Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.