lebensborn

[irishandproud]

Hey everyone,

I'm not sure if this would be the appropriate place for this post, but I couldn't think of any other suitable place.

The thing we hear most often when talking about the Nazis is the fact that they wanted only blond hair and blue eyed people. Well, Hitler himself did not fit this profile, the majority of the major Nazi officials did not fit this profile, and the only people to seem to be fit for the Nazis are the SS men who were picked by Himmler. Why did the Nazis look highly upon these blond haired, blue eyed people as the "superior Aryan race", when they themselves did not seem to be "Aryan" enough?

I have seen a program on the History Channel about the Lebensborn program. People that were conceived due to this program appeared on the show, and for anyone who doesn't know about it, the Lebensborn program was a way of producing children of the desired characteristics by having blond hair, blue eyed SS men impregnate women. Was this also a way to destabilize the family structure, making these children bred to fight?

Sorry for such a long post! Thanks in advance!

[Eddy Marz]

I'm not too knowledgeable on the Lebensborn question but these centers didn't start off as "master race" factories. The organization "Lebensborn e. V." guided SS führers in selecting and adopting 'qualified' children. They were established first of all to care, provide, and assist racially valuable families, accommodate biologically valuable mothers in decent homes, lodge husbandless pregnant german girls ('of good stock') and young wives of SS men killed in action or otherwise - and therefore also functioned as a sort of social security organism. Although at least 17.000 children must have been born as a result, the 'producing' of children was a later and fruitless addition soon replaced by kidnapping in conquered eastern territory, provided the children presented acceptable germanic characteristics. A good introduction to these questions would be found in :

- 'Himmler, Reichsführer SS' by Peter Padfield (for general info)
- 'Au nom de la race' by Marc Hillel

Hillel's book (in french) contains also many photographs, and is probably the most documented book on the subject of Lebensborn.

Regards

Eddy

[Vikki]

Hey everyone,

I'm not sure if this would be the appropriate place for this post, but I couldn't think of any other suitable place.

The Women's section is the suitable place, and your post has been moved here.

There are two other threads currently going on this topic, so please post your questions there, as I'm locking this one for redundancy.

"irishandproud": So am I. But please use the "Search" function and continue discussions on already-existing threads.

Best,
~Vikki