The Nazi Lebensborn program is a grim project that crippled the lives of thousands of children.
20,000 children were born and 200,000 children were abducted as part of the Lebensborn programme.
Hitler had no children of his own, one of the reasons perhaps being that he was afraid that they would be born like him – small and dark.
The Nazis encouraged German women to have as many children as possible. Propaganda claimed that motherhood was the only true vocation of “good” German women.
Mothers with four or more children were awarded the Order of the Mother’s Cross of Honor. These mothers received greater benefits, such as better housing, food, or clothing.
The Nazis prepared German girls for motherhood from an early age. The girls of the League of German Girls, the women’s wing of the Hitler Youth, had to do a lot of sports. The Nazis believed that only women with strong bodies could have many healthy children.
However, the Nazis wanted to increase the German population with children of “Aryan” appearance. They launched a monstrous program called Lebensborn (German for “Source of Life”).
The notorious Lebensborn program
Title page of the Lebensborn brochure
The Lebensborn program was founded in 1935 by Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. Lebensborn’s goal was to create a master race through reproduction as well as the kidnapping of children. Himmler expected every SS officer to have at least four children. It doesn’t matter if it’s legal or not. Parents of children born under the Lebensborn program had to be certified Aryans. Most of the women and men who took part in Lebensborn were blond with blue eyes.
Lebensborn was also presented as an alternative to abortion. The Nazis made abortion a criminal offence. Consequently, women could give birth in Lebensborn homes to avoid criminal punishment and social stigma for having a child out of wedlock. This option was used by many adolescent girls. More than sixty percent of all children born in Lebensborn were to single mothers.
Also, local women in the occupied countries who became pregnant by German soldiers gave birth in Lebensborn houses.
Nazi baptism of a child from Lebensborn
The SS took care of all the children involved in the Lebensborn program. They didn’t care if the child was legitimate or illegitimate. The only thing that mattered was that the child was Aryan. In addition, they wanted to turn the Lebensborn children into loyal followers of Hitler. Lebensborn’s newborn babies were baptized by the Nazis. The ceremony involved a silver SS dagger, a flag with a swastika, and a candlestick made in the Dachau concentration camp.
The Lebensborn children received excellent treatment. They ate well and received enough sunlight and fresh air.
The German Family, Through the Eyes of German Propagandists (1938)
Lebensborn homes had state-of-the-art childcare equipment. The Germans continued to use these houses as maternity hospitals for many years after the war. In accordance with the nature of the industrialization of children’s production, children born in Lebensborn houses were given serial numbers. For example, “View L 364” Some children were raised by the Nazis directly in the houses of Lebensborn. The rest of the children were adopted by trusted Nazi families.
Around 20,000 babies have been born under the Lebensborn programme. 8000 in Germany and 12000 in Norway.
One of the most famous people born in the Lebensborn program is Anni-Frid Lyngstad, a singer from the world-famous group ABBA.
Anni-Frid Lyngstad
The Nazis asked blonde girls with blue eyes to take part in Lebensborn
Aryan girls with blue eyes and blond hair were invited to take part in Lebensborn. The coaches of the German Girls’ League were looking for girls who met Aryan standards.
Member of the League of German Girls
Selected girls were sent to a remote location, usually a castle. They were given a life of luxury—servants, no work, no movies, better food. After a while, they were introduced to a group of SS men. The men were all tall, strong, fair-haired, and blue-eyed. Each girl chose the one she liked and had sex with him. The couple didn’t even exchange names. The whole procedure was mechanical and industrial. Like on a farm with pigs or cows.
After the birth of the child, the teenage mother handed him over to S.S. She was to return a year later to give birth to another child of Nazi Germany. Girls had to renounce all claims to their children, as they became the property of the state.
The Nazis also kidnapped children to raise them as Aryans.
Lebensborn Girl
“Either we win any good blood we can use for ourselves and give it a place in our people, or we destroy that blood.”
— Heinrich Himmler
Thousands of children who looked like Aryans were abducted and handed over to German families. Children deemed unfit were killed. The Nazis preferred the youngest, who did not remember their childhood. Children between the ages of two and six were the easiest to be brainwashed into believing they were Germans.
The Nazis kidnapped more than 200,000 children from Eastern Europe. Their “new” parents told them they were war orphans. “It’s your new mom!” was a common suggestion. Their new parents destroyed the children’s true identities. The Nazis even forged birth certificates claiming that the children were actually Germans.
Children who refused to accept the lies were sent to death camps or killed.
What happened to the children in the Lebensborn program?
Kindergarten in Liebensborn.
As I wrote above, one girl born under the program “Lebensborn” was lucky in life – she became a famous singer, soloist in the group “ABBA”. But this is only a rare exception to the sad statistics: children born under the Lebensborn program were bullied and mistreated after the war. They were given nicknames such as “SS bastard,” “rat,” or “Nazi child.” They spent most of their childhood in psychiatric hospitals.
The Norwegian government even tried to deport Lebensborn’s children to Germany, Brazil and Australia.
Many of Lebensborn’s children developed stuttering, wet the bed, and had difficulty expressing emotions.
The Lebensborn children were trying to find their real parents. But most of them never succeeded, because the Nazis forged birth certificates and destroyed abduction documents. The Allies returned only fifteen percent of the abducted children to their biological parents. Often their parents were ashamed of them, and they greeted their returning children with a wall of coldness.
The children from Lebensborn suffered from the loss of identity and even more from the loss of true parental love!
Decades after the war, the public tried to suppress any discussion about Lebensborn.
In 2000, the Norwegian government apologized to the Lebensborn children for their shameful treatment. A very belated, but still important apology!
“Finally, we don’t have to hide anymore, we don’t have to be ashamed anymore, we don’t have to feel guilty anymore.”
— Gudrun, a child from the Lebensborn program
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They were raised adherents of Nazi ideology
Lebensborn was a monstrous program designed to increase the Aryan population. The Nazis didn’t care if they broke up families. They didn’t care that they hurt mothers, fathers, and children.
Any regime that dares to touch the innocence of children deserves to be destroyed.
Thousands of children were born in specialized homes. Thousands more were kidnapped from their biological parents. These children grew up without true parental love and with deep emotional wounds.
We can’t change the past. But when we learn about the horrific deeds of the Nazis, we must do everything we can to ensure that such a past never happens again!