During World War II, there were approximately 12,000 blue-eyed, blond children who were kidnapped by the Nazis. These children became part of Hitler’s plan to create a super Aryan society. They were born in Lebensborn clinics and raised as Germans. In occupied Scandinavian countries, SS officers were selected and encouraged to father babies with the local women or those who chose them to make their party a pure one, one that not only had the same appearances but similar intellectual abilities. It was to be “pure,” as Hitler saw his future race spread across the world as he conquered it. This practice occurred not only in Germany, but Polish children and children of other ethnicities were also abducted. They were forced into labor camps, they became part of medical experi- mentation, and then grouped into Hitler’s plan of a world-wide Germanization.
However, these women with blonde hair and blue eyes knew there were many programs they could willingly join and not have to suffer abuse, and that once accepted, they would have to go through rigorous physicals and visual inspections. Then they could be paired with SS German soldiers, and the babies born to these mothers, unbeknownst to them, would be weaned quickly and placed in the care of the SS, waving goodbye to their true mothers forever. These Nazis believed that the ideal Aryan babies would have pale skin, blond hair, and blue eyes to be able to join the race for a perfect Hitler society.
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World on Fire: did Nazis really recruit women to bear children?
Did World on Fire’s Marga’s story actually happen in real life?
TV & Film Editor July 17, 2023
World on Fire returned to our screens on Sunday night – and viewers have been loving the new season, with the show’s entirety also being available on BBC iPlayer. The series introduced a host of new characters, including a German teenager named Marga who believes that she is being honoured after she is asked to provide children for the Third Reich. But did this actually happen? Find out more…
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Lebensborn program was very real and designed to increase Germany’s population due to a declining birthrate. Women were tested to see if they were “racially valuable” to give birth to children for the Aryan race. While most women involved were unmarried and pregnant, offering single mothers support and various services, teenagers were also recruited from the League of German Girls – a Nazi youth group – to provide children for the Fuhrer.
Marga’s story in World on Fire is similar to Hildegard Koch, a member of the Band of German Maidens who was recruited when she was 18. Speaking about the experience, she said: “The Gau Leader herself had picked me from amongst hundreds of girls. I was half a head taller than the tallest of them and had wonderful long blonde hair and bright blue eyes.”
She continued: “We had to sign an undertaking renouncing all claims to the children we would have there, as they would be needed by the State and would be taken to special houses and settlements for inter-marriage… There were about 40 girls all about my own age. No one knew anyone else’s name, no one knew where we came from.”
Hildegard also revealed that she was introduced to SS soldiers at the maternity home, where they were given a week to chose (sic) someone that they liked and to make sure that their hair and eye colours were as similar as possible. ”
“We were again medically examined and given permission to receive the SS men in our rooms at night… He slept with me for three evenings in one week. The other nights he had to do his duty with another girl. I stayed in the house until I was pregnant, which didn’t take long.” Hildegard gave birth to a baby boy, and looked after him for two weeks before he was taken away.
While in World on Fire, Marga’s parents attempted to raise objections – but backed down over fear of coming up against the Nazis – parents did complain about the situation. An official German Ministry of Justice report from 1944 read: “The parents of girls enrolled in the German Girls’ League have filed a complaint with the wardship court at Habel-Brandenburg concerning leaders of the League who have intimated to their daughters that they should bear illegitimate children.
“These leaders have pointed out that in view of the prevailing shortage of men, not every girl could expect to get a husband in future, and that the girls should at least fulfil their task as German women and donate a child to the Führer.”
Speaking about her role in the show to the BBC, Miriam Schiweck, who plays Marga, said: “Often in films about the Second World War – especially those made by countries outside Germany – the Germans are often portrayed as a little bit two dimensional. They are the bad Nazis and of course, no one would disagree with that, but I think it’s important to also reflect the misplaced pride many felt at being young in that nation.
“This is what I find so interesting about World on Fire, because it’s not only the enemy, but it’s like a microscopic story within the enemy. Marga’s wrapped up in this terrible ideology and doesn’t actually know it or realise (sic) what she signed up to – she’s never even had sex before.”
See: World on Fire: did Nazis really recruit women to bear children? | HELLO!
See also: 80 Years Ago—Mar. 7, 1944: Nazis make house-to-house calls to recruit women ages 17-45 for war work. Sarah Sundin
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The woman who gave birth for Hitler
In 1936, Nazi supporter and school graduate Hildegard Trutz was recruited as one of Germany’s racially ‘pure’ women, chosen to have sex with SS officers in the hope of producing an Aryan child. She was part of a state-supported programme called Lebensborn (meaning the ‘fountain of life’), a Nazi initiative to counteract falling birth rates in Germany and produce a ‘master race’ in accordance with Nazi eugenics
It is estimated that some 20,000 such babies were bred during the 12 years of the Third Reich (1933–45), principally in Germany and Norway. Here, Giles Milton explores Hildegard Trutz’s experience and reveals why the young German woman was so eager to give birth for Hitler…
Hildegard Trutz had been a loyal supporter of the Nazis ever since Hitler came to power. She had joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM, the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth) in 1933 and loved attending its weekly meetings. ‘I was mad about Adolf Hitler and our new better Germany,’ she later admitted. ‘I learned how tremendously valuable we young people were to Germany.’
Trutz quickly became a figurehead of her local organization, in part because of her Germanic blonde hair and blue eyes. ‘I was pointed out as the perfect example of the Nordic woman,’ she said, ‘for besides my long legs and my long trunk, I had the broad hips and pelvis built for child-bearing.’
In 1936, when she was eighteen, Trutz finished her schooling and was at a loss as to what to do next. She chatted with a BDM leader who made a suggestion that was to change Trutz’s life for ever. ‘If you don’t know what to do,’ said the leader, ‘why not give the Führer a child? What Germany needs more than anything is racially valuable stock.’
Trutz was unaware of the state-sponsored programme known as Lebensborn. Its aim was to raise the birth rate of blond-haired, blue-eyed ‘Aryan’ children through interbreeding. Racially ‘pure’ women were chosen to sleep with SS officers in the hope that they would fall pregnant.
The BDM leader explained to her exactly how Lebensborn worked. She would be given a series of medical tests, along with a thorough investigation of her background. It was essential that she had no Jewish blood. Once given the all-clear, she would be able to select a breeding partner from a group of SS officers.
Trutz listened with growing enthusiasm. ‘It sounded wonderful,’ she later admitted, and she signed up immediately. Aware that her parents would disapprove, she told them she was undertaking a residential course in National Socialism.
She was escorted to an old castle in Bavaria, near the Tegernsee. There were forty other girls in residence and all were living under assumed names. ‘All you needed to be accepted there was a certificate of Aryan ancestry as far back at least as your great-grandparents.’
The castle itself was the height of luxury. There were common rooms for sports and games, a library, music room and even a cinema. According to Trutz: ‘The food was the best I have ever tasted; we didn’t have to work and there were masses of servants.’ She was by her own admission self-indulgent and lazy and she quickly learned to enjoy life in the castle.
‘The whole place was in the charge of a professor, a high-up SS doctor, who examined each of us very thoroughly as soon as we arrived,’ Trutz said. ‘We had to make a statutory declaration that there had never been any cases of hereditary diseases, dipsomania or imbecility in our family.’
The professor also warned the girls that they would have to sign a document renouncing all claims to any children they produced, as they were to be the property of the state. They would be brought up in special institutions that would instil an absolute loyalty to the Nazi ideal.
After their initiation, Trutz and the other girls were introduced to the SS men who were to be their breeding partners. Trutz liked what she saw. ‘They were all very tall and strong with blue eyes and blond hair.’ There was a getting-to-know-you session, with the group playing games together, watching films and enjoying social evenings in the castle.
‘We were given about a week to pick the man we liked and we were told to see to it that his hair and eyes corresponded exactly to ours,’ said Trutz. The girls were not told the names of any of the men: anonymity was a key principle of the Lebensborn programme.
‘When we had made our choice, we had to wait until the tenth day after the beginning of the last period.’ Each girl was given another medical examination and told to receive her chosen SS man in her room that very night. Trutz was unbelievably excited, not just about the sexual activity, but the fact that she was doing it all for her beloved Führer.
‘As both the father of my child and I believed completely in the importance of what we were doing, we had no shame or inhibitions of any kind.’ She was particularly impressed with the ‘smashing looks’ of her chosen partner, although she thought he was probably a little stupid.
The officer slept with Trutz for three evenings in that first week. On the other evenings, he had to sleep with other girls at the castle.
Trutz fell pregnant almost immediately and was moved into a maternity home for the next nine months. ‘My confinement came neither too soon nor too late,’ she said. ‘It was not an easy birth, for no good German woman would think of having any artificial aids, such as injections to deaden the pain, like they had in the degenerate Western democracies.’
She weaned her baby son for two weeks and then he was removed from her side and taken to a special SS home where he was to be brought up as a loyal servant of the Nazi state. Trutz never saw him again. Nor, for that matter, did she see the father.
In the years that followed she was tempted to breed more children, but she eventually fell in love with a young officer and they got married. When she told her new husband about her involvement in the Lebensborn programme, she was ‘rather surprised to find that he was not as pleased about it as he might have been’. But he could not openly criticize her, ‘seeing that I had been doing my duty to the Führer’.
Trutz never discovered what became of her child and his eventual fate remains a mystery. Like so many Lebensborn babies, he almost certainly found himself ostracized in post-war Germany, his birth and upbringing a stigma that could never be completely expunged.
It is estimated that some 20,000 babies were bred during the twelve years of the Third Reich, principally in Germany and Norway. Many were adopted after the war, by which time the records of their birth had been destroyed. To this day the majority have never been able to discover the terrible truth about their conception and birth.
This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2016
Published: March 11, 2020 at 5:01 PM
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