Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Children of Nazis

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

Almost everyone has a black sheep in their family. Someone who maybe gets in trouble with the law and doesn’t follow rules. But what if you had the misfortune to be related to someone truly horrific? What if you had a relative who was in the upper echelon of the Third Reich? For a handful of people, they had to live with the legacy of parents who were responsible for the murder of millions. Learn more about the children of Nazis on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Almost everyone has a black sheep in their family, someone who maybe gets in trouble with the law and doesn't follow the rules. But what if you had the misfortune to be related to someone truly horrific? What if you had a relative was in the upper echelon of the Third Reich? For a handful of people, they had to live with the legacy of parents who were responsible for the murder of millions. Learn more about the children of Nazis on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by Masterclass. If you've ever wanted to learn something new, wouldn't you want to learn it from the very best people in their field? Masterclass is exactly that. Online courses where you can learn from the very top people in their field. Learn out a cook from Gordon Ramsey. Learn science from Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Photography from Annie Leibowitz. Filmmaking from Spike Lee, Magic from Penn and Teller, and tennis from Serena Williams. And that list is only scratching the surface. You can start learning from the world's best for only $15 per month. just go to everything-everywhere.com slash masterclass or click on the link in the show notes. Once again, that's everything dash everywhere.com slash masterclass. The people I'll be talking about in this episode played no active role in the Third Reich. They just had the misfortune of being born to horrible parents.

They were children during the events of the Second World War and weren't really responsible for anything. That being said, how these children responded to their parents was extremely varied. Most of them did as much as they could to distance themselves from their parents, but a few actively embraced their parents' ideology. Let's start with the top guy himself, Adolf Hitler. As far as we know, Hitler never had any children. However, there was a rumor that he had an illegitimate son in France. In 1918, Jean-Marie L'Oray was born in San Quentin France. He never knew his father, and his mother only told him that his father was a German soldier.

In 1948, just before his mother's death, she told him that the German soldier in question was named Hitler. The story was kept a secret, but it was eventually leaked to the press in the early 1970s. Heinzlingi was Hitler's valet during the war. In his memoirs, he noted, quote, Hitler's belief that he had a son born in 1918 as the result of a relationship he had with a French girl as a soldier in World War I in northern France and Belgium, unquote. There is no hard evidence to prove this claim, and no genetic testing has ever been done. Loret had nine children, so there still might be potential to do genetic testing in the future. If paternity could be proven, then Hitler's descendants would have a claim on the income made from the book Mind Kompf. Hitler did have relatives, however.

Hitler's father was Alois Hitler, and he had a son named Aloys Jr., who was Hitler's half-brother. He migrated to Britain had a son named William Patrick Hitler, who also fought in World War II, against the Germans. It was a great PR coup. William Patrick moved to the United States and had four sons. The family changed their name from Hitler to Stuart Houston for obvious reasons. The remaining sons have never married or had children, and they have made a pact amongst themselves to never have children because of their bloodline with Adolf Hitler. Hitler was a legitimate German surname, and there are still people today walking around with the family name Hitler. There was a documentary released several years ago called Meet the Hitler that tells the story of people with the last

name of Hitler, although they are not necessarily of any relation. They just got stuck with a crappy last name. There are literally Emily Hitler's and Doug Hitler's and Bob Hitler's out there in the world. Other Nazi leaders did have children. Martin Borman was the Nazi Party Chancellor and the private secretary to Adolf Hitler. He had a son named Martin Adolf Borman Jr. And Adolf Hitler was his grandfather. He was the oldest of 10 Borman children, and he was 15 when the war ended. His mother took the family to surrender to the Americans, and she died of cancer soon after. Martin Jr. sought sanctuary in a monastery, and there he converted to Catholicism. He became a priest in 1958, and then left the priesthood in 1969 to get married to a nun. He became a doctor

of theology and traveled around Germany and Austria, speaking about the horrors of the Third Reich. He also went to Israel to meet with Holocaust survivors. He never never, however, however, personally condemned his father, saying it was up to God to judge. Joseph Mengele was known as the Angel of Death and ran horrific experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz. He had a son named Rolf, who was born in 1944. He was only a year old when the war ended, and he never knew his father. Mangala actually escaped Germany and fled to Brazil. Rolf grew up thinking that his father was dead, even though his father managed to forge a passport,

returned to Europe and met his son under the pretense of being his uncle Fritz. Rolf eventually learned the truth and flew to Brazil to meet his father in 1977 and found that his father was unrepentant about his Nazi past. It took him five years to arrange the trip, and he never divulged the location of his father. However, he could never understand how his father did what he did, and eventually abandoned the Mengele a name so his children wouldn't have to bear the burden of it. Heinrich Himmler was the head of the Nazi SS. He had a daughter named Gudrund.

She was the only child of Himmler and was 16 when the war ended. Unlike many of the children of Nazis, she actually had a close relationship with her father. Also, unlike other Nazi children, she was an adamant supporter of her father. She never believed that her father committed suicide at the Nuremberg trials and that he was murdered. She supported far-right causes in Germany her whole life. She married a leader of the German far-right, supported former SS members, provided financial aid, a former Nazi prison guard standing trial and defended her father throughout her life. She died in 2018 at the age of 88.

Herman Garing also had a daughter named Eta. At the end of the war, she was only seven. She and her mother fled west to avoid the Soviets. She grew up in an apartment which became a shrine to her father. Throughout her life, she defended her father and claimed that he had nothing to do with the worst atrocities of the Nazis. She was quoted as saying, quote, my father's problem was his loyalty to Hitler. He had sworn personal fealty to him and would never abandon it even when Hitler had gone too far.

The things that happened to the Jews were horrible, but quite separate from my father. End quote. She died in 2019 at the age of 80. In contrast, Gering's niece, Bettina totally repudiated her uncle, moved to America, and had herself sterilized so she couldn't pass along her genes. Hans Frank was Hitler's personal lawyer and the governor of Nazi occupancy. He was personally responsible for the executions of thousands of people. He had a son named Nicholas.

Nicholas's first memory of meeting children his own age was at the age of four in a concentration camp, and he was not at all close to his father. He was six years old when the war ended. When he grew up and learned about the atrocities of World War II, he understood immediately the enormity of the crimes committed by his father. He later became a journalist writing for Playboy in the magazine Stern in Germany, and wrote several books about his hatred for his father. He thinks his father was driven by greed and ambition,

and would have murdered anyone to get what he wanted. He still carries around a photo of his father everywhere he goes. When asked why he does it, he said, I am pleased by what the picture shows, that he is dead, unquote. I should end by noting the most tragic story of all the Nazi children, the children of Joseph Goebbels. Gerbils was the Nazi minister of propaganda, and his wife Magda was as committed a Nazi as her husband.

Together they had six children. Helga, Hilda, Helmuth, Hilda, Hedda, and Heidi. At the end of the war, the children ranged in age from 13 to five. The entire family was in the bunker with Hitler when he killed himself. Despite Hitler's order that Gerbils and his family flee the bunker, he and his wife decided to stay and kill themselves and their children. One day after Hitler's suicide, they killed their six children while they were sleeping via cyanide capsules placed in their mouth. They never had a chance to grow up to defend or hate their parents.

These are just some of the children of the notable Nazi leaders. There were thousands of mid-level Nazi bureaucrats, camp guards, and officers who committed war crimes, major and minor, who all had families. All of these families and descendants had to come to terms with what the relatives did during the war. The vast majority distanced themselves from what their family members did, but a small few, like the daughters of Gering and Himmler, defended their fathers to the bitter end. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer credit. If you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them.

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