Nazikinder, Paula Hitler, & other relatives.

Discussion in 'The Third Reich' started by jacobtowne, Dec 30, 2006.

  1. Christos

    Christos Discharged

    Why should Hermann Goering's progeny be a surprise?.....His marriage to his second wife was, after all, the social extravaganza of it's day. The Goering's were the social darlings of the Third Reich hierarchy, with no scandles that come to mind (like Goebbels), and no skeltons in the cupboard (like Heydrich). Goering was not a public womanizer as a lot of Partei hacks were portrayed, and Karin Halle was the epitome of a German country Gentleman's dwelling.
    Goering's interests were many and varied, including model railways, & model boats. As a child, Hermann climbed mountains, and presented a 'sporty' outlook to the German public, a passion that did not really dissappear even when he became portly.

    The stage has been set for many years now for a reappraisel of Hermann Goering, not as the transvestite morphia addict he is so often portrayed as, but as something very different to that which Allied propaganda portrayed him. We need more time and distance from the Third Reich to get some perspective on it, and to see the principle leaders and personalities as something closer to the way in which contemporary German people viewed them.....Never forget that Germany was the ONLY totalitarian regime to have even a semblance of voter based legitimacy, appealing, as they did, to middle class German voters as a 'repectable' and 'responsible' government. Time is often best for reappraisal......look at how historians view Napolean Buonaparte now, compared to his contemporaries. He does not look like such a tyrant anymore.......One wonders if opinions will ever change for the Elite of the National Socialist German Worker's Party, not the original Fascists in Europe, and certainly not the most brutal regime either (that title is reserved for Stalin's Russia).
     
    Sussex by the Sea likes this.
  2. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    ... and signed the 'Final solution' decree at Wansee in July '41.
    Lovely bloke :huh:.

    Give or take the great assistance in Hitlers rise, taste for looting entire countries,etc. of course...
     
  3. stevew

    stevew Senior Member

    Next you be saying Hitler wasn't the tyrant that we see him as today
     
  4. 4th wilts

    4th wilts Discharged

    i think napoleon was a tyrant,rampaging all over europe.but now,200yrs on the french see him as a hero,and didnt he do well at austerlitz etc.so i see where chris is coming from.yours,4th wilts.
     
  5. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    Is this an attempt to be a Goering apologist?

    Regarding the Nazi state, it was Goering who created the Gestapo organisation which created terror throughout occupied Europe.

    Perhaps the testimony of the Czech Prime Minister, Emil Hacha when, after having to cede the Sudetenland to Germany in October 1938 and was then summoned by Hitler to be told in March 1939 that Germany intended to occupy the remainder of Czechoslovakia will persuade against a revisonist view.

    Emil Hacha related his meeting with Hitler and Goering as follows.

    "One can stand Hitler shouting because one who shouts does n't necessarily have to be a devil inside.But Goering was there with his friendly looking face.He took me by the hand and gently reasoned with me, asking whether it was really necessary for a beautiful city like Prague be flattened within hours.He spoke in an affectionate manner and looked straight into my eyes like awoman.That's when I realised that it was the devil talking to me"

    Incidentally,once the Nazi Party took power after an election which did not give them overall voting power over all parties,further national elections were never called again.Parliamentary democracy was destined to be reborn in West Germany only after the defeat of the Nazi regime.National elections were only held during the Weimar Republic.The Nazi Enabling Act saw the end the parliamentary procedures and democracy from January 1933.
     
    von Poop likes this.
  6. Trincomalee

    Trincomalee Senior Member

    I've seen Martin Bormann jr. on several documentaries .
    One of these set up an encounter for children of Nazi officials and children of Holocaust survivors . It was very moving.
    Linden
     
  7. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

     
  8. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    James S likes this.
  9. Steve G

    Steve G Senior Member

    Adam / Anyone know if the Goeth thing's available on DVD anywhere, please? Only, I have the DVD set up now, but my " connection " won't allow me to watch YouTube.

    I'd like to see that.
     
  10. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

  11. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Merged 2 threads on relatives of leading Nazis to concentrate stuff a bit.

    Edda Goering intrigues me more and more.
    That Lebert book said she received tens of thousands of cards on her birth, was presented as a major figure in the more sentimental side of propaganda, and postwar lived well in Europe's high society off the kindness of Spanish friends, not haunted in the same way as many of the other kids at all. Seems to have stayed pretty shady though, hard to find good info on her among a rather sketchy web coverage. Jamd
    Jamd

    Mussolini's progeny hadn't occurred to me before:
    Last surviving child of Benito Mussolini dies - International - redOrbit
     
  12. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    A noted Jazz musician too - seems like the sins of the father didnt pass on to the son, and rightly so.
     
  13. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Klara Hitler gave birth today, in 1889.
    All in all, a bit of a bad job all round...
     
  14. kfz

    kfz Very Senior Member

    Adam,

    There was a program on one of the history channels quite a while back about some of his ralatives (some cousins of somesort IIRC) who lived in USA, I think they had decided amongst themselves not to have children. I can't remember their exact connection to Hitler. The program also stated he spent some time in Liverpool visiting a relative - again I can't remember who

    Steve


    The story goes along the lines that Hilter's Half brother, his name escapes me, who was a bit of a black sheep of the family ended up in Ireland. He was a chef or something in the catering trade. From there he ended up in Liverpool (not unrealistic) where he had a part share of the pub on Dale St (bit less beleivable). The pub (which is still a pub) has a plaque in it If I remember right.

    Hitler visits his brother, but speaking no English, doesnt really mix with the locals. Spends his time wandering round and seeing the large amount of trade. I guess this is meant to build up the case for the admiration of the British Empire.

    The tale is well reported but have not seen any evidence, maybe its true but there just isnt any.

    Kev
     
  15. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Klara Hitler gave birth today, in 1889.
    All in all, a bit of a bad job all round...

    I wonder if it was a difficult birth :unsure:
     
  16. Peter Clare

    Peter Clare Very Senior Member

    BBC NEWS | Europe | The child of Auschwitz's Kommandant

    Barbara Cherish is a child of the SS, and the burden lies heavily upon her.

    She knew early in her life that her German father, Arthur Liebehenschel, was involved in something terrible, something the family did not discuss.
    Only later, as an adult, did she discover he had run part of the Auschwitz concentration camp for five months during World War II.
    The knowledge gnawed at her, but it took a life crisis - her divorce and the death of her sister - to spur her to delve into the past and piece together her father's story.
    The result is a book in which she struggles to reconcile her love for the father she never knew with the knowledge of his crimes, which saw him sentenced to death in Poland after the war.
    [​IMG] [​IMG] I do have mixed feelings because he was a complex person. Here's this good person that really tried everything he could to help the prisoners [​IMG]



    "As a child, I was never really allowed to talk about my past with my family. I heard some things as a small child, about the mystery father, about Auschwitz. I never really processed it because I was so young. I knew it was something bad.
    "There was a guilt there, I think that we all have. That we carry the guilt, being the…" she hesitates, "the children of the perpetrators".
    Born in 1943, she was placed in foster care aged six. Her new family emigrated in 1956 to the US, where she has remained.
    Stylishly dressed, Barbara arrives early at a San Diego cafe and apologises in advance, saying that "sometimes I get emotional" while telling her father's story. As predicted, she later becomes tearful.


    Acts of compassion
    Finding out more about her father, she explains, led her into painful territory. Not only did he help run Auschwitz, but before that he had left his wife and children for another woman. Her mother's mental health deteriorated after the war and she committed suicide in a hospital for the mentally ill in 1966.
    Liebehenschel was kommandant of Camp I, the first of Auschwitz's three. According to Piotr Setkiewicz, head of research at the Auschwitz Museum, he was not directly in charge of the gas chambers at Camp II, Birkenau, but was formally responsible for sending prisoners at Camp I to their deaths.

    [​IMG]
    Auschwitz's famous gates were the entrance to Camp I

    Despite all this, Barbara has a daughter's loyalty. The book is dedicated to her father, and the Liebehenschel she writes about in The Auschwitz Kommandant is a contradictory man, capable of acts of compassion towards inmates, and stricken by guilt for his role in the murder of women and children.
    A German who worked with Liebehenschel at Auschwitz testified at his trial that the kommandant once travelled to Berlin to attempt to prevent up to 500 prisoners being gassed.
    Several former prisoners of Auschwitz also gave evidence for the defence, saying he had improved certain conditions at the camp. In sentencing him to death, the court conceded that his claims of administering "fair treatment of prisoners and alleviation of hardship" were truthful.
    Barbara, in her book, cites former prisoners who credit him with ordering the release of those who had been held in camp bunkers for months, ending beatings for minor crimes, and ending the informer network among prisoners. He also ordered a pool to be created for inmates.
    Piotr Setkiewicz describes Liebehenschel as "not the ordinary bad guy among the high ranking SS".
    "There is one testimony from a prisoner that said Liebehenschel heard some prisoners had inadequate shoes, so he ordered them to have new ones.
    "Perhaps he was being humanitarian, or perhaps it was because at that time the SS were using the prisoners as slave labour and he wanted them to work harder. But I never heard anyone say something like this about [Liebehenschel's predecessor as kommandant, Rudolf] Hoess, for example."


    Long showers
    Another surprise about Liebehenschel is his choice of second wife, Annalise. From an SS point of view, she had been far too friendly with Jews.
    "Liebehenschel initially held a high-ranking position in the SS, but Heinrich Himmler was unhappy that he left his wife and family for another woman, who was linked to Jews, and so he was given a lower-level position in the SS administration," says Setkiewicz.
    [​IMG] [​IMG] He didn't want to go to Auschwitz - he was sent there as a punishment [​IMG]



    If this had not been the case, Barbara explains, he would never have ended up at Auschwitz.
    As her research progressed she began to feel sorry for her father.
    "I felt badly because he didn't really want to be there. He didn't want to go to Auschwitz. He was sent there as a punishment," she says.
    When Barbara traced Annalise and interviewed her, she painted a picture of what this punishment meant for Liebehenschel.
    According to her, he would come home after watching new arrivals to Auschwitz and cry "oh no, women and children", suffer headaches, take walks and have long showers, which his daughter says was "to wash away that evil, which of course he couldn't".
    Does any of this alter our view of Liebehenschel?
    In Piotr Setkiewicz's view, a "careful analysis of all the evidence is needed before you can come to a final statement" about Liebehenschel's record. But whatever improvement he represented, when measured against the worst Auschwitz kommandants, these were in the end only "minor differences", he argues.
    Liebehenschel still participated in genocide and countless innocent people were sent to their deaths during his time there.
    One Auschwitz survivor, Dr Franz Danimann, told Barbara that her father's death sentence was "probably historically and legally a just verdict", but that he "should have been given amnesty" because of his "diverse and positive initiatives which helped many prisoners"
    .
    No excuses
    However, the prisoners who take a positive view of Liebehenschel's record are contradicted by others, also quoted in Barbara's book.
    Former Auschwitz prisoner Wladyslaw Fejkiel said that during Liebehenschel's command "there were no positive changes for the care of the prisoners, related to food or medications. The sanitary conditions remained insufficient..."
    He reports that Liebehenschel asked to be told about prisoners in poor health so that they could be considered first among those to be released from the camp. But he adds that he did "not know of a single case of those prisoners brought to his attention who were therefore released".
    [​IMG]
    Liebehenschel said he attempted to ease conditions at Auschwitz

    Barbara stresses that she is not attempting to excuse her father's actions, that she is appalled by what the Nazis did. Her aim is to paint a three-dimensional picture, of a kind rarely given of Nazi war criminals, including the good as well as the bad.
    She concedes her father did not always tell the truth when interrogated by his captors after the war, and does not believe his claim that he did not know about the gas chambers at Auschwitz prior to his arrival at the camp.
    She underlines that he was loyal to Hitler and voluntarily joined the SS, but she also sees him as someone "caught in a web".
    "My question always will be, and I will never really have the answer… did he know in the beginning what kind of a despicable organisation it really was?" she asks.
    She adds, expressing a view that few outside the kommandant's family might accept: "I do have mixed feelings because he was a complex person. Here's this good person that really tried everything he could to help the prisoners."

    Family guilt
    Writing the book has not rid her of the burden she carries.
    Barbara headed off from our interview to a friend's wedding. Two days later she sent an e-mail, recounting how she had been seated at the reception next to two Jewish couples.
    She said she found herself "quietly asking my companion not to bring up my book". The thought of discussing the subject with them horrified her.
    "After all these years I still have a hard time relating to (especially) Jewish people that I am my father's daughter," she wrote.
    "I wonder if I'll ever be able to let go of the guilt and burden that I and my family have carried as the children of my father, the SS Kommandant of Auschwitz?"
     
  17. Sgt Bilko

    Sgt Bilko Member

  18. Recce_Mitch

    Recce_Mitch Very Senior Member

    Yes an interesting read.

    Cheers
    Paul
     
  19. At Home Dad (Returning)

    At Home Dad (Returning) Well-Known Member

    Thanks for bringing this thread back up, very interesting read and links.


    I never knew Adolf called himself Frau Wolf!




    Frau Wolf (Hitler's nickname)
     
  20. skywalker

    skywalker Junior Member

    What about lower echelon Nazis ? I did come across a conspiracy that Mengele has a Daughter in Adelaide, Australia.
     

Share This Page