Did the children of Nazi leaders approve of what their parents did? Did they adopt the beliefs of their parents after the truth became known, or did they denounce what their parents did? A common theme presents itself; namely, if the children had a close, loving relationship with their fathers, they were more inclined to adopt their parents’ belief system when they became adults, but if their relationship with their fathers was strained, they distanced themselves from their parents’ beliefs.
Hans Frank was the lawyer for Hitler and the Nazi party. Frank was also the governor general of Poland, known as the “Butcher of Poland.” He was arrested in May 1945 and hanged in 1946. His son, Niklas, was born in March 1939. The first time Niklas saw children his own age was when he was four years old. His mother had driven to the concentration camp in Krakow to buy corsets. “No one makes better corsets than the Jews in the ghetto,” she said. The children he saw were dressed in torn, soiled clothes, bones protruding from their impoverished bodies. After the war, he learned that his father had gassed two million Jews and immediately understood the evil his father had perpetrated. This understanding may have come because both his parents had been cold, distant, and violent. They called him “fremde,” which means “stranger.” Niklas became a journalist and the author of three books where he decried what his father had done.
Martin Bormann was Adolf Hitler’s private secretary and head of the Nazis’ home office. He died ostensibly by suicide in May 1945. His body was identified in 1972. Martin Jr. was born to Gerda Bormann in April 1930. He was Hitler’s first godson. His father was very severe with Martin. Once when Martin Jr. saluted the Führer and said, “Heil Hitler,” his father slapped him, saying that he should have said, “Heil, mein Hitler.” Bormann was fifteen and living at a boarding school when the war ended in 1945. Fearing for his life, he fled, hiding out at a farm in Austria. A Christan farmer took him in and raised him as his own son. From his adoptive parents, he learned what his real parents had done. Martin Jr. never publicly denounced his father because he said it was God’s responsibility to judge him. Upon reaching adulthood, he joined a Jesuit seminary and was ordained a priest in 1958. In 1971, after being injured in an automobile accident, Martin Jr. woke up in a hospital, and over the next few weeks, he fell in love with a nurse, and they married. Until his death in 2013, he and his wife spent their lives as teachers of religion.
Rudolf Hess was the deputy führer under Hitler until 1941 when he was arrested in England after a botched rogue mission. He spent the rest of his life in an English prison until he committed suicide in 1987. His son, Wolf, was born to Ilse Hess in 1937. Wolf was only three years old when his father was arrested, but they communicated through letters until his father died. Rudolf even taught Wolf how to play chess through his letters. Wolf always believed his father was wrongly accused and that he didn’t commit suicide but rather was killed in prison. Wolf spent the rest of his life trying to exonerate his father and wrote three books about him. He died in 2001.
Almost eighty years have passed since the war ended, and most sons and daughters of Nazi leaders have passed away or are in the last years of their lives, but what about the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Nazi leaders? Many live in the United States, and none of them personally knew their grandparents. Bettina Goering and her brother, who were the great-niece and nephew of Hermann Goering, took drastic measures and sterilized themselves. Bettina said from her US home, “It’s easier for me to deal with the past of my family from this great distance.” https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine.18120890.
Selah Award finalist Sherri Stewart loves a clean novel, sprinkled with romance and a strong message that challenges her faith. She spends her working hours with books—either editing others’ manuscripts or writing her own. Her passions are traveling to the settings of her books and sampling the food. She traveled to Zürich for Secrets Dark and Deep. A widow, Sherri lives in Orlando with her lazy dog, Lily. She shares recipes, tidbits of the book’s locations, and other authors' books in her newsletter.
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An Uncommon Gift
Ella Davis’s papa always told her there’d be no class difference in Heaven, but Ella has years to live on God’s green earth until she reaches her reward. She’s content to be a maid on the Huntington Estate, as long as she has her books and her kitten. But when her ladyship, Amberly Huntington, coerces Ella to take her place on the Mauretania, the fastest ocean liner in 1910, Ella’s worst nightmare has come to pass. She must pretend to be nobility for the eight days it takes to reach New York. In other words, she must live a lie—and this just before Christmas! https://bit.ly/47MTvYX
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