Customer Reviews

My Father's Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders--An Intimate History of Damage and Denial

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If you are like me, you know relatively little about the lives of the children of the Nazi leaders. Although their fathers' names live in infamy, the children and their names often survived in obscurity and semi-privacy. This powerful set of interviews from 1959 and 1999-2000 provides a psychological lens to see the children, being a child in general, German society, and the actions of the Allies.

In 1959 German journalist, Norbert Lebert, interviewed in a number of children of the Nazi leaders. After his death, Mr. Lebert's son, Stephan, chose to attempt to bring those interviews up to date in 1999-2000. Where he could not (as with Gudrun Himmler and Edda Goring), the younger Mr. Lebert provides a thumbnail history of what is known about the intervening years.

To me, the most interesting parts of the book were 1959 interviews. Mr. Norbert Lebert did a sensitive job of considering the children of the leaders as people rather than as celebrities or subjects of a study. The information he developed was quite extensive, broad, and very interesting.

In each case, the father cast a long shadow onto his children. While very young, these children were usually aware that their fathers were powerful and admired. Some, like Edda Goring, even had celebrity status in their own right. The Allied attempts to prosecute the fathers disrupted the lives of the mothers and their children. Some fathers died by their own hand (like Himmler and Goring), some were hung, while others languished in prison where there could be little contact (like von Schirach and Hess). So to a large extent, these children were fatherless after 1945. After World War II, their fathers' pasts continued to influence their lives, by causing some to be curious, some to scorn them, and others to approve.

The private father was usually remembered with affection and nostalgia. The public father was often obscure, except for the older children (like Gudrun Himmler). The public activities were often caught up in having Hitler as a godfather, or other kinds of positive attention.

The heritage of the Nazi past was accepted by some of the children as positive. Two sons broke strongly with what their fathers had done. The most interesting case is that of Mr. Niklas Frank who wrote a series of strong articles describing in explicit language his father (Hans Frank, governor of Poland) and his feelings about his father in very negative terms. Many Germans condemned Mr. Frank for being unfaithful to his father.

Anyone who expects the children of a war criminal to be an ideal witness about that person's culpability is obviously mistaken. Some of the incidental stories though will shake you, such as the experience of being shown Himmler's collection of household items made from parts of human bodies. Hess's son and Himmler's daughter had great hopes of correcting what they believed to be major errors in the historical record about their fathers. Edda Goring claimed that her name was never a drawback to her, although several of the other children recount many times when their names caused problems such as not being accepted for schools or jobs.

The book in many other ways is disappointing. Unless you are very familiar with the Nazis, you will receive less than the minimum information you should know about the fathers. Perhaps in Germany everyone knows these facts. In the United States, I suspect that is not true.

Long sections are circular and others are rambling with speculations by other authors.

Other sources that could have shed light on these lives are missing. How did the lives of these people compare to that of their German contemporaries whose fathers were or were not prominent Nazis? What did public opinion polls in Germany say about their fathers at the various times when the interviews were undertaken? What did the school books say about their fathers that they read? How do the children of convicted and executed murderers usually react to the memory of their guilty parent? How was the reaction in Germany different from the reaction in Italy to the children of the Fascist leaders there? All of these questions could probably have been answered, but were not raised.

After you finish reading this book, think about how we can help the children of both those who cause and are victimized by violence. Unless we break that vicious cycle of adding the burden to the next generation in unsustainable ways, we run the risk of perpetuating hatred and violence long into the future.

Honor the goodness that should guide our lives!

Unlike many books on this subject, the Leberts do not fall into the ponderous trap of attempting to be definitive or all things to all people. I stumbled across this remarkable book by accident. Posner's book 'Hitler's Children' was interesting, and is a more exhaustive look at the topic, but Lebert's book is somehow more emotional and accessible. Perhaps it is the lighter touch or the fact that it was written by Germans but it stayed in my mind much longer.

Based on a series of articles his father wrote in 1959, the son meets with those who will speak with him and explores his own feelings about his father's role in the war, his identity as a German, and the reaction modern day Germany has to it's war past. While there are tidbits of information (I had no idea there was a charity set up to support former Nazi leaders and staff or that so many of them entered the postwar government so cleanly) the real value of this book is the human one.

How rare it is to find a father and son so willing to face the possiblities of their post-war life having been stunningly different and how refreshing to find them willing to allow that experience had an effect on their interviews. The portraits of the Nazikinder then and now are done with great appeal. This is a subject too emotional to ever truly be objective about, but the willingness of the Lebert's to try and their look at where they fail does thenm credit.

This is a popular history in the best sense of the phrase that will leave you with a great deal to think about regarding modern Germany and the way the world views these heirs. If many of them have seemed to fall into their father's paths, was it inevitable? Is our own denial to the unique challenge they faced culpable? (If understandable). Is the current rise in their views tied to these things? A great read for the casual and a thought provoker for the more involved. This book deserves a wider audience.

What an interesting book this was! I liked the way Stephan took his father's work and expanded it. It is almost as though Stephan was learning about his father and his work right along with us, the reader. The subject is the children of the Nazi leaders. Norbert interviewed them in the 1950's. Stephan made the attempt to interview the same ones in the 1990's. Some of them who interviewed with Norbert, refused to meet with Stephan. Some of the children agree that their fathers were behind something evil and could not be forgiven. Others still loved their fathers, didn't believe they did anything wrong and spent their lives trying to prove it. This is a subject that I feel compelled to learn about. It was such a unique time in history, I am fascinated by it. I like reading various aspects of Nazi Germany, especially like this one. I highly recommend this to WWII history buffs.

This book struck a deep chord in me as a South African. It was an unsettling and thought-provoking read. We also have a dark icky past, and frighteningly the theme of guilt-by-pedigree, and of therefore trying to forget the past, trying to pretend that it all never happened, is familiar. SA right now is going through the same process, although not to the same extent. It's downright creepy. I won't forget the book in a hurry!

It's not a subject you run across very often- the post-war lives of the children of the Nazi hierarchy. We tend to think of the 1945 defeat or perhaps the Nuremberg trials as the "end" of the Nazi era, as if the experience of Hitler's Germany was somehow able to be quarantined into distant memory, and banned by Allied decree from any further influence on the nation or the individuals who lived through it. On the contrary, the Nazi experience was indelible and formative. That's true for most Germans of that time, but especially for the children of those men who would have been gods on earth had Germany won the war. Instead, those children were thrown back to reality with the regime's overthrow and had to endure the Old Testament-type stigma of being the offspring of history's most hated men. How do you endure when the world calls your father a monster?

This book gives some surprising answers. It includes the 1959 interviews by Norbert Lebert and the subsequent follow-ups by his son Stephan. Most of Martin Bormann's children- and he was probably the most anti-religious Nazi Minister- converted to Catholicism. His eldest even became a priest. Rudolf Hess' son idolized his father and became something of an apologist for him and the National Socialist ideology. Himmler's daughter became an unrepentant Nazi who desired to rehabilitate her father's name. Hans Frank's son spent his life consumed with hatred for his father. Goring's daughter honors her father's memory. Karl-Otto Saur's son is more philosophical, hating but trying to understand his father. Baldur von Schirach's children are proud of their father for disavowing National Socialism while in prison but are mainly uncomfortable about being in the spotlight.

It's an interesting subject, but the old double standard really struck me. Sixty years after WWII we're still obsessed with the Nazi regime, even going so far as to check up on the children of its officials to make sure they're properly penitent for their father's deeds. Why doesn't anyone track down the children of the men who incinerated the non-combatants of Dresden and a host of other German cities? How are they coping with life knowing their fathers were war criminals? Has anyone done an interview with Margaret Truman to make sure that she has disavowed the father who dropped atomic bombs on the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? How can LBJ's kids live with themselves? How can the Bush daughters still love a man whom they know has waged aggressive war on Iraq? When it comes to the crimes of the Germans, there seems to be a very one-sided standard of morality in the Anglo-Saxon/Semitic world view.

This was an interesting read. The author tries to delve into the the lives of the Nazi leader's children and detail how they viewed their fathers. Some viewed their fathers as great men (Himmilers and Goering's daughters). Others view things more circumspect, Boreman's eldest son loves his father but agrees his father was responsible for great crimes. Still others hate their fathers. Nilklas Frank hates his father to such a degree he celebrates the day his father dies. Throughout the book, both authors try to delve into the morality of each child and how he views his father's past.
I rated this as only a three, although it could well be a four. The organization of the book leaves something to be desired. The book goes between the father and son's writing and one has to note what time period he is in. Also, the author tries to much to place each child in a box. Who does best as understanding the hurt their father put on mankind and his own role as a father. These fathers may have done very evil things, but all in their own way was a loving father. To expect a child to think of his father as a monstor is perhaps bad form. An interesting read.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I was concerned that the German translation would not come across well, but there was no problem. This book tells the story of the children of former Nazi leaders and their experiences after the war up to 1960. The son picks up the story in 2000 (or thereabouts). I would like to have seen a much more engaging update of the children's lives since this book was originally published. I think the son relied too much on his father's previous manuscripts. I would like to have seen more photos of the children as they appear today.

Nevertheless, the stories about Edda Goring, the Franks, the von Shirachs et al were quite engaging. It appears that Gudrun Himmler has had the worst row to hoe during her lifetime. She comes across as a very sad, embittered person who has refused to refute her last name. Of this, it appears, she has paid a heavy price during her lifetime.

The book has a good flow to it; is easy to read (light reading) and is certainly worth a read. You may not learn too much about these kids. I believe a much more in-depth study of these children would have made this book much better.

In 1959, a German journalist interviewed the children of a number of leading Nazis and four decades, later, in 2000, his son interviewed them again and the result is this book. It must be hard to be so overshadowed by a parent when the parent had accomplished great things; but to be the child of a mass murderer in control of the machinery of state must be far harder. For many of the children, their exposure to Nazism was not very traumatic. Many were simply too young and only recalled being seated on Herr Hitler's knees or some similar minor incident. Heinrich Himmler's daughter was brought to one of the concentration camps where her father proudly showed off the herb garden.

The aftermath of the war was not very good for these children, who were interrogated with their mothers and held in camps. But in light of what happened to the general German population immediately after the war it is nothing unusual.

The children who agreed to speak to the junior Mr. Lepert (and not all of them did) seem to have led rather undistinguished and quiet lives for the most part. They coped with their unwanted legacy in different ways, some becoming Nazis themselves, others violently rejecting their fathers. It seems in German society that a father should be forgiven by his children, no matter how awful his crimes, crimes that destroyed Germany itself in the end. Of course, Joseph Goebbels, who murdered all his own children in the final waning of the Third Reich, would not be criticized by his grown-up offspring. In the case of Heinrich Himmler's daughter, she spoke to the senior Mr. Lepert about her plans to rehabilitate her father's reputation, a breathtakingly looney proposition. In all the cases, there is a perception that the family man and the Nazi were two completely different people.

The book is not terribly well-written (it is a gruesome English translation) and wretchedly edited to boot, but some of the points it makes are quite striking, particularly those dealing with how victims see events compared to victimizers. But there is a more interesting overarching theme and that is how West Germans have dealt with their past primarily by burying it. On a national and official level, a great deal has been done in the way on atonement but it seems that individuals simply shed this unpleasantness and went on with rebuilding the country. Old Nazi technocrats soon found themselves running ministries again, this time in a democratic state. It is no wonder that Daniel Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners," which posited that the average German knew what was going on and consented to it, albeit passively, provoked such controversy in Germany

Some of the Nazi leaders were good fathers and family men, others decidedly less so, but their offspring, come to age in a different world, seem rather small. The postwar pettiness directed towards them is unpleasant. It is not right to judge the children as if they were the fathers but it is hard to be terribly sympathetic to these people. Gudrun Himmler is involved with a mutual-help society of old Nazis and was involved with the NPD, the extremist nationalist party. When the Minister of Youth, Baldur von Schirach, came out of Spandau Prison after twenty years, there was a nice inheritance from a relative in the USA awaiting him. Old Nazis helped to finance his children's education. Martin Bormann's son, who became a Catholic priest for a while, went around Germany speaking on the evil that is within us all and this may be true. The madness, power-lust and brutality of the Nazi leadership is not apparent in its biological heirs. Undistinguished survivors, for the most part, but one has the feeling that the interviews were perhaps too superficial to show more.

This book is an excellent and probing treatment of the children of the Nazi leaders. These are the children of Bormann, Hess, Goring... who met the Fuhrer, received small gifts from him and may have sat on his lap. He was god-father to some of them.

The damage done (or the psychological baggage) to these individuals - now adults approaching old age - falls into two categories (I am simplifying). As the author says (and which annoyed him in the conversations) - a tremendous wall was put up between `father-family' and `father - politician - war criminal'. In one category there was no room for discussion of the latter subject area. As for the other group both categories were breached (like Niklas Frank and Martin Bormann) and the abyss was approached.

All of this makes for a very interesting read and gives insights into the Nazi era. Although Klaus Von Shirach falls into the `wall' category he does make an astute observation when he equates National Socialism with religion. One could add - with Adolf Hitler as the Messiah.

The book also makes revelations on how Germany is coping with its' inglorious past. The author makes an analogy that Germany is treating the Nazi criminals as a visit to the zoo - stare at the animals and quickly move on - without much reflection on how the animals behaved before they were caged.

A few extra notes:
1) This book is very good journalism and is the combination of father and son. The father (Norbert Lebert) made interviews in the mid-fifties with the sons and daughters of the Nazi leaders. His son, Stephan, followed the trail in the 1990's. As Stephan acknowledges in the book - this is grueling work - excavating the Nazi cult is not life-affirming.
2) The son of Martin Bormann , of the same name, found salvation in religion and converted to Catholicism. He wrote an auto-biography `Living Against the Shadow' which appears to be unavailable in the English language.
3) It would be interesting to find a book on the less visible - but equally guilty perpetrators of crimes at the camps. Men (and women) who dealt daily with crimes against humanity still walk freely in the streets as alluded to a few times in the book.
4) Although Hess was regarded as a `fruit-cake' by the Nuremburg tribunal - the correspondence he had with his children through-out his long internment was very lucid and rational.
5) If you suffer psychological distress due to parental issues this may not be the book for you.

I thought it was just me when I first read this book and found it so confusing until I had a look through the reviews of several other people to see I was not alone in this.

Perhaps the original German is better written but sadly, this does not do it justice which is a great pity as this had the potential to be a fascinating read.

The book centers around follow up interviews the author made with various children of leading men in the Nazi German government. While some have come to terms with both themselves and their fathers past others have remained bitter to this day while some even continue to support, at least in principle the theories of their father.

Of particular interest were Wolf Rudiger Hess who refused to serve in the army out of protest at his fathers imprisonment while Martin Bormann entered the church and to some extent, found a peace with himself Gurden Himmler and Niklas Frank still suffered from inner battles with themselves on how to reconcile the father with the man that the world has come to know.

Fascinating book but you will have to read it twice not least because the narrative is so damn confusing.