Authors: Lynn H. Nicholas
Here, in contrast to the East, German forces were expected to behave
correctly at all times and discipline was strict. Occupation troops were encouraged to have friendly relations with the peoples of the Nordic lands, so similar in language and blood. In this they would often be bitterly disappointed, not only because nobody likes being conquered, but also because it soon became clear in the West, as it had to the Baltic
Volksdeutsche
, that being Nordic or even Nazi was not quite enough for equal treatment: one must also be German and renounce national loyalties.
The reasons for this were not entirely ideological. Citizens of foreign nations, no matter how racially desirable, were not technically liable for induction into the German armed forces, and Hitler desperately needed more manpower. In 1943, SS officials estimated that there were some 600,000 “Germanic” draft-age boys in the “Nordic” countries alone.
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The young must therefore, as in the Reich, be prepared through youth activities and indoctrination to volunteer for German formations and, even better, become Reich citizens. In Holland, anyone already holding legal rights to German citizenship, such as German women who had married Dutchmen or businessmen who had become naturalized citizens, were now offered dual citizenship. The response was not great: few were willing to undergo the stringent racial testing required and the dual citizens had little to gain. They risked social ostracism if they stayed in their country of residence, their food rations were not increased to equal those of true Reich Germans until March 1944, and the young men were immediately liable for the German draft.
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The methods used to lure potential new citizens were not always nice. In both Holland and Norway, underage girls, by applying to the Nazi authorities, could marry German men without the parental permission required by their national laws, and thus immediately gain Reich German citizenship.
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The Nazis were no less determined to save and promote the birth of babies of good blood in the new territories than they had been everywhere else. Belgian prisoners of war of Flemish origin were sent home quickly in the hope that they might increase the Germanic populace while their French-speaking countrymen were kept on in Germany as forced labor.
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For the racial fanatics there was no purer reservoir of Nordic blood than Norway. Three weeks before the final surrender of that country, Nazi health officials had already suggested to the Lebensborn Society that each Norwegian woman “who presumes that the father of her expected child will be a German soldier should be found out as quickly as possible, perhaps by confidential report to the troop physician.” After the usual careful selection she would not only be taken care of during pregnancy and childbirth, but, preferably, be taken to Germany for the birth of the child.
Lebensborn officals were very taken with this idea, noting that it offered “a unique opportunity to transplant Nordic women in large numbers into the Reich,” which, astonishingly, was desirable, as “women of purely Nordic appearance are rather rare in the Reich, and since southern Germany is especially poor in Nordic blood, a transfer of purely Nordic women to southern Germany is particularly desirable.”
Taking such women to the Reich was necessary because otherwise their children “would be lost to Germany.” Once there, the mothers, who, “experience teaches, always want to be near their children,” would be likely to stay on. If they didn’t, their children would be offered up for adoption.
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Himmler and his representative in Norway, Wilhelm Rediess, received this idea enthusiastically. Rediess foresaw a large illegitimate production, which, he thought, would not be a bad thing. Indeed, in an internal memo, he urged that German soldiers be encouraged to have as many children as possible by Norwegian women, in or out of wedlock. This, he mused, might produce “20 or 30 divisions more to defend the space our comrades conquered.”
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Recognizing that some of the ladies in question might not be lucky enough to marry their soldier lovers and thereby “enter the sphere of influence of the German Reich,” he suggested that the Norwegian legal code be revised so that these children would not automatically have Norwegian citizenship, but would be made available for adoption in the Reich. This abrogation of Norwegian law was eventually achieved (after much fussing) with the help of the collaborationist government of Vidkun Quisling.
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The mothers, who were apt to be unpopular at home due to their relations with the soldiers, were strongly encouraged to go to Germany. They were offered free passage, health insurance, care at Lebensborn homes, and employment. Somewhere between 400 and 2,000 women are said to have taken advantage of this offer. When they did go, their experiences were often not quite as advertised. Many a lover turned out to have lost interest or to already have a wife at home,
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and the girls had to fall back on the support of Lebensborn. For the far greater number who stayed in Norway, Lebensborn set up nine homes there. The first opened in April 1942. Here, in often overcrowded and unhygienic conditions, more than 6,000 children, of whom some 4,000 were illegitimate, are said to have been born. Of these, fewer than 250 can be documented as having been transferred to the Reich.
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The children’s journeys, undertaken late in the war, could be harrowing. In the midst of constant Allied bombing, groups of twenty or so tiny
children were flown to Leipzig and other German cities. A ship taking others across the Baltic hit a mine and was plunged into darkness. One of the escort nurses, herself a Lebensborn mother who had brought her own son along, “snatched him up and held him in her lap.” Later she recounted that the damage to the ship had been slight and “nothing happened to the children.” The bunk beds in which they were sleeping had collapsed, but the “children in between were fine.” Still, one cannot help thinking they too might have needed laps to sit on.
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The precise fate of the other 3,750 or so children is unclear, but some were undoubtedly given to German officials in Norway for eventual return to the Fatherland. As it became known that the children could not be adopted by Norwegian families, the mothers warned one another not to put their babies up for foster care, a resistance that could have dire results. The SS commander of Trondheim threatened to send police to seize one such child, whose mother wished to have it adopted locally, as it “was the child of a German soldier and therefore, according to regulations, could be given only to German foster parents, not Norwegians.” This action was stopped only by the concerted intervention of other occupation officials, who employed the mother and were sympathetic to her plight. After this scare, the mother decided to keep her child.
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Norway was the only country with such an extensive Lebensborn program. In Holland, governed by Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who did not want to kowtow to Himmler, such war babies were taken care of by the Nazi Welfare Organization, Himmler’s main competitor, and a planned Lebensborn home was never opened.
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Homes established in Belgium and Denmark also never amounted to much.
There were plenty of babies needing care; the SS itself acknowledged that occupation soldiers had fathered some 85,000 in France alone. The German military authorities felt early on that, as a good occupation practice, they should make it possible for support cases involving German personnel to be dealt with in each conquered country, and not by courts in Germany proper. Hitler thought this a fine idea, but not for everyone. To him it was a racial question: such measures should apply only in Norway and the Netherlands. As for Belgium and France, the Führer declared that “we wish to protect and care for illegitimate
Germanic
children; we have no racial interest in French ones.” To regularize this, he issued a decree in July 1942 providing full care for “racially worthy” offspring of Norwegian and Dutch women.
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The order did contain provisions for extension to other areas, which, after endless debate between the Wehrmacht and the SS, were belatedly applied to a small group of war
babies fathered by German forces occupying the remote Channel Islands, inhabited by people of mixed English and French descent and language—but not to the 85,000 in France.
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Meanwhile, the Nazis had been busy with their racial rearranging in dismembered France. The borders of the
département
of the Ardennes were closed to returning refugees, who were replaced with
Volksdeutsche
from the East.
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Within weeks of the fall of France, Alsace-Lorraine was annexed and thousands of its citizens deemed too loyal to France, not to mention all its “alien-race” Jews and North African residents, were unceremoniously deported to Vichy France, the southeastern section of the country still under French control. This was done in the now all too familiar manner: the deportees were given half an hour to pack and were deprived of most of their assets. By the end of July 1940, Alsace and Lorraine had become Reich provinces. The French administration was replaced and the French language totally prohibited in the schools. By 1941, the wearing of berets had been forbidden, children had to sing “Deutschland über Alles” instead of “La Marseillaise” at school, and racial screening was in full swing. German-speaking Alsatians and Lorrainers who were not enthusiastic about their new rulers were, like their Polish brethren, shipped to camps for vetting as “re-Germanizables.” German Alsatians resident in other parts of France and South Tyroleans were, meanwhile, moved into the newly annexed area. But so little did Hitler trust the “Germanic” inhabitants of these new provinces that full Reich citizenship was granted only in exceptional cases. Volunteers for the Army and the SS were not accepted until just before the Nazi invasion of Russia, and conscription, instituted in early 1942, was limited to boys who had, by then, some indoctrination at school and in the Labor Service. Even then the Nazis were careful not to have too many Alsatians or Lorrainers in one unit.
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In the rest of France, the racial collectors had to be more patient. It was not until late 1943, having assumed control of Vichy France, that Nazi security police, “in the course of a large action … against the students of the former Alsatian University of Strasbourg,” which had relocated to Clermont-Ferrand at the beginning of the war, were able to examine “107 male and female students along racial lines,” as it was “well-known that among the students there are many persons of German descent.” Despite the fact that their political opinions were distinctly anti-German, “37 percent of the students were classified as having biologically valuable characteristics” and were slated for “transfer to the Reich.”
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The rest were sent by cattle car to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
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Earlier in 1943 the SS racial agencies had also established a branch in northern France and Belgium and had begun registering possible recruits there. This was a small operation, which targeted mostly Polish-Silesian miners of ethnic German origin who had worked at German mines in the Ruhr and had moved to France during its occupation of the Ruhr after World War I. But no group of ethnic Germans was seemingly too small to ignore, and in March 1943 complex guidelines for vetting went forth to a branch office in Douai.
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In early March 1944 this office received an order from the chief of the Race and Settlement Main Office in Prague to investigate the family of “the Pole” Johan Nendza, now resident near Lille, for its “fitness for re-Germanization.” The inquiry was to be “completed as speedily as possible since the results are urgently needed … for the purpose of forming the genealogical decision.” Three weeks later M. Nendza was astonished to receive a curt order to present himself, with his whole family, at the offices of the racial examiners in Paris. Four train tickets were enclosed. Nendza wrote back, very politely, to say that he did not understand the request. He had not applied for a job or requested any change of nationality. He felt that there was some mistake, and therefore, he was returning the train tickets, which, he declared firmly, “he had no intention of using.” Undeterred, the racial examiners wrote again, this time more politely, to say that the Nendzas must come, but that it was all a formality and their return fare would also be paid. They all went except for Johan’s wife, who was “ailing.” For each member of this simple family, like so many others, a file card and photograph were made and sent back to the race agency. Along with the cards went a cover letter that rated the parents as rejects. Mme Nendza’s evaluation was based on her photograph. Johan was unflatteringly described as “an unharmonious specimen of a person of mixed blood” and “subnormal height.” Their children, as was often the case, did better. Both were classified as eligible for “naturalization,” as they were “harmonious,” the son being “a person of mixed blood of the dinaric-Nordic-east-baltic race” and the daughter “falic-east-baltic.”
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No one in the northern France group was actually resettled, but everyone over the age of fourteen was carded, graded, and had his identity card stamped with suitable symbols for future exploitation. The long final report on this project is full of complex social statistics and ridiculous commentary. It appears that more than 5,000 persons, among them some 1,000 children, were registered and categorized. Of these only 6.7 percent were worthy of “unrestricted citizenship.” Even fewer expressed a desire to be resettled in the East or to go to Germany. But, the report stated
hopefully, these reluctant souls (who had deteriorated under French influence—but not to the level of the Poles in the East) should be considered as “falling within the conception of a pending folkdom” that could be brought to an “ethno-politically clear position” through German schooling and other measures. The agency noted candidly, however, “We are concerned with a group who could not be judged uniformly,” adding that “the people of German stock of Northern France … cannot reap for the time being any advantages … since they are rejected by the majority of their environment and since the general mood of the population of Northern France, during the months of the processing, was neither pro-German nor revealed a belief … in the final victory on the part of Germany.”
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