Talk:Lebensborn

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[edit] Source for First-Hand Account

  • In his book "I Flew for the Fuhrer", Heinz Knoke describes a visit to one of these places. He says that there was a big room, with girls, and that after a pair had selected each other, they were required to fill out some paperwork. The pilots called this "Our Ten-Minute Marriage". The overall impression was that the program preferred pilots and other men who were not likely to survive the war. [1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.252.215.212 (talk) 20:07, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Here's a recent source with some testimony from Lebensborn children. Note that some recent records on Lebensborn were also recently discovered:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article626101.ece Lebensborn under Himmler may have aided other pregnant women (including some SS wives), it also was a SS man's spot to "breed", though propaganda, not coercion, was apparently used on women.Victorianezine (talk) 01:43, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions for improving the article

  • The article says that "parents and children were examined by SS doctors before admittance." It would be informative to know, what exactly were the criteria for admittance?
  • Newsweek is one of the media organizations accused of participating in "post-war sensationalism." This is a little difficult to believe, as Newsweek is generally a reputable source. Perhaps someone could review the cited article and re-evaluate whether it belongs in this category.

Quoting from the Nuremburg trial as the "final word" on Lebensborn is not historically up-to-date. How many Nazis were not convicted then simply because more evidence came to light AFTER the Nuremburg trials?

Maybe I just don't know how to edit, but the first two paragraphs of this article are incredibly outdated and I don't know how to modify them. The tone is that Lebensborn is mostly benign and falsely maligned program. Then, one reads further to see - just hints of the controversy which these discussion pages (and a simple Internet search) reveal.

Can somebody edit the the introductory paragraphs to - at least - reflect the serious controvery over Lebensborn?

Bad assumptions: It seems that Lebensborn is not considered a breeding program since women were --at least from what we know today--not physically "forced" to breed.

Is "not using physical force" the only criteria for not considering Lebensborn a breeding program? What of the use of hunger and escape from social criticism to a woman seeking shelter while she carried a child?

And what of having spokespeople from some of the Lebensborn Child organizations contribute?Victorianezine (talk) 20:40, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Major update

OK, major revision done to this page. I'm also the one who updated the Children of the Nazi era article as ano a couple of days ago (more work remains on that one). In this article I'm not quite sure what to do with the last section about the kidnappings in Poland. It's an important part of the war history, but it was not a Lebensborn project AFAIK. -- Steve Hart 23:01, 16 December 2005 (UTC) +++

A major update should ALSO include more testimony from actual Lebensborn children, and mention their organizations and the work they are doing to come to terms with their origins, and later abuses Lebensborn children have suffered and their high suicide rate even to today.

Lebensborn children-- notably if born to mothers in occupied countries-- have suffered MUCH! I just viewed - again - the painful testimony of a Norwegian lebensborn man on the History Channel.

This article seems to portray mostly a "kinder,gentler" pregnancy crisis center provided for Nordic women in distress---Was Heinrich Himmler really so kind??? but after again viewing and hearing the testimony of Actual Lebenborn Children --- one has to wonder. Why subjugate a conquered population, take away much of their food, directly enslave many, and...then provide lots of food and comfort in a crisis pregnancy center -unless one has an ULTERIOR motive - i.e. to breed more of the so called "master race"?

A quick google search will easily bring up many leads on LEBENSBORN to sort through.Victorianezine (talk) 12:06, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] POV moved from article

In reality, no evidence is found, so far, of any breeding houses. Further, the idea that the Lebensborn project was ever intended as a program to carefully breed selected humans is disputed, at best. No written material has been discovered stating such goals. There are no recorded statements, and no woman or man has stepped forward with reliable claims. The trial against the leaders of the Lebensborn organization after the war did not reveal any plans to breed humans.

The only reference to such a plan can be found in Felix Kersten's book The Kersten Memoirs, 1940-1945 (1956), where Kersten, Himmler's physical therapist/masseur, claims that Himmler told him that he had let it be known, privately, that unmarried women who longed for a child could turn to the program for conception assistance of the "revolutionary kind".

If part of the above can be reworded, we can restore it to the article. Sam Spade 23:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Sam, let me know what lines you are thinking along. I was battling moving this part in its entirety to a new section or to the Post-war sensationalism part. Do you feel it should be rewritten? Steve Hart 19:34, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The History Channel had a documentery on LEBENSBORN. Lots of long testimony, with details from Lebensborn children. Notable details emerge on falsification of records, the adoption process, the persecution of some Lebensborn children in formerly occupied countroies. The agony of the Lebensborn children has been discussed in various articles. Perhaps the interviews, research, etc. has mainly been done on American news sources. But it is there.Victorianezine (talk) 12:18, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] recent article

There is evidence and some of the Lebensborn Children came forward and spoke about it. They did receive partial birth cetificates because the files WERE made public, but many do not even know that they were and would not even know where to go to get these documents.23:21, 18 December 2007 (UTC)23:21, 18 December 2007 (UTC)~~[2] may have some facts useful to this wikipedia entry. Remember 04:29, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The kidnappings

Hm... While most of 200.000 Polish children kidnapped during war had nothing to do with Lebensborn, there are however quite a few examples with Lebensborn participating in such activities. I will add the info back into the article, with corrected numbers, though. "Very soon now(tm)" :) Szopen 16:49, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] eingetragener Verein

At the head of the "Background" section I found this: The Lebensborn e.V. (eingetragener Verein{what does this mean in English?}) If the person who wrote that sentence sees this note, please learn that all you need to do is place a wiki link around the term and press the "Show preview" button. If a good link apears in the preview your question is answered. That is what I did. So the source of for the article now reads: The Lebensborn e.V. (eingetragener Verein) emma scanlon If that fails a google search of the term eingetragener Verein found a dozen correct tranlations including the first hit. Nwbeeson 06:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I've rewritten this to read "(eingetragener Verein, "registered association")". It's always bad form to direct people away from the page for answers; they might not come back. -Ashley Pomeroy 18:29, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality?

Is the neutrality of this article still disputed or can we remove the tag from it? If you aren't for removal of the tag, could you discuss your objections on the talk page? AniMate 03:37, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

This article is defninitely not neutral, and the lede should be edited immediately!

The lede reads: Lebensborn (Fount of Life, in German) was a child welfare and relocation program initiated by Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler to aid the racial heredity of the Third Reich. The program was implemented in Germany and certain parts of occupied Europe.


The lede is unacceptable because:

  • "child welfare program" is not neutral.

Their relocation hardly contributed to the "welfare" of those children. I understand that children fathered by German soldiers who have faced hostility in their native countires, and that giving birth out of wedlock was an enormous stigma in the 1930s/40s. But relocating children with the purpose of indoctrinating them with Nazi ideology, was hardly a contribtion to their welfare. They could have been sent to a regular orphanage in their native country. Instead, they were sent to separate orphanages and some were sent to Germany. The goal was to boost the German population and to turn them into future Nazi's, preferably members of the SS. The welfare of chilren was hardly a priority to Nazi Germany, unless those children were members of the "master race"

Moreover, the Lebensborn project not was not limited to babies fathered by German soldies. In Eastern Europe, "Aryan" looking children were kidnapped from their parents ("relocated") as a part of the project.

  • "To aid the racial heriditary of the Third Reich"

This phrase is not neutral it repeats euphemistic Nazi rhetoric. Millions of disabled and "non-Aryan" people have been sterilized or killed because the Nazi's believed they did not contribute to "the racial heriditary" of the Third Reich!

Worse, the phrasing is even more euphemistic and vague than the Nazi rhetoric. When Himmler spole about "aid for racially and biologically-hereditarily valuable families" he was being blunt about who deserved aid: the abled-bodied and and "racially valuable".

After all, the Lebensborn project was closely tied to the Nazi policies of "relocating" (deporting and murdering) "inferior races" and setting up German colonies in the "Lebensraum" that had thus been cleared in Eastern Europe, with Eastern Europeans forced to work for the "racially superior" Germans as slaves. It is no accident that the Lebensborn office was part of the SS Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt (SS Office of Race and Settlement)

The aplogetic "information" about the objective of the Lebensborn project is also not neurtral:

The current article reads:

"After World War II it was falsely reported that the objective of the program was a large-scale systematic eugenic human breeding programme to create a master race of "racially pure"

This is not neutral because it because it is incomplete and lacks context. This context is missing because of the misleading lede and the failure to explicitly point out that the Lebensborn project was a part of the Nazi's "race policies" (forced sterilization, deportation, genocide, relegating "inferior races" to slave status). This sentence also sets up a misleading contrast between what "has been reported" (by who?) and what supposed really happend. The problem is that the article is not clear about what happenened and why.

The nazi's did not set up a "breeding programme" in the sense that they promoted mass-rape, but they did encourage German soldiers occupying "Nordic" countries to have relationships with local women, and they did carefully select which children to "relocate" to Germany on the basis of their "racial fitness". The Nazi's were not interested in providing for the "welfare" of disabled children or children who were "racially impure", for instance in Norway children with Saami (Lapp) ancestry.

And they did persecute people who did not obsess about perserving the "racial hereditary" of the Third Reich. Already in 1935, with the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, the Nazi's had criminalized marriages and relationships between Germans of "pure German blood" and Jewish Germans

This article is so biased and apologetic to Nazi rhetoric that it's a shame its neutrality is still disputed: it is clearly not neutral. Fairlane75 (talk) 13:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC) 195.73.22.130 (talk) 18:49, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry that I got a bit hot under my collar. I have edited the article to make it much more neutral. I haven't deleted any facts, but I have changed the wording and placed more emphasis on the connection between Lebensborn and the raical and eugenics policies of the Nazis and I've added more relevant wikilink. The article is also badly in need of sourcing. 195.73.22.130 (talk) 18:50, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the person above - i.e. that the Lebensborn project was more sinister than the main article represents... And what of the Nazi view of women implied in the Lebensborn ideology? Get pampered, fed, protected---just sign away your child. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Victorianezine (talk • contribs) 12:23, 17 May 2008 (UTC)