What do you think?
Rate this book
Hitler's Children: Sons and Daughters of Leaders of the Third Reich Talk About Their Fathers and Themselves
In a series of interviews, the author reveals how the children of the leaders of the Third Reich now judge the sins of their fathers
239 pages, Hardcover
First published July 4, 1993
577 people are currently reading
1595 people want to read
About the author
Gerald Posner
17 books289 followersGerald Posner is an award winning journalist, bestselling author and attorney. The Los Angeles Times dubs him "a classic-style investigative journalist." "His work is painstakingly honest journalism" concluded The Washington Post. The New York Times lauded his "exhaustive research techniques" and The Boston Globe talked of Posner's "thorough and hard-edge investigation." "A meticulous and serious researcher," said the New York Daily News.
Posner's first book, Mengele, a 1986 biography of the Nazi "Angel of Death” Josef Mengele, was the result of a pro-bono lawsuit Posner brought on behalf of surviving twins from Auschwitz. Since then he has written ten other books from the Pulitzer Prize-finalist Case Closed, to bestsellers on political assassinations, organized crime, national politics, and 9/11 and terrorism. His upcoming God’s Bankers has spanned nine years of research and received early critical praise.
ohn Martin of ABC News says "Gerald Posner is one of the most resourceful investigators I have encountered in thirty years of journalism." Garry Wills calls Posner "a superb investigative reporter. "Posner, a former Wall Street lawyer, demolishes myths through a meticulous re-examination of the facts," reported the Chicago Tribune. "Meticulous research," Newsday.
Anthony Lewis in The New York Times: "With 'Killing the Dream, he has written a superb book: a model of investigation, meticulous in its discovery and presentation of evidence, unbiased in its exploration of every claim. And it is a wonderfully readable book, as gripping as a first-class detective story."
"What we need is a work of painstakingly honest journalism, a la Case Closed, Gerald Posner's landmark re-examination of the assassination of John F. Kennedy," concluded Joe Sharkey in The New York Times.
Gene Lyons, in Entertainment Weekly: "As thorough and incisive a job of reporting and critical thinking as you will ever read, Case Closed does more than buttress the much beleaguered Warren Commission's conclusion ….More than that, Posner's book is written in a penetrating, lucid style that makes it a joy to read. Even the footnotes, often briskly debunking one or another fanciful or imaginary scenario put forth by the conspiracy theorists, rarely fail to enthrall...Case Closed is a work of genuine patriotism and a monument to the astringent power of reason. 'A'"
Jeffrey Toobin in the Chicago Tribune: "Unlike many of the 2,000 other books that have been written about the Kennedy assassination, Posner's Case Closed is a resolutely sane piece of work. More importantly, 'Case Closed' is utterly convincing in its thesis, which seems, in light of all that has transpired over the past 30 years, almost revolutionary....I started Case Closed as a skeptic - and slightly put off by the presumptuous title. To my mind historical truth is always a slippery thing. The chances of knowing for sure what happened in any event - much less one as murky as the Kennedy assassination - seem remote. But this fascinating and important book won me over. Case closed, indeed."
Based in the mixed realms of politics, history, and true crime, his articles - from The New York Times to The New Yorker to Newsweek, Time and The Daily Beast - have prompted Argentina to open its hidden Nazi files to researchers; raised disturbing questions about clues the FBI missed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; sparked a reinvestigation of the Boston Strangler; and exposed Pete Rose's gambling addiction, which led to his ban from baseball.
Posner was one of the youngest attorneys (23) ever hired by Cravath, Swaine & Moore. A Political Science major, Posner was a Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of California at Berkeley (1975), where he was also a national debating champion, winner of the Meiklejohn Award. At Hastings Law School (1978), he was an Honors Graduate and served as the Associate Executive Editor for the Law Review. Of Counsel to Posner & Ferrar
Posner's first book, Mengele, a 1986 biography of the Nazi "Angel of Death” Josef Mengele, was the result of a pro-bono lawsuit Posner brought on behalf of surviving twins from Auschwitz. Since then he has written ten other books from the Pulitzer Prize-finalist Case Closed, to bestsellers on political assassinations, organized crime, national politics, and 9/11 and terrorism. His upcoming God’s Bankers has spanned nine years of research and received early critical praise.
ohn Martin of ABC News says "Gerald Posner is one of the most resourceful investigators I have encountered in thirty years of journalism." Garry Wills calls Posner "a superb investigative reporter. "Posner, a former Wall Street lawyer, demolishes myths through a meticulous re-examination of the facts," reported the Chicago Tribune. "Meticulous research," Newsday.
Anthony Lewis in The New York Times: "With 'Killing the Dream, he has written a superb book: a model of investigation, meticulous in its discovery and presentation of evidence, unbiased in its exploration of every claim. And it is a wonderfully readable book, as gripping as a first-class detective story."
"What we need is a work of painstakingly honest journalism, a la Case Closed, Gerald Posner's landmark re-examination of the assassination of John F. Kennedy," concluded Joe Sharkey in The New York Times.
Gene Lyons, in Entertainment Weekly: "As thorough and incisive a job of reporting and critical thinking as you will ever read, Case Closed does more than buttress the much beleaguered Warren Commission's conclusion ….More than that, Posner's book is written in a penetrating, lucid style that makes it a joy to read. Even the footnotes, often briskly debunking one or another fanciful or imaginary scenario put forth by the conspiracy theorists, rarely fail to enthrall...Case Closed is a work of genuine patriotism and a monument to the astringent power of reason. 'A'"
Jeffrey Toobin in the Chicago Tribune: "Unlike many of the 2,000 other books that have been written about the Kennedy assassination, Posner's Case Closed is a resolutely sane piece of work. More importantly, 'Case Closed' is utterly convincing in its thesis, which seems, in light of all that has transpired over the past 30 years, almost revolutionary....I started Case Closed as a skeptic - and slightly put off by the presumptuous title. To my mind historical truth is always a slippery thing. The chances of knowing for sure what happened in any event - much less one as murky as the Kennedy assassination - seem remote. But this fascinating and important book won me over. Case closed, indeed."
Based in the mixed realms of politics, history, and true crime, his articles - from The New York Times to The New Yorker to Newsweek, Time and The Daily Beast - have prompted Argentina to open its hidden Nazi files to researchers; raised disturbing questions about clues the FBI missed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; sparked a reinvestigation of the Boston Strangler; and exposed Pete Rose's gambling addiction, which led to his ban from baseball.
Posner was one of the youngest attorneys (23) ever hired by Cravath, Swaine & Moore. A Political Science major, Posner was a Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of California at Berkeley (1975), where he was also a national debating champion, winner of the Meiklejohn Award. At Hastings Law School (1978), he was an Honors Graduate and served as the Associate Executive Editor for the Law Review. Of Counsel to Posner & Ferrar
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews
May 19, 2023
I heard of this book sometime back and was keen to see the perspectives it throws up. How do the children of key Nazi leaders view their legacy, and how they are coping with the realization of what their fathers had done?
Gerald Posner starts with a background of the people he reached out to. Many wanted to know more of how he would go about this, meet him before agreeing and some declined. One of the cruellest legacies of Nazism was anti-semitism & the holocaust and in most cases that was the most difficult aspect for the families to contend with. The narration follows a fixed pattern for all the cases – the key Nazi figure the person is related to, background (was very helpful in some cases when I did not know much of the person referred) to the person & legacy, the child/children’s views and recollections. There is wide variation in how each of them perceives their father, and such different individual perspectives make for fascinating, and many times painful reading.
The summary Posner provides at the end is excellent covering how many of the children had trouble coming to terms and coping with the legacy of their fathers. He mentions his visit to the Nuremberg courthouse where many of the key Nazi leaders were tried, and how the place still looks the same as one would see in photos of the time. The staggering crimes committed affected the German nation and people for many years to come, other than of course, many other countries in the world. The next generation of the Nazi families finds it especially difficult – torn between the need to confront the truth & consider family ties, and also contending with many fathers not being honest & owning up to what they had done. As a result, the need to face the truth passed to their generation. Many find it difficult to understand how and why all this happened, and what they can contribute. I found the views of Dagmar Drexel to be the best articulated where she makes an impassioned plea for promoting peace. She is particular about the values her children imbibe, has visited Israel, and helps visitors to Germany from other countries. She was Initially hesitant on being included with children of prominent Nazis, but felt later rank does not matter. She says her generation has the obligation to confront the truth, wants the families of victims to know that and with that hopefully the generation after her can be free.
A lot of history is painful, and often many of us wonder why we do not learn more from it. This book is very well written and much recommended.
The audiobook narration by Julian Elfar was excellent.
My rating: 4.5 / 5.
Gerald Posner starts with a background of the people he reached out to. Many wanted to know more of how he would go about this, meet him before agreeing and some declined. One of the cruellest legacies of Nazism was anti-semitism & the holocaust and in most cases that was the most difficult aspect for the families to contend with. The narration follows a fixed pattern for all the cases – the key Nazi figure the person is related to, background (was very helpful in some cases when I did not know much of the person referred) to the person & legacy, the child/children’s views and recollections. There is wide variation in how each of them perceives their father, and such different individual perspectives make for fascinating, and many times painful reading.
The summary Posner provides at the end is excellent covering how many of the children had trouble coming to terms and coping with the legacy of their fathers. He mentions his visit to the Nuremberg courthouse where many of the key Nazi leaders were tried, and how the place still looks the same as one would see in photos of the time. The staggering crimes committed affected the German nation and people for many years to come, other than of course, many other countries in the world. The next generation of the Nazi families finds it especially difficult – torn between the need to confront the truth & consider family ties, and also contending with many fathers not being honest & owning up to what they had done. As a result, the need to face the truth passed to their generation. Many find it difficult to understand how and why all this happened, and what they can contribute. I found the views of Dagmar Drexel to be the best articulated where she makes an impassioned plea for promoting peace. She is particular about the values her children imbibe, has visited Israel, and helps visitors to Germany from other countries. She was Initially hesitant on being included with children of prominent Nazis, but felt later rank does not matter. She says her generation has the obligation to confront the truth, wants the families of victims to know that and with that hopefully the generation after her can be free.
A lot of history is painful, and often many of us wonder why we do not learn more from it. This book is very well written and much recommended.
The audiobook narration by Julian Elfar was excellent.
My rating: 4.5 / 5.
May 10, 2024
Hoher moralischer Anspruch, niedrige Ausbeute
Mit der Dingfestmachung von Lee Harvey Oswald als Einzeltäter hat sich Gerald Posner ein historisches Verdienst gesichert, das von mir nie bestritten wird, da die Verschwörungstheoretiker vom Schlage eines Jim Marrs ein viel zu schwaches Bild abgeben, auch wenn die Verfilmung von Oliver Stone schön anzusehen ist.
Bei den Interviews mit den Kindern von Naziprominenz schlägt Posner aber derart wild mit der moralischen Keule um sich, dass er kaum bezeichnende oder gar entlarvende Antworten aus den Kindern der Unmenschen heraus bekommt und deshalb noch mal hinterrücks auf die Nachfahren der Täter eindrischt. Die Substanz des Buches ist deshalb eher dünn, es sei denn der moralische Anspruch von Herrn Posner ist der Hauptschwerpunkt des Interesses.
Nachsatz: Habe gerade in den GR-Komemntaren zu Case closed gelesen, dass er alle Gegner der Einzeltätertheorie, deren Argumentation sich nicht so leicht zerpflücken lässt wie bei Jim Marrs, mit Hinweis auf deren unmoralischen Lebenswandel am Zeug zu flicken versucht. Für mich leidet die Glaubwürdigkeit von Gerald Posner am meisten unter diesem Verfahren. GP ist wohl ein kleinlicher Pisser, der sich halt irgendwie wichtig machen will.
Mit der Dingfestmachung von Lee Harvey Oswald als Einzeltäter hat sich Gerald Posner ein historisches Verdienst gesichert, das von mir nie bestritten wird, da die Verschwörungstheoretiker vom Schlage eines Jim Marrs ein viel zu schwaches Bild abgeben, auch wenn die Verfilmung von Oliver Stone schön anzusehen ist.
Bei den Interviews mit den Kindern von Naziprominenz schlägt Posner aber derart wild mit der moralischen Keule um sich, dass er kaum bezeichnende oder gar entlarvende Antworten aus den Kindern der Unmenschen heraus bekommt und deshalb noch mal hinterrücks auf die Nachfahren der Täter eindrischt. Die Substanz des Buches ist deshalb eher dünn, es sei denn der moralische Anspruch von Herrn Posner ist der Hauptschwerpunkt des Interesses.
Nachsatz: Habe gerade in den GR-Komemntaren zu Case closed gelesen, dass er alle Gegner der Einzeltätertheorie, deren Argumentation sich nicht so leicht zerpflücken lässt wie bei Jim Marrs, mit Hinweis auf deren unmoralischen Lebenswandel am Zeug zu flicken versucht. Für mich leidet die Glaubwürdigkeit von Gerald Posner am meisten unter diesem Verfahren. GP ist wohl ein kleinlicher Pisser, der sich halt irgendwie wichtig machen will.
August 23, 2018
Such an interesting book, from start to finish. The author would have had to go to great lengths to track down these people and convince them to be interviewed. Along with the interviews are backgrounds of these children’s fathers and their roles in WW2.
I found myself equally enthralled, appalled, frustrated and uplifted by these stories. Denial is a strong master - on the fathers and/or the children. Whilst some of the children cling on to their denial as adults, others purposely aim to live a life in opposition to their parent’s beliefs and actions. And some of the fathers hang onto the past steadfastly - so much so that they become almost anachronistic.
I can not recommend this book enough.
I found myself equally enthralled, appalled, frustrated and uplifted by these stories. Denial is a strong master - on the fathers and/or the children. Whilst some of the children cling on to their denial as adults, others purposely aim to live a life in opposition to their parent’s beliefs and actions. And some of the fathers hang onto the past steadfastly - so much so that they become almost anachronistic.
I can not recommend this book enough.
September 5, 2022
Posner’s book, “Hitler’s Children”, was a wonderfully written account of the bonds between children and their former Nazi fathers, those with intergenerational guilt, as well as those who clearly chose denial to cope with and survive the horrors and international record of their fathers’ atrocities.
I very much enjoyed how Posner leaves his own opinions of Nazism, as well as his opinions of each former Nazi mentioned, out of the interviews with the Third Reich’s sons and daughters. Instead, the book is formatted into ten separate chapters where we see the sons of daughters of Hans Frank, Wolf Hess, Karl Saur, Hjalmar Schacht, Rolf Mengele, Karl Dönitz, Claus von Stauffenberg, Ernst Mochar, Hermann Göring and Max Drexel, respectively, speak candidly - and often with great difficulty and conflicting emotions - on being the child of such a prominent father (or for some, less prominent, but whose crimes were no less evil).
The introspection these adults have had to perform since they were children, and the answers they still seek today, is brutally unwavering and unending. Some take the shame so hard, like Josef Mengele’s son, Rolf, or Norman and Niklas Frank (sons of Hans Frank) that it seems they’ve shouldered the blame for the crimes (as well as served a lifetime of punishment) their fathers committed and refused to express remorse for.
Mengele is the only child of a prominent Nazi father who has apologized to the nation and to Jewish survivors on behalf of his father. Norman Frank is so tormented by his father’s actions during the war that he refuses to have children. He views his lineage in such a sickly tainted way that he believes the only possible step toward forgiveness of these war years/crimes against humanity is for he himself to not procreate, thereby ending the evil bloodline his father created.
Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and Karl Dönitz all had children who saw their fathers very differently from Rolf, Norman, and Niklas. Wolf Hess, Edda Göring, and Ursula Dönitz are all full of love and pride for their fathers and the roles they believed them to have played. While Mengele and the Frank brothers confront these horrific truths head-on, the other three underscore their own fathers’ involvement. Instead of trying to come to terms with their actions, they prefer the much easier route of denial. Each saying their father’s misdeeds were greatly exaggerated by the Americans and the foreign and local press, and that they were more or less “scapegoats” who weren’t anti Semitic at all - just made to look that way so that the German civilian population could tack the blame on this group and move on.
No matter what their approach to dealing with an undoubtedly impossible hand in life, I feel it’s impossible to pass too much judgment on any of them. After all, they were just very small children when these events happened - and unless you can relate to having a parent who is responsible for murdering or ordering the murder of millions, I find it terribly unfair to treat them too harshly. One has to only imagine what a horrible burden that must be to confront and carry. Hence why many have just rejected it outright, blaming everyone but their fathers for the crimes against humanity.
An amazing, reflective book that I’d recommend to anyone. Each story and each child’s handling of their fathers’ past tells of great struggle and hardship. This book gives the reader a look at what it really means to directly deal with the sins of the father. 4 1/2 stars.
April 21, 2019
I didn’t think this book would captivate me as much as it ended up doing so. I’m not a huge WWII period reader or even into reading about history as much so this book was a great compromise as it was in interview/narrative form. Reading about the crimes of the parents through the their childrens’ eyes was unlike any other information I’d studied on this topic. It made the crimes even more real and brought to life the burden the next generation had to bear for their actions.
September 7, 2022
My wife is weirdly fascinated by nazis and she recommended this one to me and I'm grateful for that. A very interesting book, well-researched while at the same time admitting that some pieces of information provided here might be less than truthful. I guess that's the problem with a book based solely on interviews with people who want to forget the past.
The multitude of nazis (and their children) described here and their wide range of personalities achieves two things: teaches about some Nazi officials that I have never heard about and provided multiple perspectives on the problem of nazism, dealing with the past and so on.
The multitude of nazis (and their children) described here and their wide range of personalities achieves two things: teaches about some Nazi officials that I have never heard about and provided multiple perspectives on the problem of nazism, dealing with the past and so on.
May 21, 2020
There is also a movie out on the same subject which interviews the now adult children, interesting, but it is very hard to tackle such a complex subject of transgenerational guilt and inheritance. I am writing a book on the subject myself and find that one needs to carefully look into the elite Nazi education. Really informative is School for Barbarians by Erika Mann.
January 8, 2020
The title of this book can be a tad misleading, or confusing, in that it can be interpreted in more than one way, since there are no known biological offspring of the infamous German leader. He had preached the gospel of racial superiority of Germans (and using a stolen word, Aryan, falsely to describe them), and had instituted two or three separate but equally demeaning streams of lives fòr the German women, while the men were supposed to be busy conquering the world - primarily, the women were supposed to be limited to kitchen and children, with church thrown in - which might seem to be for satisfaction of higher aspirations, but no, that wasn't possible; church as an institution had 'managed' women as much as it had managed the poor and the workers, for centuries, for benefits of males and those of wealth and power; and inquisition had put women down with the horrible prospect, rather certainty, of being burnt at the stake if suspected of being a person of intellect and knowledge, rather than a sex object available for servitude. There were two special channels, elevating this role of being limited to serving the males, for selected women, selected by nazis. One was for breeding with males designated special, which did not mean those of abilities in science or arts or academic excellence, but rather Nazi officers. The other was serving nazis and others deemed deserving the service, in the role of sex object.
So the title does confuse at first in that one might naturally think it's about the children bred by those designated women chosen for reproduction who'd been kept at special facilities for this process, and the children of the nazis and others held worthy of reproduction under nazi ideology, born at those facilities and brought up by designated Germans.
Instead, it's about what the children of the accused at Nuremberg trials and similar other war criminals, and asking what they thought of their parents!
............
The author, Gerald Posner, wrote a preface to the digital edition published in 2017, 26 years after the book was published first in 1991. At that time what he thought was relevant was to not hide the identities of the nazis, and other persons in positions of authority in the Third Reich, whose children he wrote about, as other works on the subject did. Since then, he notes and gives succint descriptions of, rising tide of antisemitism through Europe after 1991 post fall of iron curtain and of totalitarian regimes, and confused populations blaming Jews for a conspiracy to impose communism on those nations and also for fall of communism. All this despite the drastically reduced Jewish populations of those countries and generally throughout Europe, due to holocaust in WWII years, and since then after 1991 due to emigration out of East Europe.
What is also true but he hasn't noticed or connected it to, is two separate but connected factors. One is general rise of racism in Europe, especially France and Germany, that manifests against "other"s in strange behaviours that once would have been clearly seen as halfway between uncivilized and viciously hostile, but after 2001 are often excused in names of fear or security. Second is migration to Europe and West in general from precisely those lands that are on one hand suffering from jihadist wars and on the other are source of jihadists migrating to West, when West opened its doors for refugees fleeing from jihadist wars.
Needless to say the connection is obvious, since the jihadists on one hand perpetrate much of the antisemitic terrorist attacks as well as general ones, and terrorise the general populations, while West is at a loss about discerning jihadists from other, non threatening migrants or visitors or citizens who, to western race based sight, look no different.
In other words, it's like - say - Vietnamese people confusing between nazis and British royalty, or between communist visitors from Moscow and republicans from Texas. Funnily enough Vietnamese, according to what one read decades ago in a U.S. publication, do discern the difference. Western lack of discernment is not merely a "They look the same" innocence, but much worse.
As a result, often it's those not in sympathy with racism, antisemitism or jihad, who are likely to be turned off by the rising racism in West, and migrate if possible, while the jihadists out to flood the globe and convert or conquer as the basic agenda are unlikely to be deterred.
............
Reading about Hans Frank, the "Butcher of Poland", the first person discussed in the book, one begins to get the impression within the first couple of pages that the real point was to set forth details about the life and career of Hans Frank, who is less famous than the others indicted at the most famous of the Nuremberg trials, the first and the public one. One wonders if that was the point of the book after all, to describe these men and their work and legacies.
But then, after a couple of pages, the picture shifts and one sees that while the information was necessary, the appoint really is about the children and the effect (of their father's lives and work and legacy, and of the whole nazi regime and ideology and crimes) on their persona, their psyche and their lives.
Frank children were not only were not indoctrinated in the Nazi ideology, but also were mostly kept away from the criminal side of the Nazi regime - Norman, born in 1930, not only never heard a word of antisemitism but had a close friend at his school in Berlin who was Jewish, until 1938, when this friend suddenly vanished - and their rare brushes with the realities of the horrors were, the elder one thought, normal parts of wartime. The youngest one Niklas did notice strain between his parents, but also recalls driving past the ghetto and seeing the people.
To their credit, when newspapers published the photographs of concentration camp inmates as discovered by the allied forces, they knew it was real, didn't brand it as propaganda, for which their mother must be given credit. Their struggle for survival later - Norman wasn't allowed by authorities to continue at school and nor was he allowed to work, while Niklas was sent out to beg for food with a note pinned to his shirt, bringing back a loaf of bread - is very moving, as is the clear bond between the brothers who got close later. They have very diverse view about their parents, but understand one another.
............
Wolf Hess in the next chapter, on the other hand, is as contrasting a figure as can be from the Frank family, and carries the banner of his father and their party and their boss as a matter of conviction, from "injustice to Germany" to calling Nuremberg trials a farce. In particular, he's bought every lie uttered by his father's boss about German rights to integrate various lands because it was "German domestic matter", and accuses Churchill and FDR of having engineered a conspiracy against Germany and forcing Germany to attack Poland because "Poles were murdering Germans by thousands". And one has to find black humour when reading of Wolf Hess speaking of his father being treated by British, when Hess was in prison, with terrorising techniques such as light kept on at night (after his attempted suicide, presumably it was so he was visible), or the air raid siren being turned on (since by definition it was heard in the vicinity, it wasnt for his benefit alone), and Wolf might have thought about the civilians of various countries terrorised - and massacred wholesale - by Germany as a small matter of clean-up for finding "lebensraum" for Germans to settle and reproduce in dozens.
Wolf Hess says that nazis guilty of crimes should have been tried by German courts. If the subsequent - or previous, post WWI - trials were an indication, that would have amounted to the whole lot getting a hero treatment and a less than two year sentencing at most, if that. He finds it ridiculous that his father was judged guilty of crimes against peace, which implies that Wolf thinks German aggressions against Austria and Czechoslovakia were not of importance nor were nazi crimes against the disfranchised civilians. Wolf resents his father's and his mother's imprisonment "only because they were ...", and fails to see the irony of his not relating it to the victims of nazis who were massacred only because they were not nazi nor approved by nazis.
"It was also during this period in the mid-1950s that Wolf began learning about his father and the war. German newspapers and magazines ran many stories about the Third Reich. Initially, Wolf drew his information from these sources. He did not learn about the period at school. “The Allies wanted the German teachers to teach a new version of National Socialist history,” he recalls. “But good German teachers would always find some way around this requirement, like saving it until the bell to end the class, and then starting the next class with a different subject.”"
And then some Germans complain that if they meet Jews outside Germany, they stop talking to them after learning they're German! One really must wonder what makes them think that their victims would accept the German world view when it amounts to definition of 'good German' being not recognising that genocides perpetrated by Germans is not a good thing.
Wolf visited South Africa in 1956 and says he realised that conditions there were quite different from as they were presented in newspapers in Germany, which prompted his turnaround in views about the nazi past of Germany and of his father, and he returned to speak with various nazis which changed his mind. Presumably he didn't live as a non white in South Africa, and there was no reason any non white would seek out a young visitor from Germany whose father was a nazi bigwig imprisoned instead of hanged only because he flew to Scotland.
""“During all the long years it is true I had a father, but in the end I did not have him, because the situations under which we corresponded, or rather conferred, were controlled through the rules of his imprisonment. There was not a single truly moving father-son discussion in which I could ask him about things on my mind. That was true for human problems a young man wants to discuss with his father, and particularly for historical issues.”"
Funny, he never thought about the children of those massacred by nazis, or the children who were massacred, in his complaining he didn't have a father.
"“I always predicted reunification in my lifetime. Germans are sick of having to feel ashamed to say they are proud to be German. Now it’s all changing. The Soviet Union is crumbling, and the great American “melting pot” is melting over with crime and drugs and racial hatred. Germans know that Americans, British and French in the West, and Russians in the East, are still occupying our country. We want them all out. Then it will return to the Europe of old, with a powerful and large Germany in the middle. Even our lands the victors gave away after the war will come back. Now, the price for unification is to sign a treaty guaranteeing the present Polish border. But wait some years. Sooner or later that land will return where it belongs, to Germany. The Poles have run their former blossoming land into a dry, grass-covered land. With their economy in ruins, they must depend on financial aid. The German nation will not continually nourish these people who have stolen our property. The Americans should remember what Abraham Lincoln once said: “Nothing is settled unless it is settled in a just way.”"
And Germans are offended when reminded of the nazi past or atrocities! If Wolf Hess is anything he's a nazi.
"He claims to have received thousands of letters and says “ninety-nine per cent are positive.” He is encouraged by letters he receives about his father from German high schools. “They show the right type of interest and understand what really happened. To me, this is a promising sign for German youth.”"
Which connects to the author's preface to the digital edition where he speaks about the rising antisemitism in Europe, only, it's far more evil than that - it's nazism rising, in Germany and around. Wolf Hess sums up his hatred for the allies and assertion about Germans being vindicated at the end. Not a word in the whole conversation about victims of the regime that his father was the "conscience of", which he mentions proudly.
............
Third chapter is about Saur, who - his sons are clear - liked power but didn't care about titles; in Speer's work he is present as a shadow figure, preferred by various high up nazis undermining Speer. This shadow emerges in this chapter as an unsavoury character who undermined anyone as long as it served his purpose, and since he testified against Krupp, paid the price by being unable to find work later, as his hopes of being employed by U.S. like Braun didn't come through. He was dictatorial to the children subsequently and hit them too.
The children only heard good things about nazis from the teachers and didn't discover realities until Klaus saw a television documentary in 1961 depicting concentration camps, which shocked not just him but a teacher who was a Lutheran priest who said he'd had no idea. Klaus discovered more through book trade exhibitions and an article in Cologne. He returned home to help with the family business on verge of bankruptcy and helped it turn.
"A year after Klaus’s return, Karl junior witnessed the only confrontation in his family over any war-related issue. “It was between Klaus and my mother. They had seen a discussion on television about the war and a Jewish person had been interviewed. My mother had said a typical German expression, “That is one that should have gone to the gas chambers.” And my brother was furious and told her it was stupid to say such things. And she was really shocked that he was so angry. “It’s just an expression, it doesn’t mean anything,” she told him. “You know I don’t mean any harm by it.” But Klaus was very firm with her. “Those stupid sentences are what eventually led to the types of things that happened in the war,” he told her."
"Both brothers seem amused by the admiration some people have for their father. It is alien to them. “See, I don’t feel any love for him, nor do I feel any pride,” says Klaus."
"Saur Verlag is the vehicle through which he tries to confront his Nazi heritage. His current catalogue shows a broad selection of serious works, including titles on European emigres, Jewish immigrants, a Hebrew text from Harvard University, and a selection of anti-Nazi books."
Karl is cultural editor of Der Spiegel.
"It is important that people understand the truth. Too many people in Germany talk about the ‘good’ things that Hitler did, and then they speak about the bad things as though only a few criminals were responsible. Their feeling is that the Third Reich gave off all this light and it is only natural that ..."
So the title does confuse at first in that one might naturally think it's about the children bred by those designated women chosen for reproduction who'd been kept at special facilities for this process, and the children of the nazis and others held worthy of reproduction under nazi ideology, born at those facilities and brought up by designated Germans.
Instead, it's about what the children of the accused at Nuremberg trials and similar other war criminals, and asking what they thought of their parents!
............
The author, Gerald Posner, wrote a preface to the digital edition published in 2017, 26 years after the book was published first in 1991. At that time what he thought was relevant was to not hide the identities of the nazis, and other persons in positions of authority in the Third Reich, whose children he wrote about, as other works on the subject did. Since then, he notes and gives succint descriptions of, rising tide of antisemitism through Europe after 1991 post fall of iron curtain and of totalitarian regimes, and confused populations blaming Jews for a conspiracy to impose communism on those nations and also for fall of communism. All this despite the drastically reduced Jewish populations of those countries and generally throughout Europe, due to holocaust in WWII years, and since then after 1991 due to emigration out of East Europe.
What is also true but he hasn't noticed or connected it to, is two separate but connected factors. One is general rise of racism in Europe, especially France and Germany, that manifests against "other"s in strange behaviours that once would have been clearly seen as halfway between uncivilized and viciously hostile, but after 2001 are often excused in names of fear or security. Second is migration to Europe and West in general from precisely those lands that are on one hand suffering from jihadist wars and on the other are source of jihadists migrating to West, when West opened its doors for refugees fleeing from jihadist wars.
Needless to say the connection is obvious, since the jihadists on one hand perpetrate much of the antisemitic terrorist attacks as well as general ones, and terrorise the general populations, while West is at a loss about discerning jihadists from other, non threatening migrants or visitors or citizens who, to western race based sight, look no different.
In other words, it's like - say - Vietnamese people confusing between nazis and British royalty, or between communist visitors from Moscow and republicans from Texas. Funnily enough Vietnamese, according to what one read decades ago in a U.S. publication, do discern the difference. Western lack of discernment is not merely a "They look the same" innocence, but much worse.
As a result, often it's those not in sympathy with racism, antisemitism or jihad, who are likely to be turned off by the rising racism in West, and migrate if possible, while the jihadists out to flood the globe and convert or conquer as the basic agenda are unlikely to be deterred.
............
Reading about Hans Frank, the "Butcher of Poland", the first person discussed in the book, one begins to get the impression within the first couple of pages that the real point was to set forth details about the life and career of Hans Frank, who is less famous than the others indicted at the most famous of the Nuremberg trials, the first and the public one. One wonders if that was the point of the book after all, to describe these men and their work and legacies.
But then, after a couple of pages, the picture shifts and one sees that while the information was necessary, the appoint really is about the children and the effect (of their father's lives and work and legacy, and of the whole nazi regime and ideology and crimes) on their persona, their psyche and their lives.
Frank children were not only were not indoctrinated in the Nazi ideology, but also were mostly kept away from the criminal side of the Nazi regime - Norman, born in 1930, not only never heard a word of antisemitism but had a close friend at his school in Berlin who was Jewish, until 1938, when this friend suddenly vanished - and their rare brushes with the realities of the horrors were, the elder one thought, normal parts of wartime. The youngest one Niklas did notice strain between his parents, but also recalls driving past the ghetto and seeing the people.
To their credit, when newspapers published the photographs of concentration camp inmates as discovered by the allied forces, they knew it was real, didn't brand it as propaganda, for which their mother must be given credit. Their struggle for survival later - Norman wasn't allowed by authorities to continue at school and nor was he allowed to work, while Niklas was sent out to beg for food with a note pinned to his shirt, bringing back a loaf of bread - is very moving, as is the clear bond between the brothers who got close later. They have very diverse view about their parents, but understand one another.
............
Wolf Hess in the next chapter, on the other hand, is as contrasting a figure as can be from the Frank family, and carries the banner of his father and their party and their boss as a matter of conviction, from "injustice to Germany" to calling Nuremberg trials a farce. In particular, he's bought every lie uttered by his father's boss about German rights to integrate various lands because it was "German domestic matter", and accuses Churchill and FDR of having engineered a conspiracy against Germany and forcing Germany to attack Poland because "Poles were murdering Germans by thousands". And one has to find black humour when reading of Wolf Hess speaking of his father being treated by British, when Hess was in prison, with terrorising techniques such as light kept on at night (after his attempted suicide, presumably it was so he was visible), or the air raid siren being turned on (since by definition it was heard in the vicinity, it wasnt for his benefit alone), and Wolf might have thought about the civilians of various countries terrorised - and massacred wholesale - by Germany as a small matter of clean-up for finding "lebensraum" for Germans to settle and reproduce in dozens.
Wolf Hess says that nazis guilty of crimes should have been tried by German courts. If the subsequent - or previous, post WWI - trials were an indication, that would have amounted to the whole lot getting a hero treatment and a less than two year sentencing at most, if that. He finds it ridiculous that his father was judged guilty of crimes against peace, which implies that Wolf thinks German aggressions against Austria and Czechoslovakia were not of importance nor were nazi crimes against the disfranchised civilians. Wolf resents his father's and his mother's imprisonment "only because they were ...", and fails to see the irony of his not relating it to the victims of nazis who were massacred only because they were not nazi nor approved by nazis.
"It was also during this period in the mid-1950s that Wolf began learning about his father and the war. German newspapers and magazines ran many stories about the Third Reich. Initially, Wolf drew his information from these sources. He did not learn about the period at school. “The Allies wanted the German teachers to teach a new version of National Socialist history,” he recalls. “But good German teachers would always find some way around this requirement, like saving it until the bell to end the class, and then starting the next class with a different subject.”"
And then some Germans complain that if they meet Jews outside Germany, they stop talking to them after learning they're German! One really must wonder what makes them think that their victims would accept the German world view when it amounts to definition of 'good German' being not recognising that genocides perpetrated by Germans is not a good thing.
Wolf visited South Africa in 1956 and says he realised that conditions there were quite different from as they were presented in newspapers in Germany, which prompted his turnaround in views about the nazi past of Germany and of his father, and he returned to speak with various nazis which changed his mind. Presumably he didn't live as a non white in South Africa, and there was no reason any non white would seek out a young visitor from Germany whose father was a nazi bigwig imprisoned instead of hanged only because he flew to Scotland.
""“During all the long years it is true I had a father, but in the end I did not have him, because the situations under which we corresponded, or rather conferred, were controlled through the rules of his imprisonment. There was not a single truly moving father-son discussion in which I could ask him about things on my mind. That was true for human problems a young man wants to discuss with his father, and particularly for historical issues.”"
Funny, he never thought about the children of those massacred by nazis, or the children who were massacred, in his complaining he didn't have a father.
"“I always predicted reunification in my lifetime. Germans are sick of having to feel ashamed to say they are proud to be German. Now it’s all changing. The Soviet Union is crumbling, and the great American “melting pot” is melting over with crime and drugs and racial hatred. Germans know that Americans, British and French in the West, and Russians in the East, are still occupying our country. We want them all out. Then it will return to the Europe of old, with a powerful and large Germany in the middle. Even our lands the victors gave away after the war will come back. Now, the price for unification is to sign a treaty guaranteeing the present Polish border. But wait some years. Sooner or later that land will return where it belongs, to Germany. The Poles have run their former blossoming land into a dry, grass-covered land. With their economy in ruins, they must depend on financial aid. The German nation will not continually nourish these people who have stolen our property. The Americans should remember what Abraham Lincoln once said: “Nothing is settled unless it is settled in a just way.”"
And Germans are offended when reminded of the nazi past or atrocities! If Wolf Hess is anything he's a nazi.
"He claims to have received thousands of letters and says “ninety-nine per cent are positive.” He is encouraged by letters he receives about his father from German high schools. “They show the right type of interest and understand what really happened. To me, this is a promising sign for German youth.”"
Which connects to the author's preface to the digital edition where he speaks about the rising antisemitism in Europe, only, it's far more evil than that - it's nazism rising, in Germany and around. Wolf Hess sums up his hatred for the allies and assertion about Germans being vindicated at the end. Not a word in the whole conversation about victims of the regime that his father was the "conscience of", which he mentions proudly.
............
Third chapter is about Saur, who - his sons are clear - liked power but didn't care about titles; in Speer's work he is present as a shadow figure, preferred by various high up nazis undermining Speer. This shadow emerges in this chapter as an unsavoury character who undermined anyone as long as it served his purpose, and since he testified against Krupp, paid the price by being unable to find work later, as his hopes of being employed by U.S. like Braun didn't come through. He was dictatorial to the children subsequently and hit them too.
The children only heard good things about nazis from the teachers and didn't discover realities until Klaus saw a television documentary in 1961 depicting concentration camps, which shocked not just him but a teacher who was a Lutheran priest who said he'd had no idea. Klaus discovered more through book trade exhibitions and an article in Cologne. He returned home to help with the family business on verge of bankruptcy and helped it turn.
"A year after Klaus’s return, Karl junior witnessed the only confrontation in his family over any war-related issue. “It was between Klaus and my mother. They had seen a discussion on television about the war and a Jewish person had been interviewed. My mother had said a typical German expression, “That is one that should have gone to the gas chambers.” And my brother was furious and told her it was stupid to say such things. And she was really shocked that he was so angry. “It’s just an expression, it doesn’t mean anything,” she told him. “You know I don’t mean any harm by it.” But Klaus was very firm with her. “Those stupid sentences are what eventually led to the types of things that happened in the war,” he told her."
"Both brothers seem amused by the admiration some people have for their father. It is alien to them. “See, I don’t feel any love for him, nor do I feel any pride,” says Klaus."
"Saur Verlag is the vehicle through which he tries to confront his Nazi heritage. His current catalogue shows a broad selection of serious works, including titles on European emigres, Jewish immigrants, a Hebrew text from Harvard University, and a selection of anti-Nazi books."
Karl is cultural editor of Der Spiegel.
"It is important that people understand the truth. Too many people in Germany talk about the ‘good’ things that Hitler did, and then they speak about the bad things as though only a few criminals were responsible. Their feeling is that the Third Reich gave off all this light and it is only natural that ..."
May 3, 2025
No wonder this is considered such a WW2-genre classic since it was published in 1993. No other record is likely to ever equal it. This comprises actual interviews of the children of top Nazi officials: Goering, Mengele, Donitz, Speer, Hess, etc. I was astounded reading of how they viewed what their fathers had done during the war, under Hitler. Overall observations:
- Some totally rejected, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, that their fathers did anything wrong.
- Some completely repudiated their fathers, believing their fathers were completely evil.
- Whether they loved their fathers was a completely different story. Some who repudiated their fathers still loved them. Some who supported their fathers admitted they had bad/uncaring fathers.
- Most of these evil men (the fathers) said they'd do the exact same thing, given the chance. They excused their actions, or even bragged about the millions of Jews they killed. And/or they blamed others or that they were following orders from above.
- Many of the children struggled for the rest of their lives, trying to reconcile the sometimes loving father they knew, with the actual historical events those men did in the name of the Third Reich.
- The son of Claus Von Stauffenberg, the mastermind behind the nearly-successful assassination of Hitler, was also interviewed. He was proud of his father. But the family suffered for many years from prejudice against them. They received hate letters and death threats.
- According to polls directly after the war, nearly half of Germans still supported Hitler and the Nazi party. Another poll twelve years later showed 25% still on the side of the Third Reich.
-For most Germans, the whole episode was a "don't ask, don't tell" scenario. Consequently no one talked about the war or what they did during the war.
- Some totally rejected, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, that their fathers did anything wrong.
- Some completely repudiated their fathers, believing their fathers were completely evil.
- Whether they loved their fathers was a completely different story. Some who repudiated their fathers still loved them. Some who supported their fathers admitted they had bad/uncaring fathers.
- Most of these evil men (the fathers) said they'd do the exact same thing, given the chance. They excused their actions, or even bragged about the millions of Jews they killed. And/or they blamed others or that they were following orders from above.
- Many of the children struggled for the rest of their lives, trying to reconcile the sometimes loving father they knew, with the actual historical events those men did in the name of the Third Reich.
- The son of Claus Von Stauffenberg, the mastermind behind the nearly-successful assassination of Hitler, was also interviewed. He was proud of his father. But the family suffered for many years from prejudice against them. They received hate letters and death threats.
- According to polls directly after the war, nearly half of Germans still supported Hitler and the Nazi party. Another poll twelve years later showed 25% still on the side of the Third Reich.
-For most Germans, the whole episode was a "don't ask, don't tell" scenario. Consequently no one talked about the war or what they did during the war.
February 9, 2025
Temat jest zbyt trudny, żebym z moim stanem wiedzy mogła go ocenić.
May 29, 2024
This is not a good book, as my rating shows, but I am going to take a little time to explain why.
1. What should a book titled 'Hitler's children' be about? The children of those who willingly served and took part in the various obscenities of Nazi policy? The children whose parents were members of Hitler's inner circle and thus had direct contact with him? The children of the leaders of the Third Reich?
It may appear pedantic but these are very distinct categories.
a. The children of those who served encompasses a near majority of those children alive at the end of WWII or born in the next twenty years or more. Rolfe Mengele (included in this book), the son of Josef Mengele, would fit into this group because despite his father's mid-twentieth century notoriety (who of an older generation cannot look back with a smile on the absurdities of the novel and film 'The Boys From Brazil'?) he was never a member of Hitler's circle or known to any Hitler's close associates. Rolfe Mengele is no different to, for example, the children of Rudolph Hoess the Auschwitz commandant (not in the book).
b. The children of Hitler's inner circle who had a relationship with Hitler could mean children like Wolfgang and the other Wagner children or the children of Albert Speer and Martin Bormann (none are in this book).
c. The children of the leaders of the Third Reich such as Wolf Hess and Edda Goring (both are in the book but Edda Goring only gave very limited access to the author) or Gudrun Burwitz nee Himmler (not in the book). Norman and Niklas Frank, sons of Hans Frank Included in the book), fall into both categories 'b' and 'c' because Frank was a close associate of Hitler's from the very early days but not really a complete insider nor a first rank 'leader'.
Unfortunately this book is a miscellaneous collection of all of the above but the majority fall into group 'a', even those like the daughters of Hjalmar Schacht and Karl Donitz (in the book), because they never were never part of, to put it crudely, the 'Berchtesgaden Set', those who holidayed and spent time with Hitler. One can't help thinking that the inclusion of the children Karl Saur, Ernst Mochar, Max Drexel is because the author couldn't get the children of more famous Nazis to talk to him. I do not understand how the inclusion of Claus von Stauffenbergs son Franz Ludwig can be justified (I don't say it isn't interesting).
The real question is what you are looking to achieve - is it insight into what it was like to have Hitler as an indulgent family friend? to be a child of a Nuremberg defendant? or simply to be the child of those who lived through WWII? Mr. Posner doesn't define or explain what he was trying to achieve outside of the voyeuristic. He also doesn't define whether simply being 'the child' of a prominent Nazi is enough or should they have significant memories of their parent? Rolfe Mengele, Wolfe Hess and Edda Goering effectively lost contact with their fathers when they were under six years of age. There is little direct testimony they can provide unlike Norman Frank or Ursula Donitz. The lack of clear purpose means that the book is a collection of the children's personal anecdotes attached to rather flimsy biographies of their fathers.
2. The major problem with this book is how much we can trust the author. I only discovered after finishing the book about Gerald Prosner's plagiarism but was deeply suspicious about the way his interviews were presented because he never makes clear that he doesn't speak German and must have been using an interpreter (although some interviewees like Niklas Frank speak English many do not). It made me wonder at the author's complaints about the difficulty of tracking down his subjects and his numerous letters that went unanswered (the book was published in 1991 so is pre all internet type searches). What language did he write them in? and is it any wonder that the recipients, even if they could understand his letters, might wonder whether this American 'journalist' had either the training or knowledge to present what they said accurately. Because Posner is no Gitta Sereny (please see my footnote *1 below).
Facing up to the horrors that make a parent a monster and whether you as a child of that monster bear any responsibility or inherit any taint is a question for psychiatry and philosophy not glib investigative journalists. The same could be said about investigating how the children of WWII era Germans deal with that history. It is complex and simply learning that this or that child of someone tried at Nuremberg is loyal to their father or isn't, or is apologist or denouncer of Nazism is interesting but meaningless without any broader context. Posner has only the most superficial knowledge of the period and clearly comes to it with a mind utterly empty of anything but publishing deadlines. It is also clear that he comes to this subject via his earlier book on Mengele (I would not recommend it - in fact the best book on Mengele is the novel by Olivier Guez 'The Disappearance of Josef Mengele') and after encountering Niklas Frank (one of the best chapters in this book is the about Niklas and his brother Norman) but very little depth or commitment. This is at best no more than magazine interview profiles and a subject worthy of so much more.
*1 Gitta Sereny has written two of the most fascinating and deeply detailed examinations of Nazi guilt and coming to terms with it 'Into That Darkness: An examination of Conscience' (about Franz Stangel) and 'Albert Speer His Battle with the Truth'. The difference between a journalist like Gitta Sereny and Gerald Posner is not simply about speaking the same language as her interviewees but both her and her subjects commitment to the exploration of difficult and challenging subjects. Posner had no such commitment from his interviewees and in many cases it is clear that pursuing difficult topics would have cost the cooperation of the interviewees.
1. What should a book titled 'Hitler's children' be about? The children of those who willingly served and took part in the various obscenities of Nazi policy? The children whose parents were members of Hitler's inner circle and thus had direct contact with him? The children of the leaders of the Third Reich?
It may appear pedantic but these are very distinct categories.
a. The children of those who served encompasses a near majority of those children alive at the end of WWII or born in the next twenty years or more. Rolfe Mengele (included in this book), the son of Josef Mengele, would fit into this group because despite his father's mid-twentieth century notoriety (who of an older generation cannot look back with a smile on the absurdities of the novel and film 'The Boys From Brazil'?) he was never a member of Hitler's circle or known to any Hitler's close associates. Rolfe Mengele is no different to, for example, the children of Rudolph Hoess the Auschwitz commandant (not in the book).
b. The children of Hitler's inner circle who had a relationship with Hitler could mean children like Wolfgang and the other Wagner children or the children of Albert Speer and Martin Bormann (none are in this book).
c. The children of the leaders of the Third Reich such as Wolf Hess and Edda Goring (both are in the book but Edda Goring only gave very limited access to the author) or Gudrun Burwitz nee Himmler (not in the book). Norman and Niklas Frank, sons of Hans Frank Included in the book), fall into both categories 'b' and 'c' because Frank was a close associate of Hitler's from the very early days but not really a complete insider nor a first rank 'leader'.
Unfortunately this book is a miscellaneous collection of all of the above but the majority fall into group 'a', even those like the daughters of Hjalmar Schacht and Karl Donitz (in the book), because they never were never part of, to put it crudely, the 'Berchtesgaden Set', those who holidayed and spent time with Hitler. One can't help thinking that the inclusion of the children Karl Saur, Ernst Mochar, Max Drexel is because the author couldn't get the children of more famous Nazis to talk to him. I do not understand how the inclusion of Claus von Stauffenbergs son Franz Ludwig can be justified (I don't say it isn't interesting).
The real question is what you are looking to achieve - is it insight into what it was like to have Hitler as an indulgent family friend? to be a child of a Nuremberg defendant? or simply to be the child of those who lived through WWII? Mr. Posner doesn't define or explain what he was trying to achieve outside of the voyeuristic. He also doesn't define whether simply being 'the child' of a prominent Nazi is enough or should they have significant memories of their parent? Rolfe Mengele, Wolfe Hess and Edda Goering effectively lost contact with their fathers when they were under six years of age. There is little direct testimony they can provide unlike Norman Frank or Ursula Donitz. The lack of clear purpose means that the book is a collection of the children's personal anecdotes attached to rather flimsy biographies of their fathers.
2. The major problem with this book is how much we can trust the author. I only discovered after finishing the book about Gerald Prosner's plagiarism but was deeply suspicious about the way his interviews were presented because he never makes clear that he doesn't speak German and must have been using an interpreter (although some interviewees like Niklas Frank speak English many do not). It made me wonder at the author's complaints about the difficulty of tracking down his subjects and his numerous letters that went unanswered (the book was published in 1991 so is pre all internet type searches). What language did he write them in? and is it any wonder that the recipients, even if they could understand his letters, might wonder whether this American 'journalist' had either the training or knowledge to present what they said accurately. Because Posner is no Gitta Sereny (please see my footnote *1 below).
Facing up to the horrors that make a parent a monster and whether you as a child of that monster bear any responsibility or inherit any taint is a question for psychiatry and philosophy not glib investigative journalists. The same could be said about investigating how the children of WWII era Germans deal with that history. It is complex and simply learning that this or that child of someone tried at Nuremberg is loyal to their father or isn't, or is apologist or denouncer of Nazism is interesting but meaningless without any broader context. Posner has only the most superficial knowledge of the period and clearly comes to it with a mind utterly empty of anything but publishing deadlines. It is also clear that he comes to this subject via his earlier book on Mengele (I would not recommend it - in fact the best book on Mengele is the novel by Olivier Guez 'The Disappearance of Josef Mengele') and after encountering Niklas Frank (one of the best chapters in this book is the about Niklas and his brother Norman) but very little depth or commitment. This is at best no more than magazine interview profiles and a subject worthy of so much more.
*1 Gitta Sereny has written two of the most fascinating and deeply detailed examinations of Nazi guilt and coming to terms with it 'Into That Darkness: An examination of Conscience' (about Franz Stangel) and 'Albert Speer His Battle with the Truth'. The difference between a journalist like Gitta Sereny and Gerald Posner is not simply about speaking the same language as her interviewees but both her and her subjects commitment to the exploration of difficult and challenging subjects. Posner had no such commitment from his interviewees and in many cases it is clear that pursuing difficult topics would have cost the cooperation of the interviewees.
June 26, 2023
I have been reading a lot about the second world war lately. It has always been an interest, and I dip in and out of it fairly regularly. I find the extremes of personality and behaviour fascinating. There is a lot of material out there now discussing the children of Nazis but this book was one of the first. The moral quandaries that these people have lived with their entire lives are appalling to contemplate. Those who agreed to be interviewed have widely varied understandings of their fathers. Some believe they must be denounced, often in the strongest terms. Others seek to defend their father to the point of a thinly veiled acceptance of Nazi ideological views. Wolf Hess was a prime example. Most have struggled to accept the crimes or complicity of their father while at the same time reconciling their love for their parent. Worthwhile.
May 24, 2018
Gerald Posnerin kirjassa "Isäni oli natsi" (Minerva, 2018) haastatellaan useita entisten natsien jälkeläisiä, jotka ruotivat enemmän tai vähemmän ongelmallista suhdetta vanhempiinsa, jotka syyllistyivät toisen maailmansodan aikana sotarikoksiin ja muihin hirmutekoihin.
Näkökulmat vaihtelevat puhujasta riippuen; esimerkiksi Edda Göring ja Wolf Hess suhtautuvat edesmenneisiin läheisiinsä rakkaudella ja ihaillen, sekä näiden osuuksia vähätellen, kun taas esimerkiksi Puolan kenraalikuvernementtia johtaneen Hans Frankin pojat ovat hyvinkin kriittisiä, suorastaan vihamielisiä isiensä tekoja kohtaan. Kaikki haastatelluista eivät halua enää itse jälkikasvua tai ovat muuttaneet sukunimensä, kun taas toiset ovat käyttäneet koko elämänsä isänsä muistoa vaalien ja sitä puhdistamaan pyrkien.
Kiinnostavin ja samalla itselleni eniten uutta tietoa tarjoava luku käsittelee Rolf Mengelen suhdetta isäänsä Josefiin, pahamaineiseen "Auschwitzin kuoleman enkeliin". Vaikka Rolf ei hyväksynytkään isänsä tekoja, ei hän omien sanojensa mukaan edes harkinnut Etelä-Amerikassa piilotelleen tohtorin ilmiantamista.
Kaiken kaikkiaan ihan mielenkiintoinen kirja. Jos aihe kiinnostaa enemmän, niin Peter Sichrovskyn Syntynyt syylliseksi : natsien lapset kertovat lienee sekin tutustumisen arvoinen, tosin siinä ollaan anonyymeja ja liikutaan enemmän ruohonjuuritasolla.
Näkökulmat vaihtelevat puhujasta riippuen; esimerkiksi Edda Göring ja Wolf Hess suhtautuvat edesmenneisiin läheisiinsä rakkaudella ja ihaillen, sekä näiden osuuksia vähätellen, kun taas esimerkiksi Puolan kenraalikuvernementtia johtaneen Hans Frankin pojat ovat hyvinkin kriittisiä, suorastaan vihamielisiä isiensä tekoja kohtaan. Kaikki haastatelluista eivät halua enää itse jälkikasvua tai ovat muuttaneet sukunimensä, kun taas toiset ovat käyttäneet koko elämänsä isänsä muistoa vaalien ja sitä puhdistamaan pyrkien.
Kiinnostavin ja samalla itselleni eniten uutta tietoa tarjoava luku käsittelee Rolf Mengelen suhdetta isäänsä Josefiin, pahamaineiseen "Auschwitzin kuoleman enkeliin". Vaikka Rolf ei hyväksynytkään isänsä tekoja, ei hän omien sanojensa mukaan edes harkinnut Etelä-Amerikassa piilotelleen tohtorin ilmiantamista.
Kaiken kaikkiaan ihan mielenkiintoinen kirja. Jos aihe kiinnostaa enemmän, niin Peter Sichrovskyn Syntynyt syylliseksi : natsien lapset kertovat lienee sekin tutustumisen arvoinen, tosin siinä ollaan anonyymeja ja liikutaan enemmän ruohonjuuritasolla.
August 20, 2022
Very good book. The stories of the children whose fathers were important Nazi feel real and are supported by great research. I learned about their lives and what happened to them after the war. I didn't know the details of Nazis' trials and escape, in some cases. The stories aren't too long and show interesting photographs, often provided by the children. I can truly recommend this book.
April 11, 2024
My thoughts are divided on this book. It is well written for sure, but to see the viewpoints of the subjects is shocking to me. I both feel bad for them for being the children of such horrible people, but then there are those that see no wrong doing in what their parents did. It was morose obviously, but seeing how some of the children responded is what I found shocking
November 20, 2021
2/5 stars
Comment: I just think that there was quite many things that these children said that should've been commented on more, as in nit just leaving it at "this person said so and so". When you're talking about one of the biggest human atrocities in history, you shouldn't leave certain things uncommented.
Comment: I just think that there was quite many things that these children said that should've been commented on more, as in nit just leaving it at "this person said so and so". When you're talking about one of the biggest human atrocities in history, you shouldn't leave certain things uncommented.
August 26, 2019
Very interesting book
September 6, 2019
Dające do myślenia.
February 12, 2021
I've often wondered about the other side and the effect it had on their children. It is nice that this book also included pictures.
February 17, 2020
This book was fascinating. It was really interesting to read about the different reactions the children had to their fathers' Nazi participation (no matter the rank held), how it changed their relationship (if at all), and how they view their fathers now. Definitely recommend if you are interested in this part of history.
January 8, 2020
The title of this book can be a tad misleading, or confusing, in that it can be interpreted in more than one way, since there are no known biological offspring of the infamous German leader. He had preached the gospel of racial superiority of Germans (and using a stolen word, Aryan, falsely to describe them), and had instituted two or three separate but equally demeaning streams of lives fòr the German women, while the men were supposed to be busy conquering the world - primarily, the women were supposed to be limited to kitchen and children, with church thrown in - which might seem to be for satisfaction of higher aspirations, but no, that wasn't possible; church as an institution had 'managed' women as much as it had managed the poor and the workers, for centuries, for benefits of males and those of wealth and power; and inquisition had put women down with the horrible prospect, rather certainty, of being burnt at the stake if suspected of being a person of intellect and knowledge, rather than a sex object available for servitude. There were two special channels, elevating this role of being limited to serving the males, for selected women, selected by nazis. One was for breeding with males designated special, which did not mean those of abilities in science or arts or academic excellence, but rather Nazi officers. The other was serving nazis and others deemed deserving the service, in the role of sex object.
So the title does confuse at first in that one might naturally think it's about the children bred by those designated women chosen for reproduction who'd been kept at special facilities for this process, and the children of the nazis and others held worthy of reproduction under nazi ideology, born at those facilities and brought up by designated Germans.
Instead, it's about what the children of the accused at Nuremberg trials and similar other war criminals, and asking what they thought of their parents!
............
The author, Gerald Posner, wrote a preface to the digital edition published in 2017, 26 years after the book was published first in 1991. At that time what he thought was relevant was to not hide the identities of the nazis, and other persons in positions of authority in the Third Reich, whose children he wrote about, as other works on the subject did. Since then, he notes and gives succint descriptions of, rising tide of antisemitism through Europe after 1991 post fall of iron curtain and of totalitarian regimes, and confused populations blaming Jews for a conspiracy to impose communism on those nations and also for fall of communism. All this despite the drastically reduced Jewish populations of those countries and generally throughout Europe, due to holocaust in WWII years, and since then after 1991 due to emigration out of East Europe.
What is also true but he hasn't noticed or connected it to, is two separate but connected factors. One is general rise of racism in Europe, especially France and Germany, that manifests against "other"s in strange behaviours that once would have been clearly seen as halfway between uncivilized and viciously hostile, but after 2001 are often excused in names of fear or security. Second is migration to Europe and West in general from precisely those lands that are on one hand suffering from jihadist wars and on the other are source of jihadists migrating to West, when West opened its doors for refugees fleeing from jihadist wars.
Needless to say the connection is obvious, since the jihadists on one hand perpetrate much of the antisemitic terrorist attacks as well as general ones, and terrorise the general populations, while West is at a loss about discerning jihadists from other, non threatening migrants or visitors or citizens who, to western race based sight, look no different.
In other words, it's like - say - Vietnamese people confusing between nazis and British royalty, or between communist visitors from Moscow and republicans from Texas. Funnily enough Vietnamese, according to what one read decades ago in a U.S. publication, do discern the difference. Western lack of discernment is not merely a "They look the same" innocence, but much worse.
As a result, often it's those not in sympathy with racism, antisemitism or jihad, who are likely to be turned off by the rising racism in West, and migrate if possible, while the jihadists out to flood the globe and convert or conquer as the basic agenda are unlikely to be deterred.
............
Reading about Hans Frank, the "Butcher of Poland", the first person discussed in the book, one begins to get the impression within the first couple of pages that the real point was to set forth details about the life and career of Hans Frank, who is less famous than the others indicted at the most famous of the Nuremberg trials, the first and the public one. One wonders if that was the point of the book after all, to describe these men and their work and legacies.
But then, after a couple of pages, the picture shifts and one sees that while the information was necessary, the appoint really is about the children and the effect (of their father's lives and work and legacy, and of the whole nazi regime and ideology and crimes) on their persona, their psyche and their lives.
Frank children were not only were not indoctrinated in the Nazi ideology, but also were mostly kept away from the criminal side of the Nazi regime - Norman, born in 1930, not only never heard a word of antisemitism but had a close friend at his school in Berlin who was Jewish, until 1938, when this friend suddenly vanished - and their rare brushes with the realities of the horrors were, the elder one thought, normal parts of wartime. The youngest one Niklas did notice strain between his parents, but also recalls driving past the ghetto and seeing the people.
To their credit, when newspapers published the photographs of concentration camp inmates as discovered by the allied forces, they knew it was real, didn't brand it as propaganda, for which their mother must be given credit. Their struggle for survival later - Norman wasn't allowed by authorities to continue at school and nor was he allowed to work, while Niklas was sent out to beg for food with a note pinned to his shirt, bringing back a loaf of bread - is very moving, as is the clear bond between the brothers who got close later. They have very diverse view about their parents, but understand one another.
............
Wolf Hess in the next chapter, on the other hand, is as contrasting a figure as can be from the Frank family, and carries the banner of his father and their party and their boss as a matter of conviction, from "injustice to Germany" to calling Nuremberg trials a farce. In particular, he's bought every lie uttered by his father's boss about German rights to integrate various lands because it was "German domestic matter", and accuses Churchill and FDR of having engineered a conspiracy against Germany and forcing Germany to attack Poland because "Poles were murdering Germans by thousands". And one has to find black humour when reading of Wolf Hess speaking of his father being treated by British, when Hess was in prison, with terrorising techniques such as light kept on at night (after his attempted suicide, presumably it was so he was visible), or the air raid siren being turned on (since by definition it was heard in the vicinity, it wasnt for his benefit alone), and Wolf might have thought about the civilians of various countries terrorised - and massacred wholesale - by Germany as a small matter of clean-up for finding "lebensraum" for Germans to settle and reproduce in dozens.
Wolf Hess says that nazis guilty of crimes should have been tried by German courts. If the subsequent - or previous, post WWI - trials were an indication, that would have amounted to the whole lot getting a hero treatment and a less than two year sentencing at most, if that. He finds it ridiculous that his father was judged guilty of crimes against peace, which implies that Wolf thinks German aggressions against Austria and Czechoslovakia were not of importance nor were nazi crimes against the disfranchised civilians. Wolf resents his father's and his mother's imprisonment "only because they were ...", and fails to see the irony of his not relating it to the victims of nazis who were massacred only because they were not nazi nor approved by nazis.
"It was also during this period in the mid-1950s that Wolf began learning about his father and the war. German newspapers and magazines ran many stories about the Third Reich. Initially, Wolf drew his information from these sources. He did not learn about the period at school. “The Allies wanted the German teachers to teach a new version of National Socialist history,” he recalls. “But good German teachers would always find some way around this requirement, like saving it until the bell to end the class, and then starting the next class with a different subject.”"
And then some Germans complain that if they meet Jews outside Germany, they stop talking to them after learning they're German! One really must wonder what makes them think that their victims would accept the German world view when it amounts to definition of 'good German' being not recognising that genocides perpetrated by Germans is not a good thing.
Wolf visited South Africa in 1956 and says he realised that conditions there were quite different from as they were presented in newspapers in Germany, which prompted his turnaround in views about the nazi past of Germany and of his father, and he returned to speak with various nazis which changed his mind. Presumably he didn't live as a non white in South Africa, and there was no reason any non white would seek out a young visitor from Germany whose father was a nazi bigwig imprisoned instead of hanged only because he flew to Scotland.
""“During all the long years it is true I had a father, but in the end I did not have him, because the situations under which we corresponded, or rather conferred, were controlled through the rules of his imprisonment. There was not a single truly moving father-son discussion in which I could ask him about things on my mind. That was true for human problems a young man wants to discuss with his father, and particularly for historical issues.”"
Funny, he never thought about the children of those massacred by nazis, or the children who were massacred, in his complaining he didn't have a father.
"“I always predicted reunification in my lifetime. Germans are sick of having to feel ashamed to say they are proud to be German. Now it’s all changing. The Soviet Union is crumbling, and the great American “melting pot” is melting over with crime and drugs and racial hatred. Germans know that Americans, British and French in the West, and Russians in the East, are still occupying our country. We want them all out. Then it will return to the Europe of old, with a powerful and large Germany in the middle. Even our lands the victors gave away after the war will come back. Now, the price for unification is to sign a treaty guaranteeing the present Polish border. But wait some years. Sooner or later that land will return where it belongs, to Germany. The Poles have run their former blossoming land into a dry, grass-covered land. With their economy in ruins, they must depend on financial aid. The German nation will not continually nourish these people who have stolen our property. The Americans should remember what Abraham Lincoln once said: “Nothing is settled unless it is settled in a just way.”"
And Germans are offended when reminded of the nazi past or atrocities! If Wolf Hess is anything he's a nazi.
"He claims to have received thousands of letters and says “ninety-nine per cent are positive.” He is encouraged by letters he receives about his father from German high schools. “They show the right type of interest and understand what really happened. To me, this is a promising sign for German youth.”"
Which connects to the author's preface to the digital edition where he speaks about the rising antisemitism in Europe, only, it's far more evil than that - it's nazism rising, in Germany and around. Wolf Hess sums up his hatred for the allies and assertion about Germans being vindicated at the end. Not a word in the whole conversation about victims of the regime that his father was the "conscience of", which he mentions proudly.
............
Third chapter is about Saur, who - his sons are clear - liked power but didn't care about titles; in Speer's work he is present as a shadow figure, preferred by various high up nazis undermining Speer. This shadow emerges in this chapter as an unsavoury character who undermined anyone as long as it served his purpose, and since he testified against Krupp, paid the price by being unable to find work later, as his hopes of being employed by U.S. like Braun didn't come through. He was dictatorial to the children subsequently and hit them too.
The children only heard good things about nazis from the teachers and didn't discover realities until Klaus saw a television documentary in 1961 depicting concentration camps, which shocked not just him but a teacher who was a Lutheran priest who said he'd had no idea. Klaus discovered more through book trade exhibitions and an article in Cologne. He returned home to help with the family business on verge of bankruptcy and helped it turn.
"A year after Klaus’s return, Karl junior witnessed the only confrontation in his family over any war-related issue. “It was between Klaus and my mother. They had seen a discussion on television about the war and a Jewish person had been interviewed. My mother had said a typical German expression, “That is one that should have gone to the gas chambers.” And my brother was furious and told her it was stupid to say such things. And she was really shocked that he was so angry. “It’s just an expression, it doesn’t mean anything,” she told him. “You know I don’t mean any harm by it.” But Klaus was very firm with her. “Those stupid sentences are what eventually led to the types of things that happened in the war,” he told her."
"Both brothers seem amused by the admiration some people have for their father. It is alien to them. “See, I don’t feel any love for him, nor do I feel any pride,” says Klaus."
"Saur Verlag is the vehicle through which he tries to confront his Nazi heritage. His current catalogue shows a broad selection of serious works, including titles on European emigres, Jewish immigrants, a Hebrew text from Harvard University, and a selection of anti-Nazi books."
Karl is cultural editor of Der Spiegel.
"It is important that people understand the truth. Too many people in Germany talk about the ‘good’ things that Hitler did, and then they speak about the bad things as though only a few criminals were responsible. Their feeling is that the Third Reich gave off all this light and it is only natural that ..."
So the title does confuse at first in that one might naturally think it's about the children bred by those designated women chosen for reproduction who'd been kept at special facilities for this process, and the children of the nazis and others held worthy of reproduction under nazi ideology, born at those facilities and brought up by designated Germans.
Instead, it's about what the children of the accused at Nuremberg trials and similar other war criminals, and asking what they thought of their parents!
............
The author, Gerald Posner, wrote a preface to the digital edition published in 2017, 26 years after the book was published first in 1991. At that time what he thought was relevant was to not hide the identities of the nazis, and other persons in positions of authority in the Third Reich, whose children he wrote about, as other works on the subject did. Since then, he notes and gives succint descriptions of, rising tide of antisemitism through Europe after 1991 post fall of iron curtain and of totalitarian regimes, and confused populations blaming Jews for a conspiracy to impose communism on those nations and also for fall of communism. All this despite the drastically reduced Jewish populations of those countries and generally throughout Europe, due to holocaust in WWII years, and since then after 1991 due to emigration out of East Europe.
What is also true but he hasn't noticed or connected it to, is two separate but connected factors. One is general rise of racism in Europe, especially France and Germany, that manifests against "other"s in strange behaviours that once would have been clearly seen as halfway between uncivilized and viciously hostile, but after 2001 are often excused in names of fear or security. Second is migration to Europe and West in general from precisely those lands that are on one hand suffering from jihadist wars and on the other are source of jihadists migrating to West, when West opened its doors for refugees fleeing from jihadist wars.
Needless to say the connection is obvious, since the jihadists on one hand perpetrate much of the antisemitic terrorist attacks as well as general ones, and terrorise the general populations, while West is at a loss about discerning jihadists from other, non threatening migrants or visitors or citizens who, to western race based sight, look no different.
In other words, it's like - say - Vietnamese people confusing between nazis and British royalty, or between communist visitors from Moscow and republicans from Texas. Funnily enough Vietnamese, according to what one read decades ago in a U.S. publication, do discern the difference. Western lack of discernment is not merely a "They look the same" innocence, but much worse.
As a result, often it's those not in sympathy with racism, antisemitism or jihad, who are likely to be turned off by the rising racism in West, and migrate if possible, while the jihadists out to flood the globe and convert or conquer as the basic agenda are unlikely to be deterred.
............
Reading about Hans Frank, the "Butcher of Poland", the first person discussed in the book, one begins to get the impression within the first couple of pages that the real point was to set forth details about the life and career of Hans Frank, who is less famous than the others indicted at the most famous of the Nuremberg trials, the first and the public one. One wonders if that was the point of the book after all, to describe these men and their work and legacies.
But then, after a couple of pages, the picture shifts and one sees that while the information was necessary, the appoint really is about the children and the effect (of their father's lives and work and legacy, and of the whole nazi regime and ideology and crimes) on their persona, their psyche and their lives.
Frank children were not only were not indoctrinated in the Nazi ideology, but also were mostly kept away from the criminal side of the Nazi regime - Norman, born in 1930, not only never heard a word of antisemitism but had a close friend at his school in Berlin who was Jewish, until 1938, when this friend suddenly vanished - and their rare brushes with the realities of the horrors were, the elder one thought, normal parts of wartime. The youngest one Niklas did notice strain between his parents, but also recalls driving past the ghetto and seeing the people.
To their credit, when newspapers published the photographs of concentration camp inmates as discovered by the allied forces, they knew it was real, didn't brand it as propaganda, for which their mother must be given credit. Their struggle for survival later - Norman wasn't allowed by authorities to continue at school and nor was he allowed to work, while Niklas was sent out to beg for food with a note pinned to his shirt, bringing back a loaf of bread - is very moving, as is the clear bond between the brothers who got close later. They have very diverse view about their parents, but understand one another.
............
Wolf Hess in the next chapter, on the other hand, is as contrasting a figure as can be from the Frank family, and carries the banner of his father and their party and their boss as a matter of conviction, from "injustice to Germany" to calling Nuremberg trials a farce. In particular, he's bought every lie uttered by his father's boss about German rights to integrate various lands because it was "German domestic matter", and accuses Churchill and FDR of having engineered a conspiracy against Germany and forcing Germany to attack Poland because "Poles were murdering Germans by thousands". And one has to find black humour when reading of Wolf Hess speaking of his father being treated by British, when Hess was in prison, with terrorising techniques such as light kept on at night (after his attempted suicide, presumably it was so he was visible), or the air raid siren being turned on (since by definition it was heard in the vicinity, it wasnt for his benefit alone), and Wolf might have thought about the civilians of various countries terrorised - and massacred wholesale - by Germany as a small matter of clean-up for finding "lebensraum" for Germans to settle and reproduce in dozens.
Wolf Hess says that nazis guilty of crimes should have been tried by German courts. If the subsequent - or previous, post WWI - trials were an indication, that would have amounted to the whole lot getting a hero treatment and a less than two year sentencing at most, if that. He finds it ridiculous that his father was judged guilty of crimes against peace, which implies that Wolf thinks German aggressions against Austria and Czechoslovakia were not of importance nor were nazi crimes against the disfranchised civilians. Wolf resents his father's and his mother's imprisonment "only because they were ...", and fails to see the irony of his not relating it to the victims of nazis who were massacred only because they were not nazi nor approved by nazis.
"It was also during this period in the mid-1950s that Wolf began learning about his father and the war. German newspapers and magazines ran many stories about the Third Reich. Initially, Wolf drew his information from these sources. He did not learn about the period at school. “The Allies wanted the German teachers to teach a new version of National Socialist history,” he recalls. “But good German teachers would always find some way around this requirement, like saving it until the bell to end the class, and then starting the next class with a different subject.”"
And then some Germans complain that if they meet Jews outside Germany, they stop talking to them after learning they're German! One really must wonder what makes them think that their victims would accept the German world view when it amounts to definition of 'good German' being not recognising that genocides perpetrated by Germans is not a good thing.
Wolf visited South Africa in 1956 and says he realised that conditions there were quite different from as they were presented in newspapers in Germany, which prompted his turnaround in views about the nazi past of Germany and of his father, and he returned to speak with various nazis which changed his mind. Presumably he didn't live as a non white in South Africa, and there was no reason any non white would seek out a young visitor from Germany whose father was a nazi bigwig imprisoned instead of hanged only because he flew to Scotland.
""“During all the long years it is true I had a father, but in the end I did not have him, because the situations under which we corresponded, or rather conferred, were controlled through the rules of his imprisonment. There was not a single truly moving father-son discussion in which I could ask him about things on my mind. That was true for human problems a young man wants to discuss with his father, and particularly for historical issues.”"
Funny, he never thought about the children of those massacred by nazis, or the children who were massacred, in his complaining he didn't have a father.
"“I always predicted reunification in my lifetime. Germans are sick of having to feel ashamed to say they are proud to be German. Now it’s all changing. The Soviet Union is crumbling, and the great American “melting pot” is melting over with crime and drugs and racial hatred. Germans know that Americans, British and French in the West, and Russians in the East, are still occupying our country. We want them all out. Then it will return to the Europe of old, with a powerful and large Germany in the middle. Even our lands the victors gave away after the war will come back. Now, the price for unification is to sign a treaty guaranteeing the present Polish border. But wait some years. Sooner or later that land will return where it belongs, to Germany. The Poles have run their former blossoming land into a dry, grass-covered land. With their economy in ruins, they must depend on financial aid. The German nation will not continually nourish these people who have stolen our property. The Americans should remember what Abraham Lincoln once said: “Nothing is settled unless it is settled in a just way.”"
And Germans are offended when reminded of the nazi past or atrocities! If Wolf Hess is anything he's a nazi.
"He claims to have received thousands of letters and says “ninety-nine per cent are positive.” He is encouraged by letters he receives about his father from German high schools. “They show the right type of interest and understand what really happened. To me, this is a promising sign for German youth.”"
Which connects to the author's preface to the digital edition where he speaks about the rising antisemitism in Europe, only, it's far more evil than that - it's nazism rising, in Germany and around. Wolf Hess sums up his hatred for the allies and assertion about Germans being vindicated at the end. Not a word in the whole conversation about victims of the regime that his father was the "conscience of", which he mentions proudly.
............
Third chapter is about Saur, who - his sons are clear - liked power but didn't care about titles; in Speer's work he is present as a shadow figure, preferred by various high up nazis undermining Speer. This shadow emerges in this chapter as an unsavoury character who undermined anyone as long as it served his purpose, and since he testified against Krupp, paid the price by being unable to find work later, as his hopes of being employed by U.S. like Braun didn't come through. He was dictatorial to the children subsequently and hit them too.
The children only heard good things about nazis from the teachers and didn't discover realities until Klaus saw a television documentary in 1961 depicting concentration camps, which shocked not just him but a teacher who was a Lutheran priest who said he'd had no idea. Klaus discovered more through book trade exhibitions and an article in Cologne. He returned home to help with the family business on verge of bankruptcy and helped it turn.
"A year after Klaus’s return, Karl junior witnessed the only confrontation in his family over any war-related issue. “It was between Klaus and my mother. They had seen a discussion on television about the war and a Jewish person had been interviewed. My mother had said a typical German expression, “That is one that should have gone to the gas chambers.” And my brother was furious and told her it was stupid to say such things. And she was really shocked that he was so angry. “It’s just an expression, it doesn’t mean anything,” she told him. “You know I don’t mean any harm by it.” But Klaus was very firm with her. “Those stupid sentences are what eventually led to the types of things that happened in the war,” he told her."
"Both brothers seem amused by the admiration some people have for their father. It is alien to them. “See, I don’t feel any love for him, nor do I feel any pride,” says Klaus."
"Saur Verlag is the vehicle through which he tries to confront his Nazi heritage. His current catalogue shows a broad selection of serious works, including titles on European emigres, Jewish immigrants, a Hebrew text from Harvard University, and a selection of anti-Nazi books."
Karl is cultural editor of Der Spiegel.
"It is important that people understand the truth. Too many people in Germany talk about the ‘good’ things that Hitler did, and then they speak about the bad things as though only a few criminals were responsible. Their feeling is that the Third Reich gave off all this light and it is only natural that ..."
July 9, 2017
I was disappointed in the book. I thought that there would be more dialog with the children and less history of what their father's had done. I have read much about WWII and am very familiar with what the head Nazi's did and were capable of doing. What I was more interested in was the perspective of the children on what their father's were and on what their father's had done. Would not recommend this book to anyone with serious interest in the children's point of view of what the children thought of their parent's participation in the Nazi regime's atrocities.
May 5, 2019
I was interested in this book to see how the children of Nazis coped with the knowledge of their parents actions. I found to variety of response to be fascinating. Some defend their parent, she want nothing to do with their parents, and other admit to being deeply divided over their feelings. But no matter what they say, you see how they were all deeply affected in one way or another. It gives you another reason to stop and think about your actions and to see how they might affect those around you.
March 8, 2023
For the longest time ever, I’ve always been curious about the personal lives of the Third Reich members. Did these men, who committed the most notorious war crime in the 20th century, have “normal” families? Did they love their children, even though they went on killing others’ children? Were they good parents? Were they even human?
So I picked up this book with this crazy hope that they weren’t human, that the stories which were told by their children would be vastly different from what I would have said about my own father and my own childhood. And the truth is, they were not. For some bizarre reasons, these men who myself and majority of us see as monsters, had normal families. They loved their kids, they had the bond and relationship any loving parents would have had with their offsprings. In a way, that is even more upsetting to me because their actions are no longer understandable. We might never find out what made them did what they did. But what we do know is the pain - the result of their sins, carries on through generations, for decades.
The first chapter was “A Thousand Years of Guilt” which centred around Niklas and Norman Frank - the sons of Hans Frank (Governor-General of Poland). Hans Frank stood trial at Nuremberg, was found guilty and executed in 1946. When the brothers were interviewed, their father had been dead for over 40 years and yet the wound was still fresh and aching. They took the blame hard, deeply, personally and lived their lives feeling guilty for what their father had committed. Norman - the older son and Hans’ favourite, was openly critical about his father’s crime. “It would have been terrible for me if my father was in prison like Hess. I would have had real trouble living with that… In a sense I am grateful he was condemned to die. A life sentence for my father would have been a life sentence for the whole family.” But he did not hide the fact that he still loved his father as a son, even though that might not align with the society's expections. In contrast, Niklas - Han’s youngest son, spent his days hating his father. While their reactions were different from each other, they both were living their lives under the shadow of their father’s guilt and were profoundly broken. The Nuremberg and the execution was simply not enough for them to move on guilt-free. And that alone to me was unbearable.
Rolf Mengele - Josef Mengele’s (Angel of Death at Auschwitz concentration camp) only son, was also interviewed. Rolf has a relatively similar critical view on his father and did not show much sympathy to him. Comparing to the Frank brothers, Rolf did not spend much time with his father since Josef Mengele spent years in hiding in South America post WWII. So while being critical, he did not hate his father simply because “This seems too final to me. Hate is such a strong word… I am more indifferent to my father. I don’t feel strongly enough about him to hate him”. This is one of the most raw and authentic opinions I’ve ever read regarding a parent-child relationship.
The book also touched base with the children of Hess and Goring who still looked up at their fathers with admiration. They were proud of what their fathers had “achieved” and rather than carrying the guilt, they proudly wore their surnames like a legacy. Donitz’s daughter (Donitz was the successor of Hitler and the last Fuhrer), without reluctance, said she was proud of her father and was not happy when people refer to him as war criminal. And as much as I want to judge her or Hess’ or Goring’s children, I could not imagine what I would have done or who I would have become if I were them. Would I hate my own father? Would I feel guilty for his sins? How would I feel and what kind of life I would have led? Those were the questions which puzzled me while reading this book.
So I picked up this book with this crazy hope that they weren’t human, that the stories which were told by their children would be vastly different from what I would have said about my own father and my own childhood. And the truth is, they were not. For some bizarre reasons, these men who myself and majority of us see as monsters, had normal families. They loved their kids, they had the bond and relationship any loving parents would have had with their offsprings. In a way, that is even more upsetting to me because their actions are no longer understandable. We might never find out what made them did what they did. But what we do know is the pain - the result of their sins, carries on through generations, for decades.
The first chapter was “A Thousand Years of Guilt” which centred around Niklas and Norman Frank - the sons of Hans Frank (Governor-General of Poland). Hans Frank stood trial at Nuremberg, was found guilty and executed in 1946. When the brothers were interviewed, their father had been dead for over 40 years and yet the wound was still fresh and aching. They took the blame hard, deeply, personally and lived their lives feeling guilty for what their father had committed. Norman - the older son and Hans’ favourite, was openly critical about his father’s crime. “It would have been terrible for me if my father was in prison like Hess. I would have had real trouble living with that… In a sense I am grateful he was condemned to die. A life sentence for my father would have been a life sentence for the whole family.” But he did not hide the fact that he still loved his father as a son, even though that might not align with the society's expections. In contrast, Niklas - Han’s youngest son, spent his days hating his father. While their reactions were different from each other, they both were living their lives under the shadow of their father’s guilt and were profoundly broken. The Nuremberg and the execution was simply not enough for them to move on guilt-free. And that alone to me was unbearable.
Rolf Mengele - Josef Mengele’s (Angel of Death at Auschwitz concentration camp) only son, was also interviewed. Rolf has a relatively similar critical view on his father and did not show much sympathy to him. Comparing to the Frank brothers, Rolf did not spend much time with his father since Josef Mengele spent years in hiding in South America post WWII. So while being critical, he did not hate his father simply because “This seems too final to me. Hate is such a strong word… I am more indifferent to my father. I don’t feel strongly enough about him to hate him”. This is one of the most raw and authentic opinions I’ve ever read regarding a parent-child relationship.
The book also touched base with the children of Hess and Goring who still looked up at their fathers with admiration. They were proud of what their fathers had “achieved” and rather than carrying the guilt, they proudly wore their surnames like a legacy. Donitz’s daughter (Donitz was the successor of Hitler and the last Fuhrer), without reluctance, said she was proud of her father and was not happy when people refer to him as war criminal. And as much as I want to judge her or Hess’ or Goring’s children, I could not imagine what I would have done or who I would have become if I were them. Would I hate my own father? Would I feel guilty for his sins? How would I feel and what kind of life I would have led? Those were the questions which puzzled me while reading this book.
August 31, 2023
Family burden of a child’s lifetime
Hitler’s Children is a fascinating and thought-provoking read. It explores how children of Nazis who committed major atrocities were impacted by their father’s war-time pasts. When the book was written each “child” was a middle-aged adult. Some had Nazi fathers who still were alive, some fathers had died, and some fathers were executed or committed suicide after being convicted for war crimes. Some were infamous and others had fathers were weren’t famous but who still committed atrocities.
The impact these fathers had on their children varied. Some were horrible parents both to their young children extending into their adulthoods. I was struck by how many kids had tyrannical fathers. Others had loving fathers or one whose father while not loving but spent his home hours loving playing classical music on his piano. Some children didn’t really ever get the chance to know their fathers. Some of the children despised their fathers, while two staunchly defended their fathers. Some strongly disagreed with their fathers actions and were horrified that their fathers still couldn’t admit there was anything wrong with their actions, even decades after the war ended. Especially intriguing though, none of the children said they could turn in their fathers if they had been faced with the hypothetical option to do that. Blood ties won out, even for kids who despised their fathers actions — one who hadn’t even talked to her father for two years (at the time the book was written).
There are few books about this topic. At the time this was written (in the 1990s), the author only knew of two. The psychological impact of these fathers is simply inescapable on each of these kids. How could anyone surnamed Goërring, Hess, or Mengele not be impacted when someone knows who their father was? Mengele’s son even legally changed his name so that his children wouldn’t have to be saddled with that burden. The kids all knew that they weren’t responsible for their fathers actions. Yet, they saw their fathers in a personal way that history can never show them. These fathers were people at home. One child didn’t even know what her father had done until she was in her 20s. It was hard for all of them to reconcile their feelings for these men as their fathers with these men who committed unimaginable human atrocities. Megele’s son didn’t even know who his father was until he was 16. He had a tumultuous relationship with him after that, but even then he kept Mengele’s whereabouts a secret, because Mengele was his father after all. The tragedy of these kids’ lives is that they can never really escape the horrifying pasts of their fathers. The best they can do is to come to accept it as best as possible and form their own lives that are separate from their family past. Most kids did that. One would hope that their own children will be able to distance themselves even more. Their family burden is truly a burden of their lifetimes.
Hitler’s Children is a fascinating and thought-provoking read. It explores how children of Nazis who committed major atrocities were impacted by their father’s war-time pasts. When the book was written each “child” was a middle-aged adult. Some had Nazi fathers who still were alive, some fathers had died, and some fathers were executed or committed suicide after being convicted for war crimes. Some were infamous and others had fathers were weren’t famous but who still committed atrocities.
The impact these fathers had on their children varied. Some were horrible parents both to their young children extending into their adulthoods. I was struck by how many kids had tyrannical fathers. Others had loving fathers or one whose father while not loving but spent his home hours loving playing classical music on his piano. Some children didn’t really ever get the chance to know their fathers. Some of the children despised their fathers, while two staunchly defended their fathers. Some strongly disagreed with their fathers actions and were horrified that their fathers still couldn’t admit there was anything wrong with their actions, even decades after the war ended. Especially intriguing though, none of the children said they could turn in their fathers if they had been faced with the hypothetical option to do that. Blood ties won out, even for kids who despised their fathers actions — one who hadn’t even talked to her father for two years (at the time the book was written).
There are few books about this topic. At the time this was written (in the 1990s), the author only knew of two. The psychological impact of these fathers is simply inescapable on each of these kids. How could anyone surnamed Goërring, Hess, or Mengele not be impacted when someone knows who their father was? Mengele’s son even legally changed his name so that his children wouldn’t have to be saddled with that burden. The kids all knew that they weren’t responsible for their fathers actions. Yet, they saw their fathers in a personal way that history can never show them. These fathers were people at home. One child didn’t even know what her father had done until she was in her 20s. It was hard for all of them to reconcile their feelings for these men as their fathers with these men who committed unimaginable human atrocities. Megele’s son didn’t even know who his father was until he was 16. He had a tumultuous relationship with him after that, but even then he kept Mengele’s whereabouts a secret, because Mengele was his father after all. The tragedy of these kids’ lives is that they can never really escape the horrifying pasts of their fathers. The best they can do is to come to accept it as best as possible and form their own lives that are separate from their family past. Most kids did that. One would hope that their own children will be able to distance themselves even more. Their family burden is truly a burden of their lifetimes.
April 26, 2020
Hitler's Children was interesting in the way that listening to someone talk in an engaging and intelligent way about something they are passionate and informed about is interesting, but it felt more like a series of anecdotes than a cohesive book. The author was up front about his inability to secure interviews with many potential subjects, and the general squirreliness of quite a few of the folks he did manage to get on record. So what conclusions are we meant to draw from this? If I had to sum up the whole book in one sentence, it would be, "The adult children of known war criminals have a complicated relationship with their fathers." Which, duh. 99.8% of the general population has a complicated relationship with their fathers and the remaining .2% are lying to themselves. Add crimes against humanity to the mix and if course the parent-child relationship will get more hectic and fraught. So it was interesting to read that Wolf Hess defends his father rabidly while Rolf Mengele sort of sadly and limpidly disavows his pops. Interesting to learn that Edda Goring had a fairytale childhood until the cyanide thing. But I knew already that monsters could be good fathers and bad fathers and indifferent fathers and that trauma is transmitted generationally as well as among cohorts.
Perhaps my greatest takeaway reading this at this point in history, in the middle of the Covid outbreak, at the end of one particularly loaded presidential term, is the reckoning of being on the wrong side of history. I still carry around a childish notion that everyone knows Nazis were bad, killing Jews and Gypsies and Poles and Homosexuals and Leftists and People Who Looked At You Wrong was WRONG, and that at the end of the day the nazis knew they were very bad and felt sorry. In the same way I like to think people in the American South who participated in lynchings came to Jesus and repented in the end. The same way I think these people protesting benign and unenforceable public safety measures with A.K.47S while politicians rile then up for personal gain will one day say, "oh man. That was dumb." It's uncomfortable to be confronted with the reality that Mengele, fucking MENGELE, died feeling like a victim. That atrocities were whispered among families, if they were uttered at all, as "excesses of the east." That very many people learn no lesson at all. It upsets a sense of balance and fairness. Which is perhaps why more people need to read more books like this.
The new forward about the rise of anti-semitism in Europe is particularly disturbing.
All in all I recommend. It was an easy and engaging read. I learned some history. I thought about stuff. The fact that the book doesn't have a point doesn't, I think, detract from its value.
Perhaps my greatest takeaway reading this at this point in history, in the middle of the Covid outbreak, at the end of one particularly loaded presidential term, is the reckoning of being on the wrong side of history. I still carry around a childish notion that everyone knows Nazis were bad, killing Jews and Gypsies and Poles and Homosexuals and Leftists and People Who Looked At You Wrong was WRONG, and that at the end of the day the nazis knew they were very bad and felt sorry. In the same way I like to think people in the American South who participated in lynchings came to Jesus and repented in the end. The same way I think these people protesting benign and unenforceable public safety measures with A.K.47S while politicians rile then up for personal gain will one day say, "oh man. That was dumb." It's uncomfortable to be confronted with the reality that Mengele, fucking MENGELE, died feeling like a victim. That atrocities were whispered among families, if they were uttered at all, as "excesses of the east." That very many people learn no lesson at all. It upsets a sense of balance and fairness. Which is perhaps why more people need to read more books like this.
The new forward about the rise of anti-semitism in Europe is particularly disturbing.
All in all I recommend. It was an easy and engaging read. I learned some history. I thought about stuff. The fact that the book doesn't have a point doesn't, I think, detract from its value.
October 10, 2022
Książka bardzo ciekawa. Historie nie są przesadnie długie, dlatego nie nudzą i czyta/słucha się w całości z uwagą. Jest sporo zdjęć uzupełniających, niektórych z nich wcześniej nie widziałem, więc to też na plus. Cóż więcej tu powiedzieć? Ocenić ciężko, bo jak ocenić czyjeś uczucia do swojego rodzica? Więc jedyna moja ocena to taka, że książka była ciekawa i warto przeczytać.
Widziałem opinie, że rozdziały o mało znanych nazistach są mniej ciekawe - nie zgadzam się. Moim zdaniem są równie ciekawe doświadczenia dzieci takich osób, bo przecież świat nie składał się tylko z tych wysoko postawionych.
W książce były takie fragmenty, które mnie rozwaliły ;) np. wypowiedź Wolfa Hessa (syna Rudolfa Hessa) o procesach norymberskich:
- heh, osobiście to uważam, że Hess miał dużo szczęścia, że go w 1941 wzięto do niewoli gdzie spędził czas do końca wojny, w przeciwnym razie to z pewnością by nie był jedyny zarzut, z którego by go skazano i pewnie na karze więzienia by się nie skończyło ;) także... No ale niektórzy z bohaterów tej książki to jakby nie zdawali sobie sprawy, że to co spotkało ich rodziców, to jest nic w porównaniu z tym co spotkało niektóre ofiary reżimu nazistowskiego...
I inne cytaty:
Ciekawe zdanie wygłosił też syn Clausa von Stauffenberga:
(czytana/słuchana: 2-6.10.2022)
4+/5 (8/10)
Widziałem opinie, że rozdziały o mało znanych nazistach są mniej ciekawe - nie zgadzam się. Moim zdaniem są równie ciekawe doświadczenia dzieci takich osób, bo przecież świat nie składał się tylko z tych wysoko postawionych.
W książce były takie fragmenty, które mnie rozwaliły ;) np. wypowiedź Wolfa Hessa (syna Rudolfa Hessa) o procesach norymberskich:
"Ten sąd działał w sposób niedorzeczny. To był przekręt. [Ojciec] został oczyszczony z zarzutów dotyczących «zbrodni wojennych» i «zbrodni przeciwko ludzkości». Był jedynym oskarżonym, którego uznano winnym wyłącznie – nie licząc udziału w spisku – tak zwanych «zbrodni przeciwko pokojowi». Akurat jego! Ponieważ był jedyną osobą, która ceniła pokój tak, że gotowa była osobiście zaryzykować, by go utrzymać, skazanie go za zbrodnie przeciwko pokojowi uważam za nonsens."
(pdf.str.102)
- heh, osobiście to uważam, że Hess miał dużo szczęścia, że go w 1941 wzięto do niewoli gdzie spędził czas do końca wojny, w przeciwnym razie to z pewnością by nie był jedyny zarzut, z którego by go skazano i pewnie na karze więzienia by się nie skończyło ;) także... No ale niektórzy z bohaterów tej książki to jakby nie zdawali sobie sprawy, że to co spotkało ich rodziców, to jest nic w porównaniu z tym co spotkało niektóre ofiary reżimu nazistowskiego...
I inne cytaty:
"W 1987 roku Rolf [syn Josefa Mengele] ze względu na dzieci zmienił nazwisko. „Zasługują, by dorastać bez odpowiedzialności za czyny dziadka” – tłumaczy. (...) Nie potrafi odciąć się od dziedzictwa, które pozostawił mu w spadku człowiek będący bardziej obcym niż rodzicem. „My, dzieci nazistów, musimy sobie z tym radzić bardziej niż reszta społeczeństwa” – twierdzi Rolf. „Przynajmniej do tej pory tak było. Inni Niemcy mówią natomiast: «Dobra, stało się, i to bardzo źle, ale już po wszystkim, więc żyjmy dalej». Nie angażują się tak jak my, dzieci bezpośrednich sprawców. Zawsze muszę mieć gotową odpowiedź, gdy ktoś o niego pyta. On odszedł, ale ja dalej muszę dźwigać to brzemię”."
(pdf.str.236)
Ciekawe zdanie wygłosił też syn Clausa von Stauffenberga:
"Wie pan, świat jest pełen głupców. I jeżeli obejmujesz publiczne stanowisko, automatycznie stajesz się przedmiotem zainteresowania tego typu ludzi."
(pdf.str.313)
(czytana/słuchana: 2-6.10.2022)
4+/5 (8/10)
October 5, 2025
Thought provoking
Gerald Posner pulled off something no one else has done, securing interviews with 11 sons and daughters of Nazi officials.
Posner first made his mark with Mengele: The Complete Story, a deeply researched biography based on 5,000 pages of Josef Mengele’s diaries and personal papers — a project that showed his tenacity for uncovering the darkest corners of history.
The result with Hitler’s Children is a compelling, revelatory and chilling insight into the worlds of these children who had no choice but to live with the fallout of their fathers’ deeds.
Chapter 1 in the audiobook is an updated preface by Posner, written 25+ years after the book’s original publication in 1991, providing interesting context.
Chapter 2 of the audiobook book begins with the words, “Chapter 1…”, so good luck if you are trying your best discuss this one at your book club with people reading the physical book. All your chapter numbers will be off! Clear chapter labels would help.
In the absence chapter names or a PDF accompaniment, here is a bit of a listener guide I pulled together of all who Posner interviewed:
Martin Bormann, Party Chancellery chief, and his son, Martin Adolf Bormann
Karl Dönitz, Grand Admiral, and his only daughter, Ursula
Hans Frank, governor-general of Poland, and his sons, Niklas and Norman
Hermann Göring, Luftwaffe chief, and his only child, Edda
Rudolf Hess, Deputy Führer, and his only child, Wolf
Josef Mengele, Auschwitz physician, and his only child, Rolf
Ernst Mochar, early Nazi Party member, and his daughter, Ingeborg
Karl Saur, Deputy Armaments Minister, and his youngest sons, Klaus and Karl Junior
Hjalmar Schacht, Reichsbank President, and his daughter, Cordula
Claus von Stauffenberg, Colonel, and his son, Franz Ludwig
Hans Frank (again), governor-general of Poland, and his son Niklas Frank (featured in his own chapter discussion)
If you really want to refer to the book’s Table of Contents, you can preview it in the Kindle ��Look Inside” sample on Amazon.
For reference, these are the audiobook details from my Audible library:
Hitler’s Children: Sons and Daughters of Third Reich Leaders
Written by: Gerald Posner
Narrated by: Julian Elfer
RELEASE DATE 2017-09-26
FORMAT Unabridged Audiobook
LENGTH 8 hrs and 48 mins
PUBLISHER Tantor Audio
Gerald Posner pulled off something no one else has done, securing interviews with 11 sons and daughters of Nazi officials.
Posner first made his mark with Mengele: The Complete Story, a deeply researched biography based on 5,000 pages of Josef Mengele’s diaries and personal papers — a project that showed his tenacity for uncovering the darkest corners of history.
The result with Hitler’s Children is a compelling, revelatory and chilling insight into the worlds of these children who had no choice but to live with the fallout of their fathers’ deeds.
Chapter 1 in the audiobook is an updated preface by Posner, written 25+ years after the book’s original publication in 1991, providing interesting context.
Chapter 2 of the audiobook book begins with the words, “Chapter 1…”, so good luck if you are trying your best discuss this one at your book club with people reading the physical book. All your chapter numbers will be off! Clear chapter labels would help.
In the absence chapter names or a PDF accompaniment, here is a bit of a listener guide I pulled together of all who Posner interviewed:
Martin Bormann, Party Chancellery chief, and his son, Martin Adolf Bormann
Karl Dönitz, Grand Admiral, and his only daughter, Ursula
Hans Frank, governor-general of Poland, and his sons, Niklas and Norman
Hermann Göring, Luftwaffe chief, and his only child, Edda
Rudolf Hess, Deputy Führer, and his only child, Wolf
Josef Mengele, Auschwitz physician, and his only child, Rolf
Ernst Mochar, early Nazi Party member, and his daughter, Ingeborg
Karl Saur, Deputy Armaments Minister, and his youngest sons, Klaus and Karl Junior
Hjalmar Schacht, Reichsbank President, and his daughter, Cordula
Claus von Stauffenberg, Colonel, and his son, Franz Ludwig
Hans Frank (again), governor-general of Poland, and his son Niklas Frank (featured in his own chapter discussion)
If you really want to refer to the book’s Table of Contents, you can preview it in the Kindle ��Look Inside” sample on Amazon.
For reference, these are the audiobook details from my Audible library:
Hitler’s Children: Sons and Daughters of Third Reich Leaders
Written by: Gerald Posner
Narrated by: Julian Elfer
RELEASE DATE 2017-09-26
FORMAT Unabridged Audiobook
LENGTH 8 hrs and 48 mins
PUBLISHER Tantor Audio
June 26, 2025
To nie jest książka o potworach. To książka o ich dzieciach. I to właśnie czyni ją tak poruszającą. Syn Karla Saura tak mówi o sobie: "Mówiono, że spośród naszej piątki czworo jest w porządku, a jedno trochę przygłupie. to nie najgorsze proporcje. W domu nikt mnie nie szanował. Matka powtarzała zawsze: <>".
Gerald Posner z odwagą i dociekliwością wchodzi w przestrzeń, której wielu autorów unika: opowiada o losach potomków czołowych nazistów – Hansa Franka, Hermanna Göringa, Rudolfa Hessa i innych. Pyta, co znaczy dorastać w cieniu niewyobrażalnego zła. Czy można uciec od nazwiska, które otwiera każde archiwum, ale zamyka ludzkie serca?
Nie znajdziemy tu taniej sensacji ani prób wybielania win. Posner nie usprawiedliwia – pokazuje, co znaczy żyć z dziedzictwem, którego się nie wybiera. Jak wygląda dorosłość z ojcem, którego twarz w podręcznikach historii nie wymaga podpisu.
W rozmowach z dziećmi nazistowskich dygnitarzy pojawia się wachlarz reakcji: wyparcie, wstyd, ucieczka w milczenie albo głośne potępienie. Są tacy, którzy przecięli więzy krwi z chirurgiczną precyzją – zmienili nazwisko, odcięli się całkowicie. Inni nie potrafili – albo nie chcieli – tego zrobić. Posner nie ocenia. Zamiast tego słucha. I to właśnie siła tej książki: pozwala wybrzmieć ludzkiemu dramatowi, który nie kończy się wraz z wojną.
To nie tylko reportaż historyczny, ale też opowieść o tożsamości, pamięci i odpowiedzialności zbiorowej. O tym, jak trauma przodków sączy się w życie kolejnych pokoleń. O tym, że nawet jeśli nie jesteśmy winni, możemy czuć się odpowiedzialni.
W czasach, gdy świat coraz chętniej upraszcza – dzieli ludzi na dobrych i złych, bez odcieni – Dzieci Hitlera są książką potrzebną. Niewygodną, ale uczciwą. Pokazującą, że historia nie kończy się na dacie kapitulacji.
Czy można uwolnić się od cienia ojca? Czy przeszłość, której się wstydzimy, musi nas definiować? Posner nie daje prostych odpowiedzi. Ale zadaje pytania, które warto usłyszeć.
Gerald Posner z odwagą i dociekliwością wchodzi w przestrzeń, której wielu autorów unika: opowiada o losach potomków czołowych nazistów – Hansa Franka, Hermanna Göringa, Rudolfa Hessa i innych. Pyta, co znaczy dorastać w cieniu niewyobrażalnego zła. Czy można uciec od nazwiska, które otwiera każde archiwum, ale zamyka ludzkie serca?
Nie znajdziemy tu taniej sensacji ani prób wybielania win. Posner nie usprawiedliwia – pokazuje, co znaczy żyć z dziedzictwem, którego się nie wybiera. Jak wygląda dorosłość z ojcem, którego twarz w podręcznikach historii nie wymaga podpisu.
W rozmowach z dziećmi nazistowskich dygnitarzy pojawia się wachlarz reakcji: wyparcie, wstyd, ucieczka w milczenie albo głośne potępienie. Są tacy, którzy przecięli więzy krwi z chirurgiczną precyzją – zmienili nazwisko, odcięli się całkowicie. Inni nie potrafili – albo nie chcieli – tego zrobić. Posner nie ocenia. Zamiast tego słucha. I to właśnie siła tej książki: pozwala wybrzmieć ludzkiemu dramatowi, który nie kończy się wraz z wojną.
To nie tylko reportaż historyczny, ale też opowieść o tożsamości, pamięci i odpowiedzialności zbiorowej. O tym, jak trauma przodków sączy się w życie kolejnych pokoleń. O tym, że nawet jeśli nie jesteśmy winni, możemy czuć się odpowiedzialni.
W czasach, gdy świat coraz chętniej upraszcza – dzieli ludzi na dobrych i złych, bez odcieni – Dzieci Hitlera są książką potrzebną. Niewygodną, ale uczciwą. Pokazującą, że historia nie kończy się na dacie kapitulacji.
Czy można uwolnić się od cienia ojca? Czy przeszłość, której się wstydzimy, musi nas definiować? Posner nie daje prostych odpowiedzi. Ale zadaje pytania, które warto usłyszeć.
September 4, 2025
A very interesting book; it was good to learn how the sons and daughters of some of the leading Nazis deal/dealt with their parents' criminal pasts.
The case I found most interesting to read was that of Rudolf Hess's son, who claims his father didn't commit suicide in Spandau, but was murdered. His version made me wonder if he's right and that the British did murder him at the age of 93. His argument that his father didn't commit suicide in Spandau has always been controversial. Interesting is how he reinterpreted the facts to preserve his father's honor, transforming him into a near-martyr.
The case of Niklas Frank, who is so ashamed of his father's past, the "butcher of Poland", Hans Frank, that he didn't want to have children so as not to carry on the Frank name. Ironically, Frank is the name of the most famous and symbolic figure of the Holocaust, Anne Frank.
Mengele's son, Rolf, who had to deal with his father as an adult when he met him in Paraguay and found that he showed no signs of remorse, and he also denied the crimes that made him the most wanted Nazi criminal.
Goring's daughter is a case that left me somewhat confused about what she tries to do with the past of her father, Herman Goring. Her relationship with his past is ambiguous. She grew up in a luxurious environment and always defended her father's memory with a certain tenderness, without dealing head-on with his crimes.
I believe Stauffenberg's son had the least difficulties; after all, his father attempted to kill Hitler, and Hitler's fury later turned against the families of all the Valkyrie conspirators.
Between denying, justifying, breaking away, remaining silent, or turning it into a political mission, each son found his own way to carry on (or erase) the surname.
The case I found most interesting to read was that of Rudolf Hess's son, who claims his father didn't commit suicide in Spandau, but was murdered. His version made me wonder if he's right and that the British did murder him at the age of 93. His argument that his father didn't commit suicide in Spandau has always been controversial. Interesting is how he reinterpreted the facts to preserve his father's honor, transforming him into a near-martyr.
The case of Niklas Frank, who is so ashamed of his father's past, the "butcher of Poland", Hans Frank, that he didn't want to have children so as not to carry on the Frank name. Ironically, Frank is the name of the most famous and symbolic figure of the Holocaust, Anne Frank.
Mengele's son, Rolf, who had to deal with his father as an adult when he met him in Paraguay and found that he showed no signs of remorse, and he also denied the crimes that made him the most wanted Nazi criminal.
Goring's daughter is a case that left me somewhat confused about what she tries to do with the past of her father, Herman Goring. Her relationship with his past is ambiguous. She grew up in a luxurious environment and always defended her father's memory with a certain tenderness, without dealing head-on with his crimes.
I believe Stauffenberg's son had the least difficulties; after all, his father attempted to kill Hitler, and Hitler's fury later turned against the families of all the Valkyrie conspirators.
Between denying, justifying, breaking away, remaining silent, or turning it into a political mission, each son found his own way to carry on (or erase) the surname.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews