Gudrun Himmler was the daughter of SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.
He was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. Although he was responsible for millions of deaths, his daughter always repeated that he was misunderstood and she tried to justify his crimes.
Heinrich Himmler always flew her and his wife to visit him when he was doing important things for the Reich. He called her “Puppi” and took her wherever he could, just to spend more time with her. After his capture in 1945, his daughter always insisted that someone killed him, that her father did not commit suicide.
Gudrun always maintained a positive image of her father, despite his crimes against humanity.
Edda Göring was the daughter of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring who was the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe (Nazi German Air Force).
Despite his contempt for other human lives, he was a good father figure to her. She said he was not really responsible for the deaths of so many Jews, but was blinded by his loyalty to the Führer as an important military figure.
It was Göring who founded the Gestapo, which arrested Jews. She never really hated him and she always visited him when he was imprisoned during the Nuremberg trials.
Klaus, Dieter, Horst and Ricardo Eichmann were the sons of Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Adolf Eichmann who was in charge of deporting people by train to the death camps.
His sons were always loyal to him and tried to justify his actions by saying “he was following orders”, as Eichmann himself said during his trial. His youngest son, Ricardo, was the only one to say that his execution was justified and deserved. His other three sons were furious that he was executed for massacring Jews.
Wolf Hess was the son of Reichsminister (and Deputy Führer) Rudolf Hess who helped plan the war and crimes. He knew about the Holocaust.
Like other children of Nazi criminals, he always said that his father was just following orders. He tried to get his father out of prison, but he was unsuccessful.
Ingebirgitt Höss was one of five children of Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss who was commandant of Auschwitz.
His children said they never knew what was going on “on the other side of the fence” the inhabitants of Brzezinka. One thing is certain, no one, not even the many prisoners employed to rake the lawns, could prevent the ashes from falling there. This is one of the rare memories of Hans-Jürgen, one of Ingebirgitt’s brothers. They said Rudolf was the best father and kindest man who ever lived. He always said to never hurt anyone.
After the war, when they found out who he really was, they justified it by saying, of course, “he was following orders and had to do it, otherwise our family would have been killed.” »
Were Nazi war criminals ever summarily murdered long after the war ended?
Only one former Nazi war criminal was summarily murdered long after the war ended. This is Herbert Cukurs.
A remarkable aviator, he was considered a national hero in his country, Latvia, for his aerial exploits in the 1930s.
However, he decides to participate in the massacre of Jews alongside the Nazis during the war. He ordered the massacre of 10,600 Jews in the Riga forest, the drowning of 1,200 Jews in a lake. He is also responsible for the fire of a synagogue in which hundreds of Jews had been locked up. He is held responsible for the deaths of 30,000 Jewish men, women and children.
Cukurs was summarily assassinated by Mossad agents in Uruguay in 1965.
Other attempts at summary assassinations of former Nazi war criminals were organized by the Mossad, but were unsuccessful.
Like that of Alois Brunner, Eichmann’s assistant, who received two letter bombs but escaped. He died in Syria at the age of 98, without ever having been tried or punished for his crimes.
Another failed assassination attempt was on SS commander Walter Rauff, inventor of the mobile gas chamber, responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Jews. The Mossad tried to kill him in Chile in 1980 but failed. Rauff died of cancer at age 77, four years later.
The Nazi hunters were tasked with bringing former war criminals to justice or, if that was not possible, executing them. A number of them were captured and tried, but the majority escaped justice and some form of punishment.
During World War II, there was such a cruel SS group that even Hitler and the Nazis wondered what they were doing. What happened to them after the war?
Not to my knowledge :
The unit that would fit this definition the most would be the 36th SS Division – Wikipediaalso called “Brigade Dirlewanger”
It was initially an irregular unit which became a brigade then a division at the end of the war, when the German army was close to annihilation.
But Hitler and the Nazis used it as a tool: it was partly made up of criminals and the SS with “discipline” problems found themselves in this unit (or not having the favors of high dignitaries, Himmler will try to get rid of some of Hitler’s personal bodyguards by assigning them to this unit, e.g. Bruno Gesche – Wikipedia).
It can definitely be compared to a kind of “disciplinary battalion” used for the most dangerous and “dirty” tasks on the front… and they did horrible acts outside the front, even by SS standards. During the war she was mainly involved in the war against the partisans on the Eastern Front, scouring the villages, pillaging them, massacring the inhabitants and/or raping them.
It was basically a bunch of sadistic criminals who enjoyed total impunity for their actions. Their original leader who gave his name to this brigade being a psychopath, a sexual pervert convicted before the war.
Oskar Dirlewanger – Wikipedia
The division was “cannibalized” to increase the strength of other divisions at the end of the war. Each of its soldiers must have had their own destiny trying to save their skin during defeat (with surely many of its members escaping sanctions). Its leader Dirlewanger was captured by French soldiers and died lynched in captivity in a prison camp. His “brigade” is said to have caused 60,000 deaths (the majority of civilians) during the war.
There was another unit quite similar in its savagery: 29th SS Division (Russian No. 1) – Wikipediaor “Kaminski” brigade, always on the Eastern front.
It was mainly made up of Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusians and also distinguished itself by its savagery and its crimes against civilians.
Bronislaw Kaminski – Wikipedia
Kaminski was executed by the Germans, probably for enrichment through looting, or to make a highly placed and troublesome witness disappear.
It should be noted that the official line coming from Himmler on the massacres was that sadism was unacceptable, killing was a task to be done, but one should not take pleasure in it, he wanted cold and determined killers, but he used just as much “technocrat” killers and “psychopaths” to carry out his sinister work.
Finally, were the Nazis shocked by certain massacres? Well yes … but not by SS units.
During the occupations of territories, reports were sent to Berlin about pogroms, massacres of residents against their former street neighbors incited by German propaganda and they tried to bring “order” … it was particularly the case in the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Belarus and Yugoslavia where the Ustashas carried out massacres that even the Nazis found horrifying… horrifying in form, not in substance.
A “Serbian cutter”, a tool invented and used by the Ustashi to slaughter their prisoners more quickly and efficiently. What happened at Jasenovac horrified many Nazis.
It is important to note that the Nazis devastated Europe, but in every occupied country there were people willing to embrace their cause who actively helped them.
Is it true that German soldiers abused French women during the occupation during World War II?
It all depends on the period.
At the beginning (1940 to 1942–43), the instructions were strict. But France is also considered a “garden of pleasure”, that is to say where culture reigns, a certain finesse full of frivolity”. In this, they are right in the German stereotypes “Happy as God in France”. This implies that French women are a priori “easy, elegant, but around whom one must appear refined”. Vulgarity is for the Untermenschen, the Slavs, the Jews, the Roma, etc. The French They are despised, weak, spineless. They are inferior, because they are bastards. These are the reasonings that one can read in the Nazi press.
As the central objective is the conquest of a Lebensraum in the east and to rid Europe of sub-humanity, it is a question of having peace in the west. France has had its back broken, it must pay and submit. As it guards an empire which can always be useful, it is better to caress the beast than to pluck it in the direction of the hair.
From then on, everything contributes to providing instructions for good behavior.
Things change when the population refuses the STO en masse and the maquis form, the Jews become more difficult to round up and the armed resistance becomes more aggressive. France becomes less and less the “garden of pleasures” and the German soldiers in garrison fear leaving their reserved quarters and, in the provinces, the ambushes of “terrorists”. From then on, the instructions to maintain a certain “courtesy” may well be maintained, but they lose more and more of their meaning.
The repression that fell in the countryside resulted in rape and looting, not only of the Germans, but also of the French militiamen (Bretons in Brittany).
In all this context, young women who have fallen in love with Germans find themselves in very difficult situations, stuck between a German soldier, whom racist German laws make it very difficult to marry, and who often finds himself leaving for the the East and a population part of which concentrates all its hatred of the “Boche” on them.
It is this hatred that erupted at the Liberation against these young women who had become expiatory victims at the hands of people who had bowed their heads. And this will continue after the war for children, often ostracized by their classmates.
That said, it is not appropriate to exaggerate the phenomenon. Many of these young women were protected by their families and escaped the infamous public shearing. On the other hand, in many places, the FFI-FTP intervened, sometimes brutally, to put an end to these vengeances. I believe that it was in Amiens that a partisan leader climbed onto the platform and demanded that she be shorn herself. The “hairdresser” should have complied at gunpoint. All the other girls were released. She would have remained to walk bareheaded the following days in the city until her hair grows back (I put all this in the conditional, because I no longer have the references at hand).
After the war, only a minority of German fathers returned to marry their childhood sweetheart. Some young girls chose to move to Germany, as the atmosphere was too hostile for the couple to stay. And there, the thing was not very simple either. Many young girls have never been able to find their war lover, either dead or missing without a trace.
Ah Barbara, what bullshit the war is!
At the end of World War II, when Jewish Holocaust survivors returned to their homes, where many had handed them over to the Nazis, what did they do?
Holocaust survivors? There really weren’t many. Almost not.
In France, the Nazis did not have much to do. P.Pétain’s collaborators (French police, militia, etc.) did all the “work”. And they have to undergo the purification.
For other countries, the surviving Jews had lost everything, starting with the family. They were usually the only survivors…
What did they do ?
Many have gone to Israel. To create a new country. For what ?
Because the only way for the horror not to start again was to create a strong state that could defend itself. They were Poles, Soviets, Germans. People whose country no longer existed, or returning was pointless.
Oh yes !! Israel was not officially created until 1948. Before that, it was the Jewish national home.
In France, Simone Veil (Auschwitz) became a minister, and contributed to Europe.
Mr Bloch (Buchenwald) changed its name to Dassault. He built some good planes.
In my family, everyone who left never came back….
Who freed us from Nazism? 178,000 Americans died to liberate France compared to 21 million Russian deaths. The Americans arrived at the last second of the war in June 1944 and were celebrated as saviors.
It is still a matter of deceit coming from Moscow in the current context of war in Ukraine ………………………….
My ex-wife is 50 years old, she was born Soviet, even if she knew little about this fascist regime…but on the other hand at school we explained to her that the USSR liberated Europe. (understand all of Europe…)
And when his family, who are in the former Soviet republic of present-day Kyrgyzstan, spoke to me via SKYPE, they spent their time bragging to me about the liberations attributed to the USSR…but going well beyond their geographical areas…
The first time I contradicted her, she told me that we were manipulated (understand by America) in our history books!
Very surprised by this statement, I told him “ok, ok, so this weekend I’m going to show you military cemeteries to the west of Paris, and we’ll see the number of graves of Russian (Soviet) soldiers that there ‘we are going to count’;
So we went to explore these Allied military cemeteries, and she had a lot of trouble counting the graves of Russians and other Soviets since there weren’t any!
On the other hand, she noted for herself that most of the graves corresponded to deaths from Anglo-Saxon armies: American, Canadian, British and the ANZACS, then French, Belgian and Polish.
This observation shook his ex-Soviet certainties a little.
So I explained to him that the Russians had not liberated all of Europe, but that they had put the Nazi fascist regime to death and stopped in Berlin!!!!!
That on the other hand this feat was materially possible thanks to the resupply by the polar routes of “American” equipment which arrived via Arkhangelsk which is a port city of Russia in the Arctic Circle, but also via Alaska, and I showed him the photos of the equipment (jeeps, planes, US trucks arriving by the thousands of tons:
400,000 jeeps and trucks (Studebaker in large numbers)
14,000 planes
8,000 tractors
13 000 chars
Trucks “Studebaker” from American deliveries in the transport reserve of the Red Army command in the Mozhaisk region. August 17, 1944. Photographer: Boris Antonov.
Here is the monument celebrating the supply of weapons to the USSR via Alaska:
Finally I pointed out to him that the USSR certainly broke the Nazi regime, but still put another super-fascist regime in its place! That the USSR deplored millions of deaths killed by the Nazis, but that we should not also obscure the fact that the USSR, in good condition itself fascist, sent its soldiers to the front like cannon fodder in waves and in waves with the aim of saturating the Nazi enemy.
The Russian soldiers therefore had Nazis in front of them and behind them political commissars who would shoot them if they turned back (as was the case in many battles, and as Wagner is currently doing in Ukraine).
Which explains enormous mortality.
My ex led less broadly then, concerning her Soviet explanations … which she had received at school in the USSR.
In short, who released? It all depends on the part of Europe we are talking about: in the West or in the East. And so it makes sense that Americans were celebrated as the saviors in 1944 in “Western Europe” since no Russians were in that part of the European continent.
But in the end it was a joint effort by the Anglo-Saxon armies and the Soviet armies to put down Hitler’s Nazis!
What would the world be like if Nazi Germany had never lost the war?
There are several scenarios in which Germany wins the war. We will choose the one where the USA joins the Axis.
- Geopolitics: Even if states like France, China or Canada will continue to exist, they will be encompassed in three continental blocks
If you live in a hatched colony, it is likely that you are subhuman and subject to slavery. If, on the other hand, you live in one of the three circled areas and you are a man, you can be very rich, however it is very badly seen to work less than sixty hours a week and entertainment is also very badly seen, you cannot do little else with your money than invest it in the expansion of the Reich.
If you were a genetics researcher, you would spend your time experimenting with genetic combinations to create improved children. Unfortunately in the vast majority of cases the children would not be viable and would die shortly after birth in excruciating pain. After thousands of experimentation you will end up creating a Superman more resistant to diseases, you will obtain the iron cross and a few days after your discovery your children will begin to be produced massively thanks to the GPA and surrogate mothers from lower races.
If you were a soldier, the Reich will organize a simulation of war by inciting a small colony to revolt in order to test your abilities to wage war.
If you were an engineer, you could be one of the creators of the first rocket to send men to Mars the day after the Americans sent men to the Moon, thus humiliating that bloc.
If you were the head of an industrial company you could automate your company and finally allow the Reich to get rid of the subhumans who served you as slaves as they lose their jobs.
Note: while the racism of the 20th century Nazis was based on nothing, that of the 21st century is based on the fact that unlike the Supermen whose genes were selected, the subhumans are born naturally and are technically inferior.
What would happen if Germany had won World War II?
What state would this Nazi Germany be in? Don’t forget that “Little boy” and “fat man” were originally planned for Berlin. The two American “gifts”, the A bombs, would have left traces, especially if their descendants had been numerous…
In short, we will admit that Germany is not a vast irradiated desert and that it won the war.
Already, despite some persistent rumors, it is unlikely that Hitler will live long. Parkinson, drug abuse, he’s a sick man. So when he dies, it’s a great rat race: Speer, Goering, Himmler, Bormann all have arguments. Not to mention the Wehrmacht.
Unless someone more cracked than Hitler turns out to be, it is likely that the new leaders would have given up some ballast from a territorial point of view, I mean. The AA line (Arkhangelsk Astrakhan) is untenable if there is Russian opposition. Unless it remains in a permanent state of war and/or finds reliable allies. France would have had a card to play in this case.
For the rest, the extermination of Jews and undesirables would have continued. Obviously the Middle East questions would have been resolved in a radical manner.
After that much would have depended on the reality of the application of the Nazi delusion, since Nazism considered all Slavs as slaves and of no importance, even vermin to be exterminated. The Latins, women’s peoples, barely worse off than the Slavs.
In any case, Germany would be a superpower with probably Japan and most certainly the United States.
It’s curious, a division of the world into three antagonistic blocks reminds me of Orwell’s 1984
1984 (novel) – Wikipedia
A nice place…I will spend my holidays there…
What happened to the Hitler Youth after World War II? How did they reintegrate into society?
Many of Berlin’s young boys all died in one of the final battles near a forest outside of Berlin. A German general tries to prevent the order to send them there, but fails. The fighting at that time was so bad that even the surviving German paratroopers were fleeing the advancing Russian army, screaming….running past the young boys who opened fire on the Soviets, and were shot down in a final hail of machine gun fire…..
All the children…..Hitler emptied the schools…..those who survived were the ‘lucky ones’…but remained frightened with terrible memories of battle and war….
How many young men and women threw away their lives that week fighting to defend a man who cared not, will surely never now be known. Those who survived, received “Nazification” Re Education after the war. it lasted a long time. I saw and read one of those original books on Nazification.
Hitler, his hand and arm shaking and trembling uncontrollably from the drug induced “Parkinsonism” meeting with child soldiers in Berlin, during his very final, laser-like public appearance before the German defeat. He tells them that you are the lucky ones because you will see the final victory”….
Eventually, memories faded, towns and cities were rebuilt, and Hitlers memory began to slowly fade from young people. But he was not forgotten by everyone….. Hitler had completely “militarized” the entire German people. The shadow of the past has not yet been completely discarded.