How did the fate of the children of the Nazi bosses of the Third Reich

In 2021, November 1, it will be 75 years since the day when the trial of Nazi criminals was completed in Nuremberg, Germany. Not all of them were convicted at this tribunal. And not all Nazis were punished for their crimes. Children do not have the right to pay and endure for the sins of their fathers - this is true. But can fate or providence rule more fair judgments?

In this article, we will tell you about the fate of the children of those Nazi bosses who were found guilty of crimes against humanity by the Nuremberg Tribunal.

Children of Reichard Heindrich

One of Hitler's closest ideological associates, the head of the General Directorate of Imperial Security of the Third Reich, SS Obergruppenführer Reichard Heindrich, died of his wounds after an attempt on his life on June 4, 1942. After his death, his wife, Lina, was left with 4 children. However, a year later, in 1943, Heindrich's eldest son, Klaus, was hit and killed by a car in Prague. The rest of the children of the ideologue of the "final solution to the Jewish question" survived the war safely.

Haider - the youngest son of Reichard Heindrich, lived in Munich all his life. In the mid-2010s, at the invitation of the Czech authorities, he visited Prague, where he visited his brother's grave and the place of the attempt on his father's life. Speaking at the end of his visit to reporters, Haider thanked the Czech side for the invitation, and also offered financial assistance in the restoration of the former family estate of the Heindrich family, which was located until 1944 in Penenske Brzejani near Prague.

Children of Martin Bormann

The second person in the Third Reich, the personal secretary of the Fuhrer, Martin Bormann had 10 children. In May 1945, the wife of the Reichsleiter moved with them to Italy, where, having lived only a year, she died of cancer in 1946. All children were distributed to different orphanages, where they were brought up and received an education.

The most famous and extraordinary fate was that of Bormann's eldest son, Martin Adolf, who was seriously seen as one of the candidates for the "position of Fuhrer" in the future. Martin even attended a special school for children of the Nazi elite, where he had the significant nickname Kronprinz. After the defeat of Germany, the young man, who at the time was 15 years old, was hid in the countryside, fearing reprisals from the allies (which, as a result, did not follow).

Unexpectedly for everyone, Martin Adolf converted to Catholicism and became a pastor. During the 1960s, he preached extensively in Africa, particularly in the Congo. There he was in a car accident and already in the hospital he met a nurse, who later became his wife (for this Martin renounced the priesthood).

For the rest of his life, Bormann worked as a theology teacher, while giving lectures on the horrors of National Socialism. In the late 1990s, Martin Adolf even visited Israel, where he met with victims of the Nazi Holocaust. He died in 2013.

Daughter of Hermann Goering

In 1938, the Reich Minister of Aviation of Germany Hermann Goering and his second wife, Edda, had a daughter, whom her parents named Emma. The girl spent all her childhood at her father's estate Karinhalle, and after the end of the war she moved with her mother to Munich. In the Bavarian capital, the girl later graduated from the law faculty of the local university, and worked for a long time in the municipal court.

Emma Goering avoided the attention of journalists in every possible way.Until the death of her mother, in 1973, the girl looked after her. For a long time, Emma lived in Germany, and in the early 2000s she moved to South Africa, where she still lives.

Children of Alfred Rosenberg

Reich Minister of the Occupied Territories and one of the oldest members of the Nazi party, the NSDAP, Alfred Rosenberg was born in 1893 in Revel (present-day Tallinn) of the Estland province of the Russian Empire. After the revolution, Alfred's family fled to Germany, where he immediately joined the ranks of the young National Socialist Party. Rosenberg was married twice, but he had children only with his second wife Hedwig. The eldest son, however, died as an infant, but her daughter, Irena, survived the war safely.

After 1945, the girl, fleeing annoying journalists, secretly left Germany. Irena often moved from one European country to another. For quite a long time she lived in the UK, where she died at the age of 90.

Daughter of Heinrich Himmler

Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler had 4 children. The most notorious of them, however, was the eldest daughter, Gudrun. Even during her father's life, she went with him to concentration camps. However, the girl (like many other Germans) was shown these "death factories" exclusively from the "good" side. In her children's letters, Gudrun admires the green trees in the SS Dachau extermination camp, as well as the hours she and the prisoners used to paint in nature.

After the Nuremberg trials, Gudrun did not believe in the atrocities in which her father was involved. Throughout her life, she remained faithful to the ideals of National Socialism. Since 1951, Gudrun, who by that time had become the wife of one of the German neo-Nazis Wulf-Dieter Burwitz, became one of the co-founders of the Stille Hilfe ("Silent Help") foundation. Who was engaged in providing all kinds of assistance and assistance to former officers of the SS and the Wehrmacht.

In 1952, Gudrun Burwitz organized the youth organization Wikingjugend, which was practically a copy of the fascist Hitler Youth. At the same time, the German authorities officially dissolved the "Viking Youth" only in 1994. After Gudrun's death at the end of May 2018, it became known to the general public that she worked as a secret intelligence officer in the FRG in the period 1961-1963, whose chief at that time was Reinhard Gellen, a former Wehrmacht general and chief of military intelligence on the eastern front.

Apart from Gudrun Burwitz, none of the children of the fascist bosses convicted in Nuremberg justified the Nazi ideology that their fathers followed. However, few of the heirs and abandoned their parents. The most they did was to avoid general attention and talk. Although who knows with what heart and soul the children of the bloody executioners of the Third Reich had to live the rest of their lives.