Hitler’s Children
Author: Guido Knopp
Publisher: Sutton
Format: Paperback
Published: 2002
ISBN-10: 0750927321
Language: English
Pages: 290

For information on purchasing this book through Amazon at a special discounted rate, click here.

There is also a documentary film series, Hitler’s Children, which may be viewed on YouTube at no charge. DETAILS ARE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE. Dr. Koenigsberg believes that this is one of the most revealing documentaries ever made on the Nazi era—and strongly suggests you take a look.

Nazi ideology revolved around submission to the Fuehrer and absolute obedience—unto death. Trained to be aggressive warriors—and often viewed by the world as the essence of violence and aggression—young Nazi men were actually among the most pathetic and abject human beings: compelled to submit absolutely, and to die when Hitler asked them to.

Upon joining various Nazi organizations, Germans took “oaths,” vowing loyalty to Hitler and Germany. A member of Hitler Youth swore to devote all of his energies and strength to the “savior of our country, Adolf Hitler,” and to be “willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God.” Joining the armed forces, the young man swore that he would render “absolute obedience to the Fuehrer of the German Reich and people,” and would be prepared as a courageous soldier to “offer my life at any time for this oath.”

The famous oath of the SS-man went as follows: “I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, as Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor, loyalty and bravery. I vow to you, and to those you have named to command me, obedience unto death, so help me God.” The Organization Book of the NSDAP for 1943 stated that obedience must be “unconditional.” Convinced that National Socialist ideology must reign supreme, he who is possessed by it “subjects himself voluntarily to the obligation to obey.” Every SS-man had to be prepared, therefore, to “carry out blindly every order which is issued by the Fuehrer or which is given by his superior, irrespective of the heaviest sacrifices involved.”

Willingness to blindly carry out every order, unconditional obedience, and vowing to die when asked to—these concepts lay at the heart of Nazism. Himmler explained to his SS-men: “Your life does not belong to you, but to the Fuehrer & the Reich.” For many young men growing up in Nazi Germany, indeed, their bodies did not belong to them. Their bodies (as well as their hearts and souls) belonged to Hitler and Germany.

A documentary film series and Guido Knopp’s book, Hitler’s Children (2002), allows us to witness precisely how young Germans were acculturated—brought into the fold. Interviewees in the films—older Germans who had survived Nazism and war—look back and reflect upon their experience: how they were seduced, educated and trained to become faithful, devoted Nazis.

They explain that the education and training they received was designed to break down individuality. The watchword—the essence of the Nazi message—was, “You are nothing, your nation is everything.” The individual no longer counted. All that counted was the community. “You’re nothing—your life is worthless. To die for the people, the Fuehrer and the fatherland—this is what they trained us for.”

Hitler’s Children conveys the process of indoctrination: young people are brought into a world of excitement and idealism uniting them with their comrades. Much of what we see occurs outdoors in the countryside, frequently involving physical activities such as hiking, camping and campfires, singing, and athletic competitions. One gets the impression of an outing at a summer camp, joyous and exhilarating.

The Nazis’ program was seductive and easy to embrace. Yet—suddenly—the good times ended. War followed closely on the heels of the outdoor paradise, becoming the culmination of everything the young people had learned. Acceptance of the Nazi appeal to their youthful idealism, several interviewees realized, “sentenced them to death.”

Martin Bormann was Hitler’s personal secretary. Interviewed in the film, his son recounts Bormann’s response to a question he asked his father: “What is National Socialism?” Taken aback, Bormann reflected a few moments, then replied: “National Socialism is the will of the Fuehrer.”

The best way to understand Nazi Germany is to view this period of history as the enactment of Hitler’s desires and fantasies, which were contained within his ideology of attachment to and glorification of the German nation. In asking young Germans to give up their lives for him—to become obedient unto death—Hitler was asking them, as one interviewee put it, to “sacrifice everything for their master.” All of their education—and training that they endured—had one aim: to compel them to “die a hero’s death.”

5-Part Documentary: Hitler’s Children

Never has a generation been so completely taken over by a totalitarian state as was the case in Hitler’s Third Reich: at the age of 10 children joined the “Jungvolk” movement, at 14 they joined the Hitler Youth, and at 18 they joined the party, the “Wehrmacht”, the SA, or the SS.

This 5-part documentary by Guido Knopp and the ZDF Contemporary History Department is the first comprehensive film portrayal of the young people in the Third Reich.

With in-depth witness statements and some previously unpublished archive material, the documentary demonstrates how Hitler succeeded in gaining power over “his children” through years of manipulation.

The documentary consists of five parts, and may be viewed at YouTube:

Episode 1: Seduction
Episode 2: Dedication
Episode 3: Education
Episode 4: War
Episode 5: Sacrifice

The photo directly below show German soldiers as they embark for the Front in 1914.  These innocent, patriotic young men, were embarking on a journey, hardly able to conceive what their fate might be. In Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914-1939 (1984), Robert Whalen writes of an image from the first weeks of the war: “A locomotive rushing across Germany. Aboard the train, hundreds of young men gaily singing.” Princess Evelyn Blücher wrote similar in An English Wife in Berlin (1920): “Every day troops pass by my window on their way to the station, and as they march along to this refrain, people rush to the windows and doors of the houses and take up the song so that it rings through the streets—almost like a solemn vow sung by these men on their way to death.”

German soldiers in a railroad car on the way to the front during early World War I, taken in 1914

Several months later, these German soldiers returned on the same trains, sick and wounded. Whalen writes:

The first major transports of wounded reached Germany in the fall and winter of 1914; subsequently, trainloads of sick and wounded arrived daily. In the winter of 1914/15, the trains that had carried singing heroes to battle the summer before, returned home bearing a cargo of broken men. The longer the war went on, the longer the trains became; the hospital train was the central metaphor of the war.

Whalen reports that after four years of battle, 2,037,000 German soldiers had died; 4,300,000 were wounded; and 974,977 reported missing or wounded. Total casualties were: 7,311,977. What’s more, according to the official Army Medical Report, the estimated numbers of cases treated by doctors during the war (1914-1918) were: 27,185,240.

In Adolf Hitler: The Making of a Fuhrer, Walter Smoter Frank says that the chances that a volunteer in Hitler’s regiment would be killed or maimed was “almost guaranteed.” Because of replacements, Hitler’s Regiment, which consisted of 3600 men in 1914, suffered 3754 killed before the war ended. Mass burials of whole and partial corpses became commonplace. Straw was placed over the dead, and another layer of bodies was placed over the first until the grave held over 100 bodies. Thousands of other recruits, Franks says, “lost limbs, parts of torsos, sight, hearing and also their minds.”

These prisoners are packed into trains for their journey to Chelmno; little do they know that it will be their final journey.

In his study of the First World War, Denis Winter (1985) draws a parallel between the freight trains that transported German soldiers and those that transported Jews:

After the stint at base, the railway took the men toward the front line. To a generation with visual memories of the railway lines running into Hitler’s death camps, tense faces peering from cattle trucks, there is something disconcerting about the imagery of this journey from base camp. The soldiers went in waggons of the same type, forty of them in each waggon, kit hanging from hoods in the roof. Death was a high probability for both generations of travelers in these cattle trucks.

We may hypothesize that Hitler created the Final Solution as the re-enactment of the trauma of the First World War. As he and his innocent comrades were sent to be slaughtered by Germany, so Jews would be slaughtered by Germany.

Best Publications on the Anthropology of Warfare

Pioneering the publication of scholarship on collective forms of violence. Library of Social Science’s Ideologies of War website has established a world-wide reputation. Recently, we received a letter from a Newsletter subscriber who is developing a course on the “Anthropology of War and Peace.”

Responding to his inquiry, the LSS staff sought to create its own bibliography—identifying the most significant writings on the topic. It quickly became clear that there are few publications articulating a general theory of warfare. The vast majority describe how and why events happen—the cause and conduct of specific conflicts.

Nevertheless, we were able to identify a handful of books and papers that we consider the best—or most fruitful. These publications provide deep insight into the dynamics of warfare. We shall present these important writings in a series of issues of the Library of Social Science Newsletter.

The First World War as Extravagant Potlatch

What was the First World War? After endless streams of books on the machinations of political leaders and strategies of generals, it comes down to one thing: young men were slaughtered and wounded in massive numbers. In Dismembering the Male, Joanna Bourke observes that there was “no limit to the danger to which the male body could be subjected. Gunfire cut bodies in half.” She states that the most important thing that one can say about the First World War is that the male body was “intended to be mutilated.”

Dismemberment often resulted in death. But next to the loss of life, the loss of a limb was the “greatest sacrifice a man could make for his country.” In Great Britain, soldiers’ mutilations were spoken of in public rhetoric as a badge of courage (or honor), “hallmark of glorious service, proof of patriotism.” The wounded or disabled soldier was “not less but more of a man.”

The “potlatch” was a ceremony practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast—that has been studied extensively by anthropologists. The word means “to give away” or “a gift.” The prestige of a chief was based on his capacity to destroy his own property. Status increased with the lavishness of potlatch. Marcel Mauss states that in certain kind of potlatch, one must “expend all that one has, keeping nothing back. It is a competition to see who is the richest—and also the most madly extravagant.”

Citing Gaston Bouthoul, Franco Fornari (1975) suggests that war represents a “voluntary destruction of previously accumulated reserves of human capital,” an act performed with the implicit intention to “sacrifice a certain number of lives.” The First World War may be understood as a monumental potlatch in which many of the world’s nations participated. Each country sought to demonstrate its greatness by virtue of the extravagance of its potlatch—its willingness to dismember and destroy young men.

Paul Berman’s Terror and Liberalism was published in April 2003 subsequent to the 9/11 suicide bombings. Apart from the insights the book provides on terrorism, it remains one of the most profound reflections and critiques of an ideology that continues to dominate political thought, namely, the belief that behavior in the public domain is governed by rationality. A “realist,” Berman says, is someone who—no matter what bizarre events occur around the world—“professes not to be surprised.” In the realist picture of the world, wars break out because “some nation’s desire for wealth, power and geography brushes up against some other nation’s equally tangible desire for the same.”

Suicide bombings, however, produced a “philosophical crisis” among those who wanted to believe that a “rational logic governs the world.” Liberal thought recoiled at the idea that human beings sought death and destruction for no apparent reason.

Berman connects the behavior of Islamic radicals—and of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party—to European totalitarian movements. During the era of totalitarianism, leaders were like “deranged, virile, all-powerful gods” who thrilled their worshipful followers, “heroes with blood on their hands.” The totalitarian leader was someone “freed of the humiliating limitations of ordinary morality” who could “gaze on life and death with blasé equanimity,” and “order mass executions for no reason at all.”

According to R. J. Rummel, 262 million people were killed in the 20th century as a result of actions undertaken by governments. What were these killings all about? Do we really understand why the 20th century was the “century of megadeath” (Brzezinski, 1994)?

European movements such as Nazism and communism were organized programs for “human betterment,” impractical programs for the whole of society, Berman says, that could “never be put into effect.” On the other hand, death was practical. Death was the “only revolutionary achievement that could actually be delivered.”

Despite the monumental death toll of the 20th century, and the incredible, astonishing forms that political violence took, the liberal belief in “rationality” persists. We prefer not to look at reality. We might acknowledge, Berman says, that “individual madmen” might step forward. But surely “millions of people are not going to choose death, and the Jonestowns of the world are not going to take over entire societies.”

And yet—in the 20th century—the Jonestowns of the world did take over entire societies. What Jim Jones did at Jonestown (918 deaths) pales in comparison to the mass deaths generated by men like Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. The difference between Jones and these leaders lay in the fact that these other men were heads of state, and had far more adherents or followers.

Many of us are not aware of how vast the killing was within sections of the Muslim world during the last quarter-century. Berman claims that millions of people died. The terrorist attacks that occurred in New York, London, Madrid and elsewhere were not isolated events, but ought to be seen as “foam from a larger wave.” The really devastated places have been Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Syria, Sudan and Afghanistan.

Is the world truly a place where human beings create mass movements and “march themselves to the cemetery”? In the face of the political history of the 20th and 21st centuries, are we wrong to assert that “from time to time political movements get drunk with slaughter”?

These statements accurately describe the facts. Yet people around the world, Berman says, continue to claim that individuals are “bound to behave in more or less reasonable ways in pursuit of normal and identifiable interests.” This mode of explanation dominates the political establishment and academic world.

Political scientists, foreign policy experts and historians begin with the assumption that governments are prone to act rationally out of “self-interest.” According to this perspective, political conflict is about the clash of interests: military power, class struggle, territory or economics.

Yet, throughout the 20th century and 21st centuries, political actors slaughtered people—generated mass murder—for no apparent reason. There is no evidence to support the view that leaders and governments behave in “more or less reasonable ways in pursuit of normal and identifiable interests.”

The belief that the world is governed by rational principles represents an ideology. This belief system has done wonders when applied to the physical world. I am astonished by the working of my computer and by cell phones. I have barely a clue as to how or why this is able to happen. Yet I assume there are rational principles that govern these happenings: the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Yet, happenings in the political world don’t seem to work so well. Indeed, at this very moment, we witness chaos and destruction, the same old, same old. It would appear that we are wrong to assume that political behavior is governed by rational principles.

The belief that human beings act based upon rational motives is a delusion. Why has this delusion been so persistent? Why do we avoid examining the motives that have generated the monumentally destructive forms of behavior that are so common in the political world?

One of the deepest motives governing human thought and behavior, I have found, is the desire not to know. However, we also desire to know—to understand. If we wish to pursue our desire to understand, the first step is to abandon the delusion that human behavior is governed by rationality.

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A Note from the Editors at Library of Social Science:

Dr. Zhu’s essay and accompanying photos provide a unique perspective: allowing Americans to understand how China conceived of and experienced the Korean War. Below is a condensed version of the entire essay, which appears here.

Below her essay are photos of Dr. Zhu’s visit to a ceremony in South Korea commemorating the 50th anniversary of the War.

China entered into the Korean War at a critical historical moment: the new Communist regime had just celebrated its first anniversary in October 1950. In military strength and industrial capacity, China was no match for its opponent, the well-equipped and supplied United Nations Command (UNC) under the United States military command leadership. What China could rely on was its massive manpower and political propaganda — entrenched in the Marxist doctrine of anti-imperialism and internationalism.

On October 8, 1950, Mao Zedong — in the name of the Chair of the Chinese People’s Military Commission — issued an executive order organizing the army of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) to enter the Korean War on the side of North Korea. Mao elaborated on the nature of China’s decision to enter into the Korean conflict: “To assist [North] Korean people’s liberation war, to resist the aggression of the American imperialists and their running dogs, and to protect the interests of the [North] Korean people, the Chinese people, as well as countries in Asia.”

Chinese military forces crossing the Yalu River, October 1950

China entered into the Korean War at a critical historical moment: the new Communist regime had just celebrated its first anniversary in October 1950. In military strength and industrial capacity, China was no match for its opponent, the well-equipped and supplied United Nations Command (UNC) under the United States military command leadership. What China could rely on was its massive manpower and political propaganda — entrenched in the Marxist doctrine of anti-imperialism and internationalism.

On October 8, 1950, Mao Zedong — in the name of the Chair of the Chinese People’s Military Commission — issued an executive order organizing the army of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) to enter the Korean War on the side of North Korea. Mao elaborated on the nature of China’s decision to enter into the Korean conflict: “To assist [North] Korean people’s liberation war, to resist the aggression of the American imperialists and their running dogs, and to protect the interests of the [North] Korean people, the Chinese people, as well as countries in Asia.”

The Chinese government strove to galvanize its population into the belief that they were fighting a just war. Mao had always paid special attention to the role of political motivation for war. “It is of utmost important to let our military and people know the political purpose of the war,” Mao emphasized. “It is highly necessary to explain to every soldier and every citizen why the war is to be fought, and how the fighting is related to them.”

The war waged by China was not simply portrayed as a conflict in Korea: it was dubbed by the Chinese authority as kangmei yuanchao, baojia weiguo, “the War to Resist American Aggression and Aid [North] Korea,” “Defend Homeland and Protect Our Country.”

When the People’s Daily carried articles on U.S. bombing of China’s border cities, they showed bloody bodies and burned houses, making the war in Korea personal to the Chinese people. “American imperialists have brought the war to the Yalu River border,” the editorial from the People’s Daily claimed. “Until the war on the Korean Peninsula ceases, there will not be peace along the Yalu River.” Instantly, the fundamental interest of the Chinese people came to be tied closely to the war in Korea: the only way to resolve this crisis was to send in China’s support to the Korean people.

U.S. Infantry troops at Taejon railroad station, July 1950

War demands commitment and sacrifice. The Communist authorities enshrined the ideal of revolutionary heroism into their wartime culture of patriotism and sacrifice. According to Communist theory, revolutionary heroism is the opposite of individual heroism. While the former is focused on individual fame and self-interest, the former emphasized daring to fight and eventually give one’s life for the revolutionary cause one believes in — and to make sacrifices for the public interest and masses.

In 1945, Mao expounded on the features revolutionary heroism: “This army embraces the spirit of moving forward unstoppably and of overwhelming all enemies, but never to be overcome. Under any circumstance, as long as there is one man left, he must fight to the end.” Since the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921, the Communists had upheld the tradition of revolutionary martyrs who had laid down their lives for the cause, and for the brighter future of a Communist China.

These martyrs, according to Zhu De, one of Communist China’s most prominent military commanders, “would not only sacrifice part of their own interests, but also their own lives without hesitation, for the sake of revolutionary interest and needs.” This was the essence of revolutionary heroism: one person’s sacrifice for millions of other peoples’ lives, and for the nation’s security. The Korean War provided a great opportunity for every Chinese, soldiers or not, to embrace the spirit of revolutionary heroism.

Wei praised the bravery and virtue of the CPV soldiers — in a fashion similar Pericles in his funeral oration to the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century B.C. Wei’s extolment of the CPV soldiers seemed to prove the unlimited human power sustained by revolutionary heroism, when one CPV company fought to kill some 300 enemies — while suffering heavy casualties by overwhelming enemy fire power from air bombing, tank and artillery, flame thrower, and strong frontal assaults. The CPV Company managed to hold onto the position until the arrival of reinforcement.

This ancient idea that warriors, “because of their godliness and virtue, can vanquish strong opponents,” was shared by many. One historian noted that “the Christian crusaders counted on it. Jihad, Islam’s conception of a holy war, is based on it. The [Japanese] Samurai believed it. So did the Nazis.” In the case of the CPV forces in Korea, the sentiment of the kangmei yuanchao movement empowered the CPV soldiers to believe they were fighting a just war for a just cause, which was invincible.

Mao’s strategy in proving “man can beat weapon” lay in his using at least four times larger, if not more, in number of troops, and 1.5 to two times bigger the fire power than that of the enemy’s — in order to eliminate them. The concept of “human wave” was born. As a result, more martyrs were in the making, and more sacrifices would be added to the national glory and international stardom.

In war, death can transcend to a higher realm of nobility. When death casualties of the CPV soldiers were reported back home, the nation and the people seemed to have little time to grieve. The authorities wanted everyone at home to “turn grief into strength, sorrow for the loss of loved ones into hatred toward the American imperialism.” Sacrifice for the Chinese nation and world peace was a glorious deed. “As a prideful CCP member,” one anonymous CPV soldier wrote the night before he was to die defending the hill top, “[I] must give my life…for the victory…for my motherland…”

One historian whose research focused on heroes in Nazi Germany commented, “Death in battle not only guaranteed eternal life for the martyrs, but also acted as a resurgent life force for the Fatherland. Death in combat took on the ennobling force of a sacrament.” Communist revolutionary heroism ensured eternal life in propaganda for those who died for the revolutionary cause. Both Huang Jiguang and Qiu Shaoyun pledged before going into battle that they were willing to “give their lives for the victory.”

Mao and his elder son, Mao Anying,
who died in the American bombing of Korea

Now they had achieved just that, dying a heroic death fighting the most powerful country in the world, the United States. The state apparatus rigorously created an account of the heroism of the CPV soldiers — who lived for the life of their motherland, and died for the peace of the Korean people. In life they were part of the “most beloved,” and in death they joined the immortals.

A very special martyr was among some 180,000 souls buried in North Korea. He was Mao Anying, the eldest son of Mao Zedong, who died in an American air raid in November 25, 1950 while working in the CPV headquarters in North Korea. Upon hearing the news, Mao’s response was calm but solemn:

In war there must be sacrifice. So many CPV soldiers have given their lives already. As a proletarian fighter and a CCP member, Anying has done his duty. He is an ordinary soldier of the CPV. His death should not be made a big issue just because he is my son. Why can’t a son of the CCP chair be making sacrifice for the common cause of the Chinese and Korean peoples?

General Clark signing the Korean War
Armistice Agreement in July 1953

The ending of the Korean War — with an armistice and return of the CPV POWs — seemed to have cast a spell on the sacrifice and devotion China made in the Korean War. Throughout the war, Mao and the Chinese authorities made good use of the propaganda apparatus to promote revolutionary heroism, and placed individual CPV soldiers’ deaths within the context of homeland security and world peace, which demanded sacrifice to safeguard a nation’s survival. China’s heroes were given an active role — as they walked toward death with courage and vigor.

There was no doubt that the CPV soldiers truly believed in why they were fighting and what they were fighting for in Korea. Death seemed more justifiable than life — to achieve the title of revolutionary hero. Retrospectively, the Korean War occupies a special place in Communist China’s history. Sending millions of China’s best to fight in Korea was no easy decision for Mao and the new leadership to make.

In 2000, Dr. Zhu traveled to Seoul to observe the South Korean government’s ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Korean War.

The photos on the first row are of the ceremony — held on June 25, 2000, in front of the Korean War Museum. The photos on the second row show Dr. Zhu with veterans of the Korean War.