What was the Lebensborn program?

Historical analysis

Most people are familiar with the Holocaust, when Nazis murdered nearly 6 million European Jews. Also sinister, but less bloodthirsty, was the SS implemented program known as the Lebensborn Program. When the Nazis took power in the 1930s, German birth rates had been falling for years before. The Nazis wanted to have a "Master Race" that would rule the world, and that would be a problem if the Aryan race continued to have falling birth rates. In 1935, the Lebensborn program was established with the goal of increasing the number of Aryan children born. At the beginning of the program, Lebensborn acted as a welfare program for SS wives who ran maternity homes, but overtime the program focused more on unmarried women who were "racially valuable" and were impregnated by "racially valuable" fathers. The program shows just what lengths the Nazis went to in order to increase the numbers of the racially desired. Although most of the racism that Nazis focused towards the Jewish party, the Nazi party was also extremely prejudice towards black and disabled people. The main goal of this program was to breed the Aryan race and the next generation of Nazi soldiers. Hitler along with Nazi party believed that the Aryan race was the one true race, and over time they would be able to breed them to the only race. Over time, with help from the Holocaust, the Jewish population became smaller and the Aryans grew. Once the Germans lost WWII many children within the Lebensborn program were left for dead, making the percentages of orphans increase dramatically. Even though most of the Lebensborn program was about breeding, there were also times that the Nazi party would abduct children from other countries, mostly Poland, that fit into the Aryan race.

Typical Abduction operation

An example of an abduction method used occurred in Cilli, Yugoslavia (todays Slovenia). The abduction took place during a crackdown on resistance in that region. The method began with rounding up around one thousand people into a schoolyard, many of the people were relatives of those who had been executed by Yugoslavia's German occupiers for resistance activities. When all of the families were accounted for, the German officers split up the men, women, and children. Further grouping of the children was done as those crying were placed in pens to be examined by Nazis. The Nazis wrote on clipboards to note each child's physical and facial characteristics. Based on those findings the children were divided into four groups: category 1 and 2 was for the children who met the criteria of "what a German child should look like", and category 3 and 4 was made up of children with any hint of Slavic features or signs of Jewish heritage. The children in groups 1 and 2 were marked as useful additions to the Third Reich, and were taken by train to a holding center for furthur examination. Those in groups 1 and 2 were given back to their parents with the intent of using them for slave labor in the future.

A German "racial specialist" examines a child to determine whether she was "Aryan" or "Alien". Photo from the Holocaust Museum.

What was tested during the eugenics craze. Photo from the Holocaust Museum.

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