«When I was a child, no one talked to me about him. I knew he was in jail, but I didn’t know any more details. My mother never gave me the slightest information, although she always answered my questions. He used to tell me: ‘Your father wants it to be that way.’ I remember the days of the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946, when my father always refused to receive us. Then I entered school and dedicated myself to my studies. At the age of 12 I began to think how wonderful it would be to have the presence of a father, but the truth is that I had not lost him, because I never really met him, even though, in his letters, he always gave me some advice”.
Wolf Rudiger Hess responded so sincerely to ABC in 1973, and it couldn’t have been easy, because he was talking about none other than Rudolf Hess, his father, Hitler’s closest collaborator, the only man with whom the all-powerful Nazi dictator allowed himself signs of affection in public. It is not the only case. We know the history of many of the children of the criminals of the Third Reich. A story crossed by pain, shame and the obligation to account for the atrocities that they did not commit.
Only a few defended their parents or tried to exonerate them for what they did. One of them was Gudrun Burwitz, daughter of Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Holocaust and the Third Reich’s highest-ranking official after Hitler. Gudrun, who was called the “Nazi princess”, died in 2018 at the age of 88, after a life in which she remained faithful to her father and the tenets of National Socialism until the end. Although she visited a concentration camp as a child, throughout her life she denied the existence of the Holocaust and even provided money and comfort to Nazis convicted or suspected of war crimes.
The majority, however, tried to go unnoticed and not be associated with their fathers after the Second World War. Some even changed their last name. Others judged them without mercy. Edda Göring, Rolf Mengele, Brigitte Höss, Albert Speer Jr. and, among others, Niklas Frank, son of Hans Frank, the Butcher of Poland. The latter condemned his father and his criminal actions through a series of books and lectures. : «I don’t hate him anymore. “I just despise him,” he declared. For years, he even carried the photo of his father executed by hanging in his wallet: «I am satisfied with the photo: he is dead. “It can’t hurt anymore.”
Martin Adolf Bormann
Voluntarily or involuntarily, all of them achieved a certain impact, but there were those who managed to go unnoticed for decades and who not only changed their surname, but also hid under a completely new identity: Martin Adolf Bormann. His father was Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary, and he was born in the state of Bavaria in 1930, three years before Hitler came to power and European history changed forever. Unlike the other children of Nazi leaders, his stigma was even greater, since the future dictator agreed to be his godfather.
As it could not be otherwise, young Martin – whose father gave him his middle name Adolf to honor the leader of the Nazi Party – was sent to boarding school and grew up within strict Nazi education. When World War II ended he was only 15 years old. However, he learned of his father’s decisive involvement in the Final Solution and chose to live in anonymity. He was then taken in by a rural Catholic family. It can be said, therefore, that he found his salvation in God.
Martin Adolf embraced Christianity with all his might, the same religion that his father in particular, and his family in general, had fiercely fought against. Hitler, in fact, ordered the writing of his own ‘Bible’, during World War II, with the aim of founding his own religion and eradicating any reference not only to Jews, but also to Christians. In this his ‘holy book’ he poured out the same visceral hatred as in ‘Mein Kampf’ (‘My Struggle’).
Against Christians
The person in charge of this work was a group of evangelical theologians from the city of Eisenach, according to Jesús Hernández in ‘100 secret stories of the Second World War’ (Tempus, 2009). The Nazi version of the ‘Bible’ was titled ‘The Germans with God. A German book of faith’. In it, the laws and principles that were to guide the German spirit under the National Socialism that had been established in 1933 were developed. In addition, the same experts who were in charge of writing it also published a volume of religious songs: ‘Great God, we we praise’. This cleaning work excited the ‘Führer’, who ordered 100,000 copies printed and distributed to more than a thousand German churches in 1941.
In 1926, Joseph Goebbels had already written in his diary that “National Socialism is a religion, the only thing missing is the religious genius that breaks the old formulas and creates new ones. We lack the ritual. National Socialism must become the official religion of the Germans. “My party is my church.” And in August 1933, a few months after being appointed Minister of Propaganda, he further specified the objective: «We must be tough against the churches. We ourselves will become one.
The road was not going to be easy, because beyond that 1% of Jews, the truth is that practically all of the 60 million inhabitants that Germany had at that time were Christians, which were divided into 20 million Catholics and 40 of Protestants, which the Nazis chose to persecute, repress and, to the extent possible, convert to the Nazi religion over the Catholic one. That is why the path chosen by the young Martin Adolf was by no means easy, taking into account the education received at home.
The godson
The ‘Führer’ wanted his own Church and began to pressure the different faiths to get out of his way. In 1935 he arrested seven hundred confessional pastors who had criticized from their pulpits the drift of the Nazi Government with respect to religions. Two years later, when the Vatican openly condemned National Socialism in Pius XI’s encyclical, ‘With Ardent Concern’, the Gestapo confiscated almost all copies. And in the Second World War, precisely Martin Adolf’s father, the feared Martin Bormann, was left alone with the criticism: “We must never allow the [otras] churches once again have influence over the direction of the people,” he said in 1941.
Hitler’s godson tried to understand his father and godfather’s aversion to the Catholic Church, but he was unable to. In 1947 he decided to be baptized and, in 1958, after studying with the Jesuits, he was ordained a priest. His work in favor of what had been one of the great enemies of Nazism went further and, in 1961, he left as a Catholic missionary to the Congo, where he remained for many years in the most absolute anonymity, hidden and ashamed of his family past. There, he was even tortured and subjected to mock executions, but he did not reveal who his father was or the role he had played in the most devastating war in history.
«I don’t hate my father. “I learned to differentiate between the individual and the Nazi politician and official,” he justified over time, perhaps moved by a Catholic religion that taught its followers to forgive. When he turned 70, the priest agreed to be interviewed by a journalist who found his whereabouts and who insisted for months. He wanted to talk about his life in anonymity and his father’s suicide when, at the end of the war, he was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trials. In the talk, Martin Adolf recognized that his father embodied “the image of evil, of the immoral, of the brutal.”
Tears
However, at the end of the interview, he pulled out old, quarter-folded paper from his wallet. The yellow, frayed edges reflected the passage of time. Martin Adolf unfolded it and showed the journalist what he had written on it in harmonious and firm handwriting: “Son of my heart. I hope I can see you again very soon. Dad”. The note was dated 1943, more than half a century later, but it continued to move the priest. Before leaving, she raised her head and let her tears be seen. And he excused himself: «Understand me. This is the image that I have as a son. And I can’t take it off. “I am opposed to losing it.”
In 1971, back in Germany, Martin Adolf suffered a serious car accident that almost cost him his life. When he regained consciousness, he fell in love with the nun who had cared for him during his convalescence. They both hung up their habits and got married. Hitler’s godson developed great work as a theologian that was recognized throughout the country, but the press continued to be interested in his family past. «I had to remain silent for justified or unjustified fear of being discovered and persecuted as my father’s son, and of being accused of the crimes committed by the Nazi regime, crimes that I learned about later. With my parents I never had the opportunity to talk about the past and the responsibility they had.
He died in Germany in 2013, aged 82.
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