Children of the Nazis Trivia Quiz

Answer: False

Magda Goebbels had a son, Harald, from her previous marriage to wealthy entrepreneur Guenther Quandt. While she was in the Fuehrerbunker in the last days of the war, she wrote a letter to her son stating that she and Joseph Goebbels were planning to poison his six younger half-siblings.

She justified her actions by saying that a world without National Socialism was not a world worth living in, and she did not want her children growing up as the offspring of a war criminal. Harald was a lieutenant in the Luftwaffe during WWII, and lived until 1967, when he died in a plane crash.

Answer: Heinrich Himmler

He had two more children with his mistress and an adopted son with his wife, but Himmler doted the most on his daughter Gudrun, born in 1928. After the war, she went through several jobs, none lasting very long due to the fact that she was proud of being Heinrich's daughter, and refused to change her name as many had advised her to. Gudrun Himmler Burwitz has been a member of "Stille Hilfe" ("Silent Assistance"), an organization which has supported fugitive, deported, or arrested Nazis who are in distress, since 1951. To this day she disputes the fact that her father committed suicide, saying that the pictures released of his body look far too much like they were altered pictures of him reviewing his SS members while on parade.

She remains committed to the Nazi cause, and has never stopped trying to justify her father's actions.

Answer: Wolf Rüdiger Hess

Rudolf Hess and his wife Ilse were desperate for a child. They tried every miracle cure they could think of, and had finally become convinced they could not conceive, but then little Wolf was born. It was reported that Hess danced for joy upon his son's birth.

In his early 20's he led a protracted battle against being called up for compulsory military service, saying he could not work for the powers that were responsible for keeping his father imprisoned. Wolf remained convinced that Rudolf was murdered by British agents, mainly because at the time of his death, the possibility of paroling him had begun to take shape.

He claims the British were afraid his father would reveal possibly embarrasing secrets about their conduct during the war should he be given the chance to talk freely about this time spent in England. Wolf died in 2001, leaving behind a wife, Andrea, and three children.

Answer: Ernst Kaltenbrunner

Kaltenbrunner was a firm believer in the Nazi view that a woman's role was to have children for the future of the Reich, and was more than willing to lend his "services" to those who couldn't have children otherwise. In addition to his three children with his wife Elisabeth, his mistress Gisela Gräfin von Westarp gave him twins in March, 1945.

He also lived next door to a brothel! Nothing much is known of his children, other than that they all survived the war.

Answer: Ilse Koch

Known as the "Bitch of Buchenwald" for her incredible sadism, Ilse had been married to Karl Otto Koch, Kommandant of Buchenwald from 1937-41 before being transferred to Majdanek. He was executed by the Nazis for embezzlement a month before the end of the war. Ilse, who had been tried along with her husband, only served four years initially before being amnestied. Immense public outcry led to her almost immediate re-arrest; by then she already pregnant. This time she was sentenced to life, giving birth to her son Uwe while in prison. Uwe did not know who his mother was until he reached adulthood. Ilse Koch hanged herself in 1967, after writing one last letter to him.

Herta Oberhauser was the only female tried at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial. She worked in the Ravensbrueck camp, where she would deliberately inflict wounds on inmates, then rub broken glass, wood, sawdust, and rusty metal into the wounds to simulate combat conditions. Initially sentenced to 20 years, she was let out after 10 for good behavior and set up a family practice. In 1958 a former Ravensbrueck inmate recognized her, and her license to practice medicine was permanently revoked. She died in 1978.

Irma Greese was the youngest female camp guard executed after the war, at age 22. Convicted in the Bergen-Belsen trial and hanged on 13 December 1945, she was one of the few concentration camp guards who was openly, indeed shamelessly sadistic.

Hermine Braunsteiner, known as the "Mare of Majdanek" for her habit of stomping on the backs of inmates with her steel-toed jackboots, tried to escape her Nazi past and moved to New York, only to be tracked down and deported in the late 70's with the help of Simon Wiesenthal. (She was the first ever former Nazi to be extradited from the US for trial) Her American citizenship was revoked and in 1980 she was handed a life sentence in Germany for war crimes. (Her husband Russell Ryan, sounding VERY much like Julius Streicher, blamed the Jews for the trial and her sentence.) She was one of the many former Nazis helped through Gudrun Himmler's Silent Assistance program, and died of complications from diabetes in 1999.

Answer: 2

Frick's eldest son Hans, committed suicide along with his wife and children on May 3, 1945. His second oldest, Walter, was killed in action on the Russian front in 1941. His other 3 children, 2 daughters and another son, survived the war. When asked by Nuremberg prison psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn how he felt about his sons' deaths, he merely stated "It's the nature of life, the laws of nature, the ways of war."

Answer: Edda Goering

"Have you heard, they've closed the Reichsautobahn."
"How's that then?"
"I thought everyone knew. Edda's learning how to walk!"

Goering was thought for years to be sterile because of the wound he suffered in the Beer Hall Putsch (he was shot in the groin). A popular joke around Edda was that her name stood for "Emmy Dankt Dem Adjutanten!" (Emmy thanks the Adjutant!). On Edda's birth in 1938 she was plastered on postcards, and her picture could be found throughout the Reich. Throughout the short time her father was in her life, she was pampered like the princess everyone thought she was, and the entire Luftwaffe were her Godfathers. In her later life, she stated that unlike many other Nazi children, she didn't find her name a liability. She remained somewhat in the spotlight, ocassionally meeting up with Wolf Hess and the other children of former Nazis. She also once remarked "If only Papi had been a chocolate maker instead..."

I have to say, Edda Goering was a beautiful little girl, the spitting image of her father, and you could tell her parents loved her very much. I almost feel a sense of sorrow for her, she certainly couldn't choose what her father did.

Answer: Margret

Margret Speer Nissen, Speer's fourth child, first studied architecture at the University in Heidelberg, then decided she'd rather be a photographer. Some of her most recent work can be seen in Berlin as part of the "Topographie des Terrors", an exhibition dedicated to showcasing the horrors of the Third Reich. Hilde Schram, his eldest daughter, is a publisher and sociologist known for her work in helping the victims of Nazi atrocities.

His eldest child Albert, Jr., followed in his father's footsteps and became an architect.

Not much is known of Speer's other three children, Ernst, Arnold (who had been named Adolf until 1945), and Fritz.

Answer: Niklas Frank

When the book was editorialized in the German magazine "Stern", it provoked outrage in countless readers, as Niklas went into very graphic detail indeed about some of the lewd acts he would commit to "commemorate" his father's death. (Many of the children of other Nazis, even those who excoriated their parents, shunned Niklas for his attitude.) He also questioned the sincerity of his father's repentance before his death. In one portion he asks "How does a person like you come into being? I fish out your diary from the filth of your life. Come, father, let's go on, the two of us. Let me pluck your crown to pieces." Klaus von Schirach labeled his writings despicable, while Martin Bormann Jr., then a Catholic priest, said he would have loved to get in touch with him and speak about their fathers.

The eldest Frank son, Norman, consciously made the decision to never have children, believing that the line should die out. The middle child, Brigitte, died at age 46. Although she had cancer, the family believed it to be a suicide, as she was obsessed with not outliving her father. The second youngest, Michael, died at age 53 of heart failure brought on by obesity. Nothing is known about Frank's eldest daughter, Sigrid, other than that she married, had children, and moved to South Africa after the war. According to Niklas, upon hearing that her father was alright after his arrest, she contemptuously remarked "You mean they haven't shot him yet?"

Answer: Joachim von Ribbentrop

At the time of her father's detention, 22-year-old Bettina von Ribbentrop was six weeks away from giving birth to her first child. Still refering to her as his "sweet little girl", Joachim stated "This is a terrible time for her. I don't give a darn about my own fate, but she will worry." Ribbentrop's eldest son Rudolf attended the Westminster School for a year when his father was the Ambassador to England. Peter Ustinov, who was his schoolmate, supposedly leaked his attendance at the school to "The Times", causing Rudolf to be pulled from the school as a safety measure.