In 1959, a German journalist interviewed the children of a number of leading Nazis and four decades, later, in 2000, his son interviewed them again and the result is this book. It must be hard to be so overshadowed by a parent when the parent had accomplished great things; but to be the child of a mass murderer in control of the machinery of state must be far harder. For many of the children, their exposure to Nazism was not very traumatic. Many were simply too young and only recalled being seated on Herr Hitler's knees or some similar minor incident. Heinrich Himmler's daughter was brought to one of the concentration camps where her father proudly showed off the herb garden.

The aftermath of the war was not very good for these children, who were interrogated with their mothers and held in camps. But in light of what happened to the general German population immediately after the war it is nothing unusual.

The children who agreed to speak to the junior Mr. Lepert (and not all of them did) seem to have led rather undistinguished and quiet lives for the most part. They coped with their unwanted legacy in different ways, some becoming Nazis themselves, others violently rejecting their fathers. It seems in German society that a father should be forgiven by his children, no matter how awful his crimes, crimes that destroyed Germany itself in the end. Of course, Joseph Goebbels, who murdered all his own children in the final waning of the Third Reich, would not be criticized by his grown-up offspring. In the case of Heinrich Himmler's daughter, she spoke to the senior Mr. Lepert about her plans to rehabilitate her father's reputation, a breathtakingly looney proposition. In all the cases, there is a perception that the family man and the Nazi were two completely different people.

The book is not terribly well-written (it is a gruesome English translation) and wretchedly edited to boot, but some of the points it makes are quite striking, particularly those dealing with how victims see events compared to victimizers. But there is a more interesting overarching theme and that is how West Germans have dealt with their past primarily by burying it. On a national and official level, a great deal has been done in the way on atonement but it seems that individuals simply shed this unpleasantness and went on with rebuilding the country. Old Nazi technocrats soon found themselves running ministries again, this time in a democratic state. It is no wonder that Daniel Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners," which posited that the average German knew what was going on and consented to it, albeit passively, provoked such controversy in Germany

Some of the Nazi leaders were good fathers and family men, others decidedly less so, but their offspring, come to age in a different world, seem rather small. The postwar pettiness directed towards them is unpleasant. It is not right to judge the children as if they were the fathers but it is hard to be terribly sympathetic to these people. Gudrun Himmler is involved with a mutual-help society of old Nazis and was involved with the NPD, the extremist nationalist party. When the Minister of Youth, Baldur von Schirach, came out of Spandau Prison after twenty years, there was a nice inheritance from a relative in the USA awaiting him. Old Nazis helped to finance his children's education. Martin Bormann's son, who became a Catholic priest for a while, went around Germany speaking on the evil that is within us all and this may be true. The madness, power-lust and brutality of the Nazi leadership is not apparent in its biological heirs. Undistinguished survivors, for the most part, but one has the feeling that the interviews were perhaps too superficial to show more.

Stephan Lebert's famous interviews with the Children of Nazi Germany's leaders are told in this book.

The Children of Himmler, Goering, Hess, and a few others gave their side of the story, some reluctently, others freely to the interviewer.

All have a story to tell and in some cases use the interviews as a means to push for their father's innocence while others really don't care what their parents did.

They are of course totally blameless of their parent's actions and in some cases want to be left alone. Sadly the old addage "Guilty by association" is what these people (and their offspring) will have to endure for the rest of their lives.

Unlike many books on this subject, the Leberts do not fall into the ponderous trap of attempting to be definitive or all things to all people. I stumbled across this remarkable book by accident. Posner's book 'Hitler's Children' was interesting, and is a more exhaustive look at the topic, but Lebert's book is somehow more emotional and accessible. Perhaps it is the lighter touch or the fact that it was written by Germans but it stayed in my mind much longer.

Based on a series of articles his father wrote in 1959, the son meets with those who will speak with him and explores his own feelings about his father's role in the war, his identity as a German, and the reaction modern day Germany has to it's war past. While there are tidbits of information (I had no idea there was a charity set up to support former Nazi leaders and staff or that so many of them entered the postwar government so cleanly) the real value of this book is the human one.

How rare it is to find a father and son so willing to face the possiblities of their post-war life having been stunningly different and how refreshing to find them willing to allow that experience had an effect on their interviews. The portraits of the Nazikinder then and now are done with great appeal. This is a subject too emotional to ever truly be objective about, but the willingness of the Lebert's to try and their look at where they fail does thenm credit.

This is a popular history in the best sense of the phrase that will leave you with a great deal to think about regarding modern Germany and the way the world views these heirs. If many of them have seemed to fall into their father's paths, was it inevitable? Is our own denial to the unique challenge they faced culpable? (If understandable). Is the current rise in their views tied to these things? A great read for the casual and a thought provoker for the more involved. This book deserves a wider audience.