Most Lebensborn children grew up not knowing their history but the past few decades led them to discover their roots thanks to family members and research.

“Most grew up knowing they had a secret,” Dorothee Schmitz-Köster told the Times. “They were angry at their mothers, because they had been lied to or abandoned. Some feel shame. There are also a small number who are proud of being Lebensborn. They feel they are part of an elite.”

Abortion wasn’t legal in Germany. Mothers ended up giving the “master race” babies to families in the SS. Some raised their children alone, but would lie about the baby’s origins.

These women had to deal with the stigma of the time in postwar Germany. Having an illegitimate child was one while the other for participating in SS programs. These mothers often developed psychological problems and turned to alcohol. Some who were ostracized and even forced into slave labor.

Mothers found themselves living in the best conditions in Norway. Lebensborn mother Hildegard Trutz said the accommodations were stationed in a castle which came with a common room for sports and games, a music room and a cinema.

The Lebensborn program acquired children through any means possible, which meant many of the kids were victims of kidnapping. An estimated 200,000 children were stolen from their families in Poland, Russia, and Eastern Europe. The children were transferred to Germany where they would be “Germanized.”

Sadly, kidnapped children were sorted ranging from most desirable to least. If a child didn’t match Hitler’s idea of genetic purity, they were sent to concentration camps. Those who passed went to re-education camps.

They were given new names and made to forget about their past lives. Children were fostered into ideal German families or sent to boarding schools.

And unfortunately, most of these children never found their real families again.

The Lebensborn program had the SS covering up the true identities of the children. The children born in the program weren’t told of their origins for decades, if at all. The childrens’ fathers were never recorded on birth certificates.

Lebensborn mothers faced stigma as well and that helped suppress the story.

Babies with known identities who grew up in a post-war world were ostracized from their communities. They were labeled enemies of state thanks to their German blood.

For single women who joined the program, they signed a waiver which stated that their children would be property of the state. They would never see their children again after the first two weeks of life.

Hildegard Trutz was one such volunteer who never felt shame as she was completely willing. “As both the father of my child and I believed completely in the importance of what we were doing, we had no shame or inhibitions of any kind,” she said.

Trutz gave birth to a son she weaned for two weeks before the boy was taken away. He was placed in a special SS home where he was raised and made to serve Hitler. Trutz never saw her son or the father again.

The only time they were allowed was for mothers with fetuses deemed disabled. Heinrich Himmler was actually convinced that abortion was evil. He reasoned that since it lowered the birth rate, that meant some “pure” children were not born. So the Lebensborn program was used as a way to adopt those children.

The Lebensborn program had many believing that willing women were always available for SS men to do with as they pleased. But the truth is that the women were either from the League of German Girls or already pregnant. Author Dorothee Schmitz- Köster wrote a book on how babies were conceived in very normal ways.

“The children were conceived in all the usual ways: love affairs, one-night stands, and so forth,” she told the New York Times.

Of course, the women were given incentives to breed, which meant help for those who just wanted to survive in a war-torn country. The women could choose from a list of qualified SS officers.

Hildegard Trutz was just 18 when she was recruited. She joined the League of German Girls after school, listening to one of the leaders say she should give birth because Germany needed more “valuable stock.”

Most of the Lebensborn fathers were SS officers who had families. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, even encouraged officers to breed outside of their marriage by saying they weren’t committing adultery but doing their jobs by helping build a German master race.

Hildegard Trutz, a Lebensborn mother, says the SS officers who fathered children were “very tall and strong with blue eyes and blond hair.”

The women would go to a meet-and-greet session with SS officers. Together, they played games and watched films before women were given a week to choose her mate.

The officer would sleep with the woman for three evenings the first week. Then on the other nights, he would sleep with other girls in the clinic.

For the women who wanted to be in Lebensborn, they had to meet really strict criteria. it wasn’t just blonde hair and blue eyes, since they had to prove that they had no genetic disorders. They took tests to be sure they had no Jewish blood (as if that can be tested).

Then the women had to prove the identity of the father, who had to meet the same criteria.

The most important criteria was their allegiance to Nazism. Indoctrination was part of living in the Lebensborn clinic, but many who participated were already devoted to Hitler, having been scouted by the SS for genetic traits and loyalty.

There were 6,000 to 8,000 babies born in Lebensborn clinics between 1936 and 1945, with some claiming a much higher 20,000. When the war ended, Lebensborn children moved on with their lives, mostly learning about their past during adulthood.

Perhaps the most famous of these is Anni-Frid Lyngstad from the Swedish pop band ABBA. Lyngstad and others like her born of unions between Norwegian mothers and German SS fathers were forced out of their country, branded as traitors together with their mothers.

The Nazis set up homes, called clinics, to get more people into the program. There were 10 facilities in Germany and 26 homes across eight countries in Europe.

Some of those homes were places children stayed in, while others were field offices. Norway had the highest amount of Lebensborn children outside Germany. They facilitated 250 adoptions, to which most mothers agreed to, although they weren’t told where their children were going.

Lebensborn means “fount of life”. It was a secret program carried out by the SS and approved by Hitler. The program set out to encourage genetically “pure” women, women who were blonde-haired and blue-eyed with the right measurements, to produce children with SS officers. It was really a program designed to breed a master race of humans.

Watch as the children of Lebensborn speak out about what they endured.