Did you know the SS order to beget children?

SS man with his bride in 1938
(Photo: alphahistory.com)

Saying that Nazi Germany was a socially and culturally conservative society is an understatement. And yet, no lesser Nazi official than SS leader Heinrich Himmler once ordered his men to make as many children as possible, even out of wedlock. The order was not only unusual and contrary to Germany’s mores, it was also widely misunderstood to the point that Himmler had to quickly issue a clarification.

In October 1939, two months into World War II, Himmler issued the so-called “procreation order” to the Schutzstaffel (SS), the paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party. The order was to impregnate “German women and girls of good blood.” In Himmler’s words, “The old proverb that only he can die in peace who has sons and children must again hold good in this war, particularly for the SS. He can die in peace who knows that his clan and everything that his ancestors and he himself have wanted and striven for will be continued in his children. The greatest gift for the widow of a man killed in battle is always the child of the man she has loved.”

SS christening ceremony for a newborn in a maternity home
(Photo: Bundesarchiv)

Such heirs were to be created even out of wedlock: “Beyond the limits of bourgeois laws and conventions, which are perhaps necessary in other circumstances, it can be a noble task for German women and girls of good blood to become even outside marriage, not light-heartedly but out of a deep moral seriousness […]”

The order had a twofold goal. One, the Third Reich was going to lose many men in the war, and Himmler wanted to get a leg up on replacing the lost population; two, he wanted to increase the proportion of pure Aryans.

An SS-run birth house in Nazi Germany
(Photo: Bundesarchiv)

Himmler recognized that there might be some reluctance to follow the order: “In past wars, many a soldier has decided, out of a deep sense of responsibility, to beget no more children during the time of war, so as not to leave his wife and an additional child in want and distress in case of his death.” He promised that the SS would take good care of both the children (legitimate or otherwise) and pregnant mothers if the father died in the war.

While unusual and going against the social expectations of the time (and the present), the order did have a certain kind of logic to it. It was also grossly misunderstood by the young men of the SS, as evidenced by the fact that Himmler felt he needed to issue a clarification only a few months later, in January 1940. It turned out that many SS men thought the order was a license to sleep with (and impregnate) the wives of still-living soldiers away on the front, which Himmler clarified was not the case at all.

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