8. Norwegian Lebensborn: The Tyskerbarnas
The Nazis viewed the Scandinavians as an even more racially Nordic-Aryans than were the Germans themselves. Thus, once they occupied Denmark and Norway, the people in charge of the Lebensborn program had great hopes for breeding with the local women, setting up two facilities in Denmark, and nine in Norway. The breeding program in Norway proved even more fruitful than the German one, producing about 12,000 Lebensborn children in Norway, as opposed to 8000 in Germany.
The program’s efforts were warmly supported by Norway’s wartime government of Vidkung Quisling – a name that became synonymous with treason and collaboration. Quisling and his fellow collaborators were not only complicit in, but eager enablers of their German masters’ efforts to breed with blond and blue eyed Norwegian women.
As a result, up to 12,000 Lebensborn children were born in Norway. After Germany’s defeat and the liberation of Norway, things got grim for women who had slept with German soldiers during the occupation. They were viewed as traitorous whores, or “horizontal collaborators”. Many were subjected to indignities ranging from beatings to getting their heads shaved in public, or worse, and ostracized. Thousands were sent to Norwegian prison camps, were they toiled as virtual slaves.
Their children, referred to as Tyskerbarnas (“German children”) were an unwelcome reminder of the humiliation of Nazi occupation, and endured sundry forms of discrimination and mistreatment while growing up. Officials referred to them as “rats”, and between discrimination by schoolmates to discrimination by school authorities, few received a proper education or had a healthy childhood.
