Martin Bormann’s Note on "Safeguarding the Future of the German People" (January 29, 1944) Even after he had consolidated his dictatorial rule, Hitler was always concerned with maintaining the loyalty and support of the German people. Thus, the most radical aspects of his population policy were largely reserved for social and other minorities, whereas the general public was to remain unaware of the implementation of extreme measures. But the following note by Head of the Party Chancellery Martin Bormann (dated January 29, 1944), reveals that Hitler envisioned a radical departure from established bourgeois and religious socio-sexual mores as being necessary in the postwar period in order to quickly compensate for the considerable loss of life during the war and thus secure the continued existence of the German Volk.
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page 1 of 4 Headquarters, 29 January 1944 Minutes for Comrade Friedrichs, Comrade Klopfer Re: Safeguarding the Future of the German People 1. During the night of 27/28 January the Führer discussed with us the problems of our national future. The following points can be established from this and earlier conversations and reflections: After the war our national position will be catastrophic, for our nation is experiencing the second enormous loss of blood within a thirty-year period. We shall undoubtedly win the war militarily but lose it in national terms if we do not decisively transform all our previous views and the attitudes which have resulted from them. For the loss of blood is not a one-off event but rather its effects will go on year after year into the distant future. A single example: How many more children would have been born in this war if it had been possible to grant our front soldiers leave or to have done so more often! How terrible the political consequences of a war can be is demonstrated by the Thirty Years War. When it started the German nation had a population of over 18 million; at its end barely 3½ million. The consequences of this loss of blood have still not been resolved to this day. For we lost the world domination which, at the beginning of the Thirty Years War the German nation seemed predestined to achieve. Our political divisions lasted until 1871, our national ones basically till 1933; the confessional division has still not been resolved. [ . . . ] 3. The Führer pointed out that after this war we shall have 3 to 4 million women who have no husbands or cannot get them. Think how many divisions we would be lacking in twenty to forty-five years time, said the Führer. 4. The greater the number of births in a nation, the more secure will its future be. The calculation made by many parents, namely that they have to limit the number of their children to secure the future of the ones who have been born is thus completely wrong; the opposite is true! Thus, if they thought about it properly, all women who have one child ought to be particularly concerned to see that not only they themselves but all other women have as many children as possible, because the more children that are born the more secure their children's future will be. That is a very sober assessment of the situation. 5. Now the women who after this tremendous war are not married to a man or do not get married cannot get their children from the Holy Ghost but only from the German men who are left. Increased procreation by individual men is of course only desirable from a national point of view in the case of some of these men. The decent, physically and psychologically healthy men of character should increase their procreation but not those who are physically and mentally deformed. [ . . . ]
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