There was little visually about Heinrich Himmler to indicate that he was one of history’s greatest monsters. With his indistinct visage, receding chin, and office clerk glasses, he a stock image of an innocuous bureaucrat. Looks can be deceiving, though, and Himmler was probably the most feared man in Germany. He was second only to Hitler in responsibility for the Third Reich’s World War II atrocities. Indeed, as Reichsfuhrer-SS, Himmler oversaw and carried out the Holocaust. He was caught after the war, but escaped trial and certain execution by swallowing cyanide. Himmler’s family lived on, though. They had to make their way postwar in a world where that name carried tons of negative weight.
A Monster Who Murdered Millions of Children, but Was a Loving Father to His Own Kids
The fate of Himmler’s family after his suicide was a quiet but revealing postscript to the Nazi elites’ collapse. Many key Nazis’ relatives vanished entirely or reinvented themselves abroad. Himmler’s immediate family – his wife Margarete and daughter Gudrun – stayed in Germany. They lived long, contentious lives marked by poverty, social ostracism, ideological stubbornness, and unresolved moral reckoning. Their postwar story illustrates how the legacy of Nazism persisted not only through institutions and networks, but within families who refused to accept the criminality of their patriarch.
Himmler had overseen a genocide whose victims included millions of children. He was a loving father to his own children, though. They included a daughter, Gudrun, a foster son whose SS father had died, and two illegitimate children, Helge and Nanette, whom he fathered upon his personal secretary. The Reichsfuhrer SS was particularly close to Gudrun, whom he nicknamed “Puppi” (“Dolly”). His work kept him away for long stretches, but he made sure to phone her every few days. He also tried to see her as often as he could. Himmler’s wife, Margarete Boden Himmler (nee Boden), was arrested shortly after the war along with her daughter Gudrun. Margarete had been an early Nazi sympathizer and party member in her own right. During the Third Reich, she enjoyed the privileges of her husband’s position.
Himmler’s Family Went From the Lap of Luxury to Abrupt Hardship
Himmler’s family did well in the Nazi era. His wife managed households, traveled extensively, and benefited materially from the system Himmler helped build. With Germany’s defeat, the privileges enjoyed by Margarete and Gudrun Himmler evaporated overnight. Mother and daughter were interned by the Allies and subjected to denazification proceedings – part of a broader effort to dismantle the Nazi social order and assess individual responsibility. The denazification process of Margarete classified her as a “follower” rather than a major offender. It was a common outcome for the spouses of Nazi leaders.
Margarete denied detailed knowledge of her husband’s crimes. She portrayed herself as politically marginal, despite evidence that she shared his worldview and enjoyed the fruits of his power. Like many Germans of her generation, she framed herself as a victim of circumstance rather than a participant. After her release, she struggled financially. The postwar German state did not offer pensions or compensation to families of executed or disgraced Nazi leaders. Margarete was thus left largely dependent on charity and temporary assistance.
Margarete’s health declined steadily in the late 1940s and 1950s. She lived in modest conditions, and moved between small apartments. She relied at times on church aid and the help of acquaintances. Social isolation was acute. The name “Himmler” carried enormous stigma, and many former friends vanished. Margarete never publicly condemned her husband or expressed remorse for his actions. Instead, she clung to a private narrative in which Heinrich Himmler was a dutiful patriot betrayed by history. She died in 1967, poor, embittered, and largely forgotten. She never faced serious legal consequences nor undergone any visible moral reckoning.
A Daughter Dedicated to the Legacy of a Monster
Of Himmler’s family, his daughter Gudrun had a far more controversial – and enduring – postwar life. Born in 1929, Gudrun had adored her father. During the Third Reich she enjoyed a privileged childhood in which she attended elite schools and traveled with her parents. Heinrich Himmler doted on her. His letters to Gudrun reveal a strikingly sentimental tone that contrasts sharply with his bureaucratic orchestration of mass murder. That emotional bond would shape Gudrun’s entire postwar identity. After her internment ended, Gudrun returned to a devastated Germany deeply hostile to its Nazi past. Many young Germans gradually accepted responsibility and distanced themselves from their parents’ generation. Gudrun, by contrast, remained defiantly loyal to her father’s memory.
Gudrun rejected the legitimacy of the Nuremberg Trials, and dismissed evidence of SS crimes as exaggeration or propaganda. She insisted that her father had been a misunderstood idealist. That refusal to accept historical reality isolated her from mainstream German society. It connected her, however, to a subculture of former Nazis, SS veterans, and far-right sympathizers. In the early 1950s, Gudrun became involved with an organization that would define her adult life: Stille Hilfe (“Silent Help”). Ostensibly a humanitarian charity, Stille Hilfe provided legal and financial assistance to imprisoned or fugitive former SS members and Nazis. While it portrayed itself as non-political, its mission was unmistakably ideological. The organization helped convicted war criminals, supported their families, and lobbied for early releases and sentence reductions. Gudrun eventually became one of its most prominent figures.
Gudrun Himmler Spent Her Adult Life Helping War Criminals
Through Stille Hilfe, Gudrun forged relationships with a network of unrepentant Nazis across West Germany and beyond. She helped raise funds, coordinated aid, and visited imprisoned war criminals, including individuals convicted of crimes against humanity. She saw that not as political extremism, but as filial loyalty and moral duty of a member of Himmler’s family. She claimed to defend honor against what she believed to be unjust victors’ justice. Gudrun married a far-right extremist in 1960 and took her husband’s name, Burwitz. That allowed her to live with less immediate scrutiny as she continued her activities. Under that surname, she maintained a low public profile, and avoided the spotlight while remaining deeply embedded in far-right circles.
Gudrun’s marriage did not mark any ideological shift. If anything, it provided stability that allowed her activism to continue quietly for decades. West German authorities were aware of Stille Hilfe and Gudrun Burwitz’s role within it, but legal action proved difficult. The organization operated within the boundaries of charitable law, and freedom of association protected its activities. Surveillance occurred intermittently, particularly during periods of heightened concern about neo-Nazi movements, but Gudrun was never charged with a crime. That frustrated many survivors and historians, who saw her as a symbol of Germany’s failure to fully confront its past.
An Alternate Moral Universe in Which Heinrich Himmler and the SS Were Good Guys
Unlike many children of prominent Nazis, Gudrun Burwitz, nee Himmler, never turned her back on her father. Her unwavering devotion to her father made her a powerful figure in neo-Nazi mythology. As a member of Himmler’s family, she was neo-Nazi royalty. Indeed, she became known as a “Nazi princess”. Among extremists, she was treated with reverence as the daughter of the Reichsfuhrer-SS – a tangible link to the Third Reich. Younger generations of far-right activists sought her out, attended gatherings where she was present. Her approval bestowed legitimacy in those circles. She never disavowed these connections. However, she avoided explicit public statements that could expose her to prosecution, and preferred private conversations and behind-the-scenes influence.
Gudrun helped many monsters. Their numbers included Klaus Barbie, AKA “The Butcher of Lyon”, Martin Sommer, AKA “The Hangman of Buchenwald”, and Anton Malloth, a concentration camp guard convicted in 2001 of beating more than a hundred prisoners to death. The contrast between Gudrun and the broader trajectory of German society was stark. From the 1960s onward, West Germany underwent a painful but increasingly explicit confrontation with Nazi crimes. Trials, public debates, school curricula, and memorials gradually dismantled the myths of ignorance and innocence. Gudrun Burwitz stood apart from all that and rejected the consensus. She insisted on an alternative moral universe in which the SS had been honorable, and the postwar order was unjust.
Not All of Himmler’s Family Were Like His Wife and Daughter
Gudrun’s later years were spent largely out of public view, but she remained active well into old age. Journalists who managed to interview her encountered a woman who was polite, articulate, and utterly unyielding. She expressed no regret, no doubt, and no sympathy for the victims of her father. The dissonance between her calm demeanor and the enormity of the crimes she defended made her a disturbing figure for observers. Gudrun Burwitz, nee Himmler, died in 2018 at the age of 88.
Her death prompted renewed discussion in Germany about the persistence of Nazi ideology within families and networks long after 1945. The children of some Nazi leaders had publicly repudiated their parents – sometimes with anguish and guilt. Gudrun took the opposite path: total identification with the perpetrator generation and active resistance to historical accountability. Beyond Margarete and Gudrun, Heinrich Himmler’s family largely faded into obscurity. Some relatives changed their names, avoided public attention, and pursued ordinary lives. There is little evidence that they played significant roles in postwar extremist movements.
The Himmler legacy, in practical terms, narrowed to Gudrun Burwitz and her circle. While Himmler’s daughter never renounced her father, his grandniece Katrin Himmler, granddaughter of the Reichsfuhrer-SS’ younger brother, spent her life trying to distance herself from her family’s Nazi legacy. That struggle found expression in her 2005 book, The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History. In it, she traced Himmler’s family, and the lives of Heinrich Himmler and his two brothers. She credited researching the book, which won acclaim, with helping her to come to terms with her family’s Nazi past.
Significance of Himmler’s Family
The postwar fate of Himmler’s family highlights several broader truths about Nazism’s aftermath. First, legal defeat did not necessarily entail moral defeat. While the Third Reich was dismantled, its values survived in private loyalties and informal networks. Second, the children of perpetrators were not predestined to reject or accept their parents’ crimes: individual choice mattered enormously. Gudrun’s life demonstrates how awful ideology can be transmitted not only through indoctrination, but through love, memory, and family identity. Finally, the Himmler family story underscores the limits of justice. The Allies prosecuted major criminals, but they could not force moral transformation.
Margarete Himmler died clinging to denial. Gudrun Burwitz lived a long life defending the indefensible. Their stories remind us that the actions of monsters can ripple outward for generations. The consequences of their crimes can shape lives long after the perpetrators themselves are gone. In the end, Himmler’s family – at least his immediate family – did not find redemption, reconciliation, or closure. Instead, they became lingering shadows of the horrific regime he helped create. Sometimes history’s worst chapters continue on in memory, silence, and a stubborn refusal to let go of a poisoned past.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Guardian, The, August 14th, 2007 – Living in the Shadow of Heinrich Himmler
Himmler, Katrin – The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History (2008)
History Halls – Operation Paperclip: The Program that Brought Hundreds of Nazi Scientists to the US
Lebert, Norbert – My Father’s Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders (2002)
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