Hildegard Koch

Hildegard Koch was born in Steglitz in 1918. Her father worked in a large bakery in Berlin: "The name of the boss was Stielke; he was very rich and employed lots of people. Father didn't like Stielke much, and he hated being an employee on weekly wages on which he couldn't make ends meet anyway." (1)

Louis Hagen knew Hildegard when she was a child: "I saw her quite often when we went to Stielke's bakery in Berlin... Hildegard used to help behind the counter after school, and when we were not in a hurry, she would take us downstairs to the bakery where her father showed us round and allowed us to taste the things. She was very proud of her father and he was even prouder of her... I cannot remember what Hildegard talked about but I do remember her pretty face, her beautiful golden hair and her exceedingly well developed figure. I was two years older than she was and was just beginning to notice these things." (2)

Hildegard Koch and the BDM

In 1930 the League of German Girls (BDM) was formed as the female branch of the Hitler Youth movement. It was set up under the direction of Hitler Youth leader, Baldur von Schirach. There were two general age groups: the Jungmädel, from ten to fourteen years of age, and older girls from fifteen to twenty-one years of age. All girls in the BDM were constantly reminded that the great task of their schooling was to prepare them to be "carriers of the... Nazi world view". (3)

The BDM was not a popular organization until the election of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor and in 1932 only had 9,000 members. (4) Hildegard Koch was encouraged to join at the age of 15. A friend of the family, Gustav Motze, was a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA). He told Hildegard's father: "Your Hilde is a real Hitler girl, blonde and strong - just the type we need... Don't let her come under the degenerate influence of the Jews, make her join the BDM." Her father was sympathetic to the ideas of the Nazi Party but her mother, disliked the movement: "She was terribly old-fashioned and full of Christianity and all that sort of thing." Despite her mother's protests, Hildegard joined the BDM in 1933. (5)

Adolf Hitler addresses the German people on radio on 31st January, 1933 — German Girls' League poster published in Nuremberg (1938)

All girls in the BDM were told to dedicate themselves to comradeship, service and physical fitness for motherhood. In parades they wore navy blue skirts, white blouses, brown jackets and twin pigtails. (6) Parents complained about the time their children were forced to spend outside the home in activities organized by the BDM and the Hitler Youth. Its leader, Baldur von Schirach, argued "that the Hitler Youth has called up its children to the community of National Socialist youth so that they can give the poorest sons and daughters of our people something like a family for the first time." (7)

These arguments upset many parents. They felt that the Nazi Party was taking over control their children. Hildegard Koch constantly came into conflict with her mother over her membership of the BDM: "After all, we were the new youth; the old people just had to learn to think in the new way and it was our job to make them see the ideals of the new nationalised Germany". (8)

The girls in the BDM spent a lot of time marching through the streets. Inge Scholl, who later joined the White Rose resistance group, that the German people were mesmerized by the "mysterious power" of "closed ranks of marching youths with banners waving, eyes fixed straight ahead, keeping time to drumbeat and song". The sense of fellowship was "overpowering" for they "sensed that there was a role for them in a historic process". (9)

Hildegard Koch later pointed out that she always appeared in the front line. "The Gau Leader herself had picked me from amongst hundreds of girls. I was half a head taller than the tallest of them and had wonderful long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. I had to step out in front of the others and the Gau Leader pointed to me and said: 'That is what a Germanic girl should look like; we need young people like that.' Once I was photographed and my picture appeared on the tide page of the BDM journal Das deutsche Mädel." Koch was also successful at fund-raising. "When we had any street collections my box was always full first and I worked on the other girls to buck up so that our group always made a good impression wherever we went." (10)

Members of the BDM spent a lot of time fund-raising. This upset some people: "What I considered negative was the street collections, which were held for one reason or another nearly every week. Collections were held for this and that - and in a rather pushy way. And house wardens were assigned to go around from house to house with lists for collections... The notion was that, whoever doesn't donate is the enemy." (11) Hildegard Koch enjoyed this activity. "When we had any street collections my box was always full first and I worked on the other girls to buck up so that our group always made a good impression wherever we went." (12)

The Nazi government encouraged the mixing of the sexes. The Ulm district of the Hitler Youth pointed out the organization of mixed social evenings with dancing "had a more beneficial effect on the relationship between boys and girls than any number of exhortations and lectures". (13) In 1936, when approximately 100,000 members of the Hitler Youth and the BDM attended the Nuremberg Rally, 900 girls between fifteen and eighteen returned home pregnant. Apparently, the authorities failed to establish paternity in 400 of these cases. (14)

Hildegard Koch could not understand why her mother was so upset by these stories of young girls getting pregnant. "After all, we were the new youth; the old people just had to learn to think in the new way and it was our job to make them see the ideals of the new nationalised Germany. When I told her about the camp with the Hitler Youth she was shocked. Well, suppose a young German youth and a German girl did come together and the girl gave a child to the Fatherland - what was so very wrong in that? When I tried to explain that to her she wanted to stop me going on in the BDM - as if it was her business! Duty to the Fatherland was more important to me and, of course, I took no notice." (15)

Isle McKee wrote about her experiences in the German Girls' League in her autobiography, Tomorrow the World (1960): "We were told from a very early age to prepare for motherhood, as the mother in the eyes of our beloved leader and the National Socialist Government was the most important person in the nation. We were Germany's hope in the future, and it was our duty to breed and rear the new generation of sons and daughter. These lessons soon bore fruit in the shape of quite a few illegitimate small sons and daughters for the Reich, brought forth by teenage members of the League of German Maidens. The girls felt they had done their duty and seemed remarkably unconcerned about the scandal." (16)

BDM in the Classroom

Melita Maschmann claimed that she disapproved of the anti-semitism of the Nazi Party but was willing to end contact with her Jewish school friend. She later argued that she did this out of duty "because one could only do one or two things: either have Jewish friends or be a National Socialist." (17)

Others like, Hildegard Koch, were clearly anti-semitic: "As time went on more and more girls joined the BDM, which gave us a great advantage at school. The mistresses were mostly pretty old and stuffy. They wanted us to do scripture and, of course, we refused. Our leaders had told us that no one could be forced to listen to a lot of immoral stories about Jews, and so we made a row and behaved so badly during scripture classes that the teacher was glad in the end to let us out. Of course, this meant another big row with Mother - she was pretty ill at that time and had to stay in bed and she was getting more and more pious and mad about the Bible and all that sort of thing. I had a terrible time with her.... But the real row with Mother came when the BDM girls refused to sit on the same bench as the Jewish girls at school."

Hildegard Koch and her BDM friends began a campaign against the Jewish girls in her class. "The two Jewish girls in our form were racially typical. One was saucy and forward and always knew best about everything. She was ambitious and pushing and had a real Jewish cheek. The other was quiet, cowardly and smarmy and dishonest; she was the other type of Jew, the sly sort. We knew we were right to have nothing to do with either of them. In the end we got what we wanted. We began by chalking 'Jews out!' or 'Jews perish, Germany awake!' on the blackboard before class. Later we openly boycotted them. Of course, they blubbered in their cowardly Jewish way and tried to get sympathy for themselves, but we weren't having any. In the end three other girls and I went to the Headmaster and told him that our Leader would report the matter to the Party authorities unless he removed this stain from the school. The next day the two girls stayed away, which made me very proud of what we had done." (18)

In 1939 all young women up to the age of twenty-five had to compete a year of Labour Service before being allowed to take up paid employment. Nine out of ten young women were sent to farms where they lived in barrack-like accommodation under close supervision. It was seen as the female parallel to compulsory military service, aimed at producing a trained labour force in the event of war. It was also a source of cheap labour as the girls received only pocket money rather than wages. (19)

Hildegard Koch was sent to a camp in Silesia. "Our main job was helping on the land at the surrounding estates. This, of course was quite new to me. I had never done anything like it before, but I tried hard and being tall and strong I was soon quite good at it. We had a pretty uniform which suited me very well. I already knew the importance of cleanliness and neatness from the BDM and our Camp Leader took a liking to me from the beginning. After a couple of months she made me assistant to the Leader in charge of the kitchen and washhouse." (20)

Lebensborn

Some members of the BDM were asked to take part in the Schutzstaffel (SS) breeding programme called Lebensborn. In September 1936 Heinrich Himmler informed SS officers that the purpose of the programme was to: "(1) Support racially, biologically and hereditarily valuable families with many children. (2) Place and care for racially, biologically and hereditarily valuable pregnant women, who, after thorough examination of their and the progenitor's families by the Race and Settlement Central Bureau of the SS, can be expected to produce equally valuable children." (21)

Hildegard Koch was told by her BDM leader: "What Germany needs more than anything is racially valuable stock". She said that "Heinrich Himmler had been charged by the Führer with the task of coupling a small elite of German women (who had to be purely Nordic and over five foot tall) with SS men of equally good racial stock in order to lay the foundation of a pure racial breed.... We had to sign an undertaking renouncing all claims to the the children we would have there, as they would be needed by the State and would be taken to special houses and settlements for inter-marriage." (22)

The main objective of the project was to promote an "Aryan future" for the Third Reich and turn around a declining birth rate in Germany. (23) Himmler planned that in future his SS men would sire as many offspring as possible and the state would assume the financial costs. It is claimed that many senior figures, including Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, complained about the morality of the programme. Claudia Koonz, the author of Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (1987) has pointed out that "teachers wanted to know, could they instill moral principles in their children and at the same time praise the pregnant, unmarried kindergarten teacher?" (24)

Hildegard Koch was sent to an old castle near Tegernsee. "There were about 40 girls all about my own age. No one knew anyone else's name, no one knew where we came from. All you needed to be accepted there was a certificate of Aryan ancestry as far back at least as your great grandparents. This was not difficult for me. I had one that went back to the sixteenth century, nor had there ever been a smell of a Jew in our family."

Hildegard was then introduced to several SS men. "They were all very tall and strong with blue eyes and blond hair... We were given about a week to pick the man we liked and we were told to see to it that his hair and eyes corresponded exactly to ours. We were not told the names of any of the men. When we had made our choice we had to wait till the tenth day after the beginning of the last period, when we were again medically examined and given permission to receive the SS men in our rooms at night... He was a sweet boy, although he hurt me a little, and I think he was actually a little stupid, but he had smashing looks. He slept with me for three evenings in one week. The other nights he had to do his duty with another girl. I stayed in the house until I was pregnant, which didn't take long." (25)

A boy was born but she was only able to stay with him for two weeks before handing him over to the SS. Hildegard agreed to come back in a year's time in order to provide another child for the regime. On her return to Berlin she obtained an administrative post with the Nazi Party. Within a few months later, Ernst Trutz, an SS officer, proposed marriage: "He said I was a model of purebred Nordic Germanic woman.... and it was a sacred duty to give the Führer as many fine children as possible."

They had to get permission from the SS before the marriage could take place: "As the children of the SS men were going to be the new ruling class of Germany they had to be very careful that the women were not racially objectionable and had the right sort of physique to produce plenty of children. The marriage permit was only granted after an investigation by the Reich Ancestry Office and a medical examination by SS doctors." They married early in 1939. (26)

The Second World War

Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War Hildegard gave birth to a boy, Norfried. Untersturmführer Ernst Trutz served with the occupying forces in Holland. In 1942 Berlin suffered several heavy air raids: "Those cowardly brutes took no notice of the fact that it was an open city and that women and children were their chief victims - they probably rather enjoyed it. I made a point of not going to the shelters at night. It was much too boring and stuffy. The best way to get through a raid was to open a bottle of Ernst's cognac." (27)

A second child, Heidrun, was born in September 1944. Her husband served in the Soviet Union and after being forced to withdraw he was ordered to form a group of Werwolves and to continue the struggle behind the enemy lines. He told his wife that the war was lost and that she should make her way to where the British and American troops were advancing.

Hildegard took his advice but was captured by the Red Army: "The first thing those charming townspeople did was tell the Russians that I was an SS woman." She was repeatedly raped: "I soon found that it was much better not to resist at all, it was all over much quicker if you didn't. I found the best thing to do was to help them a bit, otherwise they simply tore your clothes and I had so few left I couldn't afford that. After all, once you got used to the idea the thing itself wasn't so very terrible. The only time it was awful was when they were drunk." (28)

Eventually she reached the Allied lines: "The British were very quiet and reserved but the Americans were wonderful. They were all so young and friendly and their uniforms were even smarter than the German ones, except for their funny tight trousers. And goodness! The stuff they brought with them! What a country America must be! At the beginning they were terribly generous and I got all the food and cigarettes I wanted... I soon got a boyfriend to myself. Earl was a parachute sergeant with masses of decorations, only 23 and terribly good looking." (29)

Hildegard's next boyfriend was Bill from Louisiana. "It was a bit embarrassing at first and he took a bit of getting used to because he was a negro. Not that he was very black, just a deep coffee colour. Naturally, the neighbours talked their silly heads off, but I knew it was only because they were jealous, and took no notice. Bill was a giant. I don't think I ever saw anyone so strong... He knew how to behave towards a lady... He looked after me wonderfully, better than all the Russians and white Yanks put together. I didn't even have to go out with him, which might have been rather embarrassing. He was too much afraid of what the white Yanks would do if they saw him with a white woman... He was the only one I really liked... The Russians were animals and the white Yanks were a lot of common schoolboys. I was really sad when he left, and so were the children." (30)

Hildegard had several other boyfriends but found it increasingly difficult to find someone who was willing to look after her like Bill: "I had begun to look older, two of my front teeth had broken and I couldn't afford to get new ones. My hair was coming out badly too. My figure was still as good as ever, but you have to have everything for these damned Yanks. And then the competition is always so fierce, a decent woman doesn't stand a chance against some of these shameless little schoolgirls." (31)

The journalist, Louis Hagen, interviewed Hildegard Trutz in 1946. "Her straggly bleached hair was screwed up into a knot, her face was sallow and unhealthy looking and her teeth were terrible. She looked the perfect picture of a slut, with her grimy bare feet and filthy ragged dress. She did not recognise me at first... She began by inquiring after my family but as soon as I mentioned that some of them had been gassed by the Nazis, she changed the subject at once and began to talk about her own troubles." (32)

Hildegard agreed to be interviewed for the book Hagen was writing. The book, Nine Lives Under the Nazis, was first published in 1951.

Primary Sources

(1) Hildegard Koch, interviewed by Louis Hagen in 1946.

As time went on more and more girls joined the BDM, which gave us a great advantage at school. The mistresses were mostly pretty old and stuffy. They wanted us to do scripture and, of course, we refused. Our leaders had told us that no one could be forced to listen to a lot of immoral stories about Jews, and so we made a row and behaved so badly during scripture classes that the teacher was glad in the end to let us out.

Of course, this meant another big row with Mother - she was pretty ill at that time and had to stay in bed and she was getting more and more pious and mad about the Bible and all that sort of thing. I had a terrible time with her.

After all, we were the new youth; the old people just had to learn to think in the new way and it was our job to make them see the ideals of the new nationalised Germany. When I told her about the camp with the Hitler Youth she was shocked. Well, suppose a young German youth and a German girl did come together and the girl gave a child to the Fatherland - what was so very wrong in that? When I tried to explain that to her she wanted to stop me going on in the BDM - as if it was her business! Duty to the Fatherland was more important to me and, of course, I took no notice. But the real row with Mother came when the BDM girls refused to sit on the same bench as the Jewish girls at school.

Like Father I could never stick Jews. Long before our classes in race theory I thought they were simply disgusting. They are so fat, they all have flat feet and they can never look you straight in the eye. I could not explain my dislike for them until my leaders told me that it was my sound Germanic instinct revolting against this alien element.

The two Jewish girls in our form were racially typical. One was saucy and forward and always knew best about everything. She was ambitious and pushing and had a real Jewish cheek. The other was quiet, cowardly and smarmy and dishonest; she was the other type of Jew, the sly sort. We knew we were right to have nothing to do with either of them.

In the end we got what we wanted. We began by chalking "Jews out!" or "Jews perish, Germany awake!" on the blackboard before class. Later we openly boycotted them. Of course, they blubbered in their cowardly Jewish way and tried to get sympathy for themselves, but we weren't having any. In the end three other girls and I went to the Headmaster and told him that our Leader would report the matter to the Party authorities unless he removed this stain from the school. The next day the two girls stayed away, which made me very proud of what we had done...

I was the Sports Group Organiser in our Section. I was the best at sports, especially at athletics and swimming. I got the Reich Sports Badge and the Swimming Certificate and came out first in both of them and got a lot of praise from our Leader. Altogether she was pretty pleased with me. When we had any street collections my box was always full first and I worked on the other girls to buck up so that our group always made a good impression wherever we went. In the summer we went to the great Reich Youth meeting. Thousands of boys and girls marched in close formation past the Reich Youth Leader, Baldur von Schirach. He and his staff stood on a dais and gave the salute; the trumpets blew, the Landsknecht drums rolled - it was a terrific moment.

At this parade I was right-hand Flugelmann, as always. The Gau Leader herself had picked me from amongst hundreds of girls. I was half a head taller than the tallest of them and had wonderful long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. I had to step out in front of the others and the Gau Leader pointed to me and said: "That is what a Germanic girl should look like; we need young people like that." Once I was photographed and my picture appeared on the tide page of the BDM journal Das deutsche Mädel. Father was delighted and my comrades were terribly jealous.
Our Gau Leader gave me several talks on the duties of the German woman, whose chief aim in life should be to produce healthy stock. She spoke quite openly. Again I was pointed out as a perfect example of the Nordic woman, for besides my long legs and my long trunk, I had the broad hips and pelvis built for childbearing which are essential for producing a large family. Mother could not understand this at all. She thought talking about such things was disgusting and could not understand the ideals of the BM at all.

(2) Heinrich Himmler, Memorandum to Schutzstaffel (SS) officers (13th September 1936)

The organisation "Lebensborn e.V." serves the SS leaders in the selection and adoption of qualified children. The organisation "Lebensborn e.V." is under my personal direction, is part of the Race and Settlement Central Bureau of the SS, and has the following obligations:

(1) Support racially, biologically and hereditarily valuable families with many children.

(2) Place and care for racially, biologically and hereditarily valuable pregnant women, who, after thorough examination of their and the progenitor's families by the Race and Settlement Central Bureau of the SS, can be expected to produce equally valuable children.

(3) Care for the children.

(4) Care for the children's mothers.

It is the honourable duty of all leaders of the central bureau to become members of the organisation "Lebensborn e.V.".

(3) Hildegard Koch, interviewed by Louis Hagen in 1946.

As time went on more and more girls joined the BDM, which gave us a great advantage at school. The mistresses were mostly pretty old and stuffy. They wanted us to do scripture and, of course, we refused. Our leaders had told us that no one could be forced to listen to a lot of immoral stories about Jews, and so we made a row and behaved so badly during scripture classes that the teacher was glad in the end to let us out. Of course, this meant another big row with Mother - she was pretty ill at that time and had to stay in bed and she was getting more and more pious and mad about the Bible and all that sort of thing. I had a terrible time with her.... But the real row with Mother came when the BDM girls refused to sit on the same bench as the Jewish girls at school...

The two Jewish girls in our form were racially typical. One was saucy and forward and always knew best about everything. She was ambitious and pushing and had a real Jewish cheek. The other was quiet, cowardly and smarmy and dishonest; she was the other type of Jew, the sly sort. We knew we were right to have nothing to do with either of them. In the end we got what we wanted. We began by chalking 'Jews out!' or 'Jews perish, Germany awake!' on the blackboard before class. Later we openly boycotted them. Of course, they blubbered in their cowardly Jewish way and tried to get sympathy for themselves, but we weren't having any. In the end three other girls and I went to the Headmaster and told him that our Leader would report the matter to the Party authorities unless he removed this stain from the school. The next day the two girls stayed away, which made me very proud of what we had done.

(4) Hildegard Koch, interviewed by Louis Hagen in 1946.

The woman in charge of the home - she was also a member of the SS - spoke about what was expected of me. She said that Rich Leader SS Heinrich Himmler had been charged by the Führer with the task of coupling a small elite of German women (who had to be purely Nordic and over five foot tall) with SS men of equally good racial stock in order to lay the foundation of a pure racial breed.... We had to sign an undertaking renouncing all claims to the the children we would have there, as they would be needed by the State and would be taken to special houses and settlements for inter-marriage...

There were about 40 girls all about my own age. No one knew anyone else's name, no one knew where we came from. All you needed to be accepted there was a certificate of Aryan ancestry as far back at least as your great grandparents. This was not difficult for me. I had one that went back to the sixteenth century, nor had there ever been a smell of a Jew in our family...

hey were all very tall and strong with blue eyes and blond hair... We were given about a week to pick the man we liked and we were told to see to it that his hair and eyes corresponded exactly to ours. We were not told the names of any of the men. When we had made our choice we had to wait till the tenth day after the beginning of the last period, when we were again medically examined and given permission to receive the SS men in our rooms at night... He was a sweet boy, although he hurt me a little, and I think he was actually a little stupid, but he had smashing looks. He slept with me for three evenings in one week. The other nights he had to do his duty with another girl. I stayed in the house until I was pregnant, which didn't take long.