19. Gudrun Burwitz was Heinrich Himmler’s doting daughter and she continues to praise her wicked Nazi father
To most people, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the fearsome Nazi SS, was the epitome of evil. To Gudrun Margarete Elfriede Emma Anna Burwitz, he was simply a loving father. Despite being made fully aware of the crimes of the Third Reich – crimes that Himmler had a significant hand in – she never condemned the Nazi regime. What’s more, she even remained involved in far-right politics in her native Germany into her old age, remaining a hero figure for the country’s neo-Nazis.
Gudrun was born in the summer of 1929, the only child of Himmler and his wife Margarete. She was brought up in Munich, though her father would have her fly to join him in Berlin on a regular basis. And when Himmler couldn’t be with his little girl, he would write to her or telephone her almost daily. She would also get letters and presents from her “Uncle Hitler”. What’s more, like many dads, Himmler also took his daughter to work with him sometimes – including one infamous father-daughter trip to a concentration camp.
By all accounts, Gudrun was largely unmoved by her visit to Dachau. Even though she was old enough to appreciate the suffering of the people she saw, people she recalled as being all “unshaven and poorly clothed”, she was more interested in exploring the camp’s vegetable garden. Such a lack of concern for the victims of her father’s policies is perhaps why she always defended Himmler. Even after her father committed suicide at the end of the war, and after the sheer horror of the Nazi regime became apparent, she continued to insist that he was a good man and that his cause was just.
In the 1950s, Gudrun became politically involved herself. She joined a support group for unrepentant Nazis and even set up her own far-right youth organization, the Viking Youth. She married a fellow Nazi sympathizer and raised two children in Munich. Their home became a museum dedicated to the life and legacy of Himmler. Though the Viking Youth group was banned in 1994, she continues to support the German right, even if old age limits now her involvement in nationalist politics.