"[T]he 'Lebensborn' program — meaning wellspring or fountain of life... created in 1935... provided luxurious accommodations for unwed, pregnant women."

"Part of the program’s attraction was that unwed pregnant girls could give birth in secret. In 1939, about 58 percent of the mothers-to-be who applied to the program were unwed... by 1940, that number had swelled to 70 percent. Often, the homes were converted estates decorated by Himmler himself, using the highest quality loot confiscated from Jewish homes after their owners had been killed or sent to camps. Girls who were already pregnant or willing to be impregnated by SS officers had to prove their Aryan lineage going back three generations and pass inspections that included measuring the size of their heads and the length of their teeth. Once accepted, they were pampered by nurses and staff who served them delicacies at mealtimes and provided a recreational diet rich in Nazi propaganda...."

From "A new novel tells the story of Nazi birthing farms" by Kathleen Parker (WaP).

The new novel is "Cradles of the Reich" by Jennifer Coburn.

Here's the article in the Holocaust Encyclopedia about the Lebensborn program.

I found that as I was looking for photographs showing how a place "decorated by Himmler" would look. Here's a propaganda photograph with a caption that translated into "Everything for the healthy child":

 

 

From the Holocaust Encyclopedia article:

Himmler had hoped that the program would become the wellspring of future generations of Nazi Germany’s racial elite. However, Lebensborn disappointed these expectations. Although the program’s homes claimed to uphold the highest standards of modern medicine, serious complaints about the quality of medical care emerged....

Himmler had estimated that 100,000 “biologically valuable” German women obtained abortions illegally each year, despite increased penalties. However, only around 7,000 children were born into the Lebensborn homes during the program’s nine-year-long existence. 

Lebensborn ultimately fostered many more kidnapped foreign children, although the precise numbers are difficult to establish. The legacy of the Lebensborn program includes broken homes and devastated parents. It also left a generation of children forced to contend with identity crises as well as the social disapproval that often accompanied their association with a Nazi eugenics program.

I'm not going to read the new novel. I'd rather read nonfiction on this topic, but I would like to read a novel set in the near future that envisions a similar program in America, addressing the problem of declining birth and acknowledging that outlawing abortion won't work.

Of course, the racial aspect of the story would need to be changed, but how much? We'd have some sort of ideology of "diversity" or racial balancing, and it would be interesting to depict various American leaders attempting to work that out and needing to worry that what they are doing is like Lebensborn. Like Lebensborn. 

It would also be interesting to show American leaders attempting to draw in young American women through architecture and interior decoration... displayed on TikTok and Facebook. The novel could be very funny if you got just the right sort of obtuseness as the old try to imagine what these young women today want.

Offers of great food and a wonderful health care system would be part of the draw. More things to go wrong in this novel's twists and turns.

I could write this novel, but it will remain forever on my shelf labeled "Unwritten Books."