My understanding of Nazi Germany's society is that the Lebensborn programme was an initiative led by the SS to raise the birthrate of the Reich. (This came from the ideal that "ethnic cleansing" was good & that Germany needed more aryans to populate the eventual expanded empire through Hitler's Lebensraum policy).

From my understanding the way in which Lebensborn worked was by utilising those Aryan women that weren't already married, Because they weren't already married & Hitler wanted the ratio of Aryans : Non-Aryans to be higher (as stated above), Himmler then devised the programme SS officials were encouraged to impregnate these single Aryan females. Once these women had given birth, the birthing houses would then assist the woman & her child by housing them, feeding them, clothing them etc. The Lebensborn houses were also used to house stolen aryan children from Nazi Occupied countries & sometimes these babies were given up for adoption as well.

If you were an Aryan female who wasn't married yet had an Aryan boyfriend, the state encouraged marriage through the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage, this law gave newlyweds a "loan" of 1,000 marks to use on any supplies for their newborns. With each child that the newlywed couple had, they were allowed to keep 250 of the 1,000 mark loan. There was also awards given to any aryan woman that had given birth to certain amounts of children. These mothers were seen as an "exceptional merit to the German nation." This award was known as Cross of Honour of the German Mother. There were three types of "Mother-Cross" these were:

• 1st Class Order, "Bronze Cross" - For Mothers who had four to five children

• 2nd Class Order, "Silver cross" - For Mothers who had between six & seven children

• 3rd Class Order, "Gold cross" - For Mothers who had 8+ children.

So you can why with all these loans & awards given out for having kids, Aryan women would want to marry & have children. And even if they were married they were still treated well in the Lebensborn houses.

I don't know much about the affairs of Lebensborn post-1945, except that come the end of the war & partitioning of Germany, Lebensborn stopped so I can only assume the assistance that was given stopped as well. Nazi-occupied Norway had the second largest percentage of Lebensborn babies (after Germany) with roughly with anywhere between 8,000 & 12,000 Norwegian-German babies being a product of Lebensborn.

After the war, Occupied Norway's Lebensborn percentage were treated abhorrently, they were called tyskerunger ("Kraut Kids"; "Kraut" being a derogatory term for a German person) & being hunted & raped by the Norwegian population wasn't uncommon just like it wasn't uncommon for ordinary German civilians to be treated inhumanely in their own country almost immediately after the war.

~ Most of my knowledge on Nazi society & the Lebensborn programme comes from a GCSE History course that I studied a few years ago & independent research into the subjects. Even though my GCSE history course used tertiary sources (textbooks) I shall list said textbook along with updated tertiary sources & recommended reading.

Sources/Recommended Reading, Viewing & Listening:

• Clare. D . J et al (2009); AQA GCSE History B: Modern World Student Book

• Waugh. S & Wright. J (2010); WJEC GCSE History: The USA 1910-1929 and Germany 1919-1947

• Evans. J. R (2005); The Third Reich in Power & (2009); The Third Reich at War. (These books are the last 2 in Evans's 3rd Reich trilogy the first book being The Coming of The Third Reich (2003))

• Oelhafen. v. I & Tate. T (2015); Hitler's Forgotten Children: My Life Inside the Lebensborn

• Oelhafen & Tate had an interview with BBC Radio 4 around the release of the book, you can listen to that here

• Tate. T (2013); Children of the Master Race (documentary), can be watched here

• Sichrovsky. P (1988); Born Guilty: Children of Nazi Families

• Simonsen . E (2006); Into the open – or hidden away? The construction of war children as a social category in post-war Norway and Germany (article; can be read here)

• Zwei Leben (2012; "Two Lives"), fictional German drama film about a woman who was born through Lebensborn being recruited by the Stasi to find out information about her birth mother.