Question.

[u/Waste_Candidate_6956]

Does anyone else have ever thought what might have been the reaction of the children of Hitler's inner circle if they have saw the man in the high castle? (I mean Himmler's daughter, Göring's, Heydrich children)

[u/Shitsincreeks]

I believe they’d watch it and go “damn I’m glad the allies lost.” Many children of the high ranking NSDAP survived the war, including all of the children of Himmler, Göring, and Hess. Most children of these circumstances could either try to make a profit off of their name (Not very common, most of any traction for that was dead by the late 60s.) or go into a very quiet life, which most of them did. Here’s some anecdotes

Edda Göring, only child of Hermann Göring, never spoke in public except for one occasion in the 1980s (might be late 70s sorry) in Sweden where she spoke fondly of her memories of her parents. She was known to associate with other relatives of high ranking Nazis, including Rudolf Hess’s wife and who knows who else. She died in 2018, never renouncing her father or the regime.

Himmler had one daughter with his wife, Gudrun Burwitz Himmler, and one adopted son, Gerhard von der Horst, who fell off the face of the earth in 1945, no one really knows what happened as far as I know. Gudrun never renounced her father and the regime, she spent most of her life defending his legacy and associating with Neo Nazis. Himmler had two children out of wedlock with his secretary, who she hid from the public eye under assumed names, never contacting the Himmlers.

Rudolf Hess’s son, Wolf Rüdiger Hess, seems to have denounced the regime (the regime denounced his father, this does not mean he wasn’t a Nazi in secret) who spent most of his life as an architect. When his father died under somewhat mysterious circumstances, he spent the rest of his life petitioning the British government to release all classified information on Spandau Prison and Rudolf Hess’s incarceration. It is one of the few large stacks of documents from WW2 that are still classified to this day.

As most know; all of the children of Goebbels died with him and his wife via cyanide in Hitler’s bunker not long after Hitler’s death.

TLDR: they live in the “timeline” of Man in the High Castle and they likely wish it were the other one.

[u/ShroomnDoobin → u/Shitsincreeks]

As an aside, the whole Hess thing is stupidly odd. He defected, or whatever that was, in 1941. Whatever knowledge he had certainly couldn't have spilled many secrets. Plus being held for far longer than a monster like Speer. It's just never made sense

[u/Shitsincreeks → u/ShroomnDoobin]

The contention is whether he committed suicide or not. His son alleged that the British government killed his father so that the Soviet Union had less official access to West Germany. Spandau Prison was guarded by rotations of guards from the Soviet Union, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It was to remain this way until all Nazi war criminals were no longer imprisoned there. So the logic is that Hess was taking too long to die (He was the only Prisoner of Spandau for twenty years) and the British killed him to get it over with.

It’s plausible because the documentation regarding his capture, interrogation, correspondences, life and death in prison are not to be released until 2041.

[u/arcadiaberger1960 → u/Shitsincreeks]

There is precedent: the British killed Napoleon on St. Helena.

[u/Appropriate-Ad-396]

Too bad this was not explored in the series. It would make interesting parallel paths in the greater story arc.

[u/dvoryanin]

It's an interesting question, but I think the "child's" point of view is from John Smith's family, and how "the Greater Reich" impacted them. Given Smith's high placement, I think the daughters and son are a good reflection of this aspect.