A question of lineage

Can parenthood sometimes become a burden instead of a blessing? What would Hitler’s son (if he had one) say? How do Gaddafi’s offspring feel when they face the world? Or for that matter what about Mussolini and his legacy in the world? The children of admired famous people can have a tough time becoming their own person, despite even because of all their advantages. Then what to say of the children of the not-so-admired people! So, Scott Simon, the host at NPR asks Jay Nordlinger, a senior editor at National Review and author of “Children of Monsters: An Inquiry Into The Sons and Daughters of Dictators”, “What does life hold for the sons and daughters of tyrants and dictators whose very names become synonyms for evil? Does the name they bear sentence them in a way, too?” And who else should he ask about first but one who called himself Adolf Hitler’s son.

Nordlinger says, “For my book, the question of paternity is not the most important question, and he probably was not the son of Hitler (in spite of an uncanny resemblance). He’s dead now. He was a Frenchman named Jean-Marie Loret. The question for me is this –– he believed himself to be the son of Hitler. What effect did that have on him? And the answer is pretty bad. He wasn’t a stable human being is my impression. And in the end, after first resisting the idea that he was Hitler's son, he embraced it and, I’m sad to say, was proud of it.”

Mussolini had many off springs…some known, some supposedly secret. The author speaks of one of them, Romano Mussolini, “Well, he was defensive of his father, one of those keepers of a dictator’s flame. In fact, the last time Romano saw his father, Romano was picking out tunes from “The Merry Widow” on the piano, and Mussolini said, ‘Keep playing, Romano,’ and he did. For a while, he did play under a different name. He called himself Romano Full. But then he discovered that Mussolini was more of a draw than a repellent. So ever after, he was Romano Mussolini.”

The book has more to offer about Mussolini’s favourite daughter Edda and her break with her father who refused to intervene when her husband was to be executed. She dropped the Mussolini name thereafter and severed relationship with her father. It was said to have broken Mussolini’s heart.

In most cases, however, the genes eventually dictate the way the children behave, here is another example. Nordlinger says, “There are two sons of Gaddafi named Saif. This is Saif Al-Islam we’re speaking of. And he tried to go straight, so to speak. He wanted to be a Western-style liberal or an Arab reformer. He went to the London School of Economics. He almost made it. But when the Civil War came and the family dictatorship was under threat, he returned home. He fought for the dictatorship, and now is wanted by the Hague. I think the ties of blood, the ties of father in dictatorship, proved in the end too strong.”

Nordlinger concludes by saying to draw a conclusion is difficult and yet, “Very few of these kids emerged unscathed. They’re all marked in a way. I admire the ones who can find their own way and live decently. Ceausescu in Romania had two sons. One was a perfect little monster who raped and tortured and murdered his way through a mania all of his short life. And the other son, Valentin, who is alive today, has lived blamelessly as far as I can tell. He’s a physicist. For decades, he's worked at an institute. And as far as I know, he's never harmed a hair on anyone's head. So where does that leave us with nature-nurture?”