Early Life and Education
Klaus Barbie was born in Godesberg, later renamed Bad Godesberg, which is today part of Bonn. The Barbie family came from Merzig, in the Saar near the French border. His patrilineal ancestors were likely a French Catholic family named Barbier who had left France at the time of the French Revolution.
In 1914, his father Nickolaus Barbie was drafted to fight in World War I. He returned an angry, bitter man. Wounded in the neck at Verdun and captured by the French, whom he hated, he never recovered his health. He became an alcoholic and abused his children. He was later diagnosed with cancer of blood, spine and prostate.
Until 1923 when he was 10, Barbie, a shy and quiet youth, went to the local school where his father taught. Afterward, he attended a boarding school in Trier and was relieved to be away from his abusive father. In 1925, the entire Barbie family moved to Trier.
In June 1933, Barbie's younger brother Kurt died at the age of eighteen of chronic illness. Later that year, their father died. The death of his father derailed plans for the 20-year-old Barbie to study theology or otherwise become an academic, as his peers had expected. He was passably intelligent without being brilliant, and reasonably popular without being considered a leader. While unemployed, Barbie was drafted into the Nazi labour service, the Reichsarbeitsdienst.
On 26 September 1935 at the age of 22, Barbie joined the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the special security branch service of the SS {Nr. 272 284}, which acted as the intelligence-gathering arm of the National Socialist Party. On 1 May 1937 he joined the Nazi Party {Nr. 4 583 085}. In April 1939, Barbie became engaged to Regina Margaretta Willms, a 23-year-old daughter of a postal clerk.
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