Hitler Youth in World War II
The Hitler Youth is a youth organization under the NSDAP, which was officially formed in the 1926 year. The organization was headed by the Reich Youth Leader, who reported directly to Adolf Hitler. Initially, she was voluntary, but after the Nazis came to power, it became mandatory for all male adolescents. The Hitler Youth had branches not only throughout Germany and in the countries conquered by the Germans, but also in the Axis powers in Italy and Japan. During the Second World War, especially at its final stage, the Hitler regime decided to use the organization for military purposes. Initially, the younger Hitler Youths were working in the rear, and their older comrades were called to the front. But at the final stage of the war, they began to place everyone without exception. The organization ceased to exist immediately after the defeat of Germany, along with the dissolution of the Nazi party.
Currently, one of the least studied and obscure pages of World War II concerns the role of participation in the hostilities of children and adolescents. We often hear that the Soviet authorities and Stalin exterminated their people, and Hitler and the Germans destroyed other peoples, but then it was Hitler’s regime that threw children and teenagers into the millstones of war. In the Red Army, the draft age began with 18 years. Even in the most difficult for the Soviet Union war years, there was no decrease in the draft age. Only the last 1944 call of the year began with the 17 years, but adolescents called up at this age did not take part in the battles, being used only in the rear in numerous auxiliary units and subunits.
Even in the most difficult months of the Great Patriotic War for the USSR, when German troops were stationed at the gates of Moscow and on the Volga, the draft age in the Red Army did not go down. And a completely different situation was observed in Germany. And although the military age in the Wehrmacht did not officially fall below 18 years, it was the German military units that took part in the fighting, consisted of 16-17-year-olds, and at the very end of the war on the fronts one could even meet 12-year-olds.
In this case, children are much easier to bring adults to a state of thoughtless submission and make them fight fearlessly. Children are good fighters since they are young and eager to show themselves. They believe that what is happening is some kind of game, so they are often so fearless. All this in full was characteristic of the students of the Hitler Youth and those who at the end of World War II ended up in Volkssturm units or werewolf detachments (the German militia for guerrilla warfare). As a result, even experienced Soviet front-line soldiers were often surprised by the fearlessness and militancy shown by German youth. Often these teenage soldiers rushed under Tanks.
They could burn Soviet tanks and allied tanks with fanatical perseverance, fired and shot down planes as part of anti-aircraft calculations, shot unarmed prisoners of soldiers, and some especially fanatical continued fighting after shooting 9 on May 1945 of the year, shooting soldiers from war veterans from ambushes. Children and adolescents often showed more cruelty than adults. Today, this is still confirmed, but already in Africa, where a huge number of children are fighting in various militias, sometimes from the age of 8, who have no pity for their enemies.
At the same time, documentary evidence of war crimes that would have been committed by minors of the Wehrmacht and the SS troops from among the students of the Hitler Youth in the years of the Second World War, was not enough. There are two explanations for this - the juvenile criminals themselves did not want to remember and brag about their “feats” during the war years. In addition, there was an unspoken taboo on the dissemination of such information in the USSR, and children and adolescents themselves were recognized as victims of the Hitler regime.
Evidence of crime was really small. So, for example, one of them relates to the recollections of Lieutenant Colonel of Allied Forces, Robert Daniel, and concerns the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It is almost the only documentary evidence of crimes committed by underage Nazis. According to the officer, he heard the sounds of gunfire and went to the fence of the concentration camp. There were four young SS men, or even the students of the Hitler Youth, standing there, they all looked very young. They all shot at living people and corpses, while carefully striving men and women in the crotch, trying to cause them maximum pain. Robert Daniel shot three of them, and the fourth managed to escape. What happened to the "fourth", how his fate, and what life he lived, now hardly anyone will know. But the fate of some members of the Hitler Youth is known to historians quite well.
The popes and the communists
For example, the previous Pope Benedict XVI in the world was called Joseph Alois Ratzinger. In 1941, at the age of 14, he joined the Hitler youth, and later served in the anti-aircraft and anti-tank units and in the infantry. A few days before Germany announced the capitulation, he deserted and spent some time after the end of the war in the American prisoner of war camp. After being released from the camp, Josef Ratzinger abruptly changed his life by entering the seminary and was ordained in 1951. In 1977, he became the cardinal and then the head of the Congregation for the doctrine of the faith. In the year 2005 after the death of John Paul II became the new pope.
Konstantin Alexandrovich Zalessky, an employee of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies and a military historian, notes that the fate of Joseph Ratzinger is not only unique, but also somewhat typical for German adolescents during the war period. German children who were drugged by the Nazi propaganda in the Hitler Youth and, participating in armed resistance to the allied forces on the Eastern and Western Front, became, in fact, the victims of that war. Already matured, many of them were able to reconsider their views on the "Great Germany".
The fate of another famous German teenager, Alfred Cech, who was born in 1933, is also indicative. He was a member of the Jungfolk organization (a division of the Hitler Youth for adolescents under the age of 14). 20 April 1945 This German boy was awarded the Iron Cross by Hitler himself, he received an award for saving the wounded German soldiers from the fire of the Soviet army. After the award ceremony, he was immediately sent to accelerated courses on handling weaponsand later to the front, where he spent the last weeks of the war. Without a month of war, he was wounded and found himself in a prisoner of war camp in which he spent 2 of the year.
After returning home, he discovered that he would no longer live in Germany. His hometown of Goldenau was transferred to Poland. Growing up, a former member of the Hitler Youth, who received the award from Hitler, joined the Communist Party (who would have believed it even in 1945 year!). True, he did this in order to be able to emigrate to West Germany, where he worked the rest of his life as a construction worker. He had 10 children and more 20 grandchildren.
German teens go to war
The defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad was one of the reasons for attracting members of the youth organization Hitler Youth to armed resistance to the advancing units of the Red Army and its allies, the United States and Great Britain. Already in January, the service of German youth of pre-conscription age was established on 1943. Most often, it was about high school students who were recruited into service in anti-aircraft artillery units by entire divisions of the Hitler Youth under the command of their “Jugendführer”. Such adolescents were considered to be persons performing the “youth service” rather than real soldiers, although they actually served in the Wehrmacht. They also allowed to send adult anti-aircraft gunners to the front.
Apparently, these were the “cheapest” soldiers in the Hitler army. Until they reached 16 years of age, they received only 50 pfennigs for each day of service, and after reaching 16 years of age - 20 marks a month. In the final months of World War II, even girls began to be attracted to serve in air defense units. German teenagers were also involved in the service in the Air Force, where in 1944 already served 92 thousand young men who were sent here from the Hitler Youth, teenagers were also used navy.
Since the end of 1944, Adolf Hitler has authorized total mobilization in Germany. According to the Führer’s personal order of 18 October 1944, the entire male population from 16 to 60 years, which is not in military service, is to be mobilized. By May, 1945 in Germany managed to form approximately the 700 battalions of the Volkssturm, which acted on the front line against the Soviet troops. On the Eastern Front, some such detachments fiercely resisted the advancing units of the Red Army. Volkssturm fighters distinguished themselves in battles for the Prussian village of Noendorf in November 1944. Their resistance was no less fierce in Bresslau, which, together with the units of the Wehrmacht, they defended from January to May 1945, the city’s garrison capitulated only 6 in May 1945.
Already with 1944, 16-year-old German boys went to the slaughter for the sake of their führer. But this threshold did not last long, and soon the Hitler youth sent 12-15-year-old German children to battle. At the final stage of the war in Germany began to organize detachments of were-lonfs, which were to carry out sabotage in the rear of the Allied forces and lead a partisan war. Even after Germany capitulated and the war was over, some "werewolves", among whom there were many children from the 14 age, continued to carry out their combat missions, since they did not receive an order to cancel them. At the same time, the fight against individual “werewolves” in the territory of East Germany and a number of other countries of Eastern Europe lasted almost until the beginning of the 1950s. Even suffering a final defeat in the war, the Nazi regime led tens of thousands of children and teenagers to oblivion.
12-SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth"
One of the units of the German army, which was entirely formed from the students of the Hitler Youth, was the 12-I SS Panzer Division of the same name. 10 February 1943 of the year issued a decree that began the formation of the SS division "Hitler Youth", it was to consist of recruits 1926 year of birth (age -17 years, previously only SS recruits from the age of 23 years were recruited into the SS forces). The commander of the new division was appointed SS Oberführer Fritz Witt from the Leibstandarte-SS division Adolf Hitler. Before 1, September 1943, more than 16 of thousands of Hitler Youth members were called in to the new part, all of them passed a special six-month training. In addition, over a thousand SS veterans and experienced officers from Wehrmacht units were transferred to the new division. The total number of the newly created unit exceeded 20 thousands of people with 150 tanks.
With the start of Operation Overlord, this division was at the epicenter of the fighting in Normandy. The division of the “Hitler Youth”, together with the 21 armored division, was the closest to the landing site of the allies, the German tank units. In the very first days of the battle in Normandy, the 12 SS Panzer Division was able to prove itself very clearly, causing significant losses in manpower and equipment to the Allied forces. In addition to its military success, the division earned notoriety of ruthless fanatics not only among the enemy, but also among the German troops. In the June battles in Normandy, both sides rarely took prisoners, say military historians.
Indeed, Canadians and Englishmen behaved far from the way Captain Miller from the film “Save Private Ryan”, who just let the prisoner go, who had nowhere to go. British and Canadian soldiers sometimes killed German prisoners — especially in tank regiments that did not have enough infantry to escort prisoners to the rear. But on the conscience of the German troops such cases turned out to be more. Already in the first days of the battles in Normandy, the Germans executed at least 187 Canadian soldiers, most of these victims on the account of the SS division "Hitler Youth". One French woman from Cannes, visiting her elderly aunt in Ooty, was found by a 30 man of Canadian soldiers, whom the Germans had shot and cut into pieces.
14 June 1944 of the year killed the commander of the Hitler Youth Division, he was replaced by Kurt Meyer, who became the youngest division commander in World War II (33 of the year). Later, he would be accused of committing numerous war crimes, among other things, he demanded that his units not take prisoner enemy soldiers. Later, the soldiers of the Royal Winnipeg Rifle Regiment found that the SS fired 18 their prisoners' comrades who were interrogated at KP Meyer in the Arden Abbey. In this case, one captive Major Hoja was beheaded.
Ideologically, the 12-SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth" was one of the most fanatical units in the SS forces. Her soldiers saw the killing of the prisoners as retaliation for the bombing of German cities. The fanatical part fought well, but by July 1944 had suffered significant losses. During the month of fighting, the division lost killed, wounded and missing to 60% of its original composition. Later, she fell into the Falez boiler, where she lost almost all of her equipment and heavy weapons, was subsequently allotted for re-formation and continued fighting until the end of the war. She participated in the offensive in the Ardennes, as well as in the battles at Lake Balaton.
Information sources:
http://tvzvezda.ru/news/forces/content/201502220847-kobc.htm
http://spiegel.org.ua/text/articles/hellsinginfo02.htm
http://maxpark.com/community/14/content/3121771
Beevor E. Landing in Normandy. M: Calibri, 2014.
Currently, one of the least studied and obscure pages of World War II concerns the role of participation in the hostilities of children and adolescents. We often hear that the Soviet authorities and Stalin exterminated their people, and Hitler and the Germans destroyed other peoples, but then it was Hitler’s regime that threw children and teenagers into the millstones of war. In the Red Army, the draft age began with 18 years. Even in the most difficult for the Soviet Union war years, there was no decrease in the draft age. Only the last 1944 call of the year began with the 17 years, but adolescents called up at this age did not take part in the battles, being used only in the rear in numerous auxiliary units and subunits.
Even in the most difficult months of the Great Patriotic War for the USSR, when German troops were stationed at the gates of Moscow and on the Volga, the draft age in the Red Army did not go down. And a completely different situation was observed in Germany. And although the military age in the Wehrmacht did not officially fall below 18 years, it was the German military units that took part in the fighting, consisted of 16-17-year-olds, and at the very end of the war on the fronts one could even meet 12-year-olds.
In this case, children are much easier to bring adults to a state of thoughtless submission and make them fight fearlessly. Children are good fighters since they are young and eager to show themselves. They believe that what is happening is some kind of game, so they are often so fearless. All this in full was characteristic of the students of the Hitler Youth and those who at the end of World War II ended up in Volkssturm units or werewolf detachments (the German militia for guerrilla warfare). As a result, even experienced Soviet front-line soldiers were often surprised by the fearlessness and militancy shown by German youth. Often these teenage soldiers rushed under Tanks.
They could burn Soviet tanks and allied tanks with fanatical perseverance, fired and shot down planes as part of anti-aircraft calculations, shot unarmed prisoners of soldiers, and some especially fanatical continued fighting after shooting 9 on May 1945 of the year, shooting soldiers from war veterans from ambushes. Children and adolescents often showed more cruelty than adults. Today, this is still confirmed, but already in Africa, where a huge number of children are fighting in various militias, sometimes from the age of 8, who have no pity for their enemies.
At the same time, documentary evidence of war crimes that would have been committed by minors of the Wehrmacht and the SS troops from among the students of the Hitler Youth in the years of the Second World War, was not enough. There are two explanations for this - the juvenile criminals themselves did not want to remember and brag about their “feats” during the war years. In addition, there was an unspoken taboo on the dissemination of such information in the USSR, and children and adolescents themselves were recognized as victims of the Hitler regime.
Evidence of crime was really small. So, for example, one of them relates to the recollections of Lieutenant Colonel of Allied Forces, Robert Daniel, and concerns the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It is almost the only documentary evidence of crimes committed by underage Nazis. According to the officer, he heard the sounds of gunfire and went to the fence of the concentration camp. There were four young SS men, or even the students of the Hitler Youth, standing there, they all looked very young. They all shot at living people and corpses, while carefully striving men and women in the crotch, trying to cause them maximum pain. Robert Daniel shot three of them, and the fourth managed to escape. What happened to the "fourth", how his fate, and what life he lived, now hardly anyone will know. But the fate of some members of the Hitler Youth is known to historians quite well.
The popes and the communists
For example, the previous Pope Benedict XVI in the world was called Joseph Alois Ratzinger. In 1941, at the age of 14, he joined the Hitler youth, and later served in the anti-aircraft and anti-tank units and in the infantry. A few days before Germany announced the capitulation, he deserted and spent some time after the end of the war in the American prisoner of war camp. After being released from the camp, Josef Ratzinger abruptly changed his life by entering the seminary and was ordained in 1951. In 1977, he became the cardinal and then the head of the Congregation for the doctrine of the faith. In the year 2005 after the death of John Paul II became the new pope.
Konstantin Alexandrovich Zalessky, an employee of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies and a military historian, notes that the fate of Joseph Ratzinger is not only unique, but also somewhat typical for German adolescents during the war period. German children who were drugged by the Nazi propaganda in the Hitler Youth and, participating in armed resistance to the allied forces on the Eastern and Western Front, became, in fact, the victims of that war. Already matured, many of them were able to reconsider their views on the "Great Germany".
Pope Benedict XVI
The fate of another famous German teenager, Alfred Cech, who was born in 1933, is also indicative. He was a member of the Jungfolk organization (a division of the Hitler Youth for adolescents under the age of 14). 20 April 1945 This German boy was awarded the Iron Cross by Hitler himself, he received an award for saving the wounded German soldiers from the fire of the Soviet army. After the award ceremony, he was immediately sent to accelerated courses on handling weaponsand later to the front, where he spent the last weeks of the war. Without a month of war, he was wounded and found himself in a prisoner of war camp in which he spent 2 of the year.
After returning home, he discovered that he would no longer live in Germany. His hometown of Goldenau was transferred to Poland. Growing up, a former member of the Hitler Youth, who received the award from Hitler, joined the Communist Party (who would have believed it even in 1945 year!). True, he did this in order to be able to emigrate to West Germany, where he worked the rest of his life as a construction worker. He had 10 children and more 20 grandchildren.
Alfred Cech - the youngest Chevalier of the Iron Cross 2 class
German teens go to war
The defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad was one of the reasons for attracting members of the youth organization Hitler Youth to armed resistance to the advancing units of the Red Army and its allies, the United States and Great Britain. Already in January, the service of German youth of pre-conscription age was established on 1943. Most often, it was about high school students who were recruited into service in anti-aircraft artillery units by entire divisions of the Hitler Youth under the command of their “Jugendführer”. Such adolescents were considered to be persons performing the “youth service” rather than real soldiers, although they actually served in the Wehrmacht. They also allowed to send adult anti-aircraft gunners to the front.
Apparently, these were the “cheapest” soldiers in the Hitler army. Until they reached 16 years of age, they received only 50 pfennigs for each day of service, and after reaching 16 years of age - 20 marks a month. In the final months of World War II, even girls began to be attracted to serve in air defense units. German teenagers were also involved in the service in the Air Force, where in 1944 already served 92 thousand young men who were sent here from the Hitler Youth, teenagers were also used navy.
Since the end of 1944, Adolf Hitler has authorized total mobilization in Germany. According to the Führer’s personal order of 18 October 1944, the entire male population from 16 to 60 years, which is not in military service, is to be mobilized. By May, 1945 in Germany managed to form approximately the 700 battalions of the Volkssturm, which acted on the front line against the Soviet troops. On the Eastern Front, some such detachments fiercely resisted the advancing units of the Red Army. Volkssturm fighters distinguished themselves in battles for the Prussian village of Noendorf in November 1944. Their resistance was no less fierce in Bresslau, which, together with the units of the Wehrmacht, they defended from January to May 1945, the city’s garrison capitulated only 6 in May 1945.
Already with 1944, 16-year-old German boys went to the slaughter for the sake of their führer. But this threshold did not last long, and soon the Hitler youth sent 12-15-year-old German children to battle. At the final stage of the war in Germany began to organize detachments of were-lonfs, which were to carry out sabotage in the rear of the Allied forces and lead a partisan war. Even after Germany capitulated and the war was over, some "werewolves", among whom there were many children from the 14 age, continued to carry out their combat missions, since they did not receive an order to cancel them. At the same time, the fight against individual “werewolves” in the territory of East Germany and a number of other countries of Eastern Europe lasted almost until the beginning of the 1950s. Even suffering a final defeat in the war, the Nazi regime led tens of thousands of children and teenagers to oblivion.
12-SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth"
One of the units of the German army, which was entirely formed from the students of the Hitler Youth, was the 12-I SS Panzer Division of the same name. 10 February 1943 of the year issued a decree that began the formation of the SS division "Hitler Youth", it was to consist of recruits 1926 year of birth (age -17 years, previously only SS recruits from the age of 23 years were recruited into the SS forces). The commander of the new division was appointed SS Oberführer Fritz Witt from the Leibstandarte-SS division Adolf Hitler. Before 1, September 1943, more than 16 of thousands of Hitler Youth members were called in to the new part, all of them passed a special six-month training. In addition, over a thousand SS veterans and experienced officers from Wehrmacht units were transferred to the new division. The total number of the newly created unit exceeded 20 thousands of people with 150 tanks.
With the start of Operation Overlord, this division was at the epicenter of the fighting in Normandy. The division of the “Hitler Youth”, together with the 21 armored division, was the closest to the landing site of the allies, the German tank units. In the very first days of the battle in Normandy, the 12 SS Panzer Division was able to prove itself very clearly, causing significant losses in manpower and equipment to the Allied forces. In addition to its military success, the division earned notoriety of ruthless fanatics not only among the enemy, but also among the German troops. In the June battles in Normandy, both sides rarely took prisoners, say military historians.
The construction of tank divisions during the inspection of its General Marshal Gerd von Rundsted, France, January 1944 year.
Indeed, Canadians and Englishmen behaved far from the way Captain Miller from the film “Save Private Ryan”, who just let the prisoner go, who had nowhere to go. British and Canadian soldiers sometimes killed German prisoners — especially in tank regiments that did not have enough infantry to escort prisoners to the rear. But on the conscience of the German troops such cases turned out to be more. Already in the first days of the battles in Normandy, the Germans executed at least 187 Canadian soldiers, most of these victims on the account of the SS division "Hitler Youth". One French woman from Cannes, visiting her elderly aunt in Ooty, was found by a 30 man of Canadian soldiers, whom the Germans had shot and cut into pieces.
14 June 1944 of the year killed the commander of the Hitler Youth Division, he was replaced by Kurt Meyer, who became the youngest division commander in World War II (33 of the year). Later, he would be accused of committing numerous war crimes, among other things, he demanded that his units not take prisoner enemy soldiers. Later, the soldiers of the Royal Winnipeg Rifle Regiment found that the SS fired 18 their prisoners' comrades who were interrogated at KP Meyer in the Arden Abbey. In this case, one captive Major Hoja was beheaded.
Captured by the Panzergrenadier Division, captured by a Canadian intelligence unit during the Battle of Caen. 9 August 1944
Ideologically, the 12-SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth" was one of the most fanatical units in the SS forces. Her soldiers saw the killing of the prisoners as retaliation for the bombing of German cities. The fanatical part fought well, but by July 1944 had suffered significant losses. During the month of fighting, the division lost killed, wounded and missing to 60% of its original composition. Later, she fell into the Falez boiler, where she lost almost all of her equipment and heavy weapons, was subsequently allotted for re-formation and continued fighting until the end of the war. She participated in the offensive in the Ardennes, as well as in the battles at Lake Balaton.
Information sources:
http://tvzvezda.ru/news/forces/content/201502220847-kobc.htm
http://spiegel.org.ua/text/articles/hellsinginfo02.htm
http://maxpark.com/community/14/content/3121771
Beevor E. Landing in Normandy. M: Calibri, 2014.
Information