HJ and Volkssturm: The Hitler Youth

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

The Hitler Youth - HITLERJUNGEND

‘A thirteen year old boy manned a machine gun against advancing Allied tanks on the Rhineland frontier, while his mates passed the ammunition. An execution squad composed of 14-16 year olds shot Polish civilian hostages. A monument was erected to a boy still living, commemorating the fact that he denounced his father “loyally to the Führer“: (the father was executed for treason). Herbert Norkus, the Hitler Youth martyr, is the Horst Wessel of most of Germany's young today. Seven years of Nazi indoctrination, at a most susceptible age, in the Hitler Youth has done its work.’

The Nazi youth organization in which membership was effectively compulsory for all German boys ages 10–18. Boys age 10–13 joined the Deutsches Jungvolk (“German Young People”); those 14–18 served in the Hitlerjungend (“Hitler Youth”). Poorly disguised as athletic and sports clubs akin to the quasi-military Boy Scouts organization of the British Empire, these Nazi fronts trained boys and young men in “war sports” or “military athletics” (“Wehrsport”). Key activities were parade drill, map-reading, long-distance hikes, and weapons drill (with bayonet, grenade, and pistol and rifle marksmanship competitions). Boys also practiced taking cover and erecting camouflage, entrenchment, and defense against gas attack, and some learned to fly gliders as preparation for joining the Luftwaffe. All German boys were taught patriotic as well as Nazi Party songs, and closely indoctrinated in the regime’s spurious race theories and radical foreign policy revanchism. There was a parallel organization for “Aryan” girls that similarly stressed physical fitness and moral and ideological purity. Girls under 14 joined the Jungmadelbund (“League of Young Girls”), thereafter transferring to the Bund Deutscher Madel (“League of German Girls”). Both groups inculcated a state-defined ideal of maidenhood tied to eventual “German motherhood,” all aimed at revolutionary nazification of private and family life. The older boys of the Hitlerjungend were ordered into the Waffen-SS on June 24, 1943. They formed SS-Panzer Division “Hitlerjungend” from October 22, 1943. Their first combat came on June 7, 1944, during the Normandy campaign, around Caen. Ferocious and fanatic fighters, they stymied the British and Canadians for many weeks, while taking severe casualties themselves. The Division was reformed and fought next in the Ardennes offensive in Belgium in December 1944. Reformed for a second time, it was transferred to Hungary in February 1945. Its remnant surrendered to the U.S. Army in Austria on May 8, 1945.

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Deutscher Volkssturm

Of all the measures taken to mobilize speed the last manpower resources of the German nation, the most extreme was the creation of the Volkssturm designed to supplement the defense of the homeland. The Deutscher Volkssturm was constituted in September 1944. The organization may be considered a territorial militia which was formed and called to arms only for training purposes or for employment whenever a local area was threatened by the enemy. It was used to reinforce the Wehrmacht by "total commitment of all German people," as the constitution decree dictated. Although formation and training to the Volkssturm was not under the responsibility of the Wehrmacht, but rather under the auspices of the NAZI Party (NSDAP), for employment in combat all Volkssturm units came under the full operational command and control of the army. Under the status of forces as determined by the Geneva Convention, the Volkssturm was a legal irregular defense force that was neither part of the Wehrmacht nor the army, but rather an independent fighting force controlled by the Party.

Hitler Jugend

Few historical subjects are so emotional as the Nazi Third Reich, few have stimulated so much general interest, and few have been subjected to such close scrutiny. Adolf Hitler continues to fascinate and to horrify, and his barbaric regime still defies imagination. The Nazi regime is fortunately dead and buried, but the questions raised by its terrible history continue to demand explanations. Countless books have been written on the Nazi period, including many about the Hitler Youth, some of which have now become classics of their kind. In 1979, the historian James P. O’Donnell remarked that the British Library and the Library of Congress listed over 55,000 items on Hitler and World War II. Even the superficial student of that period of history is aware of why Hitler attached so much importance to the German youth, and the process of indoctrination leading to full-scale militarization is now well known