This powerful recruitment poster was intended to instil a sense of pride intoHitler Jugend members who were encouraged to show their patriotism and sense of duty by joining theWaffen-SS.
CHAPTER TWO
TRAINING
As the war turned against Germany, the Hitler Youth training camps were combed for manpower and ruthless methods of coercion applied. Boys as young as 17 were press-ganged byWaffen-SS recruiting officers for a new fighting unit, 12th SS Panzer DivisionHitlerjugend.
With the outbreak of war in September 1939, the indoctrination of the Hitler Youth was stepped up. In florid terms, the legend of Langemarck continued to be evoked by Nazi propagandists:
‘The myth of the sacrifice in the World War of Germany’s youth has given to the post-war youth a new faith and a new strength to unfold the ideals of National Socialism… From the experience of the World War was born the idea of National Socialism. Out of its armies came the front line soldier.’
The September 1940 issue of the magazinePimpf treated its readers to a prose poem on ‘the gentle heart of the Führer’, intoning:
‘Now all German hearts belong to the Führer. His hand is the fate of our Fatherland. All that happens, that determines our present, is his will… The hand of the Führer leads us.’
The recruiting offices were besieged by impatient youths prepared to go to almost any lengths to be accepted. HW Koch, himself the member of a unit that was to fight in Berlin in the closing weeks of the war, wrote in his history,The Hitler Youth:
‘Throughout the war, incidents occurred of boys appearing at their local Hitler Youth headquarters complaining that they had been overlooked in their call-up… backing up their claims with their birth certificates. With a shrug of the shoulder and a derogatory remark about some bureaucracy which had yet again failed to do its work properly, they were immediately enrolled in theJungvolk. That the birth certificates had been faked was in most cases only discovered afterwards or when the erasure of the last digit of the year of birth had been carried out too clumsily. Mostly in these cases father or brother had been called up into the army and now the sons too “wanted to do their bit”. They were usually allowed to stay.’
NEW LEADER
By this time, Baldur von Schirach had lost all credibility. When he finally succumbed to Rommel’s suggestion that he should undertake military training, it was too late to win over both leading Nazis and senior members of theWehrmacht. All had distrusted him from the start. In any case, his training had involved blatantly preferential treatment – not least, a rapid promotion to the rank ofLeutnant in just six months. His military career was over on 2 August 1940, when he was appointedReichsstatthalter (Governor and Gauleiter)
