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Kinderlandverschickung (KLV) operated during World War II (1939-1945). The children had to go to rural areas on "holiday" but really they should be out of the cities and towns that had difficulties feeding them and were being bombed by the Allies. I believe that both schools and the Hitler Jugend were involved in organizing thd KLV. One reafer reports that the HJ was especially important in the KLV organiation beginning in 1940. About 2.5 million children were send to 9,000 camps until end of World War II. I believe in many cases their teachers accompanied them. Strangely, unlike the extensive discussion of the British evacuation of children (1940-41), the German KLA evacuation and camps are little discussed.
The Allied bombing campaign not only caused civilian casulties, but made in increasingly difficult to supply German cities. The British staged some raids in 1940. A raid on Berlin had a major impact on German strategy in the Battle of Britain. The bombing campaign significantly intensified when America entered the War in December 1941 and the 8th Air Force arrived in Britain. The bombing technology in World War II did not permit the kind of percission bombing possible today. The British who bombed by night were doing good if they hit the assigned cities. The Americans bombed by day and using their Nordon bombsites attempted to hit assigned military, industrial, and transportation targets, but only a small fraction of the bombs hit the assigned targets.
One response to the bombing was the evacuation of children from the cities targeted by the Allies. The World War II evacuation of British children in 1939-40 has been well studied. Less well reported, at least in English-language books, are the evacuations of German children. About 2.5 million German boys and girls were evacuated into rural areas and accommodated in about 9,000 camps and other facilities located throughout the Reich. The KLV differed significantly from the British program in that the children were not placed in individual homes and supevised by foster parents. The KLV children were placed in camps and other facilities and supervised as a group by a commondant, Hitler Youth leaders, and teachers. The KVL program thus gave the NAZIs an additional oppottunity for ideolgical training.
The Kinderlandverschickung (KLV) means Child Land Dispatch. A German reader translates it as Kinder (child) Land (land with the sence of rural) Verschickung (evacuation). A German reader writes, "I think before the war Verschickung had the sence of recreation, during bombing period it was for evacuation. It is a funny word in German meaning something like "to make a vacuum". [Wellershaus] [HBC note: This would be similar to the use of "evacuation" in English. The program was initiated in 1939, I'm not sure if this was before or after the War began. (At any rate it was well before significant bombing raids of German cities had begun. The British also began evacuating children before the Blitz began.) The KLV was heavily promoted by German propaganda, at first primarily as health justified holiday trips for city children. The need for the KLV of course became much more pressing in 1942. Woth America in the War, the United States and Britain began the most intensive bombing campaign of World War II and trnasportation links and war related industrial sites in Germany's industrial cities were the principal targets. Given the state of bombing technology in World War II, the cities themselves became targets, especially for the British bombing at night.
The Hilter Jugend (HJ) was heavily involved in the KLV from the beginning. The HJ was given the actual responsibility for organizing the KLV camps in 1940. One KLA child reports that Hitler Youth leaders made organizational decissions at the camps rather than the reachers. [Koehn, p. 46.] The leaders made sure among other maters only positive comments on the KLV facilities appeared in the letters home to their parents. [Koehn, p.47] The Hitler Youth leaders were put in charge of the children, but in some camps there were tests iof will between these leaders and the HJ leaders. [Koehn, p. 106.] One girl repeats this comment from one of the youth leaders engaged in an exchange with one of the teachers, "Frau Doctor Pfaffenberger! We have been sent here not only to help you keep order, as you put it, but to teach these girls the factsbout our Führer and the Reich, to teach them the songs that they ought to know, and don't, and besides ... and besides it is Helga as the Lagermaedelführerin who is really in charge here. That's what we were told. The rank of Lagermaedelführerin is higher than the rank of any teacher." [Koehn, pp. 106-107.]
While the KLA was initially promoted as healthful holiday camps for city children, the NAZIs changed their depiction of thge camps as the War continued and the Allied bombing campaign began in 1942. The NAZIs turned the need to evacuate children from bombed citie that were being bombed into an ideological virtue. The children could not only be protected from the bombing against the war, but they could receive political and ideological training at the camps. Children away from their parents were always more subject to ideological influence. The KLV may have been even more effective than the HJ as the children were at the KLV camps for longer periods. I am not sure if there was any paramiltary training for the children. A further benefit of the KLV was to free mothers for work in the armaments industry. This was something that Hitler was against. Germany did not mobilize women as done in Britain and America. It only occurred after Speer took obver as armaments minister and began putting German industry on a true war footing.
The KLV was at first voluntary. Later I think whole schools were evacuated. This may have been compulsory, although I am not sure at this time. All Berlin scholls except for a few were evacuated in 1942. [Koehn, p. 98.] We note that as long as parents did not imply a criticism of the regime, that parents could appeal these assignment of their children to KLA camps. [Hermand] One KLV girl recalls a terrible shouting match between her grandmother and the camp commandant, but her grandmother armed with a doctor--signed and notorized medical emergency slip got her out of one camp. [Koehn, p. 90.] In othe instances, camp authorities refused to let parents take their children out of the camps. [Koehn, p. 149.]
The KLV was organized and paid for by the Government. There was no cost to the parents. The vhildren in many cases, however, were used for labor, especially during the harvest season to bring in the crops.
Teachers were assined to the KLV camps and other facilities along with the children. It was not, however, practical to assign each school to a KLA camp. The schools were thus often broken up. Presumably primary teachers stayed with their classes, but I do not yet have confirmation of this. Often some secondary children found themselves with some of their teachers. [Koehn, p. 44.] The authority if the teachers at the camp was not always clear and was someries challenged by the teenage HJ youth leaders.
Each camp or facility had a commandant. In the early stages of the program and as new facilities were opened, the children and teachers sometimes arrived before a commandant was assigned or arrived. In these instances the relationship of authority between the teachers and youth HJ/BDM youth leaders was ofren ill defined.
Sometimes there were conflicts between the HJ youth leaders and the teachers. We wonder whose idea it was that she should be in the middle of the portrait. She wears a plaited cord (Kordel, Fangschnur). If it was green she was the head of a organizational group called Fähnlein (little flag) of may be 100 girls (or boys respectively). We reveive different reports about these youth leaders. One German reader reports, "Often these Fähnleinführer (Faenleinfuehrer) were rather charismatic persons and loved by the younger ones." A girl
who was at three KLV camps found the BDM youth leaders to be generally demanding little tyrants. [Koehn, multiple references] The youth leaders could be identified by the different colored lanyards that they were awarded. The lanyards had whistles attached.
I am not sure what age children were involved in the KLV. The image here shows children as young as about 10 years of age (figure 1). This of course is the age that children were inducted into the HJ and of course the HJ was a program organized by the HJ. I'm not sure to what extent younger children were involved. A German reader writes, "I think you are correct that the KLV was for the older children in the HJ. The younger children tended to remain with their mothers. Fathers of course were mostly at the front in the military. Some mothers were sent to the countryside with their children where they could be safe and she could help with the farming. With so many men conscripted by the military, there was a tremenous need for agricultural labor." Many younger children were also evacuated privately, that is sent to live with relatives in the country side or small towns and villages not targetted by the Allied strategic bombing campaign.
There were KLV camps for both boys and girls. We assumed that the youth leaders at the boys camps' were boys and at the girls' camps were girls. We believe this normally to have been the case. Note in the image here that there is a BDM girl youth leader with the boys. She is clearly a youth leader as she has a lanyard and whistle. Perhaps BDM girls were assigned to help with the younger boys.
Some children were at KLV camps for only a few months. Others spent several years there. Some children stayed in more than one KLV camp. A reader writes, "In 1943, I spent one year in Trenchin-Teplitz in a Hitler-Youth camp. Trenchin-Teplitz had 24 Camps for girls and boys. I was fortunate to spent my time with about hunded other girls in the Burg." [Condon]
The KLV camps were set up in [?Schullandheimen (school land homes)], HJ summer camps, pensions or youth hostels.
We have little information about how the children's education was pursuded at the KLV camps. We believe that their academic education sufferd and that they were often used in agricultural labor [Koehn, pp. 80-81]. We believe that some attention was given to their ideological training and that the children were hardened in a way that they could have proved useful to the NAZIs if Germany had won World War II. One KLV girl reports that a class schedule was on their bukletin board, in case there was an inspection, but in fact there were virtually no classes. There was a lot of drill, martching, and war games. [Koehn, p. 50.]
One KLV girl provides this account of her camp on a Baltic island, "The barracks surround a barren square with the tall, lonelhy flagpokle in the centre. Every morning at six-fifteen, one thouusand unifiormed children march out of these barracks in perfect formation and form another squate around the pole. Hands outstreached in the NAZI salute, we have to stand immobile when the Hitler Youth band plays, the swastica is raised, and the daily motto read and repeated by all of us. On command we turn and march back. 'No one moves, no one talks during all this,' Hanka, the wman commandant, told us the first day. 'I run this camp with an iron hand. There'll be discipline here.' There is. We might as well be in prison." [Koehn, p. 81.]
We have little information on how the children dressed at the camps. We do jnow that theur rooms and clothing were regularly inspected. We had thought that they always wore their Hitler Youth uniforms. The image here, however, on a special trip shows only about half the boys in uniform (figure 1). Other photographs show the children wearing entirely their HJ uniforms. The boys brought their clothes from home when evacuated. I am not sure precisely what they were instructed to bring.
We have only afew photographs of KLV camps and activitie at this time. Not are all are dated so we have to estimate some of the dates.
Here the boys look well dressed, but not all are wearing their HJ uniforms.
This photograph was taken during the cold winter of 1944. Not all of the boys appear to have their winter uniforms. Some of the boys look very cold.
The KLA program is today little discussed. Given the size and extent of the program, this is quite surprising. This is in sharp contrast to the British evacuation of children from their cities (1940-41). We have noted realtively limired discussion of the German KLA evacuation and camps. Perhaps this is because that works are not translated into English, but we see relatively few works in German. The same is true of media treatment. While there have been many movie and TV programs about the British evacuations, we note few productions about the KLA. We suspect that because of the NAZI taint, many Germans were reluctant to discuss the program.
The British also implemented an evacuation program in 1939. Eventually about 3 million children were evacuated, roughly the same size as the German program. The British program, however, was very different. It has also been described and discussed much more extensively than the German KLA program.
We have some accounts about the World War II evacuations. A HBC reader,Margot Condon, tells us about her experiences during World War II as a Hitler Youth girl, some of which involved her time at a KLV camp. Some children were evacuated privately to relatives living outside the big industrial cities that the Allies targeted. Hans tells us about his boyhood experiences during 1941-45.
Condon, Margo. E-mail message, September 24, 2007.
Hermand, Jost. Als Pimpf in Polen. (Fischer Verlag. Frankfurt a.M. 1994). The English title is A Hitler Youth in Poland: The NAZI's Program for Evacuating Children During World War II Margot Bettauer Dembo (Translator).
Koehn, Ilse. Mischling, Second Degree: My Childhood in NAZI Germany (Puffin Plus: 1981).
Wellershaus, Stefan. e-Mail, August 21, 2002.
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