Figure 1.--This press photograph was marked "Tyskaland Fangar" which I think means German helper or child in Swedish. He is a POW perhaps a photograpgh taken by a Swedish press photographer. We think he is in a Western Allied POW camp. He is wearing a regular Garman Army uniform, but he looks to be only 10-11 years old. All we know about him was that he joined the German Army in December 1944. He does not look very happy, but he was very lucky not to be deployed to the Eastern Front. The photograph is undated, but looks to have been taken in April or May 1945.

Hitler from an early point placed a great importance in young people, more than any other German politican before or since. Young people and the SA played a key role in his rise to power. At the 1936 Nuremberg Rally, he proclaimed, "He alone, who owns the youth, gains the Future!" Hitler knew that many adults would resist him and he would be unable to win some over. His answer to that was to win over their children. Here he was largely sucessful and the Hitler Youth Movement played a key role in that success. Neither here are German youth knew that they would be used as cannon fodder in the last year of a lost war. Germany was calling up 18 year olds as early as 1942. This this drained the man power pool to the youth that came of age each year. Finally the Volkstrum gave the Wehrmacht access to boys as young as 16 years of age (1944). In the last year of the War, however, we see much younger boys, even pre-teens fighting for the Führer. We note some young-looking German soldiers in World War I, but nothing like the Children Hitler mobilized to buy him a few extra months in his dank Berlin bunker. We see by 1944 very young children with weapons, but we think that was training and not actual combat units. We assume the children on the previous page are being trained to shoot. We can't imagine for what purpose. We wonder what their mothers were thinking. we are not sure how really young boys wound up in the Wehrmact. They could not have been legally conscripted. We suspect that many were Hitler Youth boys and their heartless HJ leaders presured them to volunteer for military service.

Created: 7:02 AM 4/8/2016
Last updated: 7:02 AM 4/8/2016