Looks Interesting. "'Hitler's Forgotten Kids' Army' by historian Harald Stutte is the gripping account of their misfortune to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of the survivors from the legions forced to confront Soviet armies of more than five million men are traumatised to this day by their experiences. Heinz Schuetze was one of them. Aged 15 from Leipzig, he was given half-a-day's training with a panzerfaust - a primitive tank-killing rocket - put into an S.S. uniform and marched off to the front. There were thousands like him, harvested from schools and colleges in the spring of 1945 and set on what was, for the majority, suicide missions. Their Soviet foes, who had marched over the corpses of 27 million Russians from Stalingrad to reach Germany, had little mercy for their opponents - and even less if they were dressed in S.S. uniforms. The children were slaughtered in their thousands. Sadly, the majority of them went to their doom believing fanatically in their cause, indoctrinated as they had been since birth in the ideology of the Nazi state. Guenter Lucks, now 85, told the author; "We knew from childhood onwards only the Nazi ideology. Today young people stick posters of Justin Bieber or Thomas Mueller of Bayern Munich on their walls. "We only knew Nazi heroes like Otto Skorzeny, the S.S. commando, legendary fighter pilots or U-Boat commanders like Guenther Prien." " http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/469496/Grim-fate-of-Nazi-child-soldiers-rounded-up-from-school-revealed-in-new-book
My personal diary reminds me of my experience of Hitler's kds, the Hitler Jugend. Friday 13th. April 1945 Moved over Santerno. Some M.G. nuisance and one H.E. about twenty yards away. Bags of prisoners, Kiss from Signora. "Liberatoris !". Chasing after tedeschis with 30 browning blazing! The Browning machine gun referred to was rarely fired in anger, the exception being on this one occasion when I nearly killed Hewie our Stuart Tank driver. We had been on the move all day and the Germans were surrendering left, right and centre. To our left, about two hundred yards away, German infantry were climbing out of slit trenches with their hands high and we were gesturing to them to get behind us and to make their way to the rear. Suddenly someone to our right opened light rifle fire at us and Busty (SSM ‘Busty’ Thomas) lost patience and yelled at me "Let the bastards have it!" Hewie swung the tank to the right so we could face the new threat and I started firing non-stop, without giving Hewie a chance to drop his adjustable seat down below the level of fire belching from the Browning. A horrified Busty yelled: "Get down you stupid bastard!" and to my immediate relief Hewie disappeared from view before I could hit him. In the early hours of this morning, after a fairly sleepless night, I found myself thinking about those days and realised that I'd never actually finished the story so, with your pernission, I'd like to add a postscript. The action described above had come to a bit of a standstill and the Squadron ground to a halt. As the local firing had died down, Busty told Hewie & I that we could dismount and attend to any bodily functions or make a quick brew-up. While we were making our minds up, Tommy gun in his hand, he walked ahead of our tank to examine a small area of bushes directly to our front. Before he actually got there about three or four Jerries emerged, hands held high. The oldest could have been no older than fifteen and they made a sorry sight, we were seeing for the first time examples of the Hitler Jugend. Busty, caught completely off his guard by the unexpected appearance of the enemy, however harmless that they might have been, grabbed hold of the first one, spun him round and half-heartedly kicked him up the backside shouting as he did so "You stupid effer!.... you could have killed me !" He was quite right of course..... Busty Thomas M.M., who had managed to survive the war in the desert, two escapes from a POW camp and countless enemy action in Italy could have been brought down only minutes before by these desperate youngsters who now faced us in abject submission. And probably me as well. Ron
Here is one of the lucky ones. The caption on Facebook said: Captured German boy soldier enjoys a cup of coffee aboard a U.S. Coast Guard LCI, Normandy coast, 1944
