The Himmler's SS (29 page)

After 1939, most NSDSt.B leaders departed to join the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, thus leaving political indoctrination of students in the hands of less committed individuals. Moreover, the actual composition of the student body was altered radically. Whereas before the war only a small percentage of students had been women, by 1943 they accounted for more than 35 per cent of the student population. That factor alone greatly reduced the influence of the SS, still basically a male organisation, over student life. Himmler actively encouraged potential Germanic-SS leaders from Flanders, Holland, Norway and Denmark to study at German universities and technical colleges through the Langemarck Scholarship scheme, which commemorated the young German student volunteers who had fought so heroically at the Battle of Langemarck near Ypres in November 1914. However, the second half of the Second World War saw Nazi interest in, and dominance over, the universities fall away, and in some cases they even became staunch centres of anti-Nazi resistance.

While the majority of ordinary German youngsters never had any associations with the NPEA or NSDSt.B, most either belonged to, or had friends in, the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend or HJ) and its female equivalent the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel or BDM). After 1933 the HJ was a main source of recruitment for the Allgemeine-SS, and as the power and prestige of the SA declined so those of the SS and HJ increased. In 1936 it was decreed that the whole of German youth was to be ‘educated, outside the parental home and school, in the HJ, physically, intellectually and morally, for service to the nation and community'. The HJ initially found it hard to meet the great demands made upon it, and for that reason obligatory membership was delayed for several years. Even so, voluntary enlistment resulted in the number of Hitler Youths reaching 8 million (i.e. 66 per cent of those eligible to join) at the end of 1938. Compulsory HJ service for all male seventeen-year-olds was introduced on 25 March 1939, and in September 1941 membership finally became obligatory for both sexes from the age of ten onward. Many of the activities, trappings and insignia of the HJ were derived from those of the SS, with much anti-Semitism, neo-paganism and use of runic symbolism, and co-operation between the SS and the HJ became ever closer until by the end of the war the two had merged their interests almost completely. By that time, the ultimate aim of every Hitler Youth was acceptance into the SS.

The élite branch of the Hitler Youth organisation was the HJ-Streifendienst, or Patrol Service, created in December 1936. It was in effect an internal police force for the HJ, and kept order at Hitler Youth rallies and camps, controlled transport movements, supervised HJ hostels and counteracted juvenile crime. Each member was issued with a special pass and an SS-style cuff title and, as needs demanded, a small calibre rifle. In August 1938, under an agreement between Himmler and von Schirach's Reichsjugendführung, the HJ-Streifendienst was reorganised as a sort of preparatory school for the SS. Its training was placed entirely in SS hands, and boys were expected to graduate into the SS or police after leaving the service.

Volunteers for the ‘Hitlerjugend' Division swear an oath of loyalty before the Sig-Runes, flanked by Hitler Youth flags, in 1944. The smart M36 uniform of the helmeted officer contrasts sharply with the more basic M43 dress worn by the recruits.

Another HJ formation closely associated with the SS was the Landdienst or Land Service, the purpose of which was to provide voluntary agricultural assistance, particularly in the eastern provinces of the Reich. The Landdienst was formed in 1934 and sent urban HJ volunteers on to farms for one year, the so-called Landjahr, to give them agricultural experience. At the outbreak of war, the service had 26,000 members. In February 1940, the Siedlernachwuchsstelle Ost, or Eastern Young Settlers Office, was created under a joint agreement between the SS and HJ to train youngsters as Wehrbauern, peasant guards who would populate and defend the conquered east. Volunteers were racially scrutinised by RuSHA and had to register with the RKFDV. To further this aim, the Landdienst concept was extended in 1942 to include youths from the Nordic countries of Flanders, Holland, Norway and Denmark, who volunteered for employment with the newly created Germanic Land Service, or Germanischer Landdienst. Its badge was the Odal-Rune, and its motto was ‘Schwert und Scholle' (‘Sword and Soil'). With the turn of the tide of war, however, the Germanic Land Service was officially wound up in March 1944 and many of its male personnel were transferred to the Waffen-SS.

A ‘Hitlerjugend' MG42 team alongside a ‘Panther' tank in Normandy, June 1944. All wear standard helmet covers and smocks, with baggy Italian-pattern camouflage trousers. The panzer's number, ‘326', denotes the 6th tank of the 2nd platoon of the 3rd company, 12th SS-Panzer Regiment.

During their first week of action in Normandy, these three soldiers of the ‘Hitlerjugend' Division won the Iron Cross.

From 1936, the HJ ran weekend courses in field exercises (Geländesport) and rifle shooting. Initially it relied on its own personnel and the Wehrmacht to furnish instructors, but increasingly the SS became involved in Hitler Youth paramilitary training. In 1939 toughening-up camps, or Wehrertüchtigungslager (WE-Lager), were established in which boys between the ages of sixteen-and-a-half and eighteen were put through a three-week course culminating in an award of the K-Schein, or War Training Certificate. By 1943 there were around 150 such camps, which included among their trainees and instructors volunteers from Flanders, Holland, Norway, Denmark and Latvia. There was a sound practical reason why the SS took a great interest in the WE-Lager system, for it furnished Himmler with a means of circumventing the Wehrmacht's monopoly on military recruitment. The Waffen-SS possessed no powers of direct conscription among German nationals, but if a young man could be persuaded to volunteer for the Waffen-SS before reaching his twentieth year, the normal age for conscript service, his preference for that branch of the fighting forces was normally respected. The SS therefore strove to persuade WE-Lager boys to volunteer for service in one of its combat divisions after they had obtained their K-Schein.

In February 1943, following the loss of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, manpower shortages became so acute that Hitler authorised a programme to encourage voluntary enlistment of seventeen-year-olds, boys who would not have been subject to conscription until 1946. The SS saw this as a golden opportunity to build up its own forces. Negotiations between Himmler and the Reichsjugendführer, Artur Axmann, began at once, as a result of which it was decided to raise an entirely new Waffen-SS division from Hitler Youths who had completed their courses at the WE-Lager. By mid-summer the required number of 10,000 volunteers had been mustered. In October the division was officially named 12th SS-Panzer Division ‘Hitlerjugend' and it went into action following the Allied invasion of Normandy. The fanatical young soldiers, keen to demonstrate their worthiness to wear the honoured SS runes, threw themselves into battle without regard for losses, which were devastating. Over 8,500 of their number were either killed or wounded, and by the end of the war a single tank and 455 men were all that remained of one of Germany's foremost armoured divisions.

The SS also made use of HJ volunteers on the home front. By the middle of 1943, there were some 100,000 young Germans in the Auxiliary Flak organisation, run by the Luftwaffe, but the demand for anti-aircraft gunners and searchlight operators was such that Göring and Axmann approached Alfred Rosenberg in March 1944 with a request that the youth of the occupied eastern territories should also be enrolled as Flak Helpers. This would apply, as in Germany, to boys and girls from their fifteenth birthday until they were old enough to be drafted into their respective ethnic legions. Since these foreign legions were controlled by the SS, the youngsters from the east likewise came under Himmler's jurisdiction. Over 16,000 boys and 2,000 girls were eventually recruited from the Baltic states, Byelorussia and the Ukraine. They were first called SS-Helfer, then Luftwaffen-Helfer, and finally SS-Luftwaffen-Helfer, and were required to operate throughout the Reich. Service in the Flak batteries was fully combatant, with over forty foreign Flak auxiliaries being killed in action and two winning the Iron Cross. Each youngster wore the SS runes on a black triangle on the upper left arm, in the manner of the standard HJ district insignia.

The other area where SS and Hitler Youth came into close contact was fire fighting. In June 1939, SS-Gruppenführer Dr Johannes Meyer, commander of the Feuerschutzpolizei, met HJ leaders to discuss the participation of the Hitler Youth in fire defence. The HJ-Feuerlöschdienst (HJ Fire Fighting Service) was subsequently established, and the following December it was integrated into the HJ-Streifendienst. In March 1941 its official designation was altered to HJ-Feuerwehrscharen (HJ Fire Defence Squads), and the HJ uniform was replaced for members by a modified version of that of the Feuerschutzpolizei. As the war progressed, the distinction between the specially trained HJ-Feuerwehrscharen and other HJ units became blurred. By 1943, age restrictions had been jettisoned and all members of the youth services acted as volunteer helpers in air raids. In mid-1943 there were 700,000 boys engaged in fire defence, and in the course of that year alone thirty-two were killed, 607 wounded and 300 decorated with the Iron Cross or War Merit Cross.

Late in February 1945, when the advancing Russian Army was closing in on Berlin, special units of saboteurs and partisan guerrillas were formed from the German populace for the purpose of harassing the approaching enemy. In the event of the capture of the capital, members of these units, known as ‘Wehrwolf' or the ‘Freikorps Adolf Hitler', were to function behind Allied lines in the occupied zones creating what havoc they could. It fell to Himmler, as Commander-in-Chief of the Home Army, to set up the Wehrwolf organisation and he put it under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Prützmann, with SS-Brigadeführer Karl Pflaumer as his deputy. However, with all able-bodied personnel already at the front line or in the Volkssturm, Wehrwolf had to rely on very young members of the HJ and BDM to make up its numbers. A variety of duties was entrusted to these boys and girls, including the salvaging and concealment of arms and ammunition, minor acts of sabotage such as puncturing tyres, and the conveying of messages and distribution of Nazi propaganda. Older Wehrwolves seconded from the Waffen-SS and All-gemeine-SS set up secret radio transmitters, took part in assassinations and infiltrated enemy headquarters. Without doubt, the Wehrwolf organisation inflicted substantial damage and, even after the surrender, marauding groups of SS and Hitler Youth participated in acts of sabotage against the American, British, French and Russian occupation authorities.

By its indoctrination of youth through interaction with the NPEA, NSDSt.B, HJ and BDM, the SS ensured that the ideals of Himmler and Hitler survived long after their demise.

T
HE
G
ERMANIC
-SS