My grandfather was in the 331st regiment of the 83rd infantry division, and landed on Omaha beach. He was a staff sergeant, and was one of only two members of his original company that survived from training all the way through to the end of the campaign in Europe. While on a combat patrol in the hedgerows, they captured a kid in a hitler youth uniform and carrying a luger; which he gave to my grandpa. My grandpa was shocked and said the kid looked like he couldn’t have been much older than 15 or 16 at most. My two part question is where were the Hitler Youth deployed, and was it common for them to be used in combat roles?
It became more common towards the end when Germany was scraping the barrel.
The 12th SS Division was specifically recruited from Hitler Youth and deployed against the Overlord Landing forces. The division committed several atrocities including the murder of 11 Canadian soldiers who were captured on on June 7th. They killed 156 Canadian prisoners over the course of the Normandy campaign.
Welcome to the forum sungjaeung and thanks for sharing your experiences.
The Hitler Jugend was a evil boy scouts version. Many young German recruits started in the HitlerJugend from 8 years old (fact check me if it was always 8 please). Basically the HitlerJugend was military training and involved shooting with air rifles and fake grenade throwing but later also Panzerfaust training.
A lot of German parents did not want their kids to be sent to the countryside because they were afraid they would fall completely under the Hitler Jugend and would ended up as child soldiers (there was NOTHING humane with the National Socialist). Willy Langbein b 1930 ended up defending Vienna in April 1945 (at 14 years of age) in a foxhole with a few Panzerfausts. He was very lucky to survive and the fanatical Hitler Jugend were just seen as convenient “throw-away kids”.
The podcast is quite good as it tells you how the HJ operated and got its devious tentacles into families to steal the kids for a hopeless cause.
I think the allies troops found it hard to fight the Hitler Youth in Normandy. They were often attached to SS, had lost relatives to bombings, they were fanatics, and often tough and ruthless Fighters. But they were still only kids so it must have been hard to deal with.
Like everything, cases varied. However the 12th Panzer Division “Hitler Jugend” was the real deal. The other ranks were volunteers aged 16-17. Most of the officers and NCOs had come directly from the Eastern Front to assume leadership of the new division. The 12th Pz consisted of some 10, 000 men. For an indepth look at the combat role of the 12th HJ Hubert Meyer’s “The 12th SS : The History of the Hitler Youth Panzer Division” offers a very big picture overview of the unit’s creation and evolution, 2 volumes, some 1, 500 pages Meyer was the unit commander at one point. Hope you find this useful. Hubert Meyer - Wikipedia The 12th SS: The History of the Hitler Youth Panzer Division by Hubert Meyer