12th SS Panzer Division 'Hitlerjugend' in Normandy

Discussion in 'Axis Units' started by Jonathan Ball, Apr 6, 2011.

  1. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    Message from General Crerar
     

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  2. Sheldrake

    Sheldrake All over the place....

    The idea of the Hitler Youth division soldiers of 14 year olds is probably a myth. According to their divisional history - written by Hubert Meyer, the senior staff officer in the division, the soldiers were members of the Hitler Youth born in 1926. They would have been aged 17-18 in June 1944. You could not just blag your way into the Hitler Youth. This was a regimented society and people's ages would have been known, along with their racial/religious background. Some people look younger than their age. Many actors in their twenties have played teenagers in films.

    It may have been easier to get into British forces under age. The youngest British paratrooper on D Day was 16 and buried in Ranville CWC.
     
  3. JDKR

    JDKR Member

    I would be certain it is a myth. The February/March 1945 intakes of Hitler Youth for SS-Panzer-Grenadier Ausbildungs und Ersatz Bataillon 12 ‘Hitlerjugend’, the training and replacement battalion for 12. SS-Panzerdivision ‘Hitlerjugend’, were in the 17-19 age bracket. If 14 year olds were being recruited, this surely would have been the time as it was the stage of maximum manning desperation. But they weren't. Perhaps views formed from pictures of Hitler Youth being patted on the cheek by AH have been extrapolated?
     
  4. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    I'm glad somebody posted that, though it does not excuse the tit-for-tat the Canadians and British practised in return. The 12th was a good outfit though not supermen. Otherwise they were a bunch of young jerks who richly deserved the severe casualties they suffered. Meyer and Mohnke were good soldiers and typical Nazi bastards otherwise. To hell with the lot of them.
     
  5. ltdan

    ltdan Nietenzähler

    It was Artur Axmann who suggested to Himmler that a complete division be formed with boys born in 1926. This is documented.
    And anyone who knows the German dogmatism of regulations of the time (which makes today's institutions look like a bunch of happily stoned Rastafarians) knows with certainty that at best only a few exceptions slipped through the grid - if at all.
     

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