'Volkssturm' and German Child Soldiers

Toward the end of the war, old men and young teenage boys were recruited to Hitler’s ‘Volkssturm’ (‘People’s Storm’) troops, a last-ditch home defence force created to avert military defeat.

But German teenage soldiers also fought abroad. After the defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad in early 1943, the Hitler Youth was called to arms, and the 12th SS-Panzer Division Hitlerjugend formed. They did, for instance, fight in northern France during the Battle of Normandy (June/July 1944), where the division, led by SS-officers and heavily indoctrinated during training, committed several massacres.

 

This picture of 16-year-old Hans-Georg Henke, member of an anti-air squad, was taken in Germany in the spring of 1945. The photo was reprinted many times, including in school books, and became a famous warning against the horrors of war. Henke had been sent to serve in the army near the East German town of Magdeburg because of insubordination in the workplace. He himself said the photo was taken near Rostock in East Germany, when he was fleeing from the advancing Red Army, but the photographer claimed that he took the photo in West German Hessia after the German unit’s surrender to the American forces. Henke joined the German communist party KPD in 1946, which is why he might not have wanted to admit that he had surrendered to the Americans. He went to live in the in the GDR (socialist East Germany). He died in 1997.

 

 JF(Photo: John Florea, http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/‌‌)