They say desperate times call for desperate measures, but how bloody desperate would you
need to be to employ children as soldiers. Unfortunately, child soldiers go way back,
pretty much to the origins of war, and they're still fighting wars today.
World War II was rife with them—from Germany, yes, but other belligerent nations too. In this video,
we're going to delve into the taboo topic of child soldiers in the Second World War,
providing examples from a number of fighting nations.
Before we get stuck into it, we’ve got to ask: just who is defined as a child? Well,
during the Second World War, the definition was a little hairy. It pretty much came down to military
laws of each belligerent nation, or just how low they were willing to go in times of—in quotation
marks—"desperation." Things changed after the war. We often hear about the 1949 Geneva Conventions;
in those, as well as in the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,
children ages 15 and older are pretty much good to go to war.
In the year 2000, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on
the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict was signed for the first time. This treaty basically
prohibits the conscription of children under the age of 18, ensures recruits of the ages 16
and 17 aren't involved in combat, and ensures that no one younger than 16 can be recruited.
The keyword in this treaty is "optional," but as of September 2020, 170 states have signed it.
So just who were the child soldiers of World War II?
In October 1941, after officially entering the war in June, the USSR changed its
minimum conscription age from 19 to 17 and made all male citizens between 16 and 28
liable for military service. In an order issued in 1942, Stalin adjusted the conscription to include
male citizens between the ages of 17 and 30 from the territories he'd liberated from the Germans.
Stalin did this because these citizens were, quote, "burning with hatred for the invader and a
desire to participate in the subsequent liberation of their Soviet Motherland with weapons in their
hands." While the 17 and 18-year-olds among these conscripts were of the legal age to fight
according to Soviet law, many Soviet children served in the Red Army in an unofficial capacity.
These boys are often referred to as "sons of the regiment."
Often they had run away from home to join the fight or had been orphaned by the war.
Thirteen-year-old Ivan Gerasimov was among them.
After his father was killed at the start of the war, Gerasimov joined the 112th Infantry Division,
working as a cook and an ammunition carrier. During the Battle of Stalingrad, after his
artillery crew members were killed in front of him, he took up a rifle and started firing on the
Germans. During the chaos, one of his hands was blown off and his other arm was badly damaged.
Instead of whining about it, young Gerasimov pulled the pin of an anti-tank grenade and threw
himself under an enemy tank. But 13 was considered old for the Red Army in the Battle of Stalingrad.
The dubious honour of the youngest son of the regiment to serve in the defence of Stalingrad
goes to the famous six-year-old Sergei Aleshkov, who was adopted by the 142nd Guards Rifle Regiment
after his mother and father were executed by the Germans in 1941.
He went on to receive a medal "For Military Merit" and survive World War II, though he became
addicted to cigarettes at an early age, and this prevented him from furthering his military career.
Like the USSR, the conscription age into the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces
changed as the war dragged on. By 1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, just over 44%
of Japanese men at a minimum age of 20 were conscripted. By late-1943,
all men over the age of 20 were considered, many for kamikaze missions, too. Things were looking
bad for the Japanese by mid-1945. With the Allies invading the Japanese Home Island of Okinawa,
the Japanese passed laws to form militia units known as Volunteer Fighting Corps.
These units would be composed of male civilians aged 15 to 60 and female civilians aged 17 to 40,
a demographic with a strength of approximately 28 million, though only about 2 million Japanese were
actually conscripted. The Volunteer Fighting Corps received basic military training and were expected
to fight to the death. While Battle of Okinawa was over before these units could be implemented
in an official capacity, that didn't stop the Japanese Army from using them in the battle.
Recruited from Okinawan schools, some 1,780 schoolboys between 14 and 17 years old were
forced, on the threat of imprisonment and death, into front-line service as
members of Tekketsu Kinnōtai or the" Iron and Blood Imperial Corps." About
half of them were killed during the battle. In the lead up to the Battle of Okinawa,
56 schoolgirls from the all-girls school Dai-ni Koto Jogakko were assigned as field
medics to the Japanese Army. Kiku Nakayama was among the 34 who didn't perish on the island.
In her words, "Some soldiers came in with their guts spilling out, some had their entire faces
burnt away because of the shrapnel. It was truly hell on earth, in every possible way."
Although the Germans crushed Poland at the very start of the war, its people continued the fight
via a number of resistance organisations right until the end. Among their ranks were Polish
younglings, with children between the ages of 12 to 15 working in support roles and children ages
16 to 18 working reconnaissance and sabotage. The Grey Ranks was the codename for the Polish
Scouting and Guiding Association during the existence of the Polish Underground State.
Children between the ages of 12 and 14 received training for support services in the war against
the Germans, while children aged 15 to 17 took part in minor sabotage missions,
such as distributing propaganda and destroying German symbology. Grey Rank
members aged 17 years and older served in Grupy Szturmowe or "Assault Groups," undertaking major
sabotage operations against the Germans and fighting in the infamous 1944 Warsaw Uprising.
By May 1944, the Grey Ranks numbered 8,359 members.
Julian Kulski was just 10 years old when the war came to Poland.
Still, he wouldn't just sit idly by while the Germans destroyed everything he loved,
so he started sabotaging them. In Kulski's words, "I went to the street corners around Żoliborz
and with a struggle tore down five or six wooden signboards, and carried them home on my bicycle."
By 13, he was a fully trained member of the Polish resistance,
and during an undercover mission into the Warsaw Ghetto, the Gestapo captured him;
he was subsequently tortured at Warsaw's Pawiak prison. He gave them nothing, though, and was
rescued just before they sent him to Auschwitz. Kulski went on to fight in the Warsaw Uprising.
Of course, this video would be incomplete without the child soldiers who fought for Hitler in the
Hitler Youth. The Hitler Youth or Hitlerjugend started out as a youth organisation through which
the Nazis indoctrinated males between the ages of 14 to 18, with boys aged 10 to 14 assigned to
the subsidiary organisation Deutsches Jungvolk and girls the Bund Deutscher Mädel. From the beginning
of the war, members of the Hitler Youth served in auxiliary roles, working to clean up bombed cities
and serving in anti-air crews, for instance. By 1943, when things were becoming more desperate
for Hitler, he started drawing on the Hitler Youth to fill the ranks of the German military.
The 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend," for example, was an armoured division composed
primarily of 16- and 17-year-old boys from the Hitler Youth. The unit participated in
the defence of Normandy and, in this battle, suffered 60% casualties. The indoctrinated
boys also committed a number of atrocities, massacring 86 French men in Ascq, France,
on the way to Normandy, and 11 Canadian POWs at Ardenne Abbey during the Battle of Normandy.
Members of the Deutsches Jungvolk served, too. Among them was Alfred Czech, who, at 12 years of
age, took his father's farm cart and used it to help a dozen German soldiers injured by mortars
to safety. For this action, he was awarded the Iron Cross, and a banquet was held in his name.
During the banquet, the Nazis asked young Alfred if he wanted to go home or join the
military. He chose the military, and they put him through an accelerated training program.
During combat, he was shot through the lungs, but survived, only to be captured
by the Soviets. Alfred was released from prison in 1947, at just 14 years of age.
German children also fought in the Volkssturm or People's Army,
with males aged 16 to 60 conscripted into this last-ditch national militia,
established in September 1944. In reality, boys and girls as young as eight served in
this ragtag force, notably in the Fall of Berlin alongside the Hitler Youth.
But we'd love to know what you think. Did you know that militaries other than the German military
employed child soldiers during the Second World War? Can you think of any other nations that used
child soldiers, or any other specific examples of children fighting in World War II? And lastly,
at what age do you think people should be able to fight and die in your country's armed forces?
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.