Throughout the Second World War, there were many German war crimes committed on the battlefields
of Europe.
There were death squads who would follow the advancements of the German Army and they would
then gather up groups of civilians and then slaughter them in graves they ordered the
victims to dig themselves.
But the Hitler Youth, would also be on the front line and these were dangerous groups
of teenagers who were fanatical nazis and had been indoctrinated for years.
Hitler wanted the Hitler Youth to lay their lives down for the Nazi Party and they would,
but there was a group of Teenage Hitler Youth members who would become executions who would
be responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of allied soldiers during the war.
They especially were involved in the executions of many men who should have been taken as
prisoners of war following the normandy landings.
Join us today as we look at the teenage SS exeuctioners that shot hundreds of allied
soldiers, and as always to support our channel please make sure to subscribe.
The 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, was part of a plan devised by Arthur Amman
to bring Hitler Youth members into the conflict.
He presented this to Heinrich Himmler who consented that Hitler Youth members born in
1926 and were around 16 or 17 were to be accepted as part of a Waffen-SS division.
Hitler approved this, and the boys were then recruited.
Around 2000 boys were brought to the division, and this would grow to around 16,000 recruits
who were sent to training in Belgium.
But this was not a normal SS division, as the boys were heavily indoctrinated and one
member said, ‘In the wafer SS you couldn’t do anything if an Unterfuhrer hit you during
the training.
The purpose of the training is to make you just as they are, it’s pure sadism.’
With this the boys who made up the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend were then made
part of the 1st SS Panzer Corps and they were moved on to Caen in Normandy before the D-Day
invasion took place and they had by this time around 150 tanks at their disposal.
They were kitted out with Panzer IV’s and other pieces of heavy artillery, but the Hitler
youth division were notorious for the war crimes they would carry out.
The heavy brainwashing they had subjected them to led many to believe that they were
justified in slaughtering any civilians who were not part of the German Army.
Whilst they were heading to Normandy, they carried out their first large scale war crime,
as they executed 86 Frenchmen on the 1st April, as the locals and the French resistance had
damaged and sabotaged a railway.
They then rounded up all of the men who had houses on each side of the railway track,
and then 70 men were shot at the side of the line, and inside of the village they killed
another 16.
The Commander of the convoy Walter Hauck who would order this was later sentenced to death
for this, but he escaped execution as he was sentenced then to life imprisonment.
But when they were in Normandy, the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitler Youth were the closest
to the landing beaches, but there was a problem when the D-Day invasions took place.
The night before Hitler had been up late ranting and raving about the war, and he had ordered
his entourage to let him sleep, and because of this he was in such a deep sleep that the
nazis did not dare wake him.
Whilst he was asleep D-Day happened, and the division had to wait until they were authorised
to do so and to attack by Hitler himself.
Some were ordered to deal with parachute landings, but this was a big flaw in the effectiveness
of the divisions ability to repel the Allies.
The division were sent near to Sword and Juno, and they were attacked from the air, but trouble
was on the horizon as the group of Panther tanks ran out of fuel.
Their organisation was not the greatest, but at 10am on the 7th June, D-Day plus 1, the
SS division moved towards Caen.
They were told to stop the Canadian advances from Juno and to drive them back to the coast,
but they could not break through the Canadian assaults, despite being backed up by other
Panzer divisions.
15 tanks from the Hitler Youth division were destroyed, and despite pushing some Canadian
soldiers back, they could not repel them all.
At the end of the day the 12th SS were forced to retreat and even the enemy was confused
at their decision making, focussing on the strongest points of the Allied assault rather
than exploiting weaknesses.
But further attacks continued against the Canadians in the days and weeks after D-Day,
and let’s remember that these were very young soldiers fighting in the heat of battle
in Normandy.
However they would also commit another massacre on the day after D-Day as they would round
up 20 Prisoners of War and would shoot them in the back of the head in the Ardennes Abbey
massacre.
The executioners were catagorically stated to have been the 12th Panzer Division Hitler
Youth who were known for their fanaticism and the fact they were plucked from the Hitler
Youth and were very young.
As they were fleeing from France, they did continue to execute civilians, and they slaughtered
34 French civilians in the towns of Plomion and Tavaux.
The fighting around Normandy had seen the Hitler Youth Division depleted with around
8,000 men dying or being captured, 80% of its taks lost, and huge scores of its artillery
and other vehicles.
It was a complete disaster.
However the division continued to fight on despite the heavy losses they sustained and
they would be involved in the Battle of the Bulge, or the Ardennes Offensive.
They were attached to the 6th SS Panzer Army, and when they reached the front they suffered
heavy resistance and they could not move the Germans who had dug in.
The 12 SS Panzer Division Hitler Youth had been decimated by this point and they had
only 26 tanks and guns left, and the numbers of soldiers were heavily depleated.
The remaining men were ordered to Hungary to be part of an attack on the oilfields there,
and they took part in other smaller attacks, but the remaining men would later all surrender
as the war came to an end.
Throughout their time in service during the Second World War, the 12th SS Panzer Division
Hitlerjugend had been a part of some of the most important defensive operations that Hitler
had to throw at the allies.
But ultimately every single one of them failed, and the division were pushed back heavily
each time.
They were a group made up of boys and teenagers who had been born in 1926 meaning when they
were on the battlefields of Normandy, they were just 17 and 18 years old, but they were
incredibly dangerous.
They did not have much experience on the battlefield but they were ardent nazis and were willing
to lay their lives down for the nazi cause which was incredibly dangerous.
They would follow Hitler into any fight and battle that they were thrust into, and were
incredibly devoted to their fuhrer and the training they were given further indoctrinated
them in the nazi causes.
But as mentioned they suffered heavy losses and almost completely capitulated suffering
huge casualties at the Battle of the Falaise Pocket, inside of the Normandy Bocage and
then during the Battle of the Bulge.
The division was in effect a group of teenagers who were willing to slaughter and execute
in the name of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler, and the war crimes they were responsible for
were huge.
There are still today many of these that have yet to have been uncovered, as it’s certain
that more civilians were slaughtered by the teenage executioners of the SS 12th Panzer
Division Hitler Youth.
They would at the end of the war surrender to the US Army but this was only the beginning
as the stories of their war crimes would emerge.
There were of course a mix of senior officers in the division that were older, but these
were mixed with the members of the Hitler Youth, and by the time the war was coming
to an end the replacements were being brought in from mostly just the Hitler Youth.
But they also committed arson and assault inside of many French towns and cities, and
the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitleryouth were the teenage executioners who slaughtered many
civilians and prisoners of war.
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