What Happened To The Boy Whom H,itler Awarded The Iron Cross? German Child Soldiers

German student Kurt Gruber created the Hitler Youth in 1926. At first it looked like a club of boy scouts. Children between the ages of 10 to 18 years who loved Nazism, carry out a lot of physical activity, lead a life in the open air and in the future receive military training.

At the beginning there were 1,000 boys. In 1927 there were 12,000. By 1930 they numbered 25,000, and on the night of October 1, 1932, the first assembly of the Hitler Youth was held at the Potsdam Stadium, where Adolf Hitler spoke. The following day there was a youth parade that lasted seven and a half hours.

When Hitler came to power in 1933 the members of the Hitler Youth reached 107,956. It was still low a number. A year later their numbers exceeded 2,300,000, and their ranks kept growing even further. On December 1, 1936, the Reich government enacted a law according to which all German youth within the confines of the Reich were included in the Hitler Youth. Young people, in addition to the education they received at home with their parents and at school, would be educated there "both physically, intellectually and morally."

By 1938 there were already 7,000,000 members, and in 1940, the Hitler Youth counted 8,000,000 children and young adults. A fundamental moment for them occurred every Wednesday at 20.15. The members of the Hitler Youth (even the youngest ones, 10 years old) had to listen to the radio broadcast of the "Youth Nation Hour," which was broadcast with religious punctuality by all German broadcasting stations simultaneously.

Fast forward in time. The year was 1945 and the war was lost by Nazi Germany. The Russians were in the vicinity of Berlin and the end could be tasted in the air along with the smell of gunpowder, death and resignation.

In 1944, Hitler was counting on an elite group: "the Werwolf." A secret group formed by the combat section of the Waffen-SS. They had only one mission: to resist the advance of the Allied forces at all costs. Their training was based on guerrilla tactics. But the fearsome Waffen-SS, in 1945, were almost exterminated and for that reason Hitler gave the order that children who at most reached 14 years, would become soldiers of the Werwolf.

There is an image that can't be unseen; Hitler coming out of his bunker, a day before his suicide. The cold hit hard in Berlin. The Nazi hierarchy fell apart and a small troop formed. The small troop was not metaphorical. They were children in a row, some shivering. Others, in their firm position, could not prevent the water from running down slowly through the nostrils, denoting an uncured cold.