All language subtitles for Hitler Youth [S01E02] - Child Army Last Stand

ARTILLERY FIRE

EXPLOSION

Berlin, April 1945:
the last days of the Third Reich.

Some of the Fuhrer's last defenders
were adolescents,

not yet 15 years old.

Their only goal was to protect
their leader, Adolf Hitler.

Up against the Soviets,
they had no chance of winning.

But only a few years earlier,

they had sworn to give their lives
for Hitler.

They would stand by their promise
and see it through to the end.

Who were these boy-soldiers?

How did the regime
win their absolute loyalty?

Some of these boys
are still alive today.

They know what it meant to grow up
during the Nazi era.

How did these boys get caught up
in the darkness of Nazism?

They were the future of the regime,
its showcase...

and its cannon fodder.

The Hitler Youth
was founded in the 1920s

as the youth wing
of the Nazi Party.

After Adolf Hitler became
Chancellor of Germany,

the Hitler Youth displaced
every other organisation for boys.

Its members were given military
and ideological training.

By the start of the Second World War,
they were ready and willing to serve.

In 1943, the Hitler Youth
were ordered

to help man anti-aircraft guns.

They combed the sky
with searchlights,

looking for Allied bombers.

It meant no school,
so the boys were delighted.

Handling real weapons,
courting danger:

the boys felt they were finally
fighting as soldiers, as men,

for the Fuhrer
and for the Reich.

Among them were
the future writer Gunter Grass

and Joseph Ratzinger,
the future Pope Benedict XVI.

Between air raids,

these young soldiers could
almost be normal boys again.

But the Allied air supremacy
was overwhelming.

Exhausted by lack of sleep,

deafened because their ears
were unprotected,

they were in fact cannon fodder.

ROAR OF ENGINES

SIGHS

The raids went on day and night.

Beneath the rain of bombs,
it was a waking nightmare.

The boys of the Hitler Youth
helped collect the dead

and rescue the living.

Goebbels responded
to impending defeat
with a call for "total war".

The propaganda worked.

In the autumn of 1943,

16,000 Hitler Youth
of the class of 1926

joined a new armoured division
of the Waffen-SS.

Founded by the leader of the SS,
Heinrich Himmler,

the 12th SS Panzer Division
was called Hitlerjugend:

Hitler Youth.

They were 16 or 17 years old,
teenagers too young to smoke or drink

but officially old enough
for the front line.

The regime was counting on
their daring

and their lack of awareness
in the face of danger.

Goebbels proclaimed:

"The enemy must know
that even for our children,

"there is no other choice
than to fight to the last."

The boys of the 12th SS Panzer
Division trained in Belgium,

then headed for Normandy.

In May 1944,
Normandy was a quiet area.

The Germans expected the D-Day
invasion to come further north,

in the Pas-de-Calais region.

On the 6th of June,
the Allies launched the invasion.

And they landed in Normandy.

The Hitler Youth Division
took the news calmly.

The day after D-Day,

the Hitler Youth division was sent
to a major Allied objective:

the city of Caen.

The British 3rd Infantry Division
was supposed to take it

in the first 24 hours.

For the warriors of the Hitler Youth,
it was truly a baptism of fire.

Their ferocity drew out those
24 hours into six weeks of hell.

The Hitler Youth division

stopped the combined British
and Canadian offensive

at the gates of the city.

It also took many prisoners.

German cameras filmed the last
moments of these doomed men.

Hitler Youth under the command of
SS general Kurt Meyer

executed dozens of them.

At Ardenne Abbey, west of Caen,
20 Canadians were shot in cold blood.

Another 45 were executed in the
courtyard of the Chateau d'Audrieu.

Altogether, the Hitler Youth Division
murdered over 150 prisoners of war

around Caen.

The sons of the Third Reich
had become war criminals.

War crimes. Massacres.

The years of indoctrination
had paid off.

The Allies quickly identified
the 12th SS Hitlerjugend,

which they nicknamed
"the Baby Division".

Their recklessness and ruthlessness
made them a dangerous enemy.

The boys within its ranks
were merciless.

Nor did they hesitate
to sacrifice their own lives.

They were lauded by the regime.

Nazi propaganda remained
as rosy as ever.

But the reality was very different.

The D-Day landings succeeded.

The Wehrmacht lost
the Battle of Normandy.

The Allies captured
200,000 German troops,

including thousands of boys.

Not so long ago they had raised their
right arms in the Hitler salute.

Now it was simply, "hands up."

But defeat in Normandy did not make
the remaining Hitler Youth

any less willing
to fight on other fronts.

Convinced that they were Germany's
last defence against the Red hordes,

young volunteers flocked to join up.

Not that they had any real choice.

In fact, the arrival of these boys
did nothing for morale at the front.

The troops were skeptical
about their value.

The belief in "final victory"
gave way to reality.

The boy soldiers could do nothing
to stop the Allies.

Whether in the Battle of the Bulge
or on the Eastern Front,

the Hitler Youth went into battle.

They had no choice.

Surrender was forbidden.
Firing squads awaited deserters.

On the 20th of March, 1945,

Hitler appeared in public
for the last time.

He congratulated the Hitler Youth
he had sent to the slaughter.

The previous year, he had told them:

"The knowledge of the necessity
of our struggle

"fills the whole German people...

"but you as young
National Socialist fighters

"must surpass our entire people
in steadfastness,

"tenacious persistence,
and indomitable hardness."

Among these last fighters was
the twelve-year-old Alfred Czech

and Wilhelm Hubner, who had just
turned 16 but looked much younger.

Hitler's left hand
was visibly trembling

from what looks like
Parkinson's disease.

At 56, he seemed like an old man.

But he was more fanatical than ever.

Even in April 1945,
the month before Germany's surrender,

the war machine was still running.

Boy soldiers were still being
sent into battle.

Posters urged civilians
to fight the oncoming tanks.

Even children, over the age of ten,
were called on.

On the 16th of April, the heaviest
artillery barrage of the war began.

The Red Army fired 1,236,000 shells.

100,000 tonnes of steel
rained down on Berlin.

Nine days later,
Soviet troops entered the city.

The Hitler Youth facing them knew
that any moment might be their last.

Many of the youngsters snapped.

Some hadn't wanted
to miss out on the war.

Now, they couldn't escape it.

With only light weapons,

the Hitler Youth harried the tanks
of 18 Soviet armies.

The Red Army troops had to
flush them out like rats.

While the boys were being crushed,

Hitler sheltered in his bunker,
seven metres below the ground.

On the surface, every square metre
saw an ambush, a shootout,

or hand-to-hand fighting.

A battalion of Hitler Youth

holding the Pichelsdorf Bridge
on the River Havel

was shelled for five successive days.

It was a massacre.

Almost all of its 600 boys
died there.

On the 30th of April,
the Soviets captured the Reichstag,

the German parliament.

The same day, Hitler committed
suicide with a bullet to the head.

The Hitler Youth, who had thought of
themselves as the Fuhrer's children,

were suddenly orphaned.

Salomon Perel was a young German Jew
who hid his identity.

Taken for an ethnic German
from the East,

he had been integrated into
the Hitler Youth for three years.

In May 1945,
Field-Marshal Keitel

signed a document of
unconditional surrender

in Berlin.

The Hitler Youth who had been lured
by the prospect of power and glory

had reaped nothing but
the horror of war and defeat.

As the Western Allies and the Soviets

established zones of occupation
in Germany,

millions of displaced persons

sought to return
to their own countries.

Among them was the wounded
16-year-old Hans Muncheberg.

He hid the fact
that he had been a soldier

and was taken in by villagers.

Not all of the former Hitler Youth

saw the fall of the Reich
as liberation.

Thousands of them had to be detained
in huge prisoner-of-war camps.

The Allies had on their hands
a generation of Germans born,

educated, and fanaticised
under Hitler.

Some still believed in
National Socialism.

The victors had to
think of the future.

Now it was their turn

to win over this lost,
partially sacrificed, generation.

So began a long period of
re-education,

both in the classroom
and in the POW camps.

German prisoners
attend special classes

to fit them for leadership
in their own country.

The Gestapo, they learn, is out,

along with other
fascist institutions,

in the reconstruction of Germany.

The children of Hitler
were taught... democracy.

To denazify the wider population,
the victors used the cinema.

It had been a principal medium
for Nazi indoctrination.

Now it was used to confront
the German people with Nazi crimes.

Anticipating this reaction,

the Allies had insisted that local
residents should visit the camps

as soon as they were liberated

to see for themselves
what they were like.

As Germany picked up the pieces,

the Hitler Youth who had been
prisoners of war returned home,

sometimes after long years
of imprisonment.

Alfons Rujner was freed

after 3½ years of captivity
in the Soviet Union.

After spending several years
in Belgian mines,

Wilhelm Kupper found his family.

Salomon Perel is one of the few
survivors of his family.

The young Jew, educated as a Nazi
for four years,

nearly forgot his very identity.

In the new Germany
under construction,

many understood that the regime
had stolen their youth.

But even after all these years,
a question still haunts them.

In their twilight years,

some of the former Hitler Youth
feel that they have a mission.

Their survival must have a meaning.
They want to tell their story.