Hitler's Baby Division

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to switch to the HJ Division, one of them wanting to finish school in order to pursue university training in engineering after the war, while the other served as Patrol Service leader and surveillance chief and therefore could not be replaced. The district leader showed a considerable degree of exasperation: “If I am to surrender two additional leaders for ‘service in the east’ then I am faced with a practically leaderless organization. I don't think it makes any sense to force someone to volunteer.” Other district leaders faced similar problems. 17 In this situation coercion seemed to be the only recourse if Axmann's demands were to be met and he in turn was bound by his commitment to Himmler. Yet draftees, it was recognized, would not provide the kind of spirit and elan which the division was supposed to have, if it were to follow in the footprints of Hitler's Body Guard. Axmann, clearly worried about this problem, ordered all WEL directors training NCO candidates to determine how many of them had been commandeered. The latter were then submitted to another barrage of propaganda and those who still refused to volunteer “freely” were finally excluded from the NCO roster. So in the end the RJF was forced to pick potential NCO candidates from rank and file recruits born in 1926. This began during the second week of their training in the WELs. So the manpower squeeze led to an expedient, which gave the so-called Baby Division a substantial number of noncommissioned officers of callow seventeen- and eighteen-year-old youth leading rank and file soldiers of the same age. 18 Reluctance to volunteer, no doubt, had something to do with selectivity, since those HJ Division recruits who underwent premilitary training at Harburg revealed high morale and eagerness for combat. None had to be disciplined and nineteen earned the Marksmanship Medal. The overall impression, which these boys left behind was extremely good," wrote Kurt 14
Ziegler. Although the course had to be interrupted several times for x-ray examinations and other routine necessities, these special trainees had not been discouraged. Some twenty five boys, however, had not yet taken vocational leaving examinations. These boys could not be called up on June 15 as planned because local authorities could not administer examinations unto July or August. Another thirty-two could not take their school examinations for a variety of reasons until the fall. These boys had begged SS leaders to remove all difficulties and allow them to enlist in June. “This pressure to Join early,” in Ziegler's words, “was most extraordinary.” Thus, if Harburg was typical--and there is no reason to believe it was not--the claim made by HJ leaders that extraordinary pride and elan motivated those who survived the bureaucratic hassle and became members of the HJ Division is correct. 19 At the conclusion of premilitary training all 38 WELs staged uniform ceremonies, transferring these HJ boys to the Waffen SS. Short speeches by HJ and SS leaders, followed by rousing renditions of favorite songs like “Ein junges Volk steht auf” and “Es zittern die morschen Knochen,” 20 accompanied by combined SS-HJ musical units, characterized these martial events. It was clearly a momentous occasion in a decade of HJ-SS collaboration. Axmann and Himmler, who spoke at one of these ceremonies in WEL Wildflecken, expressed the symbolic significance of this mutual dependency. The Youth Leader spoke first, and somewhat disingenuously: ...My comrades and young volunteers who want to join the units of the Waffen SS, you are a wonderful demonstration of the attitude and spirit of youth during this fourth year of war. We all feel the burning desire to create a military unit out of volunteer comrades from the Hitler Youth. The Führer was delighted with this wish of his youth. He counted on you and thousands of you responded to our call. You are the elite of German youth and I am happy and lucky that not one of you is here except by his own free will....In your unit, my comrades, the soldierly 15
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Hitler's Baby Division

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