Hitler's Baby Division

fearing that they might lead to ill-considered actions by impressionable young
soldiers. In one incident involving a bizarre self-disciplinary method known as
“Holy Ghost,” a young soldier died. The most sensational disciplinary incident
involved the son of Gauleiter Wilhelm Murr of Württemberg who appears to
have been “invited to commit suicide,” an example his father followed a year
later. In this context it is no surprise to find that some recruits were
actually hostile to the Nazi Party and the SS. The chief of the field court was
finally forced to instruct divisional officers in the goals of proper
punishment. 28
Two months before the division was committed to combat Witt issued
one of his periodic special directives dealing with discipline and order. He
complained that many unit leaders still failed to understand that their
primary duty was to "shape young soldiers into straight and decent SS men.
Many company commanders apparently had forgotten that their charges had
grown up with fathers away at the front and mothers employed, with the
best teachers and most capable HJ leaders on the long list of casualties. Unit
leaders therefore had to become substitute educators. Providing models to
imitate was the best form of instruction and this required daily association,
since the company was the only world these impressionable recruits knew.
Witt then ordered platoon and squad leaders to live in the same room with
their men to show that they cared about their welfare. Such concern was a
soldier's "most beautiful task." Every noncommissioned officer "should
appreciate the valuable German human material entrusted to him." 29
Training within smaller units commenced as soon as recruits arrived at
Beverloo, even though there was hardly any equipment and no uniforms for
some time. In December 1943 and January 1944 training exercises on the
squad, platoon and company level were carried out, since some eighty
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