Hitler's Baby Division

leaders complained about lack of career opportunity. Dissatisfaction reached
the ever sensitive Baldur von Schirach, who soon registered a protest with
Himmler, pompously demanding disciplinary action against the commander of
the company, SS Captain Hubert Meyer, subsequently chief of staff of the HJ
Division. What happened then illustrates how much the SS relied on the HJ to
maintain its war machine. An investigation took place which absolved Meyer
from any prejudicial infraction against former HJ leaders and reaffirmed SS
recognition of HJ experience as preferential consideration for promotion.
Any ill will which this and other incidents like it might have created were soon
forgotten. By the fall of 1941 the RJF agreed to mount special recruiting
campaigns only for the Guard. The Youth Leader promised to mobilize ail
leaders in an effort to solicit some 3,000 recruits, but conditions of 5'8"
height and four-and a-half or twelve-year enlistment periods affected
results. Slightly less than 500 seventeen-year-old boys were taken into the
Guard at this time. 2
After Hitler's SS Guard became a mechanized infantry division in 1942
the recruiting campaign was repeated, this time accompanied by special
appeals from Artur Axmann himself. He asserted that only the best
volunteers had served in the Guard for years thus affirming a continuous
relationship and that it was therefore a “particular honor” to serve in a unit
which carried the banner of the Führer. The best Hitler youths “belonged” in
the Body Guard. Although exact numerical results for this second known
campaign are not available, it must have been fairly successful since
subsequent SS recruiting efforts were based on the experiences of 1941
and 1943. 3
Planning, Recruiting and Premilitary Training
4