Used under the pen name: Führer's Guard
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German SS 12th "Hitler Youth" Panzer Division (12. SS-Division "Hitlerjugend") was the only field division composed mainly of members of the Nazi Party's youth organization, the "Hitler Youth", and most of the conscripts were born after 1926.
Early posters of the Hitler Youth, which read in German:
Young people play for the Fuehrer! All children over the age of 10 came to join the Hitler Youth.
For many German children, this is where their dark fate began, entering the Hitler Youth in 1933-1935 at the age of 10 and ending with the Hitler Youth division in Normandy in 1944.
The poster reads: "You (too)"
The poster reads: "It's just you"
Fritz Witt, the first commander of Hitler's Youth Division, SS brigade commander and Waffen-SS Major General Fritz Witt, photographed by SS war correspondent Wilfrid Voshidro on May 27, 1944, in Tillierès-sur-Avre, France, on the occasion of Witte's 36th birthday.
In 1933, Witt joined the SS-Stabswache Berlin, which had only 117 members at the time—the precursor to the later famous Adolf Hitler's Flag Guard.
Five years later, in 1938, as a company commander of the 3rd Company of the 1st SS "Deutschland" flag brigade (3/SS-Standarte Deutschland), he participated with the Germans in the annexation of Austria, and the following year occupied Czechoslovakia without bloodshed.
At the outbreak of World War II, Witt's flag regiment was assigned to the Panzerverband Kempf group stationed in East Prussia, and his company experienced fierce battles and performed well, personally winning the Iron Cross of the Second Class and the First Class.
He was promoted to battalion commander of the 1st Battalion of the German Flag Corps in October 1939.
In the ensuing campaign against France, Witt once again demonstrated his command: on 20 May 1940, his battalion was attacked by 20 British Matilda tanks, and in the absence of anti-tank weapons, Witt organized his men to destroy 9 British tanks with grenades and other temporary methods to hold their positions.
In April 1941, he took part in Operation Marita, the invasion of Greece, and the task of the first battalion was to clear the resistance at the Cledi Pass and open the way to the Greek hinterland. Here the Germans fought hard for three days with the Australian-British-New Zealand-Greek forces and took the mountain pass. Werther's first battalion captured 520 Allied men at the cost of 37 killed and 95 wounded.
After operation Barbarossa began, Witt's forces took part in the encirclement at Kiev. He then moved south to join the 14th Army, crossing the Isthmus of Perekop and attacking the Soviet defenders near the Tarte Trench.
In the spring of 1943, after nearly two years of fierce fighting on the Eastern Front, Witt was transferred to the newly formed "Hitler Youth" Panzer Division as a division commander, and then led the troops in high-intensity, highly targeted combat training in Belgium and France.
On June 6, 1944, the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy. Witte ordered his division to assemble north of Caen and hold the city and the Capic airfield. Despite continued Allied bombardment with air, ground artillery and naval bombardment, the Young Division, which had just entered the battlefield, held the line of Caen and inflicted heavy casualties on the British and Canadian forces, proving that the training carried out by Werther maintained the morale and combat ability of the Young Division.
But on 14 June, a naval gun cover from the Royal Navy hit the command post of the Youth Division headquarters in Vinova, and the then 36-year-old Witt was hit in the face by shrapnel and killed on the spot. He was buried in the German cemetery of Champigne-Saint-André.
At his birthday party on May 27, Witt received a gift from his subordinates and officers of the division's reconnaissance battalion: a miniature model of an 8-wheeled Sd.Kfz.232 armored reconnaissance vehicle.
To Witt's left is Lieutenant SS Commando Heinrich "Hein" Springer, and on the far left is Heinz Ritzert, commander of the 15th Company of the SS 25th Panzergrenadier Regiment.
The Panzer Corps of the Youth Division, trained in Belgium, shows Vehicle No. 635 of the 2nd Battalion of the 12th SS Panzer Regiment, and because the Youth Division had a large number of officers from Adolf Hitler's Flag Guard Division, the tactical numbering of tanks was also followed by the custom of the Flag Guard Division.
When Witt trained these young tank soldiers, he transferred them to the production line of the tank factory in turn to practice, and he understood its principles more deeply and accelerated the depth of training.
Soldiers of the 25th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment erected a temporary tombstone for his fallen comrade-in-arms Helmut Belke, the superior SS detachment, at the wall of the Aden Monastery.
He was the driver of the regimental commander and SS flag captain Kurt "Panzermeyer" Meyer, who was killed in the June 9 attack on Breitwell by the Youth Division.
The soldier on the left is dressed in the Italian Army's M1929 camouflage uniform, while the right one wears an SS standard spring fuzzy fringed camouflage blouse (Rauchtarnmuster)
Photographed at the end of June 1944 at the regimental headquarters of the 25th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment at the Abbey of L'Abbaye d'Ardenne in the Caen region. Dressed in Italian camouflage on the left, Heinz Milius, the regimental commander and SS superior commando brigade, was briefing the division's chief of staff, Hubert Meyer.
Wearing the Demjanskschild of the Battle of Jamyansk on his right sleeve was the divisional logistics staff officer and SS superior commando squadron commander Bernhard Georg Georg. Bernhard-Georg Meitzel.
Behind Meyer was Herbert Reinecker, a war correspondent and superior SS detachment leader, who had been writing for Nazi magazines since 1935 and was a contributing writer for the official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps. After the war, he became a well-known writer of crime dramas in Germany and never hid his membership in the SS.
Commander of the 1st Battalion of the 25th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment, dressed in an Italian M29 camouflage uniform, and commander of the SS Commando Brigade, John " Johann "Hans" Waldmüller.
He joined the SS in 1933, first at the head of reinhardt Heydrich at sicherheitsdienst, and in the summer of 1940 he transferred to the combat unit, the Adolf Hitler Flag Guard. When the Hitler Youth Division was founded in 1943, he was selected to transfer to the ministry as battalion commander.
During the Battle of Normandy, Waldmuller's battalion had been fighting on the front line, and he himself was awarded the Knight's Cross on August 27.
On 8 September, Waldmuller was ambushed on a tricycle with Carl Maquart, a junior SS commando squadron leader: Belgian partisans placed a rope on the road, which they tightened as the vehicle approached. The wheels of the motorcycle were entangled and unable to move, and at the same time it was poured with guerrilla fire.
Afterwards, a carriage in Waldmüller's unit found the scene of the ambush: the driver of the motorcycle was seriously injured and lying on the left side of the road. Carl Maquart was shot in the head and died in the back seat of his motorcycle.
Waldmüller's remains were not far away, with his stomach cut open and his genitals cut off and thrown in a drainage canal in a nearby lake.
Willi Klein, a junior SS commando squadron leader near Caen, was Waldmüller's aide-de-camp. Klein joined the 1st Company of the SS Special Battalion in 1941, transferred to the 2nd SS Infantry Brigade in March 1943, and finally to the 25th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment of the Youth Division. In 1945, as commander of the regiment's 10th company, he had been promoted to commander of the SS superior assault brigade, and he was killed in battle.
Signal officer (Nachrichtenoffizier) of the 3rd Battalion of the 25th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment, Franz-Josef "Franzl" Kneipp, commander of the SS's subordinate commando squadron
Originally a police signal officer in the High SS and Police Headquarters in Weissbaden, he joined the divisional reconnaissance battalion in 1939 and served in the signal platoon of the SS "Eastern" anti-aircraft artillery battalion from August 1941 to April 43, before moving to the newly formed Youth Division
Due to an affair with a French girl, Knepp was expelled from the officer training class at Metz's SS Correspondence School near graduation, but in April 1944, at the recommendation of Kurt Meier, he was promoted to lower commando squadron leader.
During the Battle of Caen, he was hit by a Canadian tank while on a reconnaissance mission, wounded on his hands and feet, and captured. After being transported to Scotland for treatment, Knepp was handed over to the Americans and taken to Washington to be interrogated about German cipher machines, but he refused to cooperate.
After his release back to Germany, Knepp served as a staff member at the U.S. Air Force base in Weissbaden and was also chairman of the weissbaden chapter of the SS Veterans Association for many years.
Between battles, Knepp played guitar with Kurt Bergmann, a battalion aide-de-camp and commander of the SS's junior assault squadron. Knepp wore the SS standard System patterned Platanenmuster, while Bergman wore Italian camouflage. The latter disappeared during combat on 8 July.
Grenadiers of the Youth Division, dressed in SS standard pea-pattern camouflage uniforms (Erbsenmuster)
A young division grenadier holding a 15 cm caliber sIG33 heavy infantry gun. This was the standard heavy infantry gun used by the Germans in World War II. It is also the heaviest infantry gun ever built in the armies of various countries.
Its early production models were fitted with wooden wheels and were towed by horses. Later production models used pressed steel wheels, solid rubber tires and air brakes for towing in motor vehicles.
The sIG33 gun was too heavy for its positioned role, so it was redesigned in the 1930s to add light alloy materials to reduce weight. The result was a reduction of about 150 kilograms in weight, but after the outbreak of war, after producing hundreds of models of alloy structures, it had to return to the original design, because light alloy materials were given a higher priority to the Luftwaffe.
A group of young divisions during the Battle of Normandy
On the Normandy front, many young people under the age of eighteen smoke to relieve stress. Most of the soldiers and junior non-commissioned officers of the Young Division were selected from members of the Hitler Youth, while the senior non-commissioned officers and officers came from other SS combat divisions. Many recruits were too young to be given candy and milk instead of the standard ration of alcohol and tobacco, so the youth division was also given the nickname "Milchflasche division."
One of the Young Division's MG-42 machine guns was firing into the air, using a standard bipod rather than a special anti-aircraft tripod (Zwillingssockel), a desperate attempt against Allied low-altitude fighter bombers (the MG-42 or MG-34 was only used for close-range air defense support when the 20mm or 30mm anti-aircraft guns were few or no).
Occasionally, small-caliber machine guns like the MG 42 can shoot down enemy aircraft, but in most cases it is a waste of ammunition.
On 12 June 1944, at the front-line medal ceremony of hitler's Youth Division, the officer wearing the soft hat on the left was Wilhelm Munch, commander of the SS 26th Panzergrenadier Regiment, who later served as commander of the defense of the city's central government district (including the Reich Chancellery and Hitler's Führer's bunker) during the Battle of Berlin, facing the 19-year-old SS subordinate detachment leader Heniz Degenhardt, who was awarded both the Second and First Iron Crosses in the same day
On the left was Günther Hamel, a columnist in the 3rd Platoon of the 15th Company of the 25th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment, who had just received the Second Iron Cross, and on the right was his squad leader, Paul Koslowski, a veteran SS subordinate of the former Adolf Hitler's Flag Guard.
The three recipients of the Iron Cross of the Second Class in the 15th Company were Sepp Bund, Klaus Schuh and Günter Hamel. The photo was taken in an orchard at the Abbey of Aden near Caen. The three were honored for destroying a British tank, in addition to the Medal of Destruction of a Single Tank. But of the three, only Hamel, the far right, survived the war.
The Hitler Youth division was criticized for its poor performance in the first few days of the Battle of Normandy, but then the young men showed their fanatical fighting style and suffered heavy casualties themselves, with a total of 20,540 men on 7 June 1944 and only 12,500 when they withdrew from the Fares encirclement.
After the battle, the division was sent to Germany for renovations. On December 16, 1944, he again engaged in the Ardennes counterattack against the Americans, and in 1945 he moved to Hungary and participated in the German strategic counterattack in the Lake Balaton area. There were 10,000 men left when they surrendered to U.S. forces in Ens, Austria, on 8 May 1945.