by Heath, Tim
Hitler’s Girls
Hitler’s Girls
Doves Amongst Eagles
Tim Heath
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by
PEN & SWORD HISTORY
an imprint of
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Copyright © Tim Heath, 2017
ISBN 978-1-52670-532-7
eISBN 978-1-52670-534-1
Mobi ISBN 978-1-52670-533-4
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For my Paula, my love, my best friend, my rock, and for women and young girls the world over who are still suffering violence, exploitation and inequality.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Third Reich is Born
Chapter 2 Mitte Girls and the Jung Madel
Chapter 3 Sugar on the Dog Shit
Chapter 4 An Audience with the Devil
Chapter 5 Young Women, Sex and the Führer
Chapter 6 The Bund Deutscher Madel
Chapter 7 A White Rose Remembered
Chapter 8 Bombs on the Reich
Chapter 9 Girls on the Land
Chapter 10 Terror from the Sky
Chapter 11 The Volkssturm and the Werewolf
Chapter 12 A Playground with Guns
Chapter 13 The Fall of Berlin
Chapter 14 The Soviet Rape of Berlin
Chapter 15 After the Reich
About the Author
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the following contributors to this work: Anna Dann, Anita von Schoener, Amy Richardson, Brigitte Schüttenkopf, Carly Hendryks, Dora Brunninghausen, Dana Schmidt, Gabrielle Haefker, Horst Frank, Helga Stroh, Helga Bassler, Helena W. Wessel, Inge Scholl, Kirsten Eckermann, Melissa Schroeder, Sophia Kortge, Theresa Moelle, Heidi Koch, Helena Vogel, Ingeborg Schalle, Olga Kirschener, Martina Schepel, Theobald Hortinger, Barbie Densk, Helene Rischer, Elsa Lantz, Dana Henschell, William Anderson, Richard Marshall, Otto Krische and Anita Skorz, all without whom this book would never have been possible.
I would also like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Claire Hopkins, History Editor at Pen & Sword Books Limited, for her help and support given throughout its production and for making Hitler’s Girls a reality.
I must also give heartfelt thanks to copy editor and author Gerry van Tonder who has gone above and beyond his duties on this project, Lenny Warren and the Militaria Collectors Network, and Ian Tustin and Lynne Powell of the Vale Magazine.
Introduction
The youth that graduate from my academies will terrify the world!
—Adolf Hitler 1930s
It was during the course of a visit to the German military cemetery at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, England, in November of 1997, that the idea for Hitler’s Girls was conceived. It was a freezing cold, wet and windy morning. I had arrived late at the cemetery, with a view to photographing some graves as part of a research programme being conducted at the time.
I was distracted halfway through my work by the arrival of a group of visitors, which I soon discovered had come from Germany on one of the many excursions organised by the German War Graves Commission at Kassel. Some of the visitors, drawn away from their intended reason for being there, became curious as to what this mad Englishman could possibly be doing – trying to take photographs and write notes in such dreadful weather conditions. After a few minutes, one of the German visitors came over, and after some introduction and handshaking, a conversation developed.
As the weather worsened and snow began to fall, we moved into the small reception area of the building where we could continue talking in relative comfort. By this time, the party of German visitors were trekking back and forth to their luxury coach, clutching freshly cooked hotdogs and cups of steaming, hot coffee. Once inside they began to hand out the food and drinks to each other.
One of the female visitors said to me, ‘You must be frozen, and what are you doing to be out here on such a dreadful day?’
She then insisted that I have a hotdog and cup of hot coffee before introducing herself:
‘My name is Kirsten Eckermann and I have come to England for one week with my husband and sister to visit her husband’s grave, he had served with the Luftwaffe and was killed over England in 1943.’
Naturally the subject of the war became unavoidable. The conversation soon drifted into a period of time that many elderly Germans are still either desperately trying come to terms with or to forget.
I asked Kirsten about her home life and schooling. How had the war affected her and her family, and what it had been like in general to be raised in Hitler’s Third Reich? I was very surprised by many of the things she had told me, even more so by the fact that young girls and women also had to join the Hitler Youth. They had no choice, and many had been intimidated into joining.
I had not really had any previous understanding or knowledge of the role of female youth in Nazi Germany. I had previously known little about the two main female Hitler Youth organizations: the Jung Madel (young maidens) for ten to fourteen-year-old girls, and its senior equivalent, the Bund Deutscher Madel (League of German Maidens/BDM) for fourteen-to-eighteen-year-old girls. I did not possess any real understanding of the many unique problems faced by the female youth of Germany or the expectations placed upon their young shoulders by the sometimes contradictory attitudes of their parents and that of the Nazi education system. This frequently led to violence in the home, as girls strived to become independent of their parent’s strict control.
Kirsten went on to explain that the initial role of German girls under Nazi rule was strictly a passive one, where girls and females in general were confined to the two main functions of motherhood and housekeeping. With the outbreak of war in 1939, and the later unsustainable losses in both human and material resource, the Nazis were forced to dictate changes in policy with regard to the role of its female youth. Kirsten explained that from late 1943 up until the total collapse and surrender of the Third Reich, girls were incorporated into the military. Here they were given detailed instructions on how to use rifles, machine guns, make booby traps, and use anti-tank weaponry. It was all in what amounted to a vain attempt to prevent what was an inevitable Allied victory over Nazi Germany.
It is difficult for many to comprehend that young girls often fought side by side with Wehrmacht soldiers old enough to be their fathers, or formed into some quite effective fighting groups of their own, which in turn would inflict casualties upon the invading Allied forces. Female gue
rrilla units had been specially formed, seeing combat in and around the Warsaw area against the Red Army in 1944.
It soon became clear to me that the kind of information being exchanged here was that of a highly important nature, and should be documented. I then asked Kirsten if she would be interested in helping me with a view to perhaps producing a book. She agreed to help me as much as she could. We exchanged addresses and shook hands, and Kirsten agreed to talk to some of her friends back in Germany who might also be able to help with information for the proposed book. Subsequently, the work of producing a feasible manuscript was started, along with masses of interviews, via telephone, the Internet and by letter. I also started my search through various archives both here in the UK and in Europe.
Hitler’s Girls encapsulates the kind of material that was only made accessible and possible by perseverance, familiarity and friendship with the women concerned, all of whom having chosen to stay silent for all these years. Many have very genuine reasons for keeping quiet. It was only through my work with the German War Graves Commission at Kassel that these women were convinced that I should be the one to tell their stories, memories and anecdotes for the first time. Many of the women gave me the freedom of their old diaries and journals. The translations provided unique and historically valuable information. As some of the contributors had actually met the likes of Adolf Hitler, Goering and Himmler, their journals have yielded new and previously unpublished material concerning these high-ranking figures of the Third Reich.
It is not a pretty picture. Some of the contributors to this work suffered the ordeal of rape and seeing their friends brutally murdered at the hands of Russian soldiers. Some of the work contained within this book, therefore, may disturb and horrify the reader.
I hope, however, that this book represents in no small way the voice of a generation of German women and girls that must be heard. Many are now well into their twilight years, and with the passing of each year, another one passes away. Soon they will all be gone forever, taking their stories with them. It is therefore my ardent wish that this publication, aided by its straightforward approach to the reader – whatever his or her interests – will be easily understood and assimilated.
What I personally have learned from 1997, when I first began working on the project, has certainly enlightened me to the extent where I had to change many of my own personal perceptions on what I had believed life would have been like for young girls and women under Hitler and his twelve-year Reich. Many were likened to doves thrown amongst eagles.
Chapter One
The Third Reich is Born
After what can only be described as an extraordinary series of social and political events, including the death of German president Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Adolf Hitler became Führer, or leader, of Germany and the Third Reich was conceived. Hitler acted quickly to ensure he seized total power in Germany. He appointed loyal Nazis to various positions within the new government and replaced all labour unions with the Nazi-controlled German Labour Front, or Deutsche Arbeitsfront. In addition to these measures, Hitler outlawed all other political organizations.
The National Socialist monster it had, perhaps inadvertently, helped to create was rapidly swallowing Germany. Very soon, the press, economy and all activities of a cultural nature were placed under Nazi authority. It soon became very clear to many that one’s livelihood would depend on one’s political loyalty. This applied particularly to the wealthy.
There were thousands who opposed the Nazi regime and the way that it had seized power. Many of these anti-Nazis were rounded up and transported to concentration camps. No secret was made of the fate of those who opposed the Nazis – the existence of the concentration camps was widely publicised. Between 1933 and 1944, a total of 13,405 death sentences were passed in Nazi Germany, and of these 11,881 were carried out.
Soon, any sign of dissent within German society disappeared within the brutal veil of a massive propaganda campaign that hailed the destruction of democracy in Germany. At the same time, huge specially staged rallies were organised, giving the casual observer the impression that everyone supported Hitler. There were of course a great many who did support Hitler. Most of his support came from the working and middle classes, as it were they in particular who had suffered the most after Germany’s defeat in the First World War, particularly as a result of the implementation of the hated Treaty of Versailles.
Hitler had taken care to ensure that he gained the support of these social and economic classes during his rise to prominence. By 1933, unemployment had reached an all-time low of thirty-five per cent. That said, things improved only very marginally for the working and middle classes, many of whom could still not afford to feed their families. The re-armament of Germany, as ordered by Hitler, far from improving things actually proved detrimental to the economic situation.
By the mid-19th century, a dense mass of tenements had been erected to the northeast and south of the central ‘Mitte’ district of the city of Berlin. Known as the ‘Mietskasernen’ (rent barracks), these buildings were the homes of the working-class families who worked in the nearby industrial plants and factories. Aristocrats and middle-class families lived in the peripheral communities of Dahlem, Grunewald and Kopenick. The Mietskasernen was a typical industrial area, crammed with terraced houses and where everything appeared to be dark and forbidding. In fact, the Mitte district of Berlin was much like London’s East End, its populace looking and going about their lives in much the same way.
It was in this Mitte district that Anna Dann was born on 14 January 1929 into a working class family, consisting of her mother Hanna, father Erich, and two older brothers Franz and Josef. Though Anna did not join the Jung Madel until 1939, by which time both school and Jung Madel activities were concerned primarily with the issues of war, she explains:
I was only four years old when Hitler came to power and I can remember certain things such as my father Erich coming home from the factory which he was employed at. His face and hands were almost permanently stained black from smoke and oil and whatever else he had to work in. His health suffered greatly as a result of his work and I remember how he coughed and wheezed to the point where he almost vomited. I remember my mother and father talking about Hitler and I wondered whom this Hitler was, but had no understanding of what he was or what he was doing at that time, as few young children ever have any political understanding. To me Hitler was a kind of cartoon character back then.
From looking back at those early years I cannot say that our basic living conditions improved that rapidly under the Nazis as our home was small, often dirty and frequented by rats and mice (a legacy of the nearby factories) and with very few of the amenities of a modern house in Berlin where the ‘Mitte’ district borough still forms the heart of the newly unified city, along with five other central borough areas.
I know that my father was impressed with Hitler’s vision and of what he might offer by the way of prosperity. Everyone wanted to have a better standard of living and my father joined his friends by going to listen to Hitler. It was a bitterly hard existence and we were often hungry and in the winter we were cold.
My mother Hanna did her best to care for us to ensure we were as clean as was possible and most of our clothing was never thrown away as it was always repaired and worn again. At that time there was no financial help that families like ours could fall back on and it was the job of the father to provide for his family, while the mother cared for the children. In fact, there were times when I did not even have shoes or socks to wear on my feet. It was only as I grew older that I became aware of my surroundings and of course the Nazis and what their plans were for Germany and its peoples.
My father was patriotic and I can remember him reading a Nazi Party publication. I do not remember so much the text but the cover. It portrayed a group of German workers with their fists raised towards the sky and they looked like my father and I would say, ‘Father, this is you.’ The cover caught my eye
because it was so colourful and powerful in a visual sense. I suppose that looking back it was meant to provoke aggressive patriotism. It is so strange to think that I myself would later meet, though very briefly, and shake hands with this man Adolf Hitler as I too became a part of the machine.’
By the summer of 1933, Hitler was in complete control of Germany. Having made sure that existing social, economic and professional organizations had been completely absorbed into the Nazi Party, Hitler appointed party members to various key positions of authority to ensure loyalty as well as to keep an eye on the conduct of the ordinary individuals within. Even the leaders of the Protestant and Catholic churches pledged their support for the Nazis, unaware that they were in a sense supporting what was to become a slave state.
Hitler and the Nazis kept its promises to the working classes as all manner of building projects were started in an effort to defeat the scourge of unemployment. One of Hitler’s successes was the creation of the German autobahns. These roads were not really created out of any particular automotive necessity, though they were strategically vital once the Nazi war machine began to roll, but it gave the working-class man, who at best could only expect to be able to perform menial tasks, a job and a wage. He could gain back his self-respect, and feed his family. Such initiatives achieved great success, and by 1938, unemployment in Germany had fallen to less than five per cent. This was in every respect a monumental achievement and went some way to convincing the sceptics that Hitler’s policies could indeed create radical social change.