by Heath, Tim
Stronger girls of both the Jung Madel and BDM who were competent in handling a rifle, were taken to firing ranges where they learned basic musketry skills. Using blank ammunition at first, they were trained how to load, fire and maintain the weapon, as well as how to clear any stoppages. The weapons used were usually standard German infantry rifle, the 7.92mm-calibre Mauser Gewehr 41. Girls who became particularly good shots were offered the chance to become Heckenschütze, or snipers.
Helga Bassler, familiar with the use of firearms, was recruited to become an Engel Heckenschütze, or angel sniper. The term Engel Heckenschütze was used by some of the Wehrmacht soldiers to describe some of these pretty maidens with rifles. The soldiers would say that they looked like angel snipers, hence the sobriquet.
Helga recalls:
I was a good shot with a rifle, mainly for the reason that I often accompanied my father on many of his hunting trips with his friends in the Bavarian Black Forest before the outbreak of war. My father and his friends used old army rifles to shoot wild boar in the forest.
The first time I ever had a go with my father’s rifle I could not hold it properly, and he had to steady the end of the barrel for me. Although my aim was not brilliant, I fired and I hit the boar within the rifles sight. My father was as amazed as I was when the animal fell dead to the ground with a single shot to the chest. In fact he actually excitedly cried out, ‘Schiesse!’ [shit!] with astonishment.
As I grew older and stronger, I learned to use the gun more independently, and before the war ended the yearly hunting trips into the Black Forest, I had claimed a few more animals. I knew very well that humans were as easy to kill as wild boar, and that if I had to, I would defend my family and my country against those who wished us any harm.
A rifle is not a difficult thing for anyone to learn to use. It is like learning to use a knife and fork or maybe play a piano; with time and patience, you improve. My little proportion of natural ability caught the attention of the local Volkssturm Gruppenfüherin. I was guilty of showing off to them a little the skills I had learned in the past and was asked if I wanted to become a Heckenschütze. They told me that all I would have to do in the event of any military threat from our enemies was find cover and shoot at any enemy soldier who presented himself. The Gruppenfüherin explained, ‘We know that you have killed wilde sau [wild boar], your father has bragged of his daughter’s prowess with a rifle by saying that his daughter can shoot straighter and better than our soldiers.’
A couple of days later, I joined some eight other Hitler Youth boys and girls at one of the rifle firing ranges, a large bank of sand with a concrete wall behind it. We were told to form a line and two men with Volkssturm armbands came down the line, handing each of us a rifle that we then had to place down on the ground in front of us. Another man came down the line and placed some cartridges beside the rifles. The instruction was quite basic and we were firstly told how to make sure our aim remained true by adjusting the sights. To avoid any confusion as to whose shots belonged to whom we had to do our firing exercise one at a time, which meant we had to wait around for our turn and it became quite boring.
Our targets were made of board, and out of the eight of us, three girls and five boys, only four of us attained a required score. These were three Hitler Youth boys and myself. It was noted that my shooting was better than the boys. The boys did not like it very much and they glared across at me rather contemptuously.
After that, we who could shoot well were given regular training, and as kids, we found it exciting. We were taught not to stay in any one place for too long, but to move around wherever possible so as to confuse the enemy. At the time I never thought of our enemies as possibly being men with wives and children and maybe daughters of their own like me, they were like ghosts, without faces. I never thought that they would really come, and that I might have to shoot them. We were warned that we must not feel sorry or hesitant if the time came to shoot to kill real soldiers, as they would do exactly the same to us or possibly worse.
Propaganda warned us of what might happen if the enemy does come to our cities, we were particularly afraid of the Russians; our fears were justified as reports suggested that the Russians were now advancing closer. The Russian hordes had good reason to want to hate and destroy Germans, for everything they had suffered because of the war on the Eastern Front. There were few illusions by this time.
Instruction on how to use the ubiquitous Panzerfaust anti-tank rocket launcher was also given to the girls. This was one of the most prolific of all weapons given to those civilians of both the Volkssturm and Werewolf Project defending German cities. It was light and easy to use, but its use required a great deal of bravery and self-discipline, as in some cases one had to get to within thirty metres of the target, usually a tank, before it could be used with any certainty of success. This meant that the user would be well within the range of the tank’s defensive armament. The girls given the task of tank-killers would have to operate amongst the rubble, utilizing it as cover while waiting for tanks to either drive by or be decoyed towards them. The idea was that they would then kneel down right in the path of the tank, and fire at almost point-blank range at the frontal armour before running back into cover. From the female perspective, this was a task that required exceptional courage. Some of the girls were, however, to prove themselves more daring than battle-hardened soldiers, as Dora Brunninghausen explains:
The Panzerfaust was the easiest weapon of all, and I decided that this was the weapon of my choice. I soon began to regret that decision, as I was taken with some other girls to a field and given a wooden replica Panzerfaust. We were given instruction individually and I was to go first. A Panzer tank faced me at the end of the field, and I saw several men getting into it and start it up, and I was shown what to do. I was horrified to discover that the tank would drive directly towards me, I had to lie down in a shallow trench in the field, and at the designated point, I would pretend to fire off the Panzerfaust and shout out ‘BANG!’ to let the instructors know that I had discharged my weapon. Well, I did that and as I shouted ‘BANG!’ the instructor shouted back even louder, ‘Now lie perfectly still and don’t move.’
I retorted back that ‘the tank was going to drive over me.’
He then yelled, ‘If you lie still you will not be harmed, now do as I tell you.’
I lay on the ground and admit that I began to whimper and just froze as that thing actually drove right over me. I vividly remember the tracks and wheels and the horrible grinding and screeching noises as it passed over me. As soon as it passed over me, I got up and quickly sprinted to the side of the field.
The instructor then said to me, ‘You see if you lie down in a shallow dip in the ground and parallel to the centre point of the vehicle, and away from the wheels, you cannot be harmed.’
I asked visibly shaking, ‘What was the point of doing that if the tank had been hit by the Panzerfaust?’
The instructor said, ‘Well, Fraulein Brunninghausen, that had nothing to do with the exercise, it was a test of your faith in me and yourself to do as was desired.’
Some of the girls were laughing at me saying that I was as white as a ghost and my legs were quivering. They soon fell silent when the instructor called out ‘NEXT!’
There were three main types of Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon. These were classified 30, 60 and 100 respectively. The numbers indicated the effective range of the particular weapon in metres. For example, the Panzerfaust 100 had an effective range of 100m. The hollow-charge warhead could penetrate 200mm-thick armour, which meant that this one, relatively small and lightweight weapon, was a match for any tank in the Allied inventory, and would wreak havoc amongst Allied and Russian tank crews alike in the coming battles, often fought at close quarters.
In order to get the girls used to seeing dead bodies, they were often taken in groups to the makeshift morgues around the city. There they were shown the bodies of the victims killed during the bombing.
&n
bsp; Heidi Koch attended one of these gruesome tours:
Our whole group of forty girls was taken to one of the church halls, which the authorities had taken over as a temporary morgue. The bodies were down in the basement and were covered with blankets. Each body had been labelled so as you could see the person’s name and age details. The blankets were then pulled off by one of the orderlies so as we could see them. It was a horrible thing to see, the faces of babies with their eyes wide open, children, old men and women. Some of the bodies had no heads, arms or legs, and some just looked like heaps of meat. Some of the girls began to be violently sick, and they coughed and vomited onto the floor, but we were told to look and to remember what we had seen as it was the very reason why we might have to someday fight the barbarous hordes, as our leader put it. I shut my eyes and swallowed hard desperately fighting to stop the contents of my own stomach from hurtling up my throat. We were then led back up the stairway out of the morgue. On the way up the stairs, two women passed us with buckets and mops, cursing to themselves about having to clean up yet more vomit. Clearly, we had not been the only young visitors to that morgue. Although many of us had seen some dead bodies being pulled from bombed houses, nothing could have been as graphic as what we had seen in that morgue. I would often wake in the middle of the night, with sweat pouring off me and crying hysterically. Sometimes Mother and Father would have to run into my room as I began to thrash about in my sleep, so violently that I knocked things over and might wake up the others.
There were far worse horrors to come than those witnessed in that morgue.
Hitler had given his personal approval for the sacrifice of female youth. He was of the opinion that both young males and females would act as a kind of tactical stopgap against the Allied and Russian forces, which would not necessarily expect children to attack them. A former Wehrmacht leutnant, Albert Freist, recalls the horror of his senior commander when hearing news of the planned Werewolf Project:
Our commanding officer had held numerous meetings with those officers closest to Hitler, in other words his subordinates. Our commanding officer, when hearing of the Werewolf Project, shook his head in disbelief. He had much reservation about bringing young Hitler Youth boys and girls into any defensive plan, on the grounds that young females in particular, once brought into any situation of conflict, would immediately feel fear and lose all nerve and sense required to mount any effective attack. He wrote a short letter stating that perhaps the older females and BDM girls would best be used to assist the wounded in a medical capacity instead. He did not agree at all with the proposal of any female militarization.
His note was forwarded but I do not believe that it received any reply in return. I know there was a phone call from Bormann regarding this issue, but I have no idea what Bormann had said. The Führer’s plan was, though, reaffirmed later on and his demands were unchanged. The commanding officer was very worried indeed as he confided in me a little while later that he had two teenage daughters in Berlin.
As officers agreed and disagreed with the moral principles regarding the militarization of Germany’s females, the Hitler Youth continued to encourage and instruct its members in the use of deadly force.
Sophia Kortge:
The first weapon I ever held was an army rifle. This I found to be much too heavy and clumsy for me to use, I was hopeless with it, although that did not excuse me. The rifle was taken off me and I was then handed a pistol, and I found that much easier to hold. I was told to aim it and pull the trigger, as the weapon had no bullets in. I could not hold the weapon in one hand so had to use both hands. I aimed the pistol at a poster on the wall and pulled the trigger, the pistol made a loud click. I was shown how to use this weapon by a newly appointed BDM group leader who we soon nicknamed ‘The Beast’. She was a big and sort of imposing young woman, who rarely ever smiled and was totally committed to Nazism in its every possible form. She took the pistol apart and showed me how the weapon was put back together.
She then said to me, ‘Now you must try this,’ and she passed me the pistol.
I had forgotten almost straight away what to do and she began to lose her temper with me by raising her voice and saying, ‘You are not concentrating. Now I will show you again and you will do what I have shown you.’
Her face seemed to twist when she became angry and that is why she got the nickname ‘The Beast’. I watched again how she took the pistol apart, visualizing it in my mind, and then reassembling it again. Afterwards she then handed me the pistol again and nodded to me, as if to say, ‘Well, go on then’.
This time, I managed to get everything more or less correct, though it took me some time. The Beast then explained that I must practice this until I can do it much quicker. At that time, we were not allowed to take weapons home with us, as these were only to be distributed upon the orders from the Volkssturm and Werewolf authorities of our block area. The Volkssturm and Werewolves could only be issued with weapons when the Gruppenführers of the block in question were instructed to mobilize by Hitler.
All weapons were held at pre-arranged collection points around the city. The idea was that, in the event of an emergency, the citizens would go to the designated collection points, where they would be then issued with a weapon, before being transported to where they would be needed to engage the enemy. We were, however, encouraged to take home manuals that explained how the weapons worked and how to look after them, including taking them apart to clean and putting them back together.
We also learned how to use grenades and the most famous weapon, the Panzerfaust. At that time, there were probably more girls acquainted with the use of this weapon than men were. My father had an old rifle that he kept in the downstairs cupboard of our house. As school was now often being taught down in the air-raid shelters because of the disruption, I often came home early, and it was during that time that I first saw my father sit down and strip the gun, clean it, and then load it with live bullets.
He looked across at me, smiled and said, ‘Well, Sophia if they come we will be ready to defend ourselves.’
Over the next few weeks The Beast taught me how to shoot the pistol. She was a very good shot and learned her art from air-rifle shooting in the past. The pistol did not have a very long range and you could only shoot over a short distance, where accuracy was not that important. The Beast wanted the shots to hit the head or chest area of the targets that were in the shape of soldiers. It took a little while, but after a time I could do this and The Beast would be pleased. She also told me, ‘When you fire into the enemy, you must fire two or three shots in quick succession, so as to be sure of killing him. A wounded soldier might shoot you in the back as you walk away from him.’
She also delighted in telling me that if you hit the enemy in his chest, the bullets may puncture his lungs and he will then drown on his own blood. There had been rumour that The Beast had been chosen to instruct girls in these tasks by the NSV [Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, or People’s Welfare Organization], which was the female section of the SS. The female SS were called, or rather nicknamed, the ‘Brown Sisters’, and everything about The Beast pointed to SS involvement, and there was also a rumour that she had come from one of the death camps. The Beast was very good in the respect that she could frighten you into doing anything she wanted you to do. Of course, I later discovered that this woman had been personally selected to train girls in the use of firearms by Gertrud Scholtz-Klink herself.
The girls also had to be taught the rudiments of guerrilla warfare, and had to dig trenches and dug outs as part of their national-militia duties.
Sophia Kortge explains:
We were told to pick up a shovel each and then we were taken to various points such as gardens or sports fields and were shown how to dig what they called a slit trench. It was quite hard and monotonous work and we broke up the boredom by messing around. I remember pulling an earthworm out of the soil of my trench and, after dangling it in the air for a few seconds, I tossed it to o
ne of the other girls who then shrieked and jumped out of the way, flailing her arms in the air in disgust, as she did not like worms. We laughed amongst ourselves as the worm was thrown back in our direction, and a full-scale worm fight broke out, and there were handfuls of dirt flying in all directions as more girls joined in.
Another girl quickly picked up the worm and held it to the front of her work trousers and shouted out, ‘Look, a penis!’
By now we had dropped our shovels down and were in fits of laughter, the tears streaming down our faces. Then the Volkssturm man in charge of us all came back and, upon hearing the laughter, ran across to us and began to shout at and curse us for messing about.
He said, ‘What the hell do you think you are playing at? You are a disgrace, this is not some kind of a big joke, fraulein, now stop messing around and get on with your work before I report you to your superiors.’
He glared at us with his angry red face and walked away tut, tutting to himself. We started shovelling again but could not help looking at each other and giggling. I suppose we were ignorant to how serious all this was, and couldn’t really imagine that our city would really be invaded. There were many lighthearted occasions like that though, and it was not all doom. Later on, we were not smiling as we had big blisters on our hands which became very sore, as they were too soft for that kind of work!
The girls also had to learn guerrilla-warfare techniques such as firing their weapons on the move from buildings or from any other available cover, along with concealment and escape and evasion tactics. To many Hitler Youth boys, this was something that had become second nature almost from their first day in the Hitler Youth.
For girls, it was completely alien as they had only really learned how to be mothers, proficient first-aiders and housekeepers. If they were to fight, it was important that they learn as much as possible and very quickly if they were to prove successful and survive the coming battle. The very lifeblood of both the Volkssturm and the Werewolf Project would lie in the individual’s will to fight and survive.