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Berlin Boy, WW2 Era

ZenSar said:
Nowhere does it say that the Hitler Youth were involved in Lebensborn, that would have been an SS thing. Not only that, but people weren't made to breed like rats or something, they were encouraged to have families and lots of children and to be faithful. However, like just like anywhere there are always births outside of marriage and Lebensborn supported single mothers, unlike some countries in the world today. It also facilitated adoptions, be them inside of Germany or with "aryan" looking orphans from other Nordic countries. It's a myth that Lebensborn was some breeding program like a brothel where people just went to have sex with anonymous people. Check your facts next time before posting them because it is against the forum rules to post inaccurate information.
 
The Hitler Youth was organized into corps under adult leaders, and the general membership comprised boys aged fourteen to eighteen. The organization was also seen as an important stepping stone to future membership of the elite Schutzstaffel (SS). Members of the Hitler Youth were particularly proud to be bestowed with the single Sig Rune (victory symbol) by the SS.[citation needed] The SS utilized two Sig Runes as their mark, and this gesture served to symbolically link the two groups.[citation needed]


The Hitler Youth was organized into local cells on a community level. Such cells had weekly meetings at which various Nazi doctrines were taught by adult leaders. Regional leaders typically organized rallies and field exercises in which several dozen Hitler Youth cells would participate. The largest gathering usually took place annually, at Nuremberg, where members from all over Germany would converge for the annual Nazi Party rally.


The Hitler Youth maintained training academies comparable to preparatory schools, which were designed to nurture future Nazi Party leaders, and only the most devoted members could expect to attend.[citation needed]


The Hitler Youth also maintained several corps designed to develop future officers for the Wehrmacht (Armed forces). The corps offered specialist pre-training for each of the specific arms for which the member was ultimately destined. The Marine Hitler Youth, for example, was the largest such corps and served as a water rescue auxiliary to the Kriegsmarine.[citation needed]


Another branch of the Hitler Youth was the Deutsche Arbeiter Jugend – HJ (German Worker Youth – HY). This organization within the Hitler Youth was a training ground for future labor leaders and technicians. Its symbol was a rising sun with a swastika.


The Hitler Youth regularly issued the Wille und Macht (Will and Power) monthly magazine. This publication was also its official organ and its editor was Baldur von Schirach.[9] Other publications included Die Kameradschaft (Comradeship), which had a girl's version for the BDM called Mädelschaft, and a yearbook called Jungen eure Welt (Youth your World).[10]


Another program entitled Landjahr Lager (Country Service Camp) was designed to teach specifically chosen girls of the BDM high moral character standards within a rural educational setting.


As I said above put into selective units, in other words the SS, which then you may be placed into the Lesbensborn.
 
Saying that the Hitler Youth were being groomed for military service, with one of the organizations being the SS, does not equate the Hitler Youth as being the same as the SS.


Therefore your original statement that the Hitler Youth were part of a breeding program is still false.


Furthermore, not even all SS members were part of Lebensborn. The height of the Allgemeine-SS had 200,000 members. According to your wikipedia article above, only 3,500 SS leaders participated.


You can keep telling me about the Hitler Youth all you want but that won't change the fact that the Hitler Youth are not the SS and that most SS members did not even participate in Lebensborn.
 
Demi, I hate to pull your thread off-topic from you again but I must step in to make some clarifications.


Yes, that the Hitler Youth organization functioned in part as a pre-military group is very much well known, and well cited. This is because it is fact, Baldur von Schirach as well as Wilhelm Keitel testified to this at Nuremberg. It is part of OKW record that the Hitler Youth did indeed have formal agreement with the Wehrmacht to this effect and there are clear record in both writing and participant memory of pre-military exercises. What you mention about the Hitler Youth as a 'breeding program' and leading into the Lebensborn project is what I'm asking about here.


On your wiki link to the Lebensborn article it clearly states that the Lebensborn project as a coercive breeding program is a falsity attributed to post-war sensationalism, it has an entire sub-article there titled "Post War Sensationalism" and in fact traces the idea to some fiction movie. See what I'm asking here? Nowhere in that article is the Hitler Youth mentioned.


Yes, the Hitler Youth was drawn upon for a fighting force, in fact for the Waffen SS as you did mention, in '43. This is the 12th SS Hitlerjugend division and from this came some famous names as well as infamous deeds. The HJ boys conscripted for it were really not officers, although they were fanatical fighters, and listed in history it mentions selection for the 12th SS is age, as the oldest youngsters were chosen, nothing about appearance. Perhaps athleticism and personality were factors for selection and promotion as they are in military forces and elsewhere today, but based on 'Nazi aesthetic' alone, not so much. But nowhere there does it mention sheer appearance as a factor. The officers and leaders for the 12th SS were chosen by their experience and by their competence, as they were elsewhere and are today.


The German army needed soldiers, and badly by those later years. This is well-known. German mothers were encouraged to have children, this is also well known and very researchable (check out the Mother's Cross), however searching for any historical document regarding Lebensborn as a coercive breeding program or the HJ group involvement in Lebensborn really doesn't turn anything up, even in the link you posted as a source.


As I said before, it's good to talk history and find verifications and look for them when one has a feeling or a memory that might indicate something that is verifiable. Having a memory about something or dreaming on it and then finding it in a history book is one thing, and it's pretty awesome. But it's very important that when turning to history or making reference to history in order to lead someone to a possible verification, to be able to prove that history really did happen. This really might sound like splitting hairs, but something that says [citation needed] actually does need a citation. It needs an actual historical source. A document, an order, even something in a memoir or public statement.


To make this personal, I like history a lot, and when I bring it up to teach someone or tell someone about something historical online, I find myself googling what I think I'll say in order to make sure the details are right. I don't want to mislead someone. It's not hard to do and helps ensure I don't confuse someone or invalidate their memory, on a forum like this.


Clearly you've an interest in the subject and I'd encourage pursuing that, but you will make it easier on yourself and others to do so in a more orderly and factual fashion. While there is a lot lost to memory, WWII and Nazi Germany are largely well-documented. Please stick to these sorts of things if you're going to advise others on the subject. It's not worth posting things like that if they can be picked apart as falsities. A 'Nazisploitation' film is not a good source. It's all right if you didn't know it, but that's why I brought it up.


Happy hunting,


Spatz
 
Demi said:
This is very possible, ZenSar, I have glimpses of receiving training, but it's in a prison and not at a lake resort. I was 18 in 1940.
Maybe to get back on track, Demi can tell us more about this? It sounds interesting?
 
What I said isn't false, the program did exist, the Hitler youth was commonly promoted to the SS. SS members of certain looks were asked to have kids. That is the big point of me saying "Selective" in other words being select by your looks and then asked to try to have more kids. The program existed in the 1930s, what it said at the bottom was the idea that it was a baby factory, which I never stated it was. Anyway I am done trying to explain this I have been reading and watching shows since I was 12 about WW2 and I am pretty sure I have a strong understanding of the events that happened. I would say let Demi take a look at the buildings involved in it, since he stated it was more like a prison then anything else.


Below is an article on it.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/world/europe/07nazi.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0
 
I understand what you are saying. I too have been researching this subject since age 12. Certainly Aryan looks were prized in society but all Germans, regardless of traits, were encouraged to have as many kids as possible. They wanted people to have upwards of 12 kids.


All I am saying is that the Hitler Youth was not a breeding program. There were no special platoons for blonde HJ teens versus the brown-haired HJ teens. Everyone was judged based not only on physical appearance but on athletic ability, body traits, and intelligence. I'm not saying that most of your information is false, only that HJ was not a breeding program.


No one is disputing the existence of Lebensborn, but I am disputing that you are claiming the HJ was a part of it.
 
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Well not the Hitler youth directly, I must of misworded it. What I meant was the Hitler youth moved up to the SS and so forth. Now, he did say he was 18 in 1940 so I would imagine he was moved to the SS if selected and so on and so forth.


As for my interest in the war, I did have one in the past, but now after reading and such about it for years I am generally bored with the subject. The stereotypes of the shows and books, as well as their that they almost all were the same thing got boring after while. While on the other hand with WW1 the lack of information out there about it besides a few books makes in much more interesting. The same can be said with other turn of the century wars such as the Spanish American war, the Russia-Japan War, the Bosian Wars, etc. Mostly, because all these wars showed the transformation of warfare from the historic constant to modern warfare.
 
ZenSar said:
What I said isn't false, the program did exist, the Hitler youth was commonly promoted to the SS.... [/url]
Hi Zensar,


I think you are misunderstanding the issue. The issue is that your point is off-topic and what is called a 'thread jack'. If you want to write something about all this, you can start your own thread about it (if it's relevant to reincarnation). All this is no doubt of some interest to some people, but it's nothing to do with Demi's story. Demi is the one who can say what happened and when. Your enthusiam is obvious and historical background details can be interesting and sometimes helpful, but let's not get too far away from what Demi is trying to tell us about her experience? OK?


T.
 
As for my own experiences do not remember a whole lot of detail about HJ except there was a lot of competition, even fights among the boys, and some street parades, etc. no doubt it was a pre-military training, but from what I know, not just aiming for one branch. From 1936 onwards, it became mandatory for all boys from age 14, and that was the year my past life turned 14.


Lebensborn was indeed a organization for single mothers and fathers from the SS outside of marriage, I do not have any personal insight into this. Not HJ though.


The one experience I have from a prison-like setting (any verification of what/where it could be is of course appreciated).


I am about 18 years old and in a class with other young cadets like me, we are wearing dark uniforms but I see no details on them. It is sort of a prison building and we are in the basement, learning about interrogations. The instructor teaches us psychological interrogatation techniques (mostly non violent but with occasional use of sensory inputs, maybe some experimental intelligence gathering?) such as to stare at a point behind the head of the interrogated as we talk to them. We are also having a demonstration of 3 different techiques which seemingly work for different kinds of people. The concept is to get the person into a state of surprise where a certain disorientation happens that makes the person confused for a moment and surpasses his defences. One of the techniques is with the use of cold water before interrogating the prisoner. As we are watching them demonstrate it, one of my fellow trainees, a tall blonde young man with glasses, slips out on the hallway. I follow him and ask him why did he leave. He tells me he was feeling sick from watching it, and he asks if I believe it is ethically correct. I offer to go and ask the instructor this question. After class we approach him, my fellow student following sheepishly behind me. The instructor is a man in a white lab coat. Looking in his papers he assures us coldly that "everything is done according to the instructions, therefore there is nothing to worry about.. !"


Also in the same building I am sometimes assigned to bring food to a prisoner in a cell. It is a bowl of something which looks like oatmeal(?). There is a specific time to deliver it, and when I do, I have to sign on a clipboard the exact time, my number (some 3 digit number, we don´t use our names) and what I delivered.
 
Hm, well 1940 is pretty early on and if you were 18, you'd probably have graduated from the HJ program at that time. So perhaps the scene you're seeing is something from another program entirely.


Since you're interested in verification, I'll say I really have no idea as to what I'd suggest you go looking for, but do you have any hunches?


Things like that, prison settings and interrogation training might be a little hard to find documentation for and certainly pictures of, especially if you don't remember any program/division names or exact locations or names. But hunches are a great way to start with what you've got there, and could send you in the right direction. Feel free to update on it if you feel like doing so, of course, you never know who could chime in and help you find something :o
 
Hi (don't mistake with 'heil'!), my 'countryman'. As I think, you had to be in Hitlerjugend. The one organisation from Widerstand, which wasn't in Hitlerjugend/Bund Deutscher Maedel in the age between fourteen and seventeen was Edelweisspiraten. But they left education - that was there quirement. Reichsfuehrer was really frustrated, when he heard about them.


Maybe you could know me, but I don't remember anything before 1943, when hope has been diminshing after loses at the Eastern Front.
 
This is definitely another program, some kind of police academy training... and yes this kind of thing is hard to verify because most of it would not go public, all behind closed doors. I cannot tell the duration of being in that place. What seems to be next is being at a camp, working in the office there. It is on second floor of the administration building, I can see the roll call square and a road to the left, and all of the roofs of the barracks. The floor in our office is cracking a lot, there are 2 desks, one with a typewriter where my assistant is writing up the reports that I dictate to him from my notebook (which I use for taking notes when I go out on inspections in the morning.) I thing I am around 20 there.


The prisoner population is criminal convicts, maybe some others(?), and at some point the place expands with a new female section. I have a feeling they are from Eastern Europe, at least some of them. There are workshops / production facilities making small items, from wood, cloth, among others; not a big industry or factory.


My jobs are as follows at different times there: supervising storage; quality control of production; writing reports about such things as how much was produced and how many raw materials were used, what is the quality, etc. also being on parole board; parole meetings; writing release documents.


Some other details from there:


-the bosses come every once in a while to review reports, they seem to be out other places and only come by every few days.


-Staff is wearing grey uniforms and black boots.


-Barracks seems to be heated by a central oven that runs through it.


-I am secretly in love with one of the female prisoners, but could not marry her even if she was free, because of some government laws forbidding the mingling of races.


In the office there is a file cabinet with prisoner id-cards including b/w mugshots of them, and I often look at hers!


-There is a bigger office next door to ours, where a lot of clerks work, women also.


-Size of camp: it's not too big, but hard to say exactly, also it changes.


-Camp conditions: seems to be not so harsh as a concentration camp. There is often some trouble with prisoners stealing, either from each other or from the workshops. I know isolation cells are used, and they are really small, and they sit there for a few days for example if they´ve stolen something. There is a pole outside and if someone has been making a fight then they might be tied to it overnight as punishment.


Also I remember at some point I manage to bring some paint powder and pink pigment dye to the women's section for them to paint walls inside. I thought this being crazy: pink paint in a camp..., but lately saw a pink wall with patterns made with the undiluted pink pigment in one of the prisoner huts at KZ Stutthof. For sure this place is not Stutthof, lot of things are different, it just seems the idea of paint is not impossible..!
 
Thanks for sharing what you remember Demi. Each little detail you record will help you in verifying that life. It can be tough especially if you were part of a program in which records do not exist anymore and it was kept very secret. This did happen.
 
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