Hitler Youth: Fortunate to be Americans!

Thanks so much, Clint! I’m printing out your most interesting offered link to read this evening. I’m sure glad I stumbled upon this splendidly informative forum. I wish I were retired and could devote hours a day to reading all the information here offered by most well-informed contributors such as yourself.

Not only didn’t I know that there were so many American Jewish people in Germany during this tragic period, I’m flabbergasted. Why in the name of God would they have remained once Hitler came to power or had gone there afterwards? In Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War novels, a Jewish-American professor and author is stranded in Fascist Italy due to a paperwork SNAFU regarding his visa. I’m most disappointed if our government hadn’t done more to help stranded American Jews as you state.

Regarding your conjectures concerning my question, this seems reasonable to me. Thank you again.

Best,

Dave

 

I agree that for the most part Mr. Shirer allowed the facts to speak for themselves. (No one could ever accuse him of not documenting his sources! The book has a ponderous amount of footnotes.) He did at times allow his personal views to creep into the narrative. For example, on more than one occasion he describes someone meeting with top Nazis as if he: “Must have felt he had fallen in with lunatics.” Apart from jabs such as these, though, I think he had been remarkably objective and presented an extraordinarily thorough history, especially for a journalist as opposed to a professional historian.

By the way, I’m new here. I wanted to know if I could ask you who are the German soldiers in the photograph you have on your profile page. Also (and if you mind me asking you this, then please just ignore the question), are you old enough to have lived through any of the Third Reich period? (I’m 57.)

Thank you.

Best,

Dave.

 

Hi Dave,

to my luck i be to young for the Third Reich (i´m 43). The guys in the pics are my Grandpa ( in the middle) and his friends. No worries about asking me to any topic

 

Thank you, Ulrich.

Have you posted anywhere what your grandfather did during the war? What unit he was in? He survived (I pray)? Your father or mother (whichever was his child) was born before, during or after the war?

Best,

Dave

 

Clint,

I did read your reference last night and found it fascinating. I hadn’t been aware that the United States and Germany made internee exchanges. I had always thought that non-diplomats caught in a country which had declared war on one’s nation were stranded for the duration.

I do know that according to the rules of war, diplomats have a certain amount of time to leave after a declaration of war. However, an enemy alien may not enter a belligerent nation. It was for this reason that British diplomats had been stranded in the Vatican for the duration as they could not first enter Italy (after Mussolini declared war on the U.K) in order to leave. It was fortunate for them that the Vatican hadn’t likewise declared war on Britain or then they would have really been up the creek without the proverbial paddle! (G) Mr. Shirer had had the good fortune to have been expelled from Germany before war with America came as the Nazis hadn’t appreciated his editorial tenor.

The article you referred me to does mention a half German, half American gentleman who apparently had wanted to leave but the Nazis wouldn’t let him. They conscripted him into the army (and he fortunately survived the war). There was no mention of his having faced treason allegations so I guess the mother of the boy in Mr. Shirer’s account would have been likewise all right on that count as you suggest. I doubt she would have been willing to leave her family, especially her sons, no matter what the cost; and it doubtful that the father and boys would have been allowed to leave once the war began even had that been the father’s desire.

Thanks again, Clint. You’ve been most helpful.

Best regards,

Dave.

 

Dave, glad to have been of aid. There was one situation which developed as war was declared, which was sad to the extreme. The US had made arrangements with many Latin American countries to the effect that they would accept and house the Germans who had migrated to their nations pre-war to remove the necessity of those nations building "internment camps" to international specifications. Hence, a great number of Germans who had left Germany either in fear of Hitler or for other reasons were arrested and shipped to the US for holding.

When the citizen exchanges were arranged, a number (I forget off-hand) of German Jews who had left Germany to escape the Nazis were shipped back to Germany in exchange for American citizens. Very unfortunate and short-sighted policy wise, but at that time the stories of Jewish mistreatment told in the papers and to the American State Dept. were looked at with a bit of a jaundiced eye. One of the strikes against the stories being believed was that the negative propaganda during WW1 which accused the "Hun" of atrocities were proven to be false. Could this "story" also be an exaggeration? Many of the politicians at the time thought it might well be.

Second, how could a civilized and cultured nation be involved in such things? We know now in retrospect that the stories weren't only TRUE, in many cases they were understated, and only got worse.

How sad it must have been to emigrate to a safe-haven in South America or other Latin American nations, only to be rounded up and sent first to an American determent camp, and then shipped back to the horror of Nazi Germany. These weren't of course all German-Jews, there were also political opponents of the Nazis, and such.

Hope you can find Alfons Heck's book somewhere, I think it is available on Amazon. It isn't a huge book, but it is his personal account of his life in the HJ and later as a soldier in Hitler's Wehrmacht. It is rather "old", copyright is 1985, but still full of good insight into Hitler's Germany through the eyes of a young man.

 

Hi Dave,

i posted it somewhere but here is it again. He was a member of the Fallschirmjäger, the 1. Fallschirm-Division, Brigade Ramcke, 2. Fallschirm-Division and at the end of the war in some other FJ-units. He had the rank of a Stabsfeldwebel which is similar to your Sergeant-Major. He fought at France, Italy, Sicilly, Russia, Czecheslovakia, Poland, Africa, Netherlands and Crete. He survived the war and was my Dad´s father. My Father was born in 1943.

 

Clint,

Thank you for more illuminating information, by way of understatement. I’m heartsick at what you just related. As far as I know, I don’t have a single Jewish ancestor. One doesn’t have to be Jewish to be repulsed over the revelation that our government actually sought out Jewish and political refuges from the Third Reich—in other countries, no less!—in order to ship them back to the Nazis!

What the hell was wrong with Roosevelt and the state department? It’s indeed sickening to think that the twelve-year-old kid who Mr. Shirer had met in the Berlin park had had more heart and guts than the United States Government! Unbelievable! I just got done telling someone that I have always greatly admired FDR despite being a Republican since age eighteen. Now thanks to your bombshell I’m afraid that admiration has dropped more than a notch in my estimation. He had been the captain of the metaphorical ship, and he must bear responsibility.

As for the book on the Hitler Youth, I just ordered it from Amazon on your recommendation. I look very much forward to its arrival, and I thank you for bringing it to my attention. If anyone else should be interested in it, here is its Amazon link with a look inside option:

Amazon.com: A Child Of Hitler: Germany In The Days When God Wore A Swastika (9780939650446): Alfons Heck: Books

Thanks again, Clint.

Best regards,

Dave

 

Ulrich,

Thanks for the information.

Your grandfather had had an illustrious military career. Although my dad had served in Europe, he had been an engineer assigned to a behind the lines outfit. Aside from a buzz bomb having hit uncomfortably close to him in Belgium, he didn’t see combat.

However, your grandfather reminds me very much of my maternal uncle. Whereas your grandfather had been a paratrooper, he had been in the glider forces. He was one of only three men who started out in his outfit to “make the whole tour”; i.e., only one of three to serve in the outfit throughout the war. He saw much combat but thankfully escaped unscathed. (He did, however, contract malaria (and he too was in the European theater; I think he got it in North Africa) which he suffered from for years afterwards.) He still lives.

Your grandfather participated in the airborne invasion of Crete under General Student? As I’m sure you know, that was the first successful completely airborne invasion. I have read about that campaign, and it was a most interesting one. Had Hitler listened to Admiral Raeder and others and pursued the Mediterranean strategy which they advocated, the war and the world might well have had a very different outcome. I’m glad he didn’t.

Best regards,

Dave

 

I think you misunderstand here. America didn't "seek out" those who had left Germany, but offered to house/deter German Nationals from the Latin American nations who hadn't yet gained status as citizens of those nations to mitigate the possibility of "fifth column" work in those Latin American nation. When their "use" as exchange became evident it was surely more "politically" expedient to send refugee German citizens back to Germany in exchange for American citizens than to not do so. It isn't a clear cut case of "if this then that". And American did offer to house the German-Latin American refugees without cost to the nations which sent them to us.

What would you do in this circumstance? Let them be rounded up and put in a prison in Latin America? Do you understand the reputation those places had even then? Rather than having those people sent to prisons where a "life sentence" could be less than a year, America took them in and placed most of them in ex-CCC camps for holding. The reported numbers vary between 4 and 5,000 Latin Americans of German extraction sent to the USA for holding, and only some were exchanged for American citizens. It wasn't a wholesale shipment back to Nazi Germany.

The records seem to show that while there were slightly over 4,500 ethnic Germans, only 81 Jewish Germans who had fled persecution in Nazi Germany which were brought to the U.S. from Latin America to be detained. Some of them being exchanged for American citizens being held in Nazi Germany when war was declared, and thereafter. I have no idea how many of those 81 German Jews were sent back to Nazi Germany. There were undoubtedly some German-Jews sent back, but it wasn't a wholesale policy.

Their religious status was of "no consequence" to the American rules since our "quota system" for admitting was area/ethinc related, not religious. There were low quota numbers for those from eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, mostly because of odd things, not related to religion.

From the eastern European area, we (American politicians) were still very upset about the Red Scare of the late 1900s, in the Mediterranean and then in the eastern Levant it was the disproportionate existance of trachoma. This eye disease generally causes blindness but it can also lead to death and was prevalent in what were later to become recognized as "Jewish" areas. Couple those "fears" with the appearance of the "Mafia" in organized crime in the twenties, and emigration to the US was basically defined to the existing populace in America at the time, by percentage, by local, by existing citizens.

FDR inherited these laws from the decade of Republican rule of the twenties, he couldn't change them, and when American citizens were being held in Germany he made the best of a bad situation. Not the best choice in retrospect, but one cannot (or shouldn't) judge those decisions of the thirties and early forties with the lens of hindsight.

In the late twenties our immigration "laws" made exceptions for "teachers, scientists, and technical experts". No matter your background if you had a "specialty" you and your family went to the head of the line, quota numbers be damned. That is how the Kissinger family made it to America, they were Jewish, but from western Germany and both parents were educators.

 

Clint,

Well, if I misunderstood I must ask you to go back and read your note which I quoted and objectively assess where the fault lies for that misunderstanding.

Nevertheless, I thank you for the follow-up information which I need to more carefully evaluate in way of mitigation (if such is possible) for sending anyone back to a ruthless dictatorship and their almost certain doom. I did understand your proffered rationalization (of our officials then, I mean, not yours) in your first note, but three years after Kristallnacht and numerous reports coming from the likes of William L. Shirer, it is hard to accept as valid.

Best,

Dave

 

What I meant, but failed to enumerate was that some German-Jews who fled Germany were caught up again in something they couldn't control, and were once again victims. It wasn't a wholesale "German-Jew" hunt for America to use as exchange fodder. There were a few Germans of the Jewish faith who were caught up in the bureaucratic, geopolitics of the moment. Not that it is tragic, but in the larger picture of the Holocaust not much of a "blip".

Not a "proud moment" of course, but in the larger picture of the moment very minor.

 

Fortunatly in Canada military service isn't mandatory like in the hitlerjugend. I'm in the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets and I have been in cadets since I was 12. From what I have learned the cadet program is trying to stay as far away from child soldiering as possible. For example. We used to have medal in the same spot as where the military places them. Then we moved them to the other side because we 'weren't military'. Although in war time. Anybody Petty Officer first class and over (navy) was sent into naval service. I'm not sure if that is still the procedure now adays but it was back in ww2. I'm thankfull to not have to go overseas unless I volunteer. Democrasy is a beutiful thing. (In some countries)