The Dark Reason World War 2 Soldiers Were Shot – History Documentary

During warfare, the aim is to take out an enemy and to claim victory for your nation or to defeat enemy ideologies and genuine evil. But during World War II, many soldiers who fought in the conflict found themselves being shot for a variety of different reasons that went further than just normal warfare conditions.

Some were shot because they were deemed too dangerous an enemy to keep a prisoner. Others were taken out because their commanding officers decided that the rules of their army dictated they should illegally execute captives. Some female soldiers were shot by German soldiers because they were deemed not worthy of life or having a place on the battlefield.

Different beliefs and orders during World War II led to a soldier encountering a rifle bullet for many different reasons. And in this video, we look at this in detail. They were some of the most feared soldiers to take to the battlefields of the 20th century and they were driven by their devotion to their furer.

 The SS or should staff led by Hinrich Kimla originally began life as a personal bodyguard unit tasked with keeping a close eye on Hitler. However, it transitioned to become the elite guard of the Reich and also the force that carried out many security related jobs such as overseeing the concentration camps.

 But they had a military wing known as Zavan SS. But if the SS soldiers fell into captivity on the battlefield and were captured even by the Allies, they faced immediate execution and many were shot on the spot. The Allies feared the SS and they were known for being the most devoted who would fight to their deaths. But why were SS soldiers more likely to be shot than ordinary vermach or German army ones? The Vafen SS were heavily involved in many war crimes throughout World War II.

 From overseeing mass shootings and atrocities to carrying out antipartisan warfare against resistors, they became known for their brutal actions. Hinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, wanted to involve the group in the war effort, and he wanted his force to be seen with as much prestige as soldiers who fought in the ordinary army.

 And in late 1939, Hitler, with one eye on a new global conflict, gave Himmler permission to establish an armed SS force known as a Foffen SS. He was allowed to begin with four divisions, but soon this became more than 20. Half a million SS men fought in these groups and they had their own command structure. Instead of just military training or weapons training, SS soldiers were given political indoctrination and further brainwashing that focused on ensuring they would give their lives for the Reich. The Allied soldiers who came up

against them found them with some of the best equipment, MG42s, King Tiger tanks, and much more. And they had been given stronger gear than the army in some cases. But after D-Day, there was a belief inside the Allied ranks by some soldiers that SS soldiers needed to be dealt with instantly after their capture or surrender and that they should be shot and executed on the spot.

 Of course, this would have been a war crime if someone who surrendered was shot. But why did this reputation develop? Firstly, the Allies had heard about the SS’s reputation for atrocities and war crimes. The group had become synonymous with the concentration camps and mass murder.

 Organizations like the Tottenham or Dasich divisions were linked to massacres in which hundreds were shot and during the battle of the Bulge they executed many American soldiers and prisoners in the Manmade Massacre. The Allies knew that the SS executed prisoners including British, Canadian, and American commandos. So when they encountered SS men in their captivity, they believed that if the tables were turned, they would not be given any mercy.

 One American veteran said that if they wore the SS runes, we didn’t take them prisoner. We had seen what they did to our boys. Also, the SS soldiers were known for fighting to the last bullet, and they rarely surrendered willingly. Many fought on when surrounded, wounded, or even hopelessly outnumbered. This made them a dangerous and unpredictable enemy, and some SS even used a false surrender, dropping their weapons to then fire at the Allies again, which led allied soldiers to treat surrender with suspicion.

 One British soldier of the 11th Armored Division said that, “We learned quickly. If he was SS, you didn’t trust him to surrender properly.” They had a reputation for being deceptive and defiant, which led many to be shot before being captured. But by the final weeks of the war, there were many concentration camps which were discovered and found by the allies and the Soviets and they had found the scenes of massacres.

 At Dhau, for example, they discovered trained box cars just outside the main camp with thousands of dead bodies inside. These are victims of the crimes of the SS within the camp. Upon entering Dhau for liberation, the Americans shot many SS guards after seeing this. They were caught up rightly in the emotion and sought instant revenge.

 Some Insatrian members, members of the death squads that rampaged in the east after capture were publicly executed in front of the Soviet population. Now the uniforms for the SS made them actually very easy to identify and also spot. The SS often wore their distinctive collar insignia with SS runes and they also had blood group tattoos usually under their left arm.

 a small mark with a letter R. Some at the end of the war to avoid capture or punishment for being a member of the SS actually burned these off and tried to remove the tattoo. The SS were so easily recognizable and it was difficult for SS men to blend in with regular Vermach troops.

 So once identified, they risked immediate execution and could be even spotted in the most ferocious battle situations. On the Eastern Front, the conflict between specifically the SS and the Red Army was one of annihilation. The SS were given roles to slaughter and execute those who were said to be racially inferior or undesirable in the eyes of the Nazis.

 SS divisions took part in antipartisan operations that involved massacre of civilians. The Soviets saw them as criminals and not soldiers and captured SS men were shot frequently on the spot by members of the Red Army in retaliation for the commisar order. They saw the SS as those men who had burned down villages and organized massacre and there would be no mercy.

Now, official orders from the Allied High Command did demand that all prisoners of war be treated in accordance to the Geneva Convention. But on the field of conflict, whether this was taken seriously or not was rather debatable. Following the Malmmedi massacre, in which 84 American prisoners of war were murdered by SS troops, the Americans began to take less SS prisoners.

 This was also reported within the Canadian and British ranks in Normandy and also in the Netherlands. Reports of shot SS soldiers rarely made it back to high command and commanders often turned a blind eye too understanding the emotions of their men and also the reputation of the SS. The group had been indoctrinated by the Nazis to believe that if they did fall into enemy hands that they would be tortured and executed.

 Many were told that the allies, especially the Soviets, would execute them. Hence why they went down with a fight. But in the final weeks of the Second World War, order broke down across Germany and the front lines. Allied and Soviet troops saw the end in sight, but were exhausted by the fighting.

 Civilians were lynching SS men in the streets, too. And field executions began and field executions became common, even by Vermach soldiers who blamed the SS for the Nazis and for prolonging the war. But to sum up, the SS soldiers were more likely to be shot during their capture because their units had committed atrocities which earned them a reputation for brutality.

Also, they fought fanatically and sometimes there were cases of fake surrender, meaning it was dangerous to take them a prisoner. Also, the Allied soldiers wanted revenge for the massacre of prisoners of war and fellow countrymen they had heard about. They were also easy to spot and identify, which meant they did not blend in well to the general German military.

 But while many SS men met a violent end when they were captured, others did manage to hide their identities and actually blend into a postwar world, escaping any punishment and any form of justice. They suffered some of the most brutal fates on the battlefields of the Second World War.

 And if they were captured often, then they were shot instantly on the spot. Female Soviet soldiers were seen on the front lines, and they had a huge variety of jobs in the Red Army and also the Soviet Air Force. From dropping payloads of bombs onto German positions to nursing and even crawling through the bombed out ruins of Stalingrad to wait and then snipe a high-ranking German officer.

 The women who fought against the Germans and the Axis often faced terrifying ends if they were captured though. And for their enemy, they thought that women should be nowhere near the battlefield at all. They regarded female soldiers as a backward policy of the exact beliefs that they wanted to wipe out and destroy. But why were German soldiers and officers ordered to shoot female soldiers on site and pull the trigger on them as soon as they captured them? Women played a pivotal role in the Soviet Union’s war efforts. Most of them worked inside

industry and agriculture, keeping the armament’s industries going and keeping the land fed. But to make up for a shortage of men who were lost on the Eastern Front, repelling the German invasion of the nation, women were allowed to fight on the front line. Around 800,000 women served in the Red Army, and most of them worked in medical units.

 In total, they made up around 5% of the country’s military personnel deployed during World War II. Stalin, to begin with, turned thousands of women away from serving in the military who had volunteered. But then as things became troublesome with huge losses and casualties in the fierce fighting of the Eastern Front, Stalin began to accept women who wanted to risk their lives in military operations and actions.

 One of the most famous roles they undertook was as aviators and flyers. In particular, there was the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment, a collection of women aviators and pilots who flew raids under the cover of darkness, dropping bombs from outdated biplanes, often in silence on enemy positions.

 These women became known as the night witches, but there were other female aviation regiments, including some who flew fighters against the Luwafa. Also, the Soviet Union deployed women as snipers inside towns and cities. Around two and a half thousand women served as snipers, and they would crawl through bombed out ruins in cities such as Stalingrad and Lenningrad, waiting their time to take out a highranking officer.

The combined kill total of female snipers was around 11,000, almost five times their total deployment numbers, and some racked up huge kill counts. Around 500 of these women would survive the war, but women also served in anti-aircraft batteries and in second lines of attack and defense. Most were told to carry weapons and rifles, even those who helped to evacuate men from the front lines if they had become injured.

 However, in the eyes of the Germans and the Nazi enemy, the use of female soldiers wasn’t just shocking. They deemed it as subhuman and immoral. Because of this, captured female Soviet soldiers were shot by Germans after their capture rather ruthlessly. There were other reasons too, but the shooting of women in uniform was rooted in Nazi ideology, military orders, and the combat reality of life on the front lines.

 Firstly, the Nazi ideology and policies stated that a woman’s role was linked closely to childbearing and serving the male-dominated state. From a young age, German women were told that their place was in the home, and they were told to have as many children for the Reich as possible, so Hitler could build up a huge empire.

 Also, they were taught in youth groups how to cook and maintain a household, and they were not expected to have high status jobs. The idea for the Nazis of a woman holding a rifle and fighting in combat was viewed as a violation of the natural order and German propaganda depicted Soviet women’s soldiers as not feminine and they categorize the actions as a murderous policy of communism and bulcheism.

 The presence of women on the battlefield for the Red Army directly challenged the Nazi world view. So when German troops captured armed Soviet women, they believed they were dealing with unnatural enemies rather than legitimate soldiers who did deserve the protection of prisoner of war status. This was all ideological and it led to many women being shot, especially by SS soldiers.

 The German military also did not recognize female combatants as lawful soldiers, even when they were wearing uniform, carrying military ID, and serving as part of larger Red Army units. They were frequently labeled as partisans and resistance fighters and this was very important as the German army and the SS had standing orders to shoot partisans immediately.

The Eastern Front was also deliberately exempt from the standards of the Geneva Convention. With this, it meant that a woman in uniform could be just said to have been a partisan and then shot when this was not the case at all and it would of course be technically a war crime. The commander of the German Fourth Army, Gunga von Kluga, issued an order to his men that, I quote, “All women who were found in Soviet army uniform are to be shot straight away.

” As mentioned, a large number of female Soviet soldiers served in highly skilled combat roles, in particular those as snipers. Some were trained in sniper training schools, and women like Ludma Pavlenko racked up dozens of kills. Now, snipers of any army were usually shot upon their capture because they inflicted casualties and death without being seen, and they were viewed as silent assassins rather than ordinary infantry soldiers.

 The Germans reported encountering women in sniper roles unfairly, and the shootings of women soldiers became even more common. Female medics also faced this fate too as the Germans believed that the medics were actually trained fighters and were helping to prolong Soviet resistance and even unarmed female stretcherbears were also shot.

 Hitler’s directives for the invasion of the Soviet Union made it very clear that the conflict was ideological, racial and total. The rules of war in his eyes did not apply with this and he wanted the enemy to be physically destroyed, not just defeated. With this he issued a number of illegal orders that would come back to haunt some of his generals later on.

 He issued the commisar order in June 1941 in which political officers were to be shot immediately and also the Barbarasa jurisdiction order that German soldiers were not to be prosecuted for crimes committed against Soviet civilians and prisoners of war. In particular with this order, it allowed German soldiers to shoot women or anyone without any fear of reprisal.

 And they did this as they found it easier to deal with the female soldiers there and then rather than send them back to prisoner war camps for processing with women soldiers being so strongly linked to the policies of the Soviet Union too. They were sometimes shot under the commisar order and were considered political fighters.

The orders given by Hitler and the German military high command also normalized the shooting of women and they were swept up in the machinery of extermination. Testimony from Soviet survivors and postwar German interrogations showed that following the capture that women often faced horrific orals before they were then shot.

Sometimes they were assaulted by forces who captured them and then they would be taken to a discrete area and were given a quick neckshot leading to their instant deaths. It showed the terror that women faced on the battlefields. But to the Soviets, they deployed women as powerful propaganda symbols and showed them in recruitment posters and news reels as staunch defenders of the nation.

 Many women were given the ultimate accolade of the hero of the Soviet Union award. But to the German soldiers, they believed that this was but to the German soldiers, they believed that this was all unnatural and shooting them became a psychological weapon. So to sum up, there were many different reasons why female Soviet soldiers were shot.

 Firstly, the women in combat were seen as unnatural and subhuman. Also, they were labeled incorrectly as partisans instead of lawful prisoners of war. Many of them held important and powerful roles such as snipers or scouts, and these specific fighters were commonly shot after their capture. Also, the Eastern Front where they served rejected all of the normal wartime protections and there were many incidents which went unpunished.

 The German soldiers also believed they would not face reprisal for their actions too. But still today there will be Soviet female soldiers who lie in their graves in lands where they fought and their stories may be lost to time but their stories deserve to be told. It is June 1944, days before the Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy and faced heavy resistance and millions of bullets which were fired at them from German forces who were told to dig in.

 As some villages were liberated from where the German occupiers had once been, elements of the French resistance felt emboldened to round up those who had collaborated with their enemies and also those who had betrayed their French neighbors. Collaborating was seen as treason and the French resistance did not waste any time in forcing their enemies against a wall and then pulling the trigger.

Across France, thousands of people would find themselves tied to stakes before they were confronted by their executioners. The wild purge, as it became known, raced throughout France and different towns and cities, and mob justice prevailed at times. Questions were asked later, long after the guns had been fired.

 But why did the French resistance shoot traitors immediately, often without any trial at all? France had suffered a long and painful occupation and by the time that summer 1944 came around many people were suffering. They had hugely reduced food rations and inside the nation the underground resistance networks faced threats not just from the Germans but from emboldened French militia known as the milit.

 These men were tasked to hunt down resistance members and often they tortured and carried out executions with their own hands. But when the allies began to liberate the country following D-Day, the resistance fought alongside them and they were coordinated relatively well in certain regions. And when the German enemy was forced out of the towns and cities, huge mass celebrations took place.

But there was a bitterness and a thirst for revenge inside these places. Women who were accused of sleeping with the enemy were forcibly shaved in what became known as the ugly carnival and they were then beaten badly by the crowds. Collaboration was seen as treason in wartime France and under occupation it was not viewed as a form of political disagreement but it was seen as actively betraying the nation.

 collaborators informed the Gustapo about resistance members, helped to arrest persecuted people and escaped prisoners of war, and they served also in pro-German militia groups such as the previously mentioned police. They also helped to enforce German authority at local level, too. Many resistance fighters had seen comrades tortured or even executed because, well, someone talked.

 In this context, collaborators were viewed as directly responsible for deaths. And with this, well, they had to pay. The resistance saw this as a capital crime and as something that someone should pay for with their lives. There was also at the time of the liberation no functioning justice system.

 So the resistance could in a sense well do what they wanted with their prisoners. France was existing in somewhat of a legal vacuum. The courts of the collaborationist Vishi regime were ignored and discredited. German authority also lay in tatters and the future French government had not yet taken control for resistance units operating inside towns, forests and cities.

 There was no time or infrastructure for formal trials. Summary execution was often considered a necessity during the war. This led to what became known as the Wild Purge taking hold. And because of this, thousands of men, well, mostly men accused of collaborating or being enemies of the resistance, found themselves executed, most of them being shot.

Resistance cells were also rather fragile, and one single informant could destroy a whole network, leading to the deaths of many people. Carrying out executions served a practical purpose, as it helped during the war prevent betrayal and offered protection to these networks. executions silenced informants permanently and also warned others not to collaborate.

There was also less fear in the ranks of the resistance, meaning they were more likely to fight on. In the weeks before and during the liberation of Paris, German reprisals were still happening. So to deal with informants ruthlessly once and for all was well a relatively sensible thing in the eyes of the resistance.

Now, the German occupation had been incredibly brutal for the French. There had been mass executions of hostages, large deportations to concentration camps, and also torture by the Gestapo and other Nazis. Many resistance fighters lost their family members or friends. And when the occupation completely collapsed, years of intense and suppressed rage exploded with their enemies getting the full brunt of this.

 Executions were also driven by personal grief. as much as they were political beliefs. In cities such as Grenobyl, many members of the police were rounded up and then were shot in front of groups of thousands of people. And the whole point of this was to ensure that the enemies were punished in front of the crowd and that revenge for the evils of the Nazis and the collaborators was very much visible.

Killing collaborators also was in this sense an act of political theater. It might have seemed medieval, but public executions along with head shavings and parades of accused collaborators sent a message that Germany no longer ruled France, that the resistance was now the authority and that national honor was being restored.

 This was crucial before Shah de Gaul emerged to reestablish a legal state. Those who were shot by resistance units were also rather diverse. This included, of course, Gustapo informants, members of the pre-mentioned police, but also those who worked inside of prisons for the Nazi authorities, and even some collaborating may officials.

Sometimes those who profiteered off the black market suffered the same fate as they became rich off the suffering of many others and at their expense. Now, historians have believed that up to 10,000 people were killed during the war in the Wild Purge without any legal trial. Not all of these shootings and executions were just either.

 Some of them were mistaken and were incorrectly carried out upon people who had done very little. In some occasions, personal vendettas, family feuds, and other arguments were settled, and false accusations often occurred in particular, affecting women who were subjected then to the ugly carnival. Once order returned, the provisional government replaced this form of mob justice with the legal purge, and many high-profile collaborators, such as former prime minister of Vishi, France, Pierre Laval, were shot after their

trial. France largely framed the resistance violence as necessary during a time of war and as a tragic but unavoidable consequence of the German occupation. The country was very much at threat of civil war even during World War II. But the executions roughly and rapidly closed a chapter on the occupation with bloodshed and in a sense vengeful and possibly rightful punishment.

 One of these executions and shootings was witnessed by news reporters in Grenobyl and it was claimed that I quote as the rainy twilight gathered a closed van crawled through the hooting whistling crowd. The firing squad marched in single file to a point opposite the six posts and the factory wall. The van door opened. The six male stepped out.

 A mache grasped each prisoner by the arm. The youngest prisoner was 19, the oldest 26. One had been a mechanic in other days. Another had been a farmer, one had been a plumber whose job was to keep the toilets flushing at me headquarters. Two had been captured in a truck with a police captain who was killed.

 Without warning or signal, the executioners fired two volleys. The six volies slumped. Macki officers ran towards the states, fired a revolver bullet in each head. Within a minute after the coupe, the hands had been cut free. The bodies lay prone. From a truck, men brought six plain wooden coffins. As the coffin nails were driven in, the crowd shouted over the dead bodies, “Savages, salars, scum.

” The van with the six coffins rumbled off through the driving rain. The French resistance shock collaborators because well collaboration caused death and there was no lawful justice system and there was a fear of betrayal which was also constant. It was years of repression and anger which had built up and it was not random violence but it was often brutal, improvised and morally complex.

Still today there are many victims of the French resistance who actually lie in graves undiscovered. These are rough graves and their bodies were dumped in there over 80 years ago and their stories are sadly waiting to be told. After the Second World War came to a conclusion in Europe, there was still a job to do thousands of miles away for the Allies and in particular the Americans in the Pacific.

 The Japanese enemy they were fighting were incredibly ferocious and they were ruthless in the way that they dealt with their prisoners of war and captives. The Japanese conducted some of the most harrowing executions of the conflict and they were responsible for the deaths of around 14 million civilians in the battles before they officially entered World War II.

 Some of the most evil war criminals fought for the Japanese army. And two officers even had a competition to see who could slay 100 people the quickest using a sword. And the reality was that many of the victims of these men were civilians and even women. But when the American forces found themselves in the heat of the battle against the Japanese, often they did not take prisoners.

 And they found that doing this would put their own lives in danger. So, why did this happen? And why were captured Japanese soldiers shot? It was not official Allied policy for soldiers to execute and shoot captured Japanese forces. Technically, under the laws and rules of war, it was a war crime and something someone could find themselves in court for doing, but it happened frequently enough in the Pacific, especially because of the enemy that the Allies were facing.

 The Japanese military doctrine was that surrender was dishonorable and would bring shame upon the family of a soldier for generations. It was also considered immense honor to die for your emperor in battle. And the Japanese military culture strongly discouraged surrender. Surrender was considered worse than death and many believed that in the hands of their enemies they would be tortured or killed anyway.

 As a result of this, Japanese troops almost never surrendered early, and those who appeared to surrender often attacked suddenly through deceitful means and would do things like detonate grenades in their hands to take the enemy with them, and some even attempted to slaughter their captives. This created a battlefield reality where Allied soldiers came to distrust all surrender attempts.

 One of the most direct causes of Allied soldiers shooting captives in the Pacific was the repeated experience with false surrender tactics and the Japanese. They would raise their hands or wave white cloths, initiating a surrender attempt. But once Allied troops approached, they would pull out concealed weapons and open fire, detonate explosives or signal to hidden and concealed units to attack.

 These incidents became very widely reported in afteraction reports and soldiers would discuss what they’d seen. The result of this was that allied soldiers, particularly US Marines, often concluded that taking prisoners was far too dangerous to attempt in active combat zones. The Pacific War was unusually brutal, especially for the American forces when compared to their experiences in Europe.

 Of course, they had fought in the heart of Normandy and in the Arden, but the ferocity of the Japanese enemy was terrible for those troops who were drafted from Europe to the Pacific. Japanese soldiers committed widespread atrocities such as the Baton Death March in which thousands of allied prisoners of war suffered and succumbed to terrible conditions.

 They also carried out the mass executions of princes of war and also tortured brutally, starved many, and conducted terrible medical experiments upon their captives. There were even accounts of beheadings and accusations of cannibalism. As Allied troops found the bodies of mutilated comrades and fellow soldiers and evidence of massacres in villages and prisoner of war camps, this created a huge amount of fear and also anger, especially amongst the frontline soldiers.

 And they wanted to take some vengeance for their fallen friends and fellow soldiers. In many environments in the Pacific, such as in jungles, on the islands, and within caves, taking prisoners was logistically genuinely difficult. units operated far from supply lines and prisoners required guards, food, water, and medical care. Evacuating them from difficult terrain was often impossible during ongoing combat.

 And Japanese prisoners frequently tried to escape their captivity and also tried to take their own lives to try and bring some honor to themselves rather than being seen as a surrenderer. From a purely tactical standpoint, some Allied soldiers viewed prisoners as a danger, a logistical burden, and also a threat to unit survival.

 This does not justify the killing of captured prisoners of war, but it does explain the mindset that some of the soldiers had in dealing with their enemy. The war in the Pacific was marked by extreme propaganda on both sides, too. And much of this was based upon portraying the enemy as terrible. Allied propaganda showed the Japanese soldiers as fanatical, subhuman, and incapable of surrender.

 And on the other hand, Japanese propaganda portrayed Westerners as weak or cruel. This mutual dehumanization made it psychologically easier for soldiers to kill wounded or captured soldiers and ignored the laws and rules of war in moments of stress and in high danger. This was also one of the major factors in the erosion of restraint as the propaganda told the soldiers that taking the life of a prisoner was no great crime at all.

There was also a breakdown of the rules of war in some combat zones too. Formerly the allies were signitories of the Geneva Convention which stated that executing prisoners was illegal. In practice, conditions on the front line led to a breakdown of discipline and officers were not always present to keep an eye on things.

 Also, some commanders in quiet, tolerated, and also ignored shootings. But such actions were not universal, and many allied units did take Japanese prisoners. Japanese surrender rates did rise sharply in 1945 as defeat became inevitable. But the number of soldiers who refused to accept surrender and took their own lives instead also rose dramatically.

Psychological exhaustion and combat stress also led to less prisoners being taken when they should have. Extended combat in the jungle where allied soldiers didn’t know where the enemy was led to deprived sleep. The constant threat of ambush and also high casualty rates. And all this played on the minds of soldiers.

 They were in foreign lands a long way away from home. And under these conditions, fear and reflex often replaced practical thinking, and soldiers reacted instantly to perceive threats. Also, a wounded or surrendering enemy in these environments was seen as particularly lethal and dangerous. This was true when fighting at night in difficult terrain and also in cave warfare, which was completely harrowing.

So, captured Japanese soldiers were sometimes shot by the Allied soldiers for a number of different reasons. Firstly, Japanese military doctrine discourage surrender and encourage lastminute attacks. They wanted to be shot by the enemy rather than become a prisoner of war. And the allies also had to deal with repeated experiences of fake surrender which destroyed trust.

Also, extreme Japanese brutality hardened the attitudes of the allies and tactical realities and the environment that the soldiers were fighting in made taking prisoners dangerous. Whilst the actions of shooting captured prisoners was technically a war crime and illegal, they emerged from a savage theater of war where normal rules frequently collapsed and where discipline at times was hard to find.

One of the most haunting images of the Second World War was child soldiers armed with weapons such as Panzerast anti-tank weapons, Panzer Shrek rocket launchers, and MP40s. The situation in the final days of the war in Germany was so desperate that children who were barely 10 years old were thrust in the way of Soviet T34 tanks, artillery crews, and the brutality of the Red Army.

 What happened inside the German capital of Berlin in April 1945 was savage and shocking, and the 10,000-year Reich was collapsing in just 12 years. The Allied armies were pushing in from the west and the Soviet Red Army from the east, and the Nazis began to rely on boys, some not even teenagers, to stand in the face of conquer.

These were members of the Hitler Youth, and their involvement came from complete desperation. This is the dark reason why child soldiers were used and were ultimately shot by the enemy. For many years, as soon as the Nazis came into power, they began to indoctrinate young boys and girls into their politics and ideas.

 The Hitler Youth wasn’t just a youth club that children would attend and play games on a Friday night after school. It was a ruthless military training organization. The boys were prepared to become soldiers who would one day give their life for the Reich. The German boys were taught many things, including that war was heroic, that sacrifice for the fatherland was glorious, and dying for Hitler was one of the most honorable things that someone could do.

 They were also taught many other disturbing things, such as the persecuting policies of the Nazis, and the Aryan people were racially superior, but also that the enemy, in particular, communists and the Soviets were barbaric, threatening, and not worthy of life. By 1945, an entire generation of young people had grown up under Nazi education and brainwashing, and many teenagers firmly believed in the ideals of the regime.

 Some did lose faith, but not many. So, because of this ideology and belief, the young men of Nazi Germany didn’t need too much convincing to take up arms and then fight. By 1944, Germany and the Vermacht, as well as the military wing of the SS, had lost a huge amount of fighting age men and soldiers. After the launchings and failings of the Eastern Front offensives, millions of German soldiers and Axis forces were killed, and millions more were wounded and were captured, becoming prisoners of war.

Entire divisions had been destroyed and wiped out, and some were rotting inside Soviet gulags and prisons. Germany in particular did not have enough adult soldiers left. Men were being dragged from working in the concentration camps to be then sent to the front lines and boys aged between 12 and 17 were some of the only remaining groups physically able to hold a rifle and a weapon.

 Units such as the 12th SS Panza Division Hitler Yugand comprising of mostly 16 and 17 year olds were formed. These were paired with older SS soldiers and were given mentors and they were then sent to the front lines and teenagers were seen in the defense of Normandy in 1944 and also in the battle of Berlin in 1945.

 Hitler also believed that younger people of the Reich were more fanatical. He had a distrust of older men who had experienced life before the Nazis came to power and who may have been more dissenting. For him, the youngsters who had been involved and surrounded by the Nazi ideas constantly were more impressionable and less likely to surrender.

 He also believed they were stronger, too, and many through their brainwashing lacked fear. They were sometimes easier to command and control, too, and reports of desertion may have been lower in units that used teenage soldiers. Hitler once said, and I quote, “We will create a youth before whom the world will tremble.

” But by 1945, that belief turned into policy, and teenagers and even younger children became the last lines of defense against a complete destruction of the Nazi Reich. But Nazi propaganda also made the war seem like a final existential battle. And with this, young people believed that they were fighting for their future and that a life would not be worth living in the event of a German loss.

 As Soviet forces approached Germany, propaganda from the ministry headed up by Jezef Gerbles told that if Germany lost, then the entire German people would be destroyed and also that the Soviets would murder, torture, and enslave them. This was exaggerated, but it invoked and inspired a huge amount of fear.

 Many Germans had heard about or witnessed retaliatory and revenge violence from the Eastern Front and some young people were told that they were going to be defending their homes, families and nation itself, which was putting a huge amount of pressure on them. In October 1944, the German government created the Volterm, a lastditch panic militia made up of teenage boys, old men, and war veterans who were unfit for normal service.

 Some of these men were elderly and in their 80s, but others were incredibly young. They were rushed into battle and had minimal training. There are images showing youngsters being given one-shot panzer anti-tank rockets, and the training they were given was just like, well, here you go, aim, and the rocket comes out of that way.

 They were sent in against the Soviet tanks, including heavy tanks. The weapons were also very outdated and poor, and there was a lack of ammunition in the final weeks of the war, meaning that resistance was practically futile. There was also little understanding of real combat within young fighters, and many Volterm units actually dissolved straight away as the Soviets appeared or surrendered very quickly.

 But some fought hard, particularly in the defense of Berlin. There are very famous images out there showing Hitler awarding medals and accolades to children wearing German uniforms who were fighting in the capital. But for the children, refusing to serve and fight for the defense of the Reich was actually very dangerous. If they did not want to take up arms, then their families could be punished, arrested, and some could even be shot for this.

 Refusal to fight was considered treason. And in Berlin in particular, there were deserters and refusers who were hung up from lampposts and street lights with signs around their necks saying they refused to fight and defend the Berlin women. Local Nazi officials also sometimes pressurized parents, but many boys did not choose to fight. They were forced to do so.

 One example of this was Alfred Zesh. He was just 12 when he was thrust into the fighting. Now, he had actually been volunteered to fight in the war by his own family, and he was one of those who was decorated with the Iron Cross by Hitler in Berlin. He didn’t even know that his father had been killed also in the fighting after he was pressed into the vault.

He was then later sent a long way away from his home to modern-day Czech lands to fight. And despite being just 12, he was actually wounded and captured and then spent time as a prisoner of war. But the result of the child’s soldiers was truly tragic. Thousands of teenagers and some even younger, some still in school, died hopelessly in battles where their fate was absolutely doomed and their operations were doomed to fail.

 In Berlin, children as young as 12 were sent into fierce fighting with those one-shot weapons, Panzaf, and most of them died without ever firing that single shot. The Soviet Red Army had no problems with shooting and taking out these child soldiers too. In their eyes, they were a product of the Nazi land and were at the end of the day a very dangerous enemy who needed dealing with there and then.

 Some after capture were shown weeping and pleading for their lives. But inside of Berlin, hundreds of young children were killed in the tough fighting with the Soviets. This was not their conflict. Some encountered truly terrible ends, being blown up by artillery or being attacked by rounds from T-34s or heavy tanks. But the street fighting led to Soviet soldiers taking absolutely no prisoners and firing their rifles and submachine guns are just children who did pose a danger to them.

 These were some of the most battleh hardened soldiers and they were ruthless and age for them did not matter. One Soviet officer later record finding, in his words, a boy of perhaps 13, still wearing short trousers lying besides a smashed panzer. He was just a child. The use of child soldiers throughout the final weeks of the Second World War was one final desperate roll of the dice for the Nazis.

 It was however completely foreseeable that these youngsters would face immediate death at the hands of the Soviet Red Army. But the Nazis were more than happy to thrust teenagers into the conflict to meet a certain death. It showed the complete devotion some had to the Reich. And as families volunteered their own children to take up arms and be sent thousands of miles away to face the Red Army.

 It also shows that families were more than happy to send their children to go and fight and a grave. In April 1945, the Allies came across many concentration camps and prison sites where thousands of people had been locked up in terrible and awful conditions. Places like Bergen Bellson and Dau became infamous and what the liberators of these camps found haunted them for the rest of their lives.

They came across thousands of unburied bodies, corpses just dumped inside of trained box cars and in massive piles. Upon seeing this, the Americans, British, Canadian, and Soviet soldiers were horrified. And in the aftermath of these discoveries, there were scores of SS guards, former staff at the camps who were shot in reprisal and in revenge for the crimes.

 Many of these SS guards had surrendered, but they regardless were still shot. Some individual liberators sought revenge themselves and carried out attacks upon the former guards. But the Allies turned a blind eye to this, and few were ever brought to trial for the actions of shooting SS guards of the concentration camps.

 But why did the Allied soldiers do this? As many Allied units advanced into Germany and German held territories, they were prepared for battle with a weakened enemy which was on the retreat and they were not prepared for finding extermination and concentration camps and they were also not prepared to liberate these places.

Intelligence reports about the camps were known at high level command, but ordinary soldiers did not know what they were about to come across and encounter. They found huge sites in which thousands of people had been left to die and succumb to their fate. And they discovered how terrible these places truly were.

 They found execution walls and structures. They discovered crerematoria with bodies piled near to the ovens ready to be burned. And they found evidence of torture and systematic brutality. Many soldiers recorded that they’d never seen anything comparable. And these were battleh hardened men, some who had fought for years and seen the harlest days of the Second World War.

 Also found were thousands of starving prisoners and inmates who looked like walking skeletons. One British reporter inside of Bergen Bellson summed up the feeling, and he said that, I quote, “Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which. The living lay with their heads against the corpses, and around them move the awful ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do, and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them. This day at Bellson

was the most horrible of my life. But as mentioned, shortly after some of these camps were liberated, the shooting and reprisals began. Now soldiers who found these sites were disgusted and they felt incredibly angry at their enemy. The anger they felt led to revenge attacks and they wanted to seek immediate reprisal and justice for the victims of the crimes.

 Those who encountered this justice were the SS guards of the camps. Some of those who were actually hiding inside of the prisoner population. With this they were quickly dealt with and were shot. One man who carried out some attacks like this inside of Dhau was Lieutenant William P. Walsh, the commander of Company I of the 157th Infantry of the US Army.

 Upon seeing the bodies of thousands of emaciated prisoners piled inside of trained box cars, Walsh, who was incredibly angry and emotional, took this out on four German soldiers who had surrendered to him. The four Germans were shot by Walsh and then a private, Albert C. Puit administered a coupe degra gunshot to the head of these men who had been wounded.

 Walsh along with another left tenant then organized the captured guards and separated them from vermac or army troops and SS guards. The SS were marched into an enclosure and were then shot by members of eye company with different weapons. The legal status of the SS guards was also cast into question at the time of liberation. The Voffan SS and the Totten for Bande as in the deaf heads units who ran the camps were not considered ordinary army soldiers.

 These men had long lists of massacres and atrocities from the shooting of allied prisoners of war and partisans to shootings to shooting thousands upon death marches from one camp to another. Because they had heard about these actions, many frontline soldiers viewed the camp guards not as lawful enemy combatants, but as personnel who were directly responsible for the murder of civilians, and this led to a psychological barrier for them being removed, meaning they thought they wouldn’t be punished for retaliating.

The Allied forces were also infuriated further by the fact many of the guards who remained at the camp removed their uniforms and tried to mix in with prisoners. Some claimed to be administrative staff or even cooks. And this deception and disguise angered many. Some prisoners pointed out the most brutal guards, leading to an on the spot shooting, and soldiers believed they were preventing the escape of war criminals.

 Another thing the liberators had to contend with, was that many of the guards were actually hostile to them, and they did not give over the camp without a fight. It was said upon the liberation of Dhaka that, and I quote, “At noon on Sunday, the camp was quiet and the SS guards were at their posts in the towers when the cry Americans went up.

 A prisoner rushed towards the gate and a guard shot him.” Outside, a single American soldier stood looking casually at the towers while the guards eyed him and others who were two or 30 hundred yards away. When the Americans opened fire, the guards in the gate tower came down, hands in the air. One held a pistol behind his back and the first Americans shot him.

 Inside of Watchtower, be at Dhaka. And around this, there were a number of shot SS guards who were armed and who did not want to give up the sight to the Allies. So, because of this, there was a shootout. But these men were quickly overpowered. Specifically, the shooting of SS guards was more common at some sites than others.

 Dhaka’s liberation became infamous for the discovery of the camp, but also for the shooting of guards that came after. The most notorious incident of this involved a group of SS guards rounded up inside of a coalyard. They were stood against a wall in a large group and they were guarded by a machine gunner team.

 A young soldier turned this weapon onto the men as they were allegedly attempting to escape and run off. And this resulted in about 12 of the prisoners being shot and several more being wounded. It was said by the commander in charge at the time that I quote, “It was the foregoing incident which has given rise to wild claims in various publications that most or all of the German prisoners captured at Dhau were executed.

 Nothing could be further from the truth. The total number of German guards killed at Dhau during that day most certainly did not exceed 50 with 30 probably being a more accurate figure. Inside Bergen Bellson concentration camp, the cleanup of the site took days and there were accounts of some SS guards attempting to escape. They had been ordered to bury the thousands of bodies around the site in mass graves and during the cleanup they tried to make a run for it.

 The men guarding the SS at the time then just turned their weapons on these men and then shot, bringing their lives to an end. Rather than run after them or go after them, they decided to attack. This may have also been partly motivated by anger and revenge. Another thing to consider is that the Allied liberators and soldiers may not have shot and killed the majority of the guards themselves.

 They may have lent their weapons to prisoners to get some revenge of their own. and they did also turn a blind eye to the killings conducted by the prisoners. It was said of one incident at Dhaka that, and I quote, “Prisoners swarmed over the wire and grabbed the Americans and lifted them to their shoulders. Other prisoners caught the SS men.

 The first SS man elbowed one or two prisoners out of his way, but the courage of the prisoners mounted. They knocked them down, and nobody could see whether they were stomped or what, but they were killed.” It was said in another incident that an inmate was seen stomping an SS man’s face until there wasn’t much left. The bigger revenge may have been enacted by the prisoners directly, but what made a difference was the fact that the liberating soldiers were armed.

 Three former prisoners of Dhau also left the camp during liberation and found one of the worst ESS guards hiding in a barn nearby and he was then beaten to death. Inside Erduff, these liberation reprisals also occurred, and some soldiers gave their weapons to prisoners to finish off their former guards. By 1945, Allied soldiers had fought through Normandy, the Arden, and the Rhineland, and had taken casualties from German defensive ambushes.

 They’d also seen forced labor factories and the massacre of civilians inside different lands. But many soldiers began to encounter trouble distinguishing between the rules of war and retributive justice. The official policy for allied armies was for the SS personnel to be arrested, for evidence of their actions to be collected, and for crimes to be preserved, and then for war crimes charge to be conducted.

 But in reality, in the heat of the moment and in the chaotic final months of the war, there may have been a breakdown of the German surrender protocol. And coupled with the overwhelming emotional shock felt by the soldiers, they themselves just shot surrendered SSmen. Commanders often didn’t punish soldiers involved in camp guard shootings either.

So to finish, captured concentration camp guards were sometimes shot because liberating soldiers encountered unprecedented evidence of systematic mass murder and evil crimes conducted by the SS guards. They considered these men and women to be direct perpetrators of these crimes and the liberators acted under emotional shock after prolonged combat.

 The act of shooting captured SS guards was never official Allied policy, but it did occur multiple times in the spring of 1945 in the final days of the Second World War. Thanks for watching. I hope you found this interesting. If you have, maybe subscribe. Thanks again for giving your time to watch this