It’s really a footnote to stories about Nazi Germany losing the war in 1942, yet refusing for years to quit… by brainwashing their youth into suicide missions.

Basically the Nazi children (Hitler jugend) were indoctrinated with fear and hate. Then they were forced into the unjust war their fathers already had lost, told they would be killed if they refused or surrendered.

A British soldier recounts what that looked like:

Sandy also spoke about encountering Germany’s child soldiers. He explained: “The other thing that we experienced at that time were the soldiers – German soldiers. They were 12 and 14-year-olds because everyone else was up on the Russian front. Some of them used to start crying because again they had been told that they would not be taken prisoner, that they would be killed.”

The tactics used then were oriented around establishing trust through two methods. British soldiers began feeding both a hunger for foundation/faith and for food:

“Women and kids were down in the air raid shelters. Hitler had already indoctrinated them and told them they would never be taken prisoner – that British troops would kill them. They wouldn’t come out of the air raid shelters. We used to shout down but they still wouldn’t come out.” However, their breakthrough came when the unit’s Roman Catholic padre, a Fr Costello who could speak several languages, persuaded the children and their mothers into the open. “You put a bar of chocolate in their hands and it alters the whole war – as far as the children are concerned,” he said.

As William Wordsworth wrote in his poem The Rainbow: “the Child is Father of the Man”.

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.