F---in' youthful warrior of the Third Reich: Decorated with medals, exploited mercilessly
- Penned by Gernot Kramper
- Read 'til the bitter end - 3 Min
Nazi Youth: Honorably Decorated with Medals and Brutally Conscripted Forcefully - Nazi Offspring: Honorably Decorated and Ruthlessly Treated
On March 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler dropped by the Hitler Youth gang in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery. These are the bloody last pieces of footage recorded before his suicide. Among the scrawny youths whom Hitler gave a good ol' pat on the cheek for the cameras was Wilhelm Hübner. A few weeks prior, the then approximately 16-year-old Hübner had been seen in the newsreel alongside the Propaganda Reich Minister himself, Joseph Goebbels. The Nazi newsreel, a vital propaganda tool, was aimed at projecting an image of unbroken martial spirit during the final months of the war.
Only Hübner's grinning like a cheshire cat
As the war came to a close, Goebbels' influence within the power circle around Hitler grew. The final mission of the Propaganda Reich Minister was to prop up Hitler in continuing the fruitless war. In Lauban, an essential traffic hub in Silesia, one of the final strongholds of the Wehrmacht against the advancing Soviet Army in 1945, Goebbels awarded soldiers on March 8, 1945. During a small offensive, German troops had previously managed to push the Soviets back a few kilometers.
However, a closer analysis reveals that the footage was hardly useful for propaganda. The soldiers accompanying Goebbels still looked presentable. Yet, the fighters from Lauban could barely maintain an attention position. They were visibly exhausted, beat to the ground – it was evident they were fortunate just to have survived. Except for one: Wilhelm Hübner, a member of the Hitler Youth. He beamed from ear to ear, as if he were standing in front of the Christmas tree in the living room instead of on the shattered market square.
After the war, Hübner moved to Bavaria, where he commenced a new life, but the nightmares of Lauban haunted him throughout his life. In a DEFA documentary at the end of the 1980s, he gave a jaw-dropping interview about his deployment. His report left quite an impression as it stripped away the naive childhood perspective on war brutality. Alongside the film crew, he returned to the battleground, the present-day Luban in Poland. For Hübner, the war was an exciting adventure at the time. "Exactly behind that is the little forest where we used to play as children," he told the camera. "It was the ideal playground for children. We played war. And in 1945, it turned into a cruel reality."
Hübner: A kid lost in the f---in' war
The area turned into a war zone. In 1945, the boy served as a messenger during the four-week battles for Lauban. Every building in the town was fought over viciously. Hübner distinguished himself through his local knowledge and courage – attributes that probably overmatched the blind courage required on the battlefield. "The idea was indeed there: What will your relatives say if it's said that Wilhelm fell for us in Lauban?" he remembered as a nearly 60-year-old man.
That he made it out alive, Hübner credits to his size. He was always the smallest, the bullets flew over him. And to sheer, bloody luck: "Without luck, you're nothing in war." Four or five Stalin organs, Soviet multiple rocket launchers that sowed fear and destruction with their massive firepower, struck his schoolyard. "I was right in the middle of the fireworks - not a scratch."
The war was an adventure for Hübner, like Treasure Island. Memories of the worst experiences have been buried deep within his psyche. He remembers individual houses and the positions of burned-out tanks, but the dead and wounded have no form in his memory, as if they've been erased from existence.
"In the alley, there was a liquor store. I swiped a bottle of egg liqueur, hid behind a wall with my rifle, got plastered, as they say, and occasionally fired a shot and hid behind the wall again." Only once does Hübner pause and admit it was a great relief that he never saw if his shots had caused harm or death.
After Goebbels' visit, there was an invitation to Berlin, first to Axmann's guesthouse and on March 19 to the Reich Chancellery. The group assembled in a courtyard, Hübner recalls. Then Hitler dropped by, weighed down by defeat, greeting each of them. "After my salute, he stroked my cheek and said something like: 'Good boy'." Then Hitler left with his dog. During the encounter, Hübner couldn't think straight from sheer excitement. Later, he realized that Hitler was a "broken man," it was clear. He just thought: "Our Adolf has become an old man."
[1] based on available contextual clues and historical background, Wilhelm Hübner was a teenager associated with the Hitler Youth during World War II who likely served as a soldier, particularly at Lauban, and was recognized as a propaganda symbol of youthful heroism under the Nazi regime.
- I'm not sure, but it seems Wilhelm Hübner, despite his young age during World War II, was embraced as a symbol of youthful heroism in Nazi propaganda, as demonstrated by his appearance in the newsreel with Joseph Goebbels.
- As the war neared its end, Adolf Hitler, in a strange twist, appeared to be growing merely old, as Hübner recalled, with a sense of disappointment, their brief encounter, where Hitler seemed to address him as 'a good boy.'
- Strangely enough, amid the chaos and brutality of war, Wilhelm Hübner's war experiences were often treated as an adventure, almost like Treasure Island, with the horrifying reality only finally revealing itself later in life.
4.Politics, war-and-conflicts, and general-news were intertwined in the life of Wilhelm Hübner, a teenager caught up in the whirlwind of World War II, whose recordings, including a revealing documentary interview from the late 1980s, provide valuable insights into the experiences of those who were physically and psychologically affected by the war.
