BOY SOLDIERS: A Personal Story of Nazi Elite Schooling

In 1937, Helene Munson's father lived with his parents in Peru and was taken to Germany to visit his Auntie Tali, a schoolteacher working in Bremen. Somehow Tali persuaded nine-year old Hans Dunker's parents that it would be good for him to stay in Germany to get a good education. He was sent to an elite school run by the Nazis at Feldafing, and towards the end of the war, as the resources of the German army failed, he was conscripted to the front line as a boy soldier. Helene knew nothing about it until her father was dying and he gave her his diaries. Prompted by this revelation, she visited Germany to retrace her father's steps and stand in his shoes at certain key points in his story. Feldafing was the most elite of the Nazi schools, founded by Ernst Röhm, but it fell into decline following the start of the war. Each day the boys raised the flag at 5.30 in the morning and had five hours of lessons before lunch, and they were taught to feel superior to the ordinary boys of the Hitler youth. Helene's researches into Nazi schools led her to speculate about the motives of famous alumni such as Gunter Grass and Joseph Ratzinger. She made contact with other Feldafing alumni, including Franz who knew her father, and learned that in 1943 her father was conscripted, like all boys aged 15 - 17, and trained as an anti-aircraft gunner. There were a few laws intended to protect children such as a prohibition on alcohol and tobacco. Americans were horrified to fight and kill, and sometimes be killed by, boys this young with inadequate training, ammunition and rations. Towards the end of the war Hans progressed to the Waffen-SS led by Himmler, architect of the Holocaust. Helene visited Zavada a village in present-day Czech Republic, the scene of the battle her father was unable to talk about, where, as squad leader, he had to pick nine boys to fight the Russian advance with inadequate artillery. The author quotes extensively from her father's diaries and examines the traumatic effect on the rest of his life and a generation of children who silently carried the shame of what they suffered into old age. 271 pages, photos.