HITLER’S SHE WOLVES
By Tim Heath They were innocent girls as young as ten who were turned into savage fighters sent to ‘drown the enemy in their own blood’. But as a new book reveals, they paid a terrible price for the ‘honour’ of being...
BARBIE DENSK shivered under a blanket as she lay in a slit trench inside the barricaded German city of Aachen on the night of October 12, 1944. She was a member of Hitler’s Bund Deutscher Madel – or League of German Girls – and had volunteered to defend her home and family from the American infantry encircling the city.
The assault finally came at 9am. ‘It was very sudden, loud and startling,’ she said. ‘There was a series of explosions, followed by rifle and machine-gun fire, shouts and screams. I blew my whistle to raise the alarm.
‘Through my binoculars, I could see enemy soldiers. I clicked off the safety catch on my rifle, the other girls followed suit, and we began to fire at the Americans.’
The reality of warfare came as a shock. ‘There was a flash and a loud bang,’ she recalled. ‘I fell to the floor and saw the bloodspattered bodies of my friends; some of them lay across my legs, convulsing violently with blood running from their mouths.
‘Little funnels of smoke rose out of the holes in their bodies and steam from their torn stomachs.’
She was just 15.
I FIRST came across the extraordinary role played by girls in the Third Reich after a chance encounter with Kirsten Eckerman, by then 74, in the German military cemetery at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire.
She told me about belonging to the Bund Deutscher Madel and introduced me to friends who had similar, sometimes horrifying experiences. As I embarked upon countless interviews, I soon realised this was a rapidly disappearing generation of women whose compelling stories of fighting in their country’s last stand against the Allies should be told before it was too late.
The Bund Deutscher Madel (BDM) had never been intended as an arm of the German war machine. Founded in the 1920s and compulsory for eligible – Aryan – girls from 1936, it was envisioned as a version of the Girl Guides, indoctrinating a new generation in the ideology of the Third Reich.
Teenage girls in Nazi Germany received only a very limited education built around five menial principles: physical exercise, cooking, washing, cleaning and babies – though sex was not on the curriculum. Emphasis was put on the physical exercise, including naked dancing.
The German maiden had to be beautiful, supple, radiant and strong.
After school, girls between ten and 14 were required to attend Jungmadel groups, while 14 to 18-yearolds went to BDM meetings – where important Nazis including Himmler and Goebbels often lectured.
The BDM and the Jungmadel performed at the Nazis’ showpiece Nuremberg rallies, and another young recruit, Helga Bassler, shook hands with the Fuhrer there.
She recalled: ‘My knees began to shake and I had butterflies in my stomach as I watched Hitler slowly make his way towards me. Girls cried and reached out to him and some had brought flowers especially for him.
‘From that day on, I looked upon Hitler as a personal saviour – like how modern girls look up to their favourite pop stars. Many of us became infatuated after meeting him, and we were in a way in love with him.’
AFTER the Allied landings of 1944, when even the most fervent Nazis had to admit the tide of war had turned against Germany, the domestic emphasis was jettisoned.
Hitler issued a decree that girls as young as ten must be trained to fight to the death to defend their cities. Members of the BDM were taught to lay booby traps, become snipers, sabotage roads, railways and telephone lines and even operate Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons in all-female Werewolf guerrilla units – part of the Nazis’ desperate Volkssturm rearguard action.
Barbie was a Werewolf volunteer in Aachen.
‘Our defences had been prepared – trenches, barbed wire, upturned cars, lorries and trams,’ she said. ‘Our task was to cause as many enemy casualties as we could. We felt confident we might prevent the enemy from capturing the city.
‘Just before the American attack, our group leader told us, “German girls, you are like the grey slender wolves of our nation. As she-wolves in the great wilderness, the human female is also a natural predator, provider and protector. As wolves, you shall roam the shadows and leave no enemy safe. Our enemy shall drown in their own blood – and ours if necessary.”
‘I have never forgotten, because when the fighting started that leader donned civilian clothing and surrendered – so much for being a leader of wolves!’
Willi Anderson, a young private with the American 26th Infantry Regiment, said: ‘It was a shock to see kids shooting at you. You had no choice but to return fire and kill them. One incident sticks in my mind. We were advancing up a side street, a shot rang out from a cellar and one of our guys was killed. We took the only course of action we could and fired a bazooka through the entrance. One of our guys crawled inside.
‘He came out in a state of shock and said, “Jesus Christ, there’s a dead kid in there, a girl.”’
Corporal R.Marshall, also of the 26th Infantry Regiment, added: ‘They fought very well, considering they were young ladies. They sniped at us, threw grenades, and generally did their best to kill us. Yet when we captured them they would drop their weapons and raise their hands shouting, “Amerikaner! Amerikaner!”
‘Then they asked us for sweets and chocolate bars. They were just kids who should never have been fighting.
‘After Aachen, I prayed every day that we would experience nothing like it ever again; it was like a butcher’s shop, with pieces of human meat lying everywhere, dead bodies of men, women and little children.’
Barbie was captured by the Americans. ‘I was asked how I came to get wounded and I told him the truth,’ she said. ‘He asked if the Nazis had encouraged and taught me to shoot and I told him that yes, they had.
‘Then he wanted to know if I liked Hitler and if I wanted to continue fighting. I told him I only wanted to stop enemy soldiers from hurting my friends and that I had only seen Hitler in films and pictures. ‘My war was over and in a way I was glad, but was also very fearful about what was going to happen to us now.’
IF THE situation in Aachen was terrible, conditions in Berlin were unspeakable. By April 1945, Berlin had been reduced to rubble, its citizens hiding in cellars and sewers.
Almost incessant propaganda boomed out across the city through loudspeakers, reminding civilians of what would happen to them if they were captured by the Bolsheviks.
There was even a radio station, Radio Werewolf, continuously calling for the boys and girls of Berlin to fight, and die if necessary, for the Fatherland. ‘Besser Tot Als Rot’, they were told. Better Dead Than Red.
For the young Werewolf girls, the battle for Berlin would become a nightmare.
Heidi Koch recalled: ‘I had never known fear like it. Loudspeakers were asking citizens not to run like cowards, saying relief would arrive soon. The bodies of traitors were hanging from trees and lampposts; it was like everyone had gone mad.
‘We spent much of our time digging holes, making walls of rubble and upturning motor vehicles and trams. There were many members of our SS in the city. I kept asking questions until one turned and shouted at me, “Do you know what will happen if the
I was a sniper. I shot dead a Russian and then another who ran to his aid
Russians get here? They will probably f*** you, then shoot you, understand?” I turned and ran.’
Dana Henschell, then 21, remembered: ‘We were told we must not let the enemy take the aerodrome. As a Heckenschutze [sniper], I had to move to the far side of the airfield, and watched as the Volkssturm men began to surrender. Some were shot and bayoneted by the Russians.
‘The next few seconds were the slowest of my life. I lay beneath an abandoned vehicle, cocked the rifle and with a pounding heart, looked into the telescope. I held the black cross steadily on a Russian soldier, held my breath and slowly squeezed the trigger. I saw the Russian thrown back by the impact.
‘Another Russian ran to help the man I had just shot, so I killed him too. Then a mortar bomb fell very close. Another two bombs came in seconds later, so I quickly backed away from the vehicle. Moments later, there was a loud whoosh and a large chunk of the vehicle sailed into the air.
‘I ran to a first-aid post where there were men who had arms or legs blown off. Blood was everywhere, like a butcher’s shop. Some of our girls could not cope and some were outside vomiting and crying hysterically. I retched but nothing came out. I was given a metal cup of sugared water and told I was suffering from shock.’
Theresa Moelle fired her antiaircraft gun at zero elevation at the advancing Russians until she ran out of ammunition. Then a Russian T-34 tank came. ‘One of our girls, an 18-year-old named Anneliese, began to babble. “Someone is going to have to stop it or it will kill us all,” she said.
‘‘I shouted at her to give me the Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon and fired. I watched the little rocket streak towards the tank. There was a flash, followed by a puff of smoke. Suddenly, the lid of the tank blew off, followed by a rush of bright red and yellow flame and sparks.’
BY THE time Berlin surrendered on May 2, its civilian casualty figures were put at an estimated 125,000 dead, the result of Hitler’s obdurate refusal to surrender.
Considerably more had been wounded, raped or driven to insanity, Hitler’s girls among them.
Theresa Moelle recalled being clubbed from behind by Russian soldiers. ‘I came around and had been bound and gagged. Everything was a blur. I was surrounded by objects on the floor. As my vision began to clear, I could see they were the severed heads of German soldiers arranged in a circle.
‘Five Russian-speaking figures stood a few yards away urinating over a poster of the Fuhrer.
‘I wondered what they had done with Anneliese, and later learned they had raped and shot her. One of the bastards took great pleasure in telling me I would be next.’
Her colleague, Anita von Schoener, was brutally gang-raped by Russian soldiers.
‘I could not stop them, as while one did the raping, the others held you down,’ Anita said.
‘I had to survive what these men were doing to me for the sake of my child, so I shut my eyes. They were like a pack of wild animals and when they had finished taking turns abusing me, I had teeth marks on my neck, breasts and my shoulders.
‘The worst thing of all was that I later discovered I was pregnant again, this time with a rapist’s child. I went ahead with the birth, as many German girls did.
‘But it was utterly impossible for me to show any affection for the child, and I gave it up straight after the birth. I did not even want to know if it was a boy or girl.’
Hitler’s Girls: Doves Amongst Eagles, by Tim Heath, is published by Pen & Sword Military, priced £19.99. Offer price £15.99 (including p&p) until August 6 at mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640.