Artur Axmann

Hitler Youth Fascism and National Socialism Counter-revolution 1913–1996 ○ Natural causes

The last Reich Youth Leader, who sent children into the fighting for Berlin

The last edition of the German weekly newsreel shows Axmann with a delegation of twenty Hitler Youth boys in the garden of the Reich Chancellery, where Hitler, in his last public appearance, gave the lined-up boys the Iron Cross.

Born in Hagen and raised in Berlin-Wedding, Axmann joined the Hitler Youth in 1928 after hearing Joseph Goebbels speak, and joined the Nazi Party in 1931. In August 1940 he succeeded Baldur von Schirach as Reich Youth Leader. He lost his right arm on the Eastern Front in 1941, and in 1943 proposed forming an SS panzer division from Hitler Youth members. In the last weeks of the war he commanded Hitler Youth units, made up mostly of children and adolescents, in the Battle of the Seelow Heights and in Berlin. On 1 May 1945 he left the Führerbunker with Martin Bormann's breakout group and later testified that he had seen Bormann's body, an account confirmed when the remains were found in 1972. Arrested in December 1945, he was sentenced in 1949 by a denazification court as a major offender.

Also known as: Artur Werner Axmann · Erich Siewert