The Endkrieg and the Last of the Napolas

Abstract

For pupils at the Napolas, the last few months of World War II heralded an inexorable transition from ‘total war’ to total chaos. Boys as young as 15 or 16 were called up into the armed forces, and many of the schools had to be evacuated wholesale in the face of the advancing Allied armies. This chapter explores the experiences of pupils from a range of different Napolas throughout the Third Reich, as Germany’s territories shrank around them. Some boys were forced to fight their ‘liberators’ to the last, having been drafted into makeshift units of the SS, the Wehrmacht, or the Volkssturm; others fought on willingly even after the armistice, unable to believe that the regime to which they had given their all had collapsed into utter ruin. Many were merely concerned to reunite themselves with their families, even if they were unsure whether any of their relatives remained alive, or if their homes would still be standing. Yet others simply wished to flee and avoid internment at all costs, once they knew that the war was truly lost. In this chapter, the last days of four different groups of NPEA are charted: Stuhm, Köslin, and Rügen, which had most to fear from the encroaching Red Army; Rottweil and Reichenau in south-west Germany, which fell into French hands; Göttweig, Traiskirchen, and Wien-Theresianum in Austria; and Berlin-Spandau and Potsdam, whose pupils were caught up in a series of desperate last stands as Hitler’s capital was finally reduced to rubble.