A senseless war at 15: an ss child soldier remembers spring 1945

A senseless war at 15: An SS child soldier remembers spring 1945

May 8, 2015 – 7:56 p.m.

By RTL chief correspondent Lothar Keller

A friend died next to Hans Müncheberg, hit by a sniper. When he faces an enemy soldier directly, both have their finger on the trigger – and neither shoots. A few days before the end of the war, fragments of a tank grenade seriously injured his arm and lungs.

At that time, Hans Müncheberg was just 15 years old.

Today he is 85. He looks at least ten years younger, he is on his feet quickly and with his thoughts. He has not forgotten anything from the last days of the world war when he was part of the last reserve. Children, adolescents and old men should save what could no longer be saved. They were supposed to defend Berlin against the Red Army, which was attacking from all directions.

Muncheberg wanted to fight. He was a student at an elite school of the National Socialists, drilled on obedience and that struggle for the empire and the leader. As a 15-year-old he was actually too young, from 16 onwards young people were drafted into the Volkssturm. In addition, 15-year-old Hans weighed just 45 kilos, with a height of 1.60 m.

However, the head of the ‘Nationalpolitische Bildungsanstalt’ in Potsdam, SS-Oberführer Calliebe, sent Müncheberg and the other boys from the years 1929 and 1930 to Berlin to go along with SS soldiers in the final battle for the capital.

Müncheberg wanted to fight, but the war is different than he and the 15-year-old comrades had imagined. "We did not imagine that we would have to withdraw continuously. We thought: If you fight, you go forward to victory." Instead, the part of Berlin that the Germans still control is getting closer and closer. His unit withdraws to the broadcasting center on Masurenallee, where Soviet snipers lie across the street.

"From that moment on, the enemy had a face for me"

When a sniper shoots Müncheberg’s comrades, he flees through backyards and loses sight of his unit. He turns a corner of the street – there is a Red Army man right in front of him. "We were both startled, but neither of us had raised our arms. We looked at each other. He will have thought – this is a child. I thought – is that the enemy? He was blonde, blue-eyed, who saw from like one of us! I took a step back. He didn’t have to shoot, I didn’t have to shoot. And from that moment the enemy had a face for me, he was a person like you and me."

When trying to flee west from Berlin, Müncheberg is seriously injured by fragments of grenade. Take care of two women his Wounds. And when he made his way to his hometown Templin weak, tired and hungry after the end of the war, a group of Poles – former forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners – helped him. Although victims of the Germans themselves, they give the injured German child food and a bed.

When Müncheberg remembers it, his eyes are filled with tears.

Only every second in Müncheberg’s class survived the war. SS Chief Leader Calliebe also survived – the man who made Müncheberg and his classmates child soldiers. Calliebe fled to Lower Saxony and became a Latin teacher at a high school in Soltau. He was never held responsible for sending the children of Potsdam to war.

Hans Müncheberg was initially not allowed to study in the GDR because he was a student of the Nazi elite school. Back then and later, however, going to the West was never an option for him: Hans Müncheberg did not want to live in the country that SS SS leader Calliebe continued to teach undisturbed.