305 - A Boy Soldier in Hitler's Army

In the final months of the Second World War, as the Third Reich collapsed in on itself, boys were sent to the front to hold back the Red Army. Among them was fourteen-year-old Willi Langbein.

He had grown up under Nazism, saluting Hitler at school, joining the Jungvolk at ten, and the Hitler Youth soon after. By March 1945, he was fighting Soviet tanks at close range on the Eastern Front. He was wounded, decorated, and survived the war, though many of the boys he fought alongside did not.

In this episode, I am joined by his daughter, Heidi Langbein Allen, to talk about her father's war and the long shadow it cast over his life. Heidi is the author of Save the Last Bullet: Memoir of a Boy Soldier in Hitler's Army.

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