THE LAST REICHSJUGENDFUHRER: ARTUR AXMANN (18 FEBRUARY 1913 TO 24 OCTOBER 1996)

            Twenty years ago on this date, 24 October 1996, the last Reichsjugendführer by the name of Artur Axmann passed away. I will post information about him in Wikipedia.

Artur Axmann
Reichsjugendführer
In office 8 August 1940 – May 1945
Appointed by	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Baldur von Schirach
Succeeded by	Office abolished
Personal details
Born	18 February 1913 Hagen, Westphalia, German Empire
Died	24 October 1996 (aged 83) Berlin, Germany
Citizenship	Nazi Germany
Nationality	German

Artur Axmann (18 February 1913 – 24 October 1996) was the German Nazi national leader (Reichsjugendführer) of the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) from 1940 to the war's end in 1945. He was the last living Nazi with a rank equivalent to Reichsführer.

Early life

Axmann was born in Hagen, Westphalia, the son of an insurance clerk. In 1916, his family moved to Berlin-Wedding, where his father died two years later. Young Axmann was a good student and received a scholarship to attend secondary school. He joined the Hitler Youth in November 1928, after he heard Nazi Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels speaking, and became leader of the local cell in the Wedding district. He also joined the National Socialist Schoolchildren's League, where he distinguished himself as an orator.

Having obtained his Abitur degree (i.e., graduated from high school), Axmann began studying law and economics at the Frederick William University in Berlin. Soon thereafter, however, his mother fell seriously ill, and he had to abandon his studies to provide for the family.

Nazi career

In September 1931, Axmann joined the Nazi Party and the next year he was called to the NSDAP Reichsjugendführung to carry out a reorganisation of Hitler Youth factory and vocational school cells. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, he rose to a regional leader and became Chief of the Social Office of the Reich Youth Leadership.

Axmann directed the Hitler Youth in state vocational training and succeeded in raising the status of Hitler Youth agricultural work. In November 1934, he was appointed Hitler Youth leader of Berlin and from 1936 presided at the annual Reichsberufswettkampf competitions. On 30 January 1939 he was awarded the Golden Party Badge.

War service

Axmann was on active service on the Western Front until May 1940. On 1 May 1940, he was appointed deputy to Nazi Reichsjugendführer Baldur von Schirach, whom he succeeded three months later on 8 August 1940. As a member of the Wehrmacht 23rd Infantry Division, he was severely wounded on the Eastern Front in 1941, losing his right arm.

In 1943, Axmann promoted the formation of the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend with servicemen drawn from the Hitler Youth. In the last weeks of the war in Europe, Axmann commanded units of the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend), which had been incorporated into the Home Guard (Volkssturm). His units consisted mostly of children and adolescents. They fought in the Battle of Seelow Heights (Seelower Höhen) and the Battle in Berlin.

Berlin, 1945

During Hitler's last days in Berlin, Axmann was among those present in the Führerbunker. During that time it was announced in the German Press that Axmann had been awarded the German Order, the highest decoration that the Nazi Party could bestow on an individual for his services to the Reich. He and one other recipient, Konstantin Hierl, were the only holders of the award to survive the war and its consequences. All other recipients were either awarded it posthumously, or were killed during the war or its aftermath.

On 30 April 1945, just a few hours before committing suicide, Hitler signed the order to allow a breakout. According to a report made to his Soviet captors by Obergruppenfuehrer Hans Rattenhuber, the head of Hitler's bodyguard, Axmann took the Walther PP pistol which had been removed from the room in the Fuehrerbunker by Heinz Linge, Hitler's valet, which Hitler had used to commit suicide, saying that he would "hide it for better times".

On 1 May, Axmann left the Führerbunker as part of a breakout group that included Martin Bormann, Werner Naumann and SS doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger. Attempting to break out of the Soviet encirclement, their group managed to cross the River Spree at the Weidendammer Bridge.

Leaving the rest of their group, Bormann, Stumpfegger, and Axmann walked along railway tracks to Lehrter railway station. Bormann and Stumpfegger followed the railway tracks towards Stettiner station. Axmann decided to go in the opposite direction of his two companions. When he encountered a Red Army patrol, Axmann doubled back. He saw two bodies, which he later identified as Bormann and Stumpfegger, on the Invalidenstraße bridge near the railway switching yard (Lehrter Bahnhof); the moonlight clearly illuminating their faces. He did not have time to check the bodies thoroughly, so he did not know how they died. He avoided capture by Soviet troops and disappeared. His statements were confirmed by the discovery of Bormann's and Stumpfegger's mortal remains in 1972.

Post-war

Axmann lived under the alias of "Erich Siewert" for several months. In December 1945, Axmann was arrested in Lübeck when a Nazi underground movement which he had been organising was uncovered by a U.S. Army counterintelligence operation.

Trials

In May 1949, a Nuremberg de-Nazification court sentenced Axmann to a prison sentence of three years and three months as a 'major offender'. On 19 August 1958, a West Berlin court fined the former Hitler Youth leader 35,000 marks (approximately £3,000, or $8,300 USD), about half the value of his property in Berlin. The court found him guilty of indoctrinating German youth with National Socialism until the end of the Third Reich, but concluded he was not guilty of war crimes. During his trial, Axmann told the court he heard the shot by which Hitler committed suicide. He also stated he had attempted to escape from central Berlin along with Martin Bormann, who he said had died during the attempt.

Later life

After his release from custody, Axmann worked as a businessman with varying success. From 1971 he left Germany for a number of years, living on the island of Gran Canaria. Axmann returned to Berlin in 1976, where he died on 24 October 1996, aged 83. His cause of death and details of his surviving family members were not disclosed.

Portrayal in the media

Axmann was portrayed by Harry Brooks, Jr. in the 1973 British television production The Death of Adolf Hitler.

PATRIOTIC DONBASS

            I will post information about a Child Soldiers’ Organization in the United Armed Forces of Novorossiya, known as Patriotic Donbass. 

The position in which the soldier is portrayed is inspired from a photograph of a Russian unmarked soldier, handing a young boy a kitten. Belogorsk.rf

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://europe.newsweek.com/russia-unveils-first-monument-dedicated-troops-involved-crimea-annexation-326948]

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-monument-polite-people-crimea-invasion/27000320.html

May 07, 2015

Russia Unveils Monument To 'Polite People' Behind Crimean Invasion 

The unveiling of the "polite people" monument in Belogorsk on May 6.

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-monument-polite-people-crimea-invasion/27000320.html]

Russia's first monument honoring the "polite people" behind last year's armed annexation of Crimea has been erected in the Far Eastern city of Belogorsk.

Veterans, residents, and a phalanx of local officials gathered amid a May 6 snowfall for the unveiling of the life-size statue, which depicts a heavily armed, insignia-free soldier holding a cat.

The monument, cast from 400 kilograms of Chelyabinsk iron, is reportedly based on an image by TASS photographer Aleksandr Ryumin of a soldier in Crimea handing an orange-and-white cat to a young boy.

A boy attending the Belogorsk unveiling was asked to pose with his arms outstretched toward the soldier, whose stance is otherwise suggestive of a man dumping a cat into a wastebasket.

Unlike the soldier in the original, Belogorsk's "polite person" is unmasked, a detail that didn't pass unremarked on social media:

​​Stanislav Melyukov, the mayor of Belogorsk and the mastermind behind the project, says he hopes the monument will become a major tourist attraction. The city has already laid special decorative tiles around the statue and installed a video surveillance system to discourage vandalism.

The memorial is a tribute to the armed men in unmarked olive-drab uniforms who entered Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in February 2014, seizing control of airports, administration buildings, and other key structures in a purported effort to "protect" the territory's majority-Russian population from Ukrainian unrest.

The soldiers, originally referred to as "little green men," were later given the "polite people" moniker in an attempt to improve their image. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted the men were Russian troops only after Crimea had been annexed following a widely criticized public referendum.

Asked if Belogorsk had been too hasty in immortalizing a particularly controversial chapter in Russia's recent history, Mayor Melyukov said the statue was a matter of patriotism, not current events.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reportedly has thrown his support behind erecting a second "polite person" monument in Moscow.

-- Daisy Sindelar

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-ukraine-rebels-train-child-soldiers-in-the-making-2015-6?IR=T

Ukraine rebels train child soldiers in the making

Yulia Silina, AFP

Jun. 24, 2015, 8:21 AM

A pro-Russian separatist teaches boys how to use a Kalashnikov machine gun, in the eastern Ukrainian city of Khartsyzk, Donetsk region. © AFP Andrey Borodulin

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-ukraine-rebels-train-child-soldiers-in-the-making-2015-6?IR=T]

Khartsyzk (Ukraine) (AFP) - He is only 14 but already knows how to assemble a Kalashnikov rifle. Denis is a child soldier in the making -- eager to join the pro-Russian militants fighting Ukrainian troops.

"If I were an adult, I would fight," the skinny boy with a dishevelled crew-cut said in a war-scarred town deep in the heart of the rebel-run east of the ex-Soviet state.

"I want to see war, to learn how to shoot, to see the tanks," he said with an air of excitement as two adult rebels stood nodding at his side.

The UN children's agency said in January it had no proof of minors being used in one of Europe's bloodiest and most diplomatically-charged conflicts since the end of the Cold War.

UNICEF believes that about 250,000 children are being exploited in wars fought across nearly two dozen countries -- many of them in Africa.

But the Western-backed leaders in Kiev accuse the rebels of training a small army of child soldiers in schools under their control.

About 20 kids between the ages of 14 and 19 are still taking training lessons in the town of Khartsyzk  -- home to 60,000 people prior to the breakout of hostilities and a flood of migrants for safer regions that followed -- in the first weeks of their summer break.

Some like Denis are learning basic drills. But his parents are understandably wary after being trapped in fighting that has killed 6,500 and shows few signs of abating 15 months on.

"They do not talk about the war with me. They hate it," Denis said. "They do not even watch the news."

Others like 17-year-old Alina are taking first aid lessons provided by the rebel command.

"We are still children and not ready to go to the front," she conceded.

"But if something were to happen, I would be able to help out."

- 'Back to the USSR' –

The Khartsyzk military lessons for children are organised by Patriotic Donbass -- the local name for a rustbelt region that hugs the 2,000-kilometre (1,250-mile) Don River and includes the self-declared "people's republics" of Lugansk and Donetsk.

Patriotic Donbass boss Yury Tsupka -- a 53-year-old who disdains the Ukrainian nationalists who fight as volunteers across the war zone -- said he only wanted to reinstate the old Soviet tradition of teaching army skills in school.

"We decided to go back to what we had in the USSR," the fatigues-clad Tsupka said.

"We will also teach them to dig trenches, to work the terrain."

Tsupka said more and more schools across the heavily Russified region were running such military clubs. He said there were at least four others in surrounding towns alone.

But not all of them are providing simple training.

Some have seen their pupils actually join the Khartsyzk separatist units stationed in the mine-strewn fields that stretch 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of the rebel stronghold city of Donetsk.

Child Soldiers of Novorossiya

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/NewRussiaPress/photos/a.745143815604041.1073741845.731351056983317/787214378063651/?type=1]

- 'Not afraid of blood' –

Anya and Katya are genial twins who are used to wearing heavy combat boots.

They seem at ease and not the slightest bit regretful recalling how -- at the tender age of 19 -- they made the life-altering decision to quit their technical college and join one of the local militia forces.

"We studied and lived in Donetsk when the war started," Katya said.

"We decided to join the rebellion when we learned that kids were being killed."

Monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) believe that at least 68 children have died and 180 have been wounded since fighting began in March 2014.

The campaign's brutality has splintered family allegiances and left psychological scars on both ethnic Russian and Ukrainians -- fellow Slavs who had lived in relative harmony even after the Soviet Union broke up.

Anya admits that "at first, mom would not let us" join the war.

But she then she caved, and started going along with her daughters to treat rebels wounded at the front.

"Before the war, I used to be afraid of blood -- of its smell," Katya said. "I am not afraid of blood any more."

Novorossiya, children of war – Archive

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/SouthFrontEN/photos/a.618268324944343.1073741828.617555095015666/694230050681503/?type=1&theater]

INTERNET SOURCE: http://uatoday.tv/politics/russian-backed-militants-train-children-for-war-444735.html

14:31 Jun. 24, 2015

Russian-backed militants train children for war

In a picture taken on Saturday, March 7, 2015, Denis, second from left, along with other boys looks out from the window of a children's home, in Khartsyzk, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://uatoday.tv/politics/russian-backed-militants-train-children-for-war-444735.html]

"We decided to go back to what we had in the Soviet Union," the fatigues-clad Tsiupka said.

The Patriotic Donbas militant organization has organized military training for children in the militant-controlled town of Khartsyzk, according to AFP.

Patriotic Donbas boss Yuriy Tsiupka - a 53-year-old who disdains the Ukrainian nationalists who fight as volunteers across the war zone - said he only wanted to reinstate the old Soviet tradition of teaching army skills in school.

"We decided to go back to what we had in the Soviet Union," the fatigues-clad Tsiupka said.

"We will also teach them to dig trenches, to work the terrain," he said.

About 20 kids between the ages of 14 and 19 are still taking training lessons in the town of Khartsyzk - home to 60,000 people prior to the breakout of hostilities and a flood of migrants for safer regions that followed - in the first weeks of their summer break. Some of them are learning basic drills, while others are taking first aid lessons provided by the rebel command.

For example, Denis is only 14 but he already knows how to assemble a Kalashnikov rifle. Denis is a child soldier in the making - eager to join the pro-Russian militants fighting Ukrainian troops.

"If I was an adult, I would fight," the skinny boy with a disheveled crew-cut said in a war-scarred town deep in the heart of the rebel-run east of the ex-Soviet state.

"I want to see war, to learn how to shoot, to see the tanks," he said with an air of excitement as two adult rebels stood nodding at his side.

Tsiupka said more and more schools across the heavily Russified region were running such military clubs. He said there were at least four others in surrounding towns alone.

But not all of them are providing simple training.

Some have seen their pupils actually join the Khartsyzk separatist units stationed in the mine-strewn fields that stretch 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of the rebel stronghold city of Donetsk.

Ukraine rebels train child soldiers in the making

Published on Jun 24, 2015

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School children in the town of Khartsyzk in northern Donetsk are learning how to assemble Kalashnikov rifles -- eager to join the pro-Russian militants fighting Ukrainian troops.

VIDEO SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LiU9vUk3jY