Hitler's birthday as Soviet shells hit Berlin

20th April 1945: A delusional Nazi regime sends thirteen-year-old boys into battle as a senile old Fuhrer clings on, still worshipped by some

A month earlier, on 20th March, Adolf Hitler emerged from his small Führerbunker in Berlin to meet a group of Hitler Youth members in the garden of the Old Reich Chancellery. Also present is (third from left at the front) Hitler Youth Leader Artur Axmann (1913–1996). And (fourth from left) SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein (1908–1945), who served as Himmler’s SS liaison at the bunker. Fegelein would later be discovered in civilian clothes about to run off to Switzerland - and would be 'shot like a dog' in this garden on 28th April. SS-Obergruppenführer Julius Schaub (1898–1967), Hitler’s adjutant, is fifth from left behind Fegelein.

Adolf Hitler, accompanied by Artur Axman, meets a group of Hitlerjugend in the chancellery garden during his last public appearance on camera, on 20th March 1945.

Some argue that it was the psychological turning point of reaching 50 years old that led Hitler to war in 1939. Six years later his thousand year Reich was in ruins, yet somehow the Nazi regime clung to power, with loyal Nazis still believing that some miracle would give them victory. The ruthless suppression of any form of dissent had now become commonplace.

German housewife Dorothea von Schwanenfluegel¹ describes the circumstances in Berlin at the time:

Friday, April 20, was Hitler's fifty-sixth birthday, and the Soviets sent him a birthday present in the form of an artillery barrage right into the heart of the city, while the Western Allies joined in with a massive air raid.

The radio announced that Hitler had come out of his safe bomb-proof bunker to talk with the fourteen to sixteen year old boys who had 'volunteered' for the 'honor' to be accepted into the SS and to die for their Fuhrer in the defense of Berlin. What a cruel lie!

… the Nazis did not want the people to survive because a lost war, by their rationale, was obviously the fault of all of us.

These boys did not volunteer, but had no choice, because boys who were found hiding were hanged as traitors by the SS as a warning that, 'he who was not brave enough to fight had to die.' When trees were not available, people were strung up on lamp posts. They were hanging everywhere, military and civilian, men and women, ordinary citizens who had been executed by a small group of fanatics.