Wilhelm 'Willi' Hübner - One of the Youngest Recipients of the Iron Cross

As casualties mounted during the Second World War, Germany was forced to call up ever younger conscripts to fill the ranks of the Wehrmacht. So dire was the situation at the end of 1944, that boys born in 1928 were called up to serve the Führer. They were 15 or 16 years old and had grown up in the shadow of Nazism. Each would have spent their teenage years in the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) preparing them for military service.

The net result of this was a cadre of youths that grew up surrounded by Nazi propaganda and were called up to serve the Vaterland they had been raised and trained to defend. In many cases they fought bravely against overwhelming odds, but the lives of thousands of these youths were wasted by throwing them senselessly into battle with the Allies when the war was already lost.