On Dec. 28, 1945, Major-General Kurt Meyer was found guilty of war crimes for the massacre of 18 Canadians at Abbaye D’Ardenne in Normandy, France, shortly after D-Day in 1944.
Meyer commanded the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, arch-enemy of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division as it advanced inland from Juno Beach on June 7, 1944. Meyer had instructed his troops to retaliate against the Allies for the bombing of German cities.
The bulk of the 12th Panzer Division were Hitler Youth members aged 17-19. These fanatical teens were led by battle-hardened older officers who had fought with the 1st SS Panzer Division on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union and were inured to brutality. Old or young, these Nazis were not averse to murdering prisoners of war.
In 1943, correspondent John Hetherington reported on the “bestial young Nazi fanatics” captured in Italy. He recounted tales of PoWs who were taken to camps in Crete, Greece, being tortured by Hitler Youth guards.
“They represent everything that is most vicious in the Nazi system,” he said. “More mature German solders were by no means incapable of playing fair…even of chivalry, but the training undergone by the Hitler Youth is obviously designed to eliminate the better human instincts and replace them with those of the hoodlum.” (more...)
The Nazi mass murders of Canadian troops in WW II
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