Grandma was in a Nazi work camp for a year due to her being in the French Resistance.
She said the Nazi’s took ANYONE who was in opposition to their agenda, although some(Jews-Gypsy’s-Homosexuals) were favored more than others.
My landlord in Berlin while I was a soldier stationed there in the 1970s with U.S. Army was thrown in a concentration camp in late 1930s for being part of a Hitler Youth plot to assassinate Hitler.
Yes, believe it or not, a number of young anti-Nazis in Berlin joined the Hitler Youth with the idea of getting near The Horrible One with a pistol and blowing him away.
Unfortunately, one of the members of the plot was a snitch for the SS and all the boys involved were arrested (I think this happened in 1938). Werner was 16 years old and his young age was what saved him from execution with most of the plotters.
Somehow he survived a year in the concentration camp and the Nazis made him an offer: Joined the Army as an infantryman or stay in the concentration camp. Werner decided his chances were better in the German Army and so joined up for the duration.
After many adventures in Poland and Russia his unit was transferred to the Western Front for the Battle of the Bulge, and he took this opportunity to surrender to the U.S. Army who treated him at first like a war criminal since he had been drafted into the Waffen SS by that time.
Werner’s next war experience was as a German POW in Melbourne, Florida at what is now the International Airport where he worked in the laundry and was allowed weekend passes (after V-E Day) into town to go to the movies, the beach, the bars and date American girls on the sly.
He returned to Berlin in the summer of 1946 to the surprise of friends and family who had long given him up for dead. Werner purchased (He was paid a small wage as a POW) an large abandoned three story house near Andrew’s Barracks where the U.S. Army set up shop after the war from U.S. occupation authorities, patched it up and rented out the rooms to American soldiers and their families.
It was in 1975 that moved into the first floor apartment and became friends with Werner and his wife Gisela. I checked out a number of history books about a 1938 plot against Hitler by members of the Hitler Youth, but found no evidence to back up Werner’s story.
Andrew’s Barracks, which was only three blocks down Kadetenwegg from my apartment, was the German West Point under the Empire and under the Nazis it was the base for Hitler’s SS bodyguards, so he made frequent visits there.
The plan of assassination in 1938 was to have several armed Hitler Youth in the area as often as possible, as Hitler was known to stop at the front gate of the base to briefly address the fevered crowds of off duty SS and Berlin Nazis.
Of course, the assassination didn’t off because the plotters were arrested long before they could get firearms, but on at least one occasion Werner did work his to within several feet of Hitler and claimed he could have nailed The Ogre, as he was excellent shot with a Lugar.
I suppose Werner was just an old man with a war story, but a part of me wants believe it was true. I asked Werner why at such a young age why he hated Hitler so much that he willing to throw away his life.
“Simple. Hitler was the devil. It was my duty as a German patriot and a Christian to destroy evil.”