Adolf Hitler – telegram to the Hitler Youth

October 8, 1944

My Hitler Youth!

With pride and joy I have noted your enlistment as war volunteers of the 1928 age-group. In this hour in which the Reich is threatened by our enemies who are filled with hatred, you set a shining example of fighting spirit and fanatical readiness for action and sacrifice.

The youth of our National Socialist movement fulfilled at the front and in the homeland what the nation expected of it. In an exemplary fashion, your war volunteers in the divisions named Hitler Youth and Grossdeutschland, in the Volk grenadier divisions, and as individual fighters in all branches of the Wehrmacht have by action demonstrated their loyalty, hardness, and unshakable will to win. Today, the realization of the necessity of our fight fills the entire German Volk, above all its youth. We know our enemies’ merciless plans of annihilation. For this reason, we will all the more fanatically wage this war for a Reich in which you will one day be able to work and live in selfrespect.

However, as young National Socialist fighters, you have to outdo our entire Volk in steadfastness, dogged perseverance, and unbending hardness.

Through the victory, the reward for the sacrifice of our heroic young generation will be the proud and free future of our Volk and the National Socialist Reich.

Adolf Hitler