The Americans were very surprised and stunned when some of the soldiers they captured after the big battles of the Western Front turned out to be kids not older then 20. Although they did not have the spirit to fight, their minds were essentially poisoned.
The truth was that as the war got worse for Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler slowly and slowly came to believe that his top generals in the army Wehrmacht were the ones to blame, and that the high command was incompetent. Thus, due to this mistrust, he gave the order to mobilize young kids into the army even though they were definitely poorly trained and not mature. To combat this, the Nazi propaganda machine spun into effect, teaching these kids that to die for their homeland was the noble thing to do. They believed this stuff and even when they were captured by the Americans they continued this hateful rhetoric.
After these kids were captured, the Americans gradually came to understand that these kids were just pawns in a massive war machine and many of them were not prosecuted at war crime trials. Although Hitler Youth and similar organizations were banned, the Hitler youth leader Baldur von Schirach was handed a 20 year prison sentence at the Nuremberg Trials.
*He’s in the second row second from right.
Not surprisingly, many of the captured Hitler Youth became top senior officials in West and East Germany and realized that they were completely taken advantage of by a desperate and cruel regime in the darkest hour.