This is the story of light, hope and promise ─ gone wrong.

A generation trained to live and die for the Reich. Of the millions of boys who ingested the ways of National Socialism between 1933 and 1945, most rushed to war eager not only to secure one Germany in her rightful place but die for the man they saw as their father, Adolf Hitler.

To Die for Hitler: Child Soldiers of the Third Reich chronicles this high-stakes era through its most brilliant─albethey notorious─leaders as well as the child soldiers they honed. Baldur von Schirach, a social climber descended from both German and American aristocracy, grew Hitler's youth from thousands to millions. Academically gifted and streetwise Artur Axmann designed a division for them. National Socialism's Svengali, Josef Goebbels, created the air they breathed. Loyal to one man, they groomed the legions demanded for a specific and ultimately calamitous end. It proved a tremendous and electrifying undertaking.

For youth like those of Year Group 1928, "defeat" and "surrender" were inconceivable. Rudi Schulz, left for the 12th SS Panzer Division (Hitlerjugend) at sixteen. His weeks as a "tank-hunting commando" fighting the climactic battles of northern Germany during the last month of the war proved his passion and a secret he kept for life. Spirited Robert Ullrich, whose grandfather owned a prominent Cologne bank, found excitement and camaraderie in training to fight for the Reich. Failing to mature, he clung to the Führer, keeping his California roots secret as his flak battery downed the enemy over Vienna. Cosmopolitan Gerhard Wolf devoured all things the Reich provided through cinema, public education and youth training. Proud to serve the Waffen-SS, he clawed to survive as a child prisoner. These boys fulfilled the dream promised through to its incomprehensible and tragic end.