Axmann, Artur

Axmann, Artur (1913–1996) founder of the Hitler Youth movement Born on February 18, 1913, in Hagen, Germany, Axmann studied law, became an early member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), and, in 1928, established the first Hitler Youth group, in Westphalia. In 1932, the party summoned him to reorganize all Nazi youth cells throughout the country. The following year he was named chief of the Social Office of the Reich Youth leadership. From this post, Axmann put the Hitler Youth in the forefront of determining the nature and direction of state vocational training, and he put Hitler Youth groups to work on farms. Axmann became an officer in the Waffen SS and fought on the western front until May 1940. In August, he succeeded Baldur von Schirach in the post of Reich youth leader of the Nazi Party. Returning to combat, he was gravely wounded on the eastern front in 1941, suffering the loss of an arm. Axmann returned to Germany and resumed personal leadership of the Reich Youth. A thoroughly committed Nazi, Axmann was a member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle and was with Hitler in the infamous Fuhrerbunker, the shelter deep beneath the streets of Berlin from which the dictator directed the war in its final desperate days. Axmann escaped capture by the Red Army in April but was arrested in December 1945 by the Western Allies, after he was discovered organizing a Nazi underground movement. He was held until 1949, when he was tried by a Nuremberg de-Nazification tribunal, which sentenced him in May 1949 to a three-year three-month prison term. After serving his sentence, Axmann found employment as a salesman in Gelsenkirchen and Berlin. However, on August 19, 1958, a West Berlin de- Nazification court levied a heavy fine against Axmann of 35,000 marks (about $15,000), which represented some 50 percent of the value of property he owned in Berlin. Although it was the judgment of the court that he was guilty of indoctrinating German youth with National Socialism until the very end of the Third Reich, he was acquitted of actual war crimes.