Episode
305 - A Boy Soldier in Hitler's Army
- Podcast
- The WW2 Podcast
- Published
- May 6, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3831
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://ww2podcast.libsyn.com/305-a-boy-soldier-in-hitlers-army
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-ww2-podcast-745440/episodes/305-a-boy-soldier-in-hitler-s-army/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-ww2-podcast-745440/305-a-boy-soldier-in-hitler-s-army.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
In the final months of the Second World War, as the Third Reich collapsed in on itself, boys were sent to the front to hold back the Red Army. Among them was fourteen-year-old Willi Langbein. He had grown up under Nazism, saluting Hitler at school, joining the Jungvolk at ten, and the Hitler Youth soon after. By March 1945, he was fighting Soviet tanks at close range on the Eastern Front. He was wounded, decorated, and survived the war, though many of the boys he fought alongside did not. In this episode, I am joined by his daughter, Heidi Langbein Allen, to talk about her father's war and the long shadow it cast over his life. Heidi is the author of Save the Last Bullet: Memoir of a Boy Soldier in Hitler's Army . Patreon patreon.com/ww2podcast