Also on a somewhat related note, did any kids later express regret or horror at what they had participated or done, like in JoJo Rabbit? Did any kids, again like in Jojo, love the parades and marching but were horrified at actually seeing Jews be killed?
I will be using an endnote format, so to find the corresponding source below search for its number and the source will be there.
So, to begin we have to get an idea of early De-nazification. The official beginnings of the term denazification originated at the pentagon prior to the end of ww2 in 1943, referring to how the legal system of the new Germany would have to be adjusted. [1] Later it was expanded to include ideological cleansing of nazi ideas. Adults and youth around the age of 12 and up would have been expected to view films produced by the Americans as a sort of 'shock therapy sensitivity training' where videos of the concentration camps and other such films would be shown to give humanity to the victims of the holocaust and by proxy humiliate or shame those who had previously supported nazi measures, including youth who had little idea of the brutal realities of what extermination meant for a population besides them simply being gone [2].
Examples of these films include Die Todesmühlen or 'The Death Mills', (Normally a Wikipedia link is unacceptable but they allow you to watch the film via a sidebar, and as such, it is an invaluable primary source for this use.) Moreover prior to the end of the third Reich media was highly controlled with magazines like "Art in the German Empire" AKA 'Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich' giving a specific view of the war ( humble brag, but I have worked with one of the most extensive collections of these magazines in the world at my university, it was very exciting.) but afterward many adults and their children witnessed new media that showed a fuller range, and as children often do it changed many peoples opinion, like with Die todesmuhlen. The films were so effective some were shelved for fear it would severely hinder people's desire to believe them for the blame that would rest on their shoulders, shelved films like "The Camps" being a critical example. PBS did an excellent analysis but to break it down simply they were shelved for having the potential to push germans away by having the blame lie on them. [3] From this we can assume that people in Germany didn't entirely feel the full blame for what happened in the camps despite their disgust or other emotions, as the government of the occupation viewed that as an impediment to rehabilitation and specifically set out to avoid a full-blown humiliation so as to avoid a repeat of the Versailles problem.
As it affects children specifically many thousands of german children were orphaned after the war and raised with the knowledge of the holocaust and the many orphanages around the country had trips frequently sponsored to ensure they knew the harm of their forefathers well so as not to repeat it and this is partly due to the many individuals who saw the potential to shape and protect future generations from a repeat of those past mistakes. Examples like that of Erwin Farkas serve a great purpose in showing this. After WW2 on both sides, there were millions of displaced people and another critical thing to remember is that these children and orphans were as likely to be Jewish as they were any other group, and so there was frequent socializing and fraternizing between the groups on the post-war years. [4] Despite this many remembered these years with trauma and despite the attempts to forget examples of Nazi-era trauma still arise in the elderly survivors of that lost generation. Examples like the 'Heil Hitler' woman famous for spouting the phrase at a birthday party, despite having been free of association with the Nazis for decades due to the fact she had Alzheimer's which triggered the memories of her childhood, where it was normal to heil Hitler at a birthday party. [5] In any case it is hard to pin down exactly what life was like in a de-nazified Germany, but many people who gave testimony as adults made clear they reviled what they had fought for and believed in during that time, misguided and misshapen. [6] Stories of adults like Bert Trautmann [See further reading section] show us that sometimes people really did believe the propaganda and died a little inside when the truth came to them and broke through and so I think in some sense that gives an idea of how it must have changed children's worldview, but in the end, it is up to us to draw our own conclusions based on what we can find in the record and our, now-fading, living memory. The hope is everyone who could recover, and that as few children were hurt as possible in any permanent way. Sadly millions perished in the holocaust, and thousands died of disease, famine, and cold in the years following due to the instability of the early cold war. And to give a final answer to your question, we can't know how every child reacted, but for the homeless, or orphaned, or those whose worlds were shattered it did in some sense serve to forever shape their experiences and lives. Even in 1952, 25% of west germans polled viewed Hitler favorably and remarked him as a good statesman [7]. This didn't go away overnight.
Citations/Endnote:
[1] Beattie, Andrew H. Allied Internment Camps in Occupied Germany: Extrajudicial Detention in the Name of Denazification , 2019.
[2] Haggith, Toby. Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television since 1933. Wallflower Press, 2005.
[3] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/faqs.html (Warning, very old website, but good info.)
[4] Hagen, Carrie. “This Orphanage Did More Than Find Homes for Children of the Holocaust. It Helped Them Reclaim Their Humanity.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 14 Mar. 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/orphanage-helped-them-reclaim-their-humanity-180962516/.
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGWit9QFhz8 video example. The woman was 98 I beleive when the video was taken, but that I can't find the source to. A similar story can be found here > Reed, Rex. “The Holocaust and Alzheimer's, Together at Last in 'Remember'.” Observer, Observer, 11 Mar. 2016, observer.com/2016/03/the-holocaust-and-alzheimers-together-at-last-in-remember/.
[6] Macdonald, Fiona. “Culture - How the Children of Nazi Germany Remember World War Two.” BBC, BBC, 23 Jan. 2018, www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180123-how-the-children-of-nazi-germany-remember-world-war-two.
[7] Young, Simon. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945: a History of Europe Since 1945. Macat Library, 2017.
Further reading on previous askhistory questions by Shino336: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5rnwe1/how_were_the_children_of_the_hitler_youth/
and also a similar question answered by the same user
Other Further reading:
Rowlands, Alan. Trautmann: the Biography. DB, 2012.
^ Trautman was an anglo-german footballer and german soldier captured at the later part of the war. He was exposed to evidence of nazi war crimes and recanted rapidly swearing off nazism and displaying dismay at the things shown to him such as evidence of genocide. He spent much of his later life as an activist and inspiration for young people and played professional football (the UK kind, mind you) in the post-war years. He remains controversial, but by all accounts, he was true to his change of heart, and made profuse apologies and worked to right his wrongs after the war. Worth noting is that he technically wasn't a nazi, but was, in fact, a soldier for the Wehrmacht.