From: invaliddmpyron@austin.rr.com   
      
   [Default] Thus spake Steve Silverwood :   
      
   >On Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:25:12 -0700, RT    
   >wrote:   
   >   
   >>A year or two is all that's needed. In a war like that, one for outright   
   >>survival, younger and younger recruits are accepted. That's what Japan and   
   >>Germany did. And Caprica and the colonies were very technically advanced -   
   >>very. No hueys or 105s... Understand?   
   >   
   >Japan and Germany didn't "accept" kids (and old men), they all but   
   >forced them at gunpoint to serve in what Germany called the   
   >Volkssturm, the equivalent of the Home Guard in the UK during World   
   >War II.  Many DID volunteer, as their indoctrination in those cultures   
   >"programmed" them to, but if there weren't enough they were forcibly   
   >enlisted.   
   >   
   >-- //Steve//   
      
   There were two groups of boys who were drafted into the German Army.   
   The Hitler Youth jumped up and said me too.  But many boys had a fear   
   that they were going to die and pushed out front as cannon fodder. The   
   old men, from two autobiographies I've read, had pretty much resisted   
   the "mind meld" that Hitler had worked on the rest of Germany and were   
   dragged into the war.   
      
   If you watch movies of the Volksweir you'll see a sad, resigned look   
   on the faces of the men and either fear or excitment in the boys.   
      
   When I lived in the DBR we walked through a cemetary in Bavaria and I   
   was surprised to find a family burial plot with a father and four   
   sons.  The oldest son died in late 1944, the second on June 7, 1944.   
   But the two youngest died two days apart in February, 1945, and the   
   father died in early February of the same year.   
      
   My father walked away and I think he cried.  He went through that area   
   about then.   
      
   The Soviets were different.  They were fighting to defend their   
   country.  Most of the inductees were actually women who volunteered.   
   After the Winter Battalion of the Socialist Soviet People's Army   
   defeated the Germans, there was little need for the Soviets to pull up   
   young and old.   
      
   Japan was an interesting one.  Everyone just accepted thatif needed   
   they would die to the last man, woman and child defending Japan.  Part   
   of the Bushido way of life.  Which many now regret has disappeared   
   from the Japanese culture.   
      
   So, what would the Colonies be doing?  In WW II, many American men   
   enlisted before they were drafted because they "knew" it was right.   
   And the law provided enlistment as early as 16 years, 11 months, but   
   they couldn't go into combat until they were 17 1/2.   
      
   But a 14 year old Bill Adama?  Not likely unless things were so   
   despesperate that they were all but wiped out.   
   --   
      
   - dillon  I am not invalid   
      
   An object's desireability to a dog is directly   
   proportional to its desireability to another dog.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)