The Black Forest, 1936: Five Boys Died and the Propaganda Story Was Rebuilt

On 17 April 1936, twenty-seven London schoolboys and their teacher, Kenneth Keast, walked across Schauinsland in southern Germany. Temperatures fell below freezing, snow thickened, and strong wind erased the path. Several boys wore shorts, thin raincoats, or even sandals. Five boys aged between 12 and 14 died from exhaustion and hypothermia. Bernd Hainmüller's documentation records how the bells of St Laurentius church led the lost boys down to Hofsgrund, while villagers carried sledges and lanterns to find children scattered across the mountain.

Germany did not tell the story as adult negligence. Within days, the coffins lay in a Freiburg chapel under a Hitler Youth guard. Wreaths carried swastika ribbons and the words "To our English comrades". German and British newspapers printed the photographs. The Hitler Youth took credit for the rescue. A disaster caused by taking children into a snowstorm became proof that Nazi Germany was a trustworthy friend of Britain.