As Remembrance Day approaches, one in six children think Auschwitz is a theme park and one in ten think Hitler was a football manager

The survey, conducted by Erskine, which takes care of around 1,350 war veterans, asked 2,000 children aged nine to 15 a number of questions about the Second World War and got some astonishing results.

One in six of respondents said they thought that Auschwitz is a theme park based on the Second World War. One in 20 said that the Holocaust was the celebration of the end of the war, whilst one in ten said they believed that the SS were Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven.

One in twelve thought The Blitz was a huge cleanup operation after the war, a quarter believed that D-Day stood for “Dooms Day” and thought that a nuclear bomb was dropped on Pearl Harbour.

Around 40 per cent of children did not know that Remembrance Day was 11 November, while 12 per cent thought the McDonalds logo was the symbol of Remembrance Day.

A quarter of respondents said they do not think of the sacrifices made by the soldiers who died in war, but 70 per cent said they wanted to learn more about the Second World War at school.

Major Jim Panton, Chief Executive of Erskine, said, “Some of the answers to this poll have shocked us and it has shown that Erskine, amongst others, has a part to play, not just in caring for veterans but in educating society as a whole. As we approach Remembrance Day it is hard to believe that forty per cent of our children do not know when it is. There are also some positives to come out of this survey with the level of interest from children wishing to learn more at school about the World Wars. School children are the future of the country and it is important that we help them to learn about our history.”

Erskine said that in response to the survey it would be working with education project Their Past Your Future (TPYF) to help educate young people about the Second World War, including talks from Second World War veterans keen to share their stories with the younger generation.

Andrew Salmond, TPYF Scotland Project Manager for Museums Galleries Scotland said: "This initiative offers a fantastic opportunity to inform young people about the experiences of war – both at home and abroad. Some, we know, will convey wartime loss and suffering, others will speak of daring and inspiration. However, all will be of great educational value, offering an insight to what previous generations have endured in times of conflict."

The Real Facts

Adolf Hitler was not the manager of the national German football team. In 1933 he and his Nazi party took power in Germany and started the Second World War by invading Poland in September 1939. He committed suicide as Germany was on the brink of losing the war in 1945.

Auschwitz: is not a theme park. It was a death camp, the remains of which can still be seen in modern day Poland. It is estimated that over a million people, mostly Jews, were killed in gas chambers by the Nazis there.

The “D” in D-Day does not stand for “Dooms”. It does not stand for anything other than signifying the day of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France on 6 June 1944.

Pearl Harbour did not have a nuclear bomb dropped on it. It was the site of a surprise air attack by the Japanese on the American fleet stationed there. The attack brought the Americans into the war in 1941. Nuclear bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, prompting the Japanese to surrender and the war to end.

The Holocaust is not a celebration. It is the name given to the systematic extermination and genocide of the Jewish people of Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators. It is estimated that six million of Europe’s Jews were killed, initially with mass shootings, later with gas chambers.

The SS are not the Secret Seven. SS stands for Schutzstaffel, meaning “Protection Squad”. Initially they served as Hitler’s bodyguards but later came to run the death camps and have their own active military divisions known for their atrocities and fanatical devotion to Nazism and Hitler.

The Blitz was not devoted to cleaning up Europe. Blitz is the German word for Lightening and was the name given to the German air-force’s campaign of bombing British cities.

Remembrance Day is 11 November every year. It marks the end of the First World War which finished on 11 November 1918. The day commemorates soldiers who have died in every conflict since the start of the First World War in 1914. The symbol most commonly associated with the day is the red poppy, not the McDonalds logo. The poppy was one of the few flowers which could grow in abundance in the destroyed landscape of “No-man’s land” in the First World War and its red colour symbolises the blood of those who fell in war.