Hitler Youth

Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend in German) was the Nazi organization for young Germans aged between 10 and 18. Like other Nazi institutions, its primary purpose was to foster or coerce blind allegiance to the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler. In the case of the Hitler Youth, its additional purpose was to reshape the minds of young Germans from an early age and turn them into committed Nazis to be used in Hitler’s war machine. Through the means of education and indoctrination, young people were prepared to sacrifice their lives and labor in the service of Hitler and Hitlerian Germany.

Background

The Hitler Youth was founded in 1926 when the Nazi Party was still a fringe political movement. After the Nazis rose to power in 1933, under the leadership of its first youth leader Baldur von Schirach, the organization grew both in its scope and membership. In 1936, the Hitler Youth Law banned all other youth organizations and incorporated all their members into the Hitler Youth. An additional law passed in 1939 made it compulsory for all Germans between 10 and 18 years of age to become members of the organization. By 1945, its members included almost all German boys and girls, making it the largest youth group in history. After the Allied occupation of Germany at the end of World War II, the organization was outlawed by the Allied Control Council along with other Nazi organizations. Like other Nazi organizations, it remains unconstitutional in Germany.

Overview

The Hitler Youth projected itself as an organization for young, blond, loyal, and strong "Aryans." Between 1933 and 1945, it was influential in Nazi Germany for the promotion of Nazi propaganda among the German youth. The organization had separate wings for boys and girls, who were further divided into two groups according to age. The German Young People and the League of Young Girls was for children between ages 10 to 14. The Hitler Youth and the League of German Maidens catered to young boys and girls between 14 and 18. All of these wings are together understood as the Hitler Youth. The organization also had several local units devoted to carrying out its objectives. Representatives from the local units from all over Germany usually gathered at the Reich party rally held at Nuremberg annually.

The Nazi government could not solely rely on schools and families to propagate its ideology. The Hitler Youth was formed to immerse young minds in Nazi propaganda and counter the traditional authority of schools, parents, and priests, some of whom might not be sympathetic to Nazism. As part of the Hitler Youth program, children were given lessons in "race science," eugenics, anti-Semitism, anti-Bolshevism, and the supposed superiority of the German master race. Great importance was given to the pursuit of physical fitness and outdoor activities to build strong and healthy bodies. Other activities included military drills and marches, educational programs compatible with Nazi indoctrination, camping and community services, and singing of German folk songs. Particular importance was given to musical education and group singing as means of building community solidarity and group cohesion. With its roots in a romanticized vision of a glorious pre-modern German past, singing of old German folk-songs became hugely popular. It also had several publications for popularizing its ideas; the monthly magazine Wille und Macht (Will and Power) being the organization’s official mouthpiece.

Although physical fitness was given prominence for both boys and girls, their training differed significantly, in line with Nazi ideals of appropriate gender roles. Young boys were given pre-military training where they picked up skills such as camouflage, digging trenches, marksmanship, weaponry, crossing rivers, and so on. The emphasis was on turning them into formidable future soldiers. In this, the organization became an important pool for future recruitment into the elite Schutzstaffel (SS) and the armed forces. The girls were given lessons in the virtues of matrimony and motherhood. They were encouraged to fulfil the Nazi eugenic role of breeding and rearing as many Aryan children as possible for the sake of the nation. Socialization in the Hitler Youth had considerable effect in garnering almost universal consensus on Nazism among the youth in Germany.

For all the talk on instilling family values, the Hitler Youth prioritized loyalty to the Führer and the government over everything else. The members of the organization were encouraged to spy on their parents and report them if they engaged in anti-Nazi conversations at home. They were used to disrupt church attendance and spy on Bible classes to monitor propagation of anti-Nazi ideas. Many parents were shocked to see their children display military brutality in their demeanor. Stress on physical activities made them fitter, but the culture of anti-intellectualism pervading Nazism made them more curtailed critical thinking, and the freedom to bully anyone who did not agree with Nazi ideas further encouraged perverse and violent behavior among the youth of this period.

After the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, the Hitler Youth was used as a military reserve to compensate for the huge loss of manpower in the war in the Eastern Front. By 1945, members as young as 12 years old were recruited into the combat units. Going against the grain of Nazi ideals, from 1943, young women were also used to collect money for the war effort, serve as nurses, do heavy work, and perform other paramilitary activities. From 1943, both boys and girls were recruited as fighting members of anti-aircraft defences. In the final days of the Nazi regime, squads of Hitler Youth were used to form the last line of defense in the Battle of Berlin, where almost all of them were decimated by Soviet forces.

The organization was disbanded after the Nazis were defeated, but the occupying Allied forces did not prosecute its members at the Nuremberg Trials because a majority of them were children. Since there was no choice in Nazi Germany to not become members of the Hitler Youth, many influential Germans had to bear the taint of having a Nazi past in the postwar period. One such former Hitler Youth member was Pope Benedict XVI. Although dissent was almost impossible, the White Rose resistance by the Scholl siblings during 1942–1943 remains a glorious exception in the history of the Hitler Youth.

Bibliography

Burleigh, Michael. The Third Reich: A New History. London: Pan, 2001. Print.

Dvorson, Alexa. The Hitler Youth: Marching Towards Madness. New York: Rosen, 1999. Print.

Kater, Michael H. Hitler Youth. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004. Print.

Koch, H. W. The Hitler Youth: Origins and Development 1922– 1945. New York: Cooper Square, 2000. Print.

Marten, James, ed. Children and War: A Historical Anthology. New York: New York UP, 2002. Print.

Meyer, M. The Politics of Music in the Third Reich. New York: Lang, 1993. Print.

Rempel, Gerhard. Hitler's Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1989. Print.

Werner, Emmy. Through the Eyes of Innocents: Children Witness World War II. Boulder: Westview, 2000. Print.