Educators and Their Influence on German Youth Leading Up to the Holocaust

Naziism had a huge impact on German youth during Hitler’s reign of power over the state. The life of a German child changed dramatically during the 1920’s and 30’s, especially for

The students were taught fighting was something good. War was an adventure. When being soldiers, the students did not have to attend school and they want to fight for their fatherland.

From the early 1930’s to the late 1940’s, there was the Holocaust. The Holocaust was horrific and awful for many Jews in Germany. If you were a Jew, you were sent to death camps where you would eventually die. Jews would be tortured and most of the time killed. The leader of this harsh and brutal abuse was Adolf Hitler. It is said that he committed suicide after the rescue of all the death camps. There were children in these death camps as well. The children were as young as newborns. As you read, you will learn about the children in the Holocaust and during the Holocaust. You will learn what they went through and how they suffered during this time.

The holocaust was one of the low points in the history of mankind anywhere from 8,437,000 to 12,702,000 people were executed in the period of 1942-1945. That is killing 2,109,250 to 3,175,500 people a year! A majority of the people familiar with the Holocaust think that only Jewish people were persecuted when in fact there were many more groups of people, these groups included Slavs, Serbs, Soviet POWs, Romani people, colored people, the disabled, homosexuals, Freemasons, Spanish republicans, Gypsies, the mentally ill, and Jehovah's witnesses. These people were executed because they proposed a threat to the Great Nation, taking up space and land that Germany needed, were believed to be the cause of a problem, the wrong political, racial, religious reasons, distrust, suspicion, not being genetically pure, contrary wholesome popular sentiment, having Jewish ideology, refusing to pledge to German alliance, having succumbed to the Jews, or being in France when it fell.

During the early days of the holocaust, schools in Germany were training its students to conduct its own philosophy. Techniques were used such as paintings, drawings, and literature to establish an agreement that is based off of an expert's opinion. Anyone who disagrees with the teachers and staff would be punished. As the students get older, that philosophy would turn into a lecture of political and personal preference. Those students would lack the ability to change their way of thinking. That lecture would then become a method of brainwashing.

Jewish children were separated from their parents during the Holocaust...These are children who walk to wait for the next train.

People have always linked the thought of child soldiers to less developed countries such as Rwanda or Sri Lanka. The term child soldiers is less associated with the children who grew up in and supported Hitler’s ideology. Throughout All the Light We Cannot See a perspective of a young German boy is brought to light. In the story it is shown how Werner was influenced to act in ways he didn’t want to, just as many child soldiers are pulled into the conflict around them.

German soldiers fought the Führer’s ideological war. Hitler wanted the German race to take over the world. Heinrich Bölls book, And Where Were You, Adam?, describes several soldiers and their lives at the end of World War II. In the chaos of war, they found various reasons to capitulate with the Holocaust and other atrocities, but at the same time, tried to find some normalcy and sanity in an insane situation. Just as other warriors in other wars, they were humans who found themselves in an inhuman situation. They were concerned with the defense of their homeland, family, and future. They were not monsters, but men serving under monstrous leaders and nefarious conditions.

Germany had many huge problems throughout their years as a country, but one major problem that made a huge impact was the Holocaust. The Holocaust refers to the period January 30, 1933 when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Then in May 8th, 1945, the war officially ended. It all started after its defeat in World War I, Germany was humiliated by the Versailles Treaty, which reduced its prewar territory, drastically reduced its armed forces, demanded the recognition of its guilt for the war, and stipulated it pay reparations to the allied powers. “With the German Empire destroyed, a new parliamentary government called the

Shortly after the start of WW1, young Paul Baumer was a high schooler with his friends graduating soon. Flyers and rumors were everywhere about the war, encouraging people to join the German army. It wasn’t until they were being influenced by their teacher’s stirring patriotic speeches that they were really entailed to join. Thus started the beginning of these boys road to the end. After experiencing ten weeks of brutal training, Paul realized that the ideals of nationalism and patriotism for which he enlisted are simply empty promises. He no longer believes that war is glorious or honorable, and he along with his friends live in constant physical terror. When Paul’s company receives a short reprieve after two weeks of fighting, only eighty

Ninety seven percent of the teachers in Germany joined the Nazi Teacher’s League, and those who didn’t still had to teacher under Nazi rule and ideology. If they did not, then they were fired and sent to labor camps.”(Southey) (http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks3/life-in-nazi-occupied-europe/controlling-everyday-life/controlling-education)

In the year of 1916, Paul Bäumer, a 19 year old German volunteer in the Great War, sits with his comrades laughing and smiling bitterly at the letter their old schoolmaster wrote them. Their old schoolmaster preached them into joining yet knows nothing of war himself. They laugh at how he calls them “The Iron Youth” (Remarque, 16) because they were never iron, and they no longer feel like the youth. The war has taken that from them. They did not have time to make lives before the war. They will not have lives after the war. To these soldiers, nothing can fix the rest of the world’s ignorant bliss; nothing can make anyone else understand. They are lost, deprived of lives, of family, of anything but “despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality

I was born and raised in Gaukönigshofen, a small Bavarian village in southern Germany. Life in German villages was very traditional. Women and girls wore elaborate folk costumes on Sundays and special occasions. The women wore their long hair in the traditional style. Families lived together in large homes built of stone. All the different generations of the family shared the same house. They shared the household chores and the joys and troubles of everyday life.

Adolf Hitler often proclaimed, “Whoever has the youth has the future.” This future would entail the most destructive war in history and the systematic murder of millions of people. This research will study how the Hitler Youth, a youth organization affiliated with the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi Party), affected the German population, particularly its members, from 1922 to 1945. Specifically, this research will examine how formal and informal Hitler Youth training influenced its experiencers’ decisions to acquiesce to and perpetrate the Holocaust. This research about the Hitler Youth’s effects on people’s behavior during the Holocaust will analyze the role of Nazism versus preexisting societal trends in cultivating genocidal mindset.

The Success of Nazi Policies Toward Education and Youth Hitler and the Nazi party had a range of policies to control education and the German youth. This was mainly to ensure loyalty to Hitler and the Nazi party. Some believed in these policies and other did not but it was fear and glory and the fear of social inadequacy that made most comply. Hitler and the Nazis wanted to control the education system and youth by controlling the teachers, pupils and the curriculum.