Hitler Youth In The 1930's

The root and future of your society is the youth. To have them follow you is to have definite power in the future. Hitler seems to have been aware of this when molding his perfect community, therefore he did many things to have his ideology accepted by

Recalling his devoted years to the Hitler Youth program, author Alfons Heck states “I have never once during the Hitler years thought of myself as anything but a decent, honorable young German, blessed with a glorious future” (206). This honesty conveyed by Heck elucidates the selfish ideals of those in the Hitler Youth, a theme apparent in the novel A Child of Hitler. Although Heck’s thoughts are self-conceited, they convey the opinions of those decieved by the Hitler Youth principles. As politically incorrect as these principles were, A Child of Hitler portrays them differently than other literature reporting on the subject. Through his descriptions of daily activities, Heck describes the pressure that children faced as Hitler Youth.

“How can this happen?” one might ask. In Germany specifically, a variety of brainwashing tools were utilized. Early on in school, children were taught the ideology of the Nazi party. Additionally, “throughout the Second World War children played war games... None of us cried and we won” (Stargardt, 39). Children became so desensitized to war and brutality that when such events actually occurred, emotion and rationale became separate. Furthermore, the concept of the “master race,” certain people are better than others, was ingrained into their subconscious. Adults experienced similar techniques, albeit in a different environment. Individuals in the police battalion were also directly involved with some of the atrocities committed. For these men, “there was to be continuing ideological training during the war, with planned daily, weekly, and monthly instruction of the men in police battalions. The daily instruction informed the men of political and military developments. The weekly instruction was intended to shape their ideological views and build their character” (Godhagen, 184). As shown above, both children and adults were similarly trained to view the outside world the way the party wanted them to. In effect, the brainwashing was so severe that it seemed to change individual’s sense of morality. One woman in Lower’s

The Nazi Party considered the youth of Germany as an important component for the future. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nationalist Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazi Party) wrote in his autobiography Mein Kamp (My Struggle), “whoever has the youth has the future” . Hitler considered the Germany’s youth and the treatment of the youth to be an imperative aspect to guarantee a secure future for Germany and Nazi party and he aimed to create a nation dedicated to the Nationalist Socialist view. In order to achieve this, Hitler exploited the education system and took control of the Youth movement. The Reich Ministry of Education took power of the schooling system permeated it with propaganda to indoctrinate the youth. The majority of the young people in Germany participated in youth groups such as the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls which trained them for military service and motherhood.

The youth of Germany were an important target for Hitler. He knew that if his dream for the thousand year Reich were to be fulfilled he needed the loyalty of the young German people. But how did he obtain that loyalty? How did he set about bending the German children’s hearts and minds to his will?

The education of the children was key in perpetuating the beliefs of the Nazis and the Party. In Nazi Germany, children were taught to relish bloodshed and violence and to hate Jews ("Modern World History: Nazi Germany"), and the Party used this technique as well (Orwell 23). If children were taught to delight in bloodshed, they would be more accepting of violence aimed at a particular group; the children would not protest against this violence because of their morals or values. Instead, they would go beyond accepting the violence to cheering on the violence and enjoying it immensely.

Schools were riddled with propaganda like a disease, it controlled people instead of just influencing them. “The youth organizations, particularly the Hitler Youth, have been accorded powers of control which enable every boy and girl to exercise authority backed up by threats.”(Spartacus Educational, 1997) Even as the kids were being controlled, adults who worked in certain areas that refused to respect the Nazi Party ultimately became fired. “Teachers who did not support the Nazi Party were sacked.”(Spartacus Educational, 1997) Most of all, almost everyone became submissive and obeyed the Nazis. “Gradually, the old teachers were replaced with younger ones, those with Nazi orientations.”(Spartacus Educational, 1997) As so, the new teachers that had been radicalized conformed with and embraced the new curriculum. This new school curriculum was not very overwhelming but, most of the commands shaped the German children. The Holocaust Explained argues that, “Hitler and the Nazis wanted all young Aryans to be physically fit and perfectly obedient.”(The Holocaust Explained, n.d.) As more people and children submitted to the Nazis, commands that were made out of the bounds of an average school’s limits were enforced. Children were bribed out of their freedoms for money, unknowingly and

Hitler isolated the youth from the rest of Germany to be able to easily manipulate their beliefs. In 1926 the Hitler Youth was founded and was made for the purpose to train boys to enter the SA (Storm Troopers), a Nazi Party paramilitary

Then the Nazis had to prepare for the future and the future of Germany was the youth. Many organisations like the Hitler youth and the league for German Maidens were set up to teach the youth to follow the Nazis. In the Hitler youth they were taught like the military, neat, tidy and organised. The youth saw Hitler as a father figure in the fatherland and obeyed him. Then Hitler used indoctrination in the education system to recruit them into the army as loyal Nazis. There were subtle Nazi views added into all school work to brainwash the youth, as they were naive and didn’t see the wrong side of the Nazis true nature. The future of the people’s community was successfully secure and the Nazis would keep control for years to come.

A proper education consisted of burning racial sense into the instincts of the youth. History classes focused on the triumphs of Germany. Math classes calculated the expenses for the disabled and were used to show why it was necessary to kill those asylum patients. Students with disabilities were screened and disappeared if found inadequate. Students that didn’t agree were beaten by the teachers. He circulated Mein Kampf in schools and created songs for the children to sing. One of the main concepts of bother was his desire to expand east of Germany. “We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east” (33). He wanted to reeducate those of German blood trapped there due to the Treaty of

In Nazi Germany, conformity was extended to schools and universities as education meant indoctrination. Hitler used the schools to promote Nazi ideas and to educate the themes of racial hygiene and the glories of Germany’s past. By 1937, non-Nazi teachers were sacked under Hitler’s wishes and universities were purged of all Jews. The school curriculum was dominated by subjects that served Nazi’s purpose. The German History was rewritten to glorify the fatherland’s past and students were being taught Anti-Semitic ideas in school and every subject was given special emphasis on the Nazi themes. Thus, it is evident that Hitler has effectively initiated changes in schools and universities in order to indoctrinate the young with Nazi ideology and hence mould a future generation of loyal supporters of the Nazi state.

“The Hitler Youth was founded in 1926” (“The Nazi Party”). As stated by Meinecke, “The Hitler Youth is not a boy scout or a girl guide organization… it is a compulsory Nazi formation which has consciously sought to breed hate, treachery, and cruelty into the minds and souls of every German child. It is in the true sense of the word education for death” (Conley). Hitler “based the Hitler Youth on anti-intellectualism, focusing on military training in preparation for becoming a soldier at 18” ("The Nazi Party”). The Hitler Youth was split up throughout the world, with some of the groups sent as far away as South America. “Baldur von Schirach was appointed the Reich Youth Leader” (“The Nazi Party”). There were age restrictions for the German Youth under Hitler. “German Youth could join the Hitler Youth beginning at the age of 10” (“The Nazi Party”). Hitler thought that the Hitler youth would help the “Third Reich last 1000 years” (Conley). The Hitler Youth played a major part in Hitler’s ultimate plan to eliminate the Jews, the

From the time Adolf Hitler came into office in 1933, up to the time when Germany surrendered to the Allied forces and Hitler committed suicide in 1945; the future for Germany became strongly invested in the hands of the younger generations. The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization formed in 1926. It gave kids excitement, adventure and new heroes to idolize. Hitler admired young kids drive, energy and strong love for Germany. He recognized these qualities and made it part of his plan to control the future world but the real question is why did Adolf Hitler pick children for his future? The education and the lack of schooling in independent thinking that instilled the ideology that brainwashed the Hitler- Jugend and eventually led

In the Hitler Youth movement, created in 1922, each child born had to join an extremely tough military training in preparation for any kind of war. Many children did not know why they were training in that way. Yet for them just the feeling in being proud and brave was enough to continue in their tasks. They enjoyed being the center of attention and the object of the adult desires. We can say that the Nazis system in

Hess not only defied his father’s protests with his participation in the Hitler Youth but had his father sent to "Dachau (a concentration camp) in protective custody" after "he turned in his father for calling the Fuhrer a crazed Nazi maniac...” (Heck 81). This pattern of parental alienation is further indicative of an overall campaign to exploit children in the most profitable way possible. Just as the alienation of Germans from fellow countrymen perpetuates irrational patriotism and loyalty to the state, turning the child on parent produces an entire generation beholden only to the Fuhrer, and fiercely competitive in their desire to improve their standing and rank in the Nazi Party. Thus, the Nazi regime in a sense transformed the population of a nation into a collective of alienated, paranoid laborers competing with their fellow workers for the approval of their Party, with only self-preservation and paranoia in mind.