“The future of the German nation depends on its youth and the German youth shall have to be prepared for its future duties”
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 answer is simple-the Hitler Youth.
In the years from 1929 to 1933 economic hardship, a faltering political regime and generational tensions left many young people with no place to turn. The Nazis used this situation to their advantage, pointing out to the youths the way the Weimar republic government were
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This proved to be relatively easy, because often the leaders of the other youth groups sympathized with Hitler and were easily lured into Hitler youth. By the end of 1933 membership had increased to two million and by 1936 it had risen to five million.
With many young receptive minds at his disposal Hitler initiated the plans that saw all members of Hitler youth indoctrinated into the Nazi ideals. Hitler made it publicly clear what his plans for brainwashing the youths would consist of: “After these youths have entered our organisations at the age of ten, and there experienced, for the first time, some fresh air….. We shall under no circumstances return them into the hands of our old champions of class and social standing, but instead place them immediately in the party, or the labour front, the SA or SS….. And thus they will never be free again for the rest of their lives.” The Nazis successfully achieved the indoctrination by employing many different subtle brainwashing techniques. For example, at drill times, the repetitive use of a song helped numb the young minds of the Hitler Youth. These songs would invariably be related to duty, blood, honour, soil and above all death and fighting. The lyrics of one such song goes like this: “We are marching for Hitler through night and dread/ with the banner of youth for freedom and bread.” This indoctrination
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
One way in which the Hitler Youth pushed the Nazification of Germany was through the brainwashing of the youth in schools (Featherman, 1932). Hitler was smart and realized it would be very hard to convince adults to change their ways immediately, so he targeted the youth because they were young and easily manipulated. According to
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 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.
This source’s context contains information about how the youth were trained in preparation for the war and what they were trained for. It gives information about the age ranges for the different groups and rites of passages. It also describes the separation between boys and girls in these youth camps, and is thus valuable to one researching Hitler’s Youth. A limitation of this is that does not reveal anything about Hitler’s success or failure in his military involvement, or reveal anything about his invasions into other countries but simply informs about his Youth programs. It does not reveal his military involvement and is thus not valuable to one researching Hitler’s Involvement in other countries.
With Adolf Hitler coming to power, he wanted to increase the power of Germany to rule the world. To do this, he has to start off small, and to do this, he created the Hitler Youth in the 1930’s. In “Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler’s Shadow,” author Susan Campbell Bartoletti discusses the ways Hitler used education to further Nazi ideals. He implemented new textbooks, made students salute him and say “Heil Hitler,” and did not let them express their own ideas in order to mold them into “good Nazis.”
During his dictatorship, Adolf Hitler spread his antisemitic views all over Germany. Susan Campbell Bartoletti, writer of “Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler’s Shadow,” explored in the article how Hitler used education to devise methods of brainwashing and puppeteering. Three methods Hitler used were the standardized school curriculum, the pressuring teachers, and the creation of a youth group in order to spread antisemitism. To start, Hitler used the standardized school curriculum to his advantage. Hitler believed that education should be used for molding children into good Nazis.
This tactic was part of the process that Hitler mentioned in Mein Kampf, when he explained the importance of dumbing the message down to the lowest intelligence level and the importance of reaching the most people. The young people were called Hitler Youth, and because they were so inexperienced and because there were so many young people who had seen the effects of the First World War, they bought into Hitler quickly. In 1926, the National Socialist propaganda became connected with people even younger. First it was boys from fourteen to eighteen, but eventually the youngest boy would be ten, and there were even a group of young German girls involved. What these young people who were seduced by Hitler and his propaganda did was accumulate the places the Anti- Semite message or the National-Socialist or any kind of German propaganda message was spread. In 1929, though Hitler was not yet as influential in Germany as he soon would be, a grand total of 2,000 Hitler Youth went up in a procession to the Fuhrer proudly where Kurt Gruber, who was the National Leader of the Hitler Youth, received honors.Hitler gave these young people who grew up surrounded by war and national shame a reason to have national pride, which they lapped up like kittens drinking milk. Hitler made the youth of Germany his puppets, and it magnificently benefitted the spread of his propaganda
The German youth were willing to follow orders by cause of, their acknowledgement of what was happening to the Jews, what they were being told wasn’t always the truth, and the youth were forced to obey their higher leaders.
Living in Germany during the Weimar Republic and then having to deal with the uprising of power of Hitler, was an experience that changed many lives of everyday German citizens. Thomas Kohut’s book, A German Generation, analyzes a group of interviewees that grew up and lived during this time period. After World War I, Germany was in a state of heartbreak, but for many of the children going through the war, they recall it as, “not as a time of anxiety and hardship but as an idyllic period in their lives” (Kohut 39). However, the Weimar Republic was certainly a time of disorder and chaos for Germany. The older groups recall memories they have of the defeat they faced and the revolution in Germany as, “vivid and
One of the most chilling aspects of Nazi Germany was how the youth was used to control the country. Hitler’s Youth and the Legion of German Girls allowed the Third Reich to indoctrinate children when they were at their most impressionable. Life for these children was extreme; they were bred to be either soldiers or mothers. “These young people will learn nothing else but how to think German and act German. . . . And they will never be free again, not in their whole lives”.
People in all countries have always been attracted to youth groups because they can identify with the activities of that group. This paper will demonstrate how the Hitler Youth movement created a place to belong for many German youth after World War I. The idealism and propaganda used by the Nazis resulted in many members of youth groups volunteering for the Hitler Youth. The paper will argue that the Nazis exploited a generation of young Germans and gave them an identity that reacted against a common enemy in the years leading up to the war (1922-1939). The Youth of Germany were challenging the status quo; reacting against an older generation of Germans that were accused of the country’s social problems after World War I. This paper will
Although bizarre and outrageous, the brainwashing of the Hitler youth was much comparable to our current system of training of k-9’s. It is no secret that Hitler seamlessly developed a large-scale propaganda that he forced upon Germany and his allies. But not only did he manage to fool his citizens, but a whole generation of kids. He created youth camps, known as Hitler Youth, where young boys were brainwashed in training camps.
One way hitler planned to control the youth was by starting his Hitler Youth (HJ) program in July 1926. In the HJ boys ages 10-18 had military training such as marching, bayonet drill, grenade throwing, trench digging, map reading, gas defence, use of dugouts, how to get under barbed wire and pistol shooting as well as Nazi ideological indoctrination courses. These were to prepare them for war. Their uniforms even had badges and other decorative insignia to make it easier to transition into the army. For some reason they didn’t suspect something of it. In 1938 meeting attendance dipped
Many wonder how Hitler came to be, but he was a great leader, for the most part. He took the youth, and gave them power. The role of the Nazi Youth was very specific. Hitler wanted everyone to think of him as the one and only. Hitler’s plan of the Hitler Youth was very efficient in a way and got everyone to hate the Jews. Hitler wanted them to be the ‘’early’’ Aryan race as they were the future.