Hitlerjugend Methods

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.

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

"If you could go back in time and change three things that occurred prior to 1933 in order to prevent the Holocaust from happening, what would you change and why?"

“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

This IA will address how the Hitler Youth program effected the Nazification of Germany leading up to World War II. Hitler started the Nazi movement in 1919 and led the Nazis for some time before the whole party took control of Germany (Featherman, 1932). The Nazis officially came to power in 1933, and The Hitler Youth was made official that same year (Baldur von Schirach, 67, Dies; Head of Hitler Youth 1933–40, 1974). Hitler chose Baldur von Schirach as the head of the youth program (“The New York Times Archives”, 1974, p. 36). Schirach’s job as the head of the Hitler Youth was to lead an organization that specializes in training the aryan German youth to embody the perfect Nazi. Once the Nazi’s were in control of Germany the Hitler Youth continued to and grow and grow, and eventually became mandatory for all the adolescent aryan youth in Germany (Central Intelligence Agency, p. 14). The Hitler Youth was the main reason that race in Germany became the society and the state (Waite, p. 340), and the German military was so abundant because of the Hitler Youths ability to train kids and put them into war quickly (Central Intelligence Agency, p. 14).

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?

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

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.

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 more we do, the less you seem to believe we are doing it” was stated by Josef In WWII. There were many medical doctors that did experimentation on Jews, gypsies, individuals of African descent, homosexuals, and any person defined as undesirable by the Nazi regime. During the WWII Holocaust Nazi Doctors Mengele, Herta, and Aribert used the concentration Camps for scientific experimentation in preparation for Hitler's final solution.

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.

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.

With this power, Hitler controlled the minds of the young by training the youth to be soldiers for education Schools were filled with many pictures of Hitler, teachers put out the Nazi message and courses involved a great deal of Nazism and anti-Semitism. “In 1938 4.4 million of Germany’s total youth population of 12.1 million had not joined. In 1939 membership was made compulsory.”(Hitler’s Rise to power, n.d) Since Hitler had the power to do as he wished he eliminated all of his opposition, especially the SA which had powerful

Germany 1942 The Nazis are patrolling the streets looking for Jewish people to round up. I couldnt believe it had got this far why had no one stopped Hitler? How had he gained so much power? I was forced into it at the beginning and now I was in too deep. i had nothing against Jewish people so I didnt see know why I was doing this apart from fear. I was scared of what Hitler could do so I joined him. My patrol group came to a house where there was a Jewish family living inside;mother,father and three young boys. My Commanding Officer ordered me to tell the family to come outside and I helped line them up with the rest of the rounded up Jews, I followed orders.

After Hitler took power of the German country in 1933, the youth movement took control to organize the youth so one day they could be immensely helpful to wartime efforts and helped bring economic prosperity. The children could be easily manipulated and were used for service to become future militants or contributors that would carry out Hitler’s war policies, hopefully impacting the economy coming time to the war. After the economic turmoil inflicted from World War 1, the Hitler Youths leader Kurb Grubber, highlighted the purpose of the Youth, stating that,” The Hitler Youth is the new Youth movement of social revolutionary... who are chained to the destiny of the nation... in order to emancipate the state and the economy from the shackles.”(Koch, H,1985)