In What Ways Did the Nazis Use Education of Young People for Their Own Purposes.

When Hitler became Chancellor of Nazi Germany, in 1935, he proposed many changes in education and throughout the country. He believed that these changes would influence people and indigenise them of his beliefs and reforms that should happen in the country – to praise his glory and make Germany the most powerful country and its rule to continue forever. One of these integral changes was education. Hitler strongly believed that, younger minds were easier to infiltrate and indoctrinate, as they were developing and imposed this sudden change amongst schoolchildren to provoke stronger Nazism in the future generation of Germans. Older generations, could oppose and have

On the other hand, however, the group also did not enforce membership as stringently as their male counterparts did. The League of German Girls was the female part of the overall national-socialist youth movement known as the Hitler Youth. Its proper title was The League of German Girls in the Hitler Youth. An important part of life in the League of German Girls was to help the girls build character, and to prepare them for what were supposed to be their future tasks within the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft, or people's community, by getting them involved in programs that were for the "good of the people", such as collecting for the Winter Relief, helping with the harvest or collecting medicinal herbs in the fields. But to the girls, many of the League of German Girls' activities looked like lots of fun and like something they really wanted to participate in along with their friends. Many of the activities were not unlike what youth organizations offer today: BDM members could see movies or plays at reduced rates, go on field trips, or go away to camp during their school holidays. They were also able to compete against one another locally, regionally, and nationally in sports and other competitions.

Education was deemed as an important factor in creating a strong, powerful Germany. The Nazi party modified the schooling system and used it as a tool to indoctrinate the youth with Nazi ideology. According to Bernhard Rust, Reich Minister of Education, “the whole function of education is to create Nazis”. In 1933, the Nazi policy passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which permitted civil servants of Jewish background and socialist or liberal views to be

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 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.

The Hitler Youth, also known as the Hitlerjugend, was designed specifically for young Germans who wanted to fulfill their duties to the Fatherland and its leader, Adolf Hitler. Founded in 1926, this helped Hitler gain support from children throughout the entire country. Children as young as 6, with good records could join and become apprentices. By 1933, there were 100,000 members of the Hitler Youth and by 1940, 90% of all German children were members of the organization. Children were encouraged directly, mostly through school teachers. Parent permission was not necessary, making it easier for children to join. There were different sections of the Hitler Youth, based on age. It also had several divisions much like a real army. The boys were treated much like real soldiers at Hitler Youth training camps. They practiced military marching daily, strengthened their bodies, and had their hair shaved in military

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.

Hitler isolated the youth from the rest of Germany to be able to easily manipulate their beliefs. In 1926 the Hitler Youth was founded to train boys to enter the SA (Storm Troopers), a Nazi Party paramilitary formation. After 1933, however, youth leaders sought to integrate boys, while isolating them from the German girls and from their parents, into the Nazi national community to prepare them for service in the armed forces as soldiers. The Nazi army was such a dominant

During the time of Adolf Hitler, many young German Kids were forced to join the Hitler Youth. Teachers pressured the German students into joining the Hitler Youth program, In “Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler’s Shadow,” author Susan Campbell Bartolletti discussed the ways Adolf Hitler used education to further Nazi ideals. To make young Germans into good Nazis, Hitler changed the textbooks and the curriculum, so that it only taught Nazi approved ideas. Hitler also made the German students pledge to him every single day, by saying, “Heil Hitler” to a poster of him and a Nazi flag. Hitler and the Nazis also forced teachers to teach the Nazi ideas to make sure that every German student would grow up to be a good Nazi.

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.

“Young boys were organized into the Deutches Jungvolk (German Young People, informally called Pimpfe), older boys into the Hitlerjugend (HJ). The Deutches Jungvolk could have boys from the ages of 10-14 and the Hitlerjugend could have boys from the ages of 14-18. When World War II started, more than ninety percent of German youth were members of these organizations. Ninety percent is a huge percentage. That means that almost every teenage German, Gentile was a member of some kind of Nazi Youth Organization. Many of these youth organization actually over rid the parental control on the children. Many were told that the individual or the family was less important than the state. If children had disloyal parents, they were encouraged to report them. When the boys weren’t in school or at home with their parents, they were with their youth organization learning military maneuvers and different chants. An example of the one the chants that the Hitler Youth used to march around chanting are: “Comrades, we march to the field, red today, tomorrow dead, Comrades it must be that way.” If the boys made any achievement in the Hitler Youth, credit in school would be given to the student. The teacher must respect the authority of the youth leaders, regardless of their age or attitude towards them. Blind obedience seems to be a common theme. Children are taught these ideologies without knowing the true real reason. Teachers are forced to believe and follow these ideologies if they wish to

There are many reasons why the Nazis changed the school curriculum. Firstly, the party wanted the German children to focus on important subjects that would be useful to the country when they grew up. For example, the boys in particular focused on physical education (so later on the German army would be strong), and the girls had lessons on home economics (which prepared girls to be good mothers and raise strong, German families). Biology and Aryan superiority were also taught in the curriculum, and so was German history and literature. From a very young age, the children were told what was right and wrong to build a “strong”, Nazi-led Germany. Furthermore, Hitler indoctrinated the youth or “brainwashed” them, drilling his ideology into their

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

The Nazi party taught children to be obedience and to be able to make any sacrifice to save the country.

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.