preview

The Hitler Youth Organization Essay

Decent Essays

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 …show more content…

Historian Eileen Hayes summarizes:
“the Hitler Youth was such a group, with its own departments of culture, school, press, propaganda and so on. All this early organization was done because Hitler realized that, if and when he finally managed to over throw the Weimar government, we would need to have something ready to take its place immediately.”
After the HJ became the sole Nazi youth group, Hitler and Gruber stressed the importance of loyalty to the Reich and the ideologies for the Aryan race.
In October of 1936 the Hitler made Hitler youth a mandatory membership, conscripted all German boys aged ten into the HJ as well. The laws required boys age ten and over to join but there were younger boys as little as 6 years old fighting to join the Jungvolk, which was the voluntary HJ. The young boys wanted to be a part of a group and fit in, and most of all wanted to wear a uniform. Alfons Heck described his infatuation with the HJ uniforms, comparing it to being part of a sports team and having pride in wearing your own teams’ jersey.
Education for the HJ changed drastically during the years after Hitler became power, leading into the war. No longer were math, science and literature the focus in grammar school. It changed focus to Nazi racial principles, German history and leadership training. Teachers could not teach their normal lecture plans, and the German history they taught their students was

Get Access