This really bugs me. As Neurotik said, the movement began in England, and is the Scouts wherever it appears in the world. If you’re posting a wildly speculative OP, at least do some research.
When we lived in the US, someone asked my father: “Do you have the Boy Scouts of America in England”. :rolleyes: (Incidentally, someone also asked me “do you have African Americans in England?” I replied “yes, when they’re on vacation.”). :mad:
Rant over, in answer to the question, the Scouting movement in England, certainly, is Christian-oriented, but fairly non-denominational/protestant, with devotion to country and Monarchy thrown in, with symbolic raising and lowering and saluting the Union Flag.
Could you also explain with examples how the mindset of current boy scouts has very little difference between the mindset of Hitlerjugend. For instance, maybe you can tell us of some Jamboree that tried to annex Poland?
I would disagree. The BSA (having been one myself) quite possibly hug more trees than greenpeace. 3/4 of the handbook is about the environment, animals, and how to make the world a better place. The admission of gays & athiests has thus far been the only ‘conservative’ things I ever saw.
In the US it really depends on the troop you are in. When I was in Scouts there was no religion in it at all. Maybe the oath said god but we really did not go around saying the oath. The most religious part of Scouts as I was a the Scout Camp I went to there were Optional services on Sunday that most of the people I went to camp with did not go to.
Lest our impressionable OP finds reason to equate this with the extreme Nationalism of the HJ, I should point out, once again, that on top of the above mentioned devotion to flag and country Scouts have a devotion to internationalism through exchange and cooperation within the World Scout Organization. Above all and anything the Scout movement is community oriented. A little bit along the lines of ‘think global act local’.
And jcmckaig, conservative is not automatically contradictory to any of the qualities you listed. In fact Nature Conservation was launched largely by Conservatives like Teddy Roosevelt and Baden-Powell in the beginning of the twentieth century. Many of the ‘green’ organizations are in fact not at all very radical, it’s only scum like Nader or the neo-Communist agendas of the European Green parties that have corrupted the idea of environmental care and thinking into a leftist idea.
It is truly so tiring that every sundry Liberal walking around in a pair of shoes has started equating Conservative with Reactionary. You know, Conservatives can still hold liberal, even radical opinions on universal principles, nature conservation and humane issues, without corrupting the central idea of less state involvement and more supervised responsibility. Are all Liberals Radicals? I didn’t think so.
Neurotik: Likewise, or as Benjamin Disraeli said; ‘My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.’
I am not in disagreement with the scepticism that posters are expressing. I would like to point out however that the HJ exactly DID NOT do that. As so many things at that (early) time it was not clear what the ultimate motives were, reading Mein Kampf and annexing Poland was not part of the original charta.
I assume it was a much more hidden agenda that only slowly turned into aggressive pursuit of nationalistic goals. Hence my comment that at the beginning there were no difference between boyscout activities and HJ activities. There are many people right now that propose gun training at a young age, very similar to what the HJ did.
The BIG difference is the ulterior motive to these seemingly innocious activities and the following abuse. It is always important in these discussions that hindsight is 20/20 but it was not always clear to the people at that time what’s ‘black and white’.
So, in other words–If I understand things correctly–the boy scouts are exactly like the Hitler Youth. Except for, you know, the Hitler part. And the Nazism part. And the compulsory part. And the paramilitary part. And the nationalist part. And the anti-semitic part. And the racist part. And the whole invading Poland part.
Other than that, they are exactly the same.
It’s a good thing we have Hinten here to point out the sleeping viper at our collective bosoms. Actually, following his lead, I am seeing disturbing similarities between the US Postal service and the postal service in Nazi Germany. I mean, they both deliver letters, they both carry packages. I mean, if the US Postal service were composed of Nazis, it would be exactly like the Nazi post office. The parallels are…disturbing…
Not quite certain why I bother with this, but what the hell…
It wasn’t clear?¿? Cite me that if you can. I can tell you with complete certainty that although they didn’t try to invade Poland before 1939 (duh!) they did read Mein Kampf and learn all about hating Jews and opposing Internationalism in all its imagined wickedness. You might want to check your facts before you start positing stuff young man.
You assume wrong. Go look up some speeches by the NSDAP leadership from 1932/33 and see what they have to say about the youth of Germany. Look up some of the party program stuff from those years and read up on what they had to say re the organization and education of the next generation Germans.
This is a joke, right?
What?
Listen, if you want to propose this kind of stuff, go ahead, but please try to have some foundation first. The Hitler Jugend belongs to one of the most nefarious periods in human history, it’s quite offensive to just throw out comparisons to current groups that truly don’t even come close. I know people who were in the HJ, I have read the source material. I have heard the speeches. I have seen the actual hand books they used. I have read Mein Kampf several times. I can personally vouch for the fact that the HJ was a very efficient indoctrination machinery from the very start. It was about as close to the Boy Scouts as a flock of hyenas is to a kennel of mini poodles - vaguely canine.
As someone pointed out earlier, the scouts were started by Lord Baden-Powell. The book which he wrote, on which the scout movement is based, is called “Scouting for Boys”.
Sparc,
I resent the fact that you interpret my comments as apologies. Nothing is further from the truth and I if I didn’t get the point across correctly then that is the problem not the intent of what I was trying to say.
I appreciate your knowledge on this matter and I don’t understand why you cannot contribute without flaming.
Despite what you have said, I still believe that the authorities of the HJ must have done a pretty good job at hiding their ultimate attempt at the beginning. I don’t think that they would have found such willing participants if they wore those sinister motives on their sleeves. No, I was not joking when I compared gun training with th HJ gun training because there is nothing sinister about it per se. It is what you do with it afterwards. HJ was not at the front but rather members were recruited by the German army which made sense since they had gotten basic shooting, survival, etc. training.
To your other point, what the leadership of the NSDAP might have said about HJ. I would assume that there is still a difference between that and what happened on a local level and why parents let their kids join.
Since y’all enlightened me about the history of the boy scouts, I can agree with you know that there is absolutely no similarity in motives.
Don’t worry Hinten, I’m not flaming you. I get a lot more grumpy and condescending when I flame someone - I’m prone to some temper. I think that I tried to show you from the very get go that your position is quite untenable as did several people and you just went on posting the same thing. So I thought I might be a little clearer after a while. No offense intended though. I didn’t think that you were being an apologist either.
You are however deeply mistaken as re what people knew and didn’t know in Germany in the 30s. Of course they didn’t know that it would all end in Auschwitz and the utter destruction of their own land. I honestly don’t think that the majority of Germans wanted any of the two. The early persecution of Jews failed the first time in 1934 and even after gradual erosion of the rights of the Jewish people Reichskristallnacht of Nevmber 9 1938 was considered a failure by Hitler because he didn’t get as much support from the general public as expected. Nevertheless the general anti-Semitic sentiments were well established very early on and although there was hesitance by some to force their kids to join the HJ and DBM, the programs were so constructed as to very much motivate the kids to want them. Combine that with the fact that the school system was immediately changed to include the Nazi doctrine as an integral part of the curriculum.
As re the actual Nationalistic part of the HJ and DBM there was no reason to resists or be suspicious of those from the side of parents. An overwhelming majority supported the NSDAP style Nationalism, even those that frowned on the anti-Semitic part of the program. Consider that Hitler garnered 42.3% votes in the last free election, before he enacted the Emergency Laws of February 1933, he got those votes on an agenda that was very explicit on what the plan was, save on two fronts - the actual war and the Holocaust.
The German people elected him because they agreed that it was time for Germany to ‘Awaken” that’s the slogan the NSDAP went to the polls with ‘Deutschland Erwache’ and there was neither any hiding the Nationalist goals nor any hand waving over whether or not Internationalism, Bolshevism and Jewry were the most evil and base pests of the world. They knew, they agreed and they had no problem letting their kids walk down that road. Sure there was a wide swath of people that didn’t immediately agree 100%. In the first years the SA and eventually SS took special care in making sure that they didn’t open their mouths too wide. Hitler’s ‘wonder years’ of 36, 37, and 38 did away with whatever doubt there might have been left, the part of the generation Germans that are yet alive from that time still call those years ‘the good Hitler years’.
In conclusion: There is no doubt that people knew what was going on. HJ and DBM celebrated the Nazi ideals openly and actively from the very beginning. Not every German kid was a member in the beginning, but by the time membership was obligatory it was almost already a de-facto state of affairs.
The analogy simply does not hold. Scouting organizations have existed for approx. a century, are international in nature and are not tied to any stated political party or ideology. The HJ was created and run by the National Socialist party to promite party aims. Seems like a fundamental difference to me.
Furthermore:
Most skills training in Scouting (such as firearms training) are elective items, not mandatory. True, advancement in rank is based on the eraning of merit badges, but there is some flexibility in whcih badges may be earned.
Nowhere have I seen any suggestion that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) be enlisted to join Operation TIPS, either by a government representative or by the organization itself. If this has been suggested, I’d like to see a cite.
In any event, such participation could not take place without the approval of the management of the BSA, and I find it unlikely in the extreme that such a change would enacted without requesting the approval of the full membership.
I believe it is now up to the OP to provide some sort of supporting evidence that there is a “hidden agenda” in Scouting.
Really, otherwise there’s not a whole lot left to debate here.
Hinten, the trouble is that you are getting things exactly backward. The Hitler Youth didn’t start as an innocous boys camp, which gradually revealed its sinister purpose. No, it was established by the Nazi dictatorship–after the Nazi dictatorship already existed–as the youth wing of the Nazi party, with the explicit goal to indoctrinate the youth and prepare them for national service. There was no hidden agenda. It was all out in the open. There was nothing gradual. The Hitler Youth wasn’t the vanguard of the Nazi movement, secretly preparing the youth for dictatorship. It was established after the Nazis had already won.
Any ideological dictatorship must of course pay special attention to the young, since that is their source of future slaves and fanatics. And therefore, any institution that involves the young must therefore be pro-dictatorship. Nazi schools taught Nazism, Nazi newspapers taught Nazism, Nazi radio programs taught Nazism, and Nazi youth groups taught Nazism. We have schools, we have newspapers, we have radio programs, we have youth groups. None of them teach Nazism.
My son’s scouting experience has been one of community servic in food pantries and parks, outdoor activites, acquiring and honing skills, physical fitness and career investigation, not one of paramilitary activity. (Although he did learn to shoot and clean both a rifle and shotgun.)
He was awarded his Eagle Rank on my birthday last month. It’s an impressive body of work when you keep records and realize how much they have put into attaining the rank.
To be fair to Hinten, I think what s/he is asking, though very badly phrased, is: “Could a seemingly innocuous youth group be used for a sinister purpose?” The answer is, of course, “yes”, though in the examples s/he gives, the answer is clearly “no”.