(Of course inspired by the election of the new pope.)
There can be no doubt that many ‘good people’ were members of the Hitler Youth (HJ). At some point the regime closed down all other youth groups and made it mandatory for everyone to join.
I know they did a sort of pre-military training. Marches with packs and things like that.
OK, so how evil could a youth group be? How often did they meet? As part of school? Classes on Racial Hygiene?
All in all, I suspect it might have been one of those boring things adults invent for kids to do.
I saw a documentary on it. It really was a lot like the Boy Scouts, except with a lot more indian stuff (living in a teepee, shooting bows and arrows, etc.) For some reason Germans have always been fascinated by the old west.
If I remember right there was even a bit of controversy whith the founder of the Boy Scouts wanting to have open ties with the Hitler Youth, but he was voted down by the other scout leaders.
From what I was told while I was living in Germany, it was like Boy Scouts and summer camp and the YMCA all in one. It was a way for kids to get out into nature, to compete in sports, to learn about flying and sailing and science. There was the facination with Cowboys and Indians (Google Karl May and you will find a lot of books and movies based on those books).
It was also a way for poor kids to have a chance to learn skills they would not normally have ever had a chance to do. Quite a few German scholars, scientists, engineers and athletes all credited those days with giving them goals to continue in their careers after the war.
That would be the Bund Deutscher Mädel, the German Girls’ League. They probably didn’t sell cookies, though they did collect money (see the propaganda poster on this page ). Membership was mandatory for girls between 14 and 18. However, between the ages of 10 and 14, they had to join the Junior Hitler Youth along with the boys.
Here’s a quote from the page mentioned above:
"Besides preparing the young women for what were supposed to be their future tasks within the overall Nazi community, the BDM also offered a wide variety of activities that were attractive to potential members, and that were not unlike the things offered by many youth organizations today. BDM members could see movies or plays at reduced rates, take part in field trips, and go to camps that lasted anytime from one day to several weeks. They were also able to compete for and win a number of sports and other proficiency badges at sports fests, and youth rallies on local, regional, and national levels. Local BDM groups usually held bi-weekly group meetings where members played music, learned and sang folk songs, played games, or did arts and crafts.
Big importance was also placed on finishing school and getting training in a profession, something that was almost entirely unheard of for other women of the time who most often worked as untrained help and secretaries. Many of the ladies who later became BDM regional and national leaders were successful women who held degrees and doctorates, and were meant to serve as a positive example to the girls they led. BDM leaders were supposed to always set an example, and were, for example, never to be seen drinking or smoking in public, since Hitler Youth members were discouraged from “indulging”.
It wasn’t until the late 1930s, and the establishment of the Belief and Beauty society, which was supposed to serve as a tie-in between the BDM and the Frauenschaft, the female part of the Nazi party, that more traditionally female programs and activities were added to the BDM’s curriculum, such as home economics. The more traditionally female roles were the ideal for the German girls of the BDM, although the training and vocational programs still offered them opportunities outside the mother and wife roles."
I haven’t had a chance to read it, but Michael Kater, an historian who’s made a career out of writing standard studies of different Nazi cultural organisations, has recently published one on the Hitler Youth.
That would be Karl May’s fault. He was a hugely popular German writer a hundred years ago and he wrote numerous “westerns” despite a general lack of knowledge about the actual American west.
Actually, most of Europe was fascinated by the old west, especially in the decades around 1900. Buffalo Bill took his traveling show over there and it was hugely successful. Anton Dvorak incorporated Native American melodic themes in his New World Symphony. This will be hard to believe, but according to at least one biographer, Hitler himself played Cowboys and Indians with his friends, as a young boy in the 1890s. So it isn’t all that surprising that the HJ brought in some Indian motifs.
When I was learning German, we had a substitute teacher for one lesson who was a native German, and she mentioned that she had been a member of the Hitler Youth.
Unfortunately, as she was only there for one lesson, we didn’t really get the opportunity to ask her about it - but it didn’t appear to have left her with any obvious racial hatreds or tendencies to goose-step into Poland.
This article over at Wikipedia mentions in passing that the Hitler Youth helped track down POW’s who’d escaped, not an activity I remembered from my Boy Scout days. Any truth to it?
I have a vague sense that during the latter half of the war, as boys were basically being drafted directly from the HY into the army, that the older ranks of the HY became increasingly involved in military activities like the one I mentioned above, and the group became less Boy Scouty and more like an army auxillary. Not sure where I got this impression from though, so it could very well be bull.
Yes, Malodorous, the HJ was one of many resources called upon to ferret out escaped POWs (and downed aircrew who had not yet been captured–technically called “evaders.”)
Whe a big break occurred, like the Great Escape in March of 1944, all available able-bodied men were called out to create a huge dragnet. Reserve military units, Police of all types, Foresters, Game Wardens, Hitler Youth, etc., were deployed.
Incidentally, several British POW escape books remark that children (HJ or otherwise) were the escaper’s greatest enemy–they tended to notice things that adults didn’t and remark upon them (for instance, a man dressed in a reasonable suit, but with muddy shoes), as well as being naturally curious.
As for the political indoctrination, ask any Canadian veteran who came up against any of the “Hitler Youth” batallions of the Waffen-SS in France, Belgium or Holland. They were known for fanatical defence, and also had a bad reputation for murdering unarmed prisoners (notably some 130 Canadian soldiers in Normandy)
The founding of the HJ Division, and their training:
Mischling Second Degree is the story of Ilse Koehn’s life in WWII Germany as a quarter Jewish girl whose origins were successfully concealed by her family. Her memories of the Hitler Youth are particularly interesting, she found the teenagers in charge to be as decadent as the Nazi leadership above – albeit on a smaller scale.