HITLER CALLS HITLER YOUTH INTO BEING
Munich, Germany • March 8, 1922
Adolf Hitler was just over a decade away from being appointed chancellor of Germany when he announced his intention on this date in 1922 of forming a youth wing for his Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), or Nazi Party, of which he was party leader. At first the Nazi youth organization was called Jugendbund der NSDAP (German Youngsters of the NSDAP) and later Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung (Greater German Youth Movement) following Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, his trial and conviction for treason, and his incarceration. Less than two years after Hitler’s early release for good behavior from Bavaria’s Landsberg Prison the name of the Nazis’ youth organization was changed to Hitler-Jugend Bund der deutschen Arbeiterjugend (Hitler Youth League of German Worker Youth, or Hitler Youth for short), often abbreviated as “HJ” in German.
At the time of its inaugural meeting on May 13, 1922, the Nazis’ new youth organization was just one of many youth organizations—secular (scouting, for instance), political, and religious—that sprang up in Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany and in the post-World War I Weimar Republic. Four years later, in mid-1926, the Hitler Youth became an integral part of the Nazi Party’s Sturmabteilung (Storm Detachment, or SA for short), the party’s paramilitary wing of brownshirted stormtroopers who provided security at Nazi rallies and assemblies and played a significant and violent role in Hitler’s ascend to power in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1930 the Hitlerjugend had some 18,000 teenage boys aged 14 to 18 in its ranks. A junior branch, Deutsches Jungvolk (Young People, known by the initials DJ or DJV), was established in 1928 for boys between the ages of 10 and 14. Two parallel organizations, Jungmaedel (Young Girls) and Bund Deutscher Maedel (League of German Girls [BDM or BDM-Maedel]), came into existence several years later for girls aged 10 to 14 and 14 to 18, respectively.
The multilevel Nazi youth movement took off spectacularly under 26-year-old Jugendfuehrer des Deutschen Reiches (Youth Leader of Germany) Baldur von Schirach following Hitler’s assumption of power as German chancellor on January 30, 1933. The chancellorship made Hitler the second-most powerful man in the country after aging President Paul von Hindenburg. Schirach saw it his mission to eliminate all 400 rival youth organizations, whose members numbered close to 6 million. Early that April Schirach sprang into action, quickly disbanding Communist, Socialist, and Jewish youth organizations after illegally acquiring their membership rosters. Protestant groups (but not initially Catholic ones by agreement with the Vatican) were pressured to jump on Schirach’s wagon. Organizations that resisted Schirach’s pressure were prevented by the police and Nazi Party stormtroopers from holding gatherings under the pretext of being a “public nuisance.” Some groups went underground.
By the end of 1933 Schirach had absorbed over a dozen and a half German youth leagues, totaling 2.3 million members, into his brownshirt fold. (One figure put the figure at over 3.5 million members.) On the eve of World War II in Europe (September 1939), between 7 million and nearly 8 million boys and girls—roughly 80 percent of eligible youths—were enrolled in one of Schirach’s four youth organizations. This made the Nazi youth movement the largest in the world. Soon these same children and teenagers would be called to military service—engulfed in a swelling tsunami of violence, oppression, bestial cruelty, systematic murder, and human wreckage that swept over all Europe between 1939 and the end of Hitler’s Third Reich in 1945. For nearly six years Hitler Youth labored in the ranks of a mass murderer and, in so doing, contributed to the deaths and injuries of millions of people.
Hitler Youth: Planting Toxic Seeds in the Soil of Impressionable Minds
Left: Deutsches Jungvolk fanfare trumpeters at a Nazi rally in the Rhineland-Palatinate city of Worms in 1933. Their banners illustrate the Deutsches Jungvolk rune (Old Norse) insignia beloved by the Nazis. Following the enactment of the “Law on the Hitler Youth” on December 1, 1936, all healthy boys (excluding Jews) had to be registered with the Reich Youth Office in March of the year in which they would reach the age of ten; those who were found to be racially acceptable were expected to join the DJ. Although not compulsory, the failure of eligible boys to join the DJ was seen as a failure of civic responsibility on the part of their parents. On March 25, 1939, membership in the DJ and Hitler Youth was made mandatory for all German males between 10 and 18. Parents could be fined, imprisoned, or have their children taken away for failing to register their offspring. Boys (and girls) were excluded if they had previously been found guilty of “dishonorable acts,” if they had a hereditary disease or were mentally handicapped (“unfit for service”), if they could not prove their “Aryan” (Nordic or Caucasian) descent, or if they were Jewish (even partly Jewish), were Jewish converts to Christianity, or were Jehovah’s Witnesses. (Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to swear oaths to Hitler or perform military service.) Others could be dismissed (or worse) from the Nazi youth organizations for insubordination, missing mandatory meetings and parade drills, nonconformance, and more; their misconduct was noted in an individual’s record book.
Right: Two members of the Deutshes Jungvolk (for boys between 10 and 14, where they were called Pimpfe, sing. Pimpf, “squirt”) hang recruiting signs on their bicycles reading “Are you a German boy?” and “Join our Jungvolk” (no date). Efforts by recruiters such as these youngsters helped the Hitler Youth gain in numbers and strength, for many of their cohorts found membership and comradeship in the Nazi youth program an irresistible attraction and a safeguard against being treated by their peers as outcasts. By 1939 the cohort of boys aged 10 to 14 constituted the largest of the four Hitler Youth branches, in large part because all athletic and sport leagues were closed to them. Boys younger than 10 could hang around boys in the Deutsches Jungvolk but not participate formally in their activities.
Left: Hitler Youth teenagers navigate an obstacle course under the guidance of their platoon leaders. Activities for boys included vigorous games of hide and seek called “Trapper and Indian.” They also played war games in which the boys formed teams, tied red or blue strings around their wrists, and hunted down the “enemy” to swipe their wristbands (proof of kill). Fierce team competitiveness often degenerated into fistfights and outright mayhem. Younger, weaker boys were bloodied while platoon leaders stood by or even encouraged the fighting in field exercises that were intended to toughen the boys and make them indifferent to pain and suffering.
Right: This photo shows a group of exuberant girls. Just as he did the boys, Hitler harnessed female enthusiasm, patriotism, and lust for adventure and excitement to the future of his Nazi Party and a Greater (expanded) Germany. Both sexes wore brown uniforms (the color of the SA’s), earned merits (e.g., the prestigious Hitler Youth Achievement Medal), practiced hourslong parade drills, ran races, swam, performed calisthenics, did long and high jump, threw javelins, and learned to read maps and compasses. They competed in cross-country hikes (girls two hours, boys 1½ or 3 days depending on age), camped out, and sat around campfires singing about battle, victory, and death (Kampf, Sieg, und Tod), or dying heroically for their flag (Unter der Fahne Sterben Wir), or boasting “Today Germany belongs to us and tomorrow the whole world” (“Heute gehoert uns Deutschland und morgen die ganze Welt”). They listened to and watched hate-filled lectures and films full of racist and other ideological cant, recited Nazi-inspired slogans, read propaganda publications (predictably, Hitler Youth had their own newspapers, magazines, and handbooks), and attended local, regional, and national youth rallies.
Left: As the Nazi Party’s national youth leader and head of the Hitler Youth from 1931 to 1940, Baldur von Schirach (1907–1974) set the militaristic tone of the youth organization, which participated in military-style exercises such as digging foxholes and storming trenches, as well as practicing use of military equipment, like shooting rifles, tossing stick grenades, and operating Panzerfaeuste (bazookas), antiaircraft weapons, even tanks. The Hitler Youth had specialized sections run by the army (numerous), air force (Flieger-HJ), and navy (Marine-HJ). In this photo a Hitler Youth is given glider instruction during the special “Day of Military Training” run by regular members of German armed forces.
Right: At the Nuremberg Nazi Party rally of 1934 Schirach accompanied Hitler as the two men inspected some of the 30,000 members of the Hitler Youth standing in full dress uniform, row upon long row, on the parade field. A Nazi Party member since 1925 (he was 18) and an anti-Semite to the core, Schirach worshiped at the altar of Adolf Hitler. Later he served his master as Gauleiter (party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of Greater Vienna (1941–1945), whence he zealously dispatched 65,000 Jews from Austria to German death camps. After the war he was convicted of crimes against humanity by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) (Nuremberg Trial) and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment. He died nearly 8 years later following his release and the publication of his memoirs, Ich glaubte an Hitler (I Believed in Hitler).