What was the Hitler Youth? |
Why was it created? |
"Founded in 1926, the original purpose of the Hitler Youth was to train boys to enter the SA (Storm Troopers), a Nazi Party paramilitary formation. After 1933, however, youth
leaders sought to integrate boys into the Nazi national community and to prepare them for service as soldiers in the armed forces or, later, in the SS." (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
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“The weak must be chiselled away. I want young men and women who can suffer pain. A young German must be as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp’s steel.” -Hitler
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
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Sections of the Hitler Youth
"In 1930 the Bund Deutscher Mädel (German League of Girls) was formed as the female branch of the Hitler Youth movement . . . There were two general age groups: the Jungmädel, from ten to fourteen years of age, and older girls from fifteen to twenty-one years of age. All girls in the BDM were constantly reminded that the great task of their schooling was to prepare them to be "carriers of the... Nazi world view."
(Spartacus Educational, German League of Girls, n.d.)
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Also known as "German Hitlerjugend, [the Hitler Youth was an] organization set up by Adolf Hitler in 1933 for educating and training male youth in Nazi." principles."
(The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Hitler Youth, 2015)
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"The Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were the primary tools that the Nazis used to shape the beliefs, thinking and actions of German youth. Youth leaders used tightly controlled group activities and staged propaganda events such as mass rallies full of ritual and spectacle to create the illusion of one national community reaching across class and religious divisions that characterized Germany before 1933."
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
Example of Nazi Propaganda
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
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There was a lot of pressure on children and parents to join the Hitler Youth. And on December 1, 1936, Hitler "made membership mandatory, and the Hitler Youth thereby changed from a party to a state organization."
(Friedrichs, Law on the Hitler Youth (December 1, 1936), 1937)
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"League of German Girls in the Hitler Youth"
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
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Hans Scholl in the Hitler Youth
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)
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"Against his father's wishes, Hans had joined the Hitler Youth movement when he was fourteen" because Hitler had promised the country's youth that they would help build Germany into a bright future."
"Hans was excited to be asked to attend a Nazi rally, but when he got home, "he looked tired and showed sogns of great dissapointment. Hans had been disillusioned by the mass conformity of the Numbemberg rally, the mindless obedience demanded of each participant."
(Freedman, We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose
Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler, 2016) |
Could Jews Participate?
"Jewish youngsters, along with others of 'inferior' ancestry, were not allowed to join. Hitler had declared that the 'Aryan race,'of which Germans were the supreme example, was the 'master race,' superior to all others."
(Vinke and Patcher Hedwig, The Short Life of Sophie Scholl, 1984)
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(Cline, Gestapo in Berlin Orders Jews to Display Star of David on Front Doors. n.d.)
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Hitler not allowing Jews to participate in the Hitler Youth rose a big red flag...
Even kids started to notice, once even saying to their counselor "Everything would be fine, but this thing about the Jews is something I just can't swallow." The conselor shut down the conflict by saying "he is doing it for the sake of the greater good. We will have to accept certain difficult and incomprehensible things."
(Vinke and Patcher Hedwig, The Short Life of Sophie Scholl, 1984)
Sophie Doubts Hitler
The hitler youth "never took complete possession of her [sophie]" because Jews were not allowed to join the Band of German Maidens and that outraged her.
"Why can't Luise, with her fair hair and blue eyes, be a member, while I with my dark hair and dark eyes am a member?"
After hearing about all the people they were not supposed to interact with, Sophie and her siblings,"felt attracted to people we had been commanded to spurn, and the harder we tried to spurn them, the more intensely they attracted us," and knew she needed to take a stand.
"Why can't Luise, with her fair hair and blue eyes, be a member, while I with my dark hair and dark eyes am a member?"
After hearing about all the people they were not supposed to interact with, Sophie and her siblings,"felt attracted to people we had been commanded to spurn, and the harder we tried to spurn them, the more intensely they attracted us," and knew she needed to take a stand.
(Vinke and Patcher Hedwig, The Short Life of Sophie Scholl, 1984)