Hitler Youth

The youth organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei−NSDAP) was founded in Munich in 1922 and included only boys. It was given the name Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend) in 1926, when a parallel organization for girls (Schwesterschaften) was established, which was known from 1930 as the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel–BDM). By the end of 1932 the Hitler Youth had no more than 108,000 members, but when the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, the organization's growth potential and functions were decisively altered. Other youth organizations were prohibited, dissolved or taken over, and membership in the Hitler Youth rose to 2.3 million in 1933 and steadily increased in the following years: 3.6 million in 1934, 3.9 million in 1935, 5.4 million in 1936, 5.8 million in 1937, 7.0 million in 1938, and 8.7 million in 1939. From 1934 the Hitler Youth was the principal means by which the Nazi Party exerted its influence on German youth and was more important in this respect than the school system, which was not as fully controlled by the party. Its status in the Third Reich was emphasized in 1933 by the appointment of its leader, Baldur von Schirach, to the post of Youth Leader of the German Reich (Jugendführer des Deutsche Reiches ), then by a law of 1936, which stipulated that the Hitler Youth, aside from parents and school, was the sole legitimate institution for rearing children, and finally by a law of 1939 introducing youth duty, which in effect made membership in the Hitler Youth mandatory for young men. Mobilization during World War II added further pressure to expand membership. In spite of these factors the Third Reich never managed to enroll all German boys in the Hitler Youth.

The task of the Hitler Youth was to politically indoctrinate and physically harden young people. Physical training played a paramount role, and the lure of camping trips, terrain sports, shooting practice, rowing, glider flying, and other activities was effective for recruitment. Its tasks were militarily organized, using uniforms, rank, and a division by age and geographical area. Ten-to thirteen-year-old boys were organized in the German Young People (Deutsche Jungvolk), while the Hitler Youth itself comprised boys and young men from fourteen to eighteen. Correspondingly, girls from ten to thirteen were enrolled in the Young Girls (Jungmädel), and girls and young women from fourteen to twenty-one in the League of German Girls. The organizations for both genders were organized hierarchically into regions at the top (Obergebiete and Obergau ), counting up to approximately 750,000 members, which were successively subdivided down to the smallest units (Kameradschaft and Jungmädelschaft ) with little more than ten members.

The Hitler Youth, like other of the Nazi Party's subordinate organizations, was amply represented at the annual Nuremberg Party Rallies, where thousands of young people had the opportunity to personally experience, even at a distance, the presence of the party leader. The leader cult was at the core of the Hitler Youth's training program, and Hitler himself considered it the foundation of his "Thousand Year Reign." He wrote in Mein Kampf : "A violently active, dominating, brutal youth–that is what I am after. Youth must be indifferent to pain… . I will have no intellectual training. Knowledge is ruin to my young men."

World War II brought new tasks to the Hitler Youth, both to the organization in general and to its specialized units, which had already captured youthful interest in flying, driving, sailing, gathering intelligence, patrolling, music,

and other activities. In 1940 Arthur Axmann was appointed Reich Youth Leader (Reichsjugendführer ) and put in charge of committing youth to the war effort. The first assignments consisted in collecting blankets and clothes for soldiers and bones and paper for war production. As part of the mobilization for total war in the spring of 1943 combat units of Hitler Youth members, some of them no more than sixteen years of age, were formed. These units were sent into battle from the summer of 1944, often with huge losses due to inadequate training and experience. They surrendered to American forces in May 1945 along with the other German units.

See also: Communist Youth; Fascist Youth; Organized Recreation and Youth Groups.

bibliography

Koch, H. W. 1975. The Hitler Youth: Origins and Development, 1922−45. New York: Stein and Day.

John T. Lauridsen

Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend), Nazi organization for young men aged from 14 to 18 which was founded in 1922. From 1929 it also embraced the League of German Maidens (Bund deutscher Mädel, or BdM) for the same age group and, from 1931, two organizations for the 10–14 age group, the German Young People (Deutsches Jungvolk) for boys and the Young Maidens (Jungmädelbund) for girls. Girls from 18 to 21 became part of the BdM called Glaube und Schönheit (Faith and Beauty). The boys joined the State Labour Service in which they served for six months before joining the German armed forces (Wehrmacht) or the SS, with which the Hitlerjugend was closely linked and for whom a Hitlerjugend Division was formed within its combat wing, the Waffen-SS, in 1943.

Members of the Hitler Youth were required to be, according to Hitler, ‘slim and slender, swift as greyhounds, tough as leather, and hard as Krupp steel’. The organization was a mainstay of the Nazi regime and its influence, which became all-pervasive in Germany, was extended into occupied countries. Baldur von Schirach (1907–74), who ran it from 1931 to 1940, increased its membership from 2.3 million at the end of 1933 to 7.7 million by 1939. It was made a state organization in April 1933 and membership became compulsory in 1940. When in the summer of 1940 Schirach was appointed state governor of Vienna, he was succeeded by Artur Axmann (b.1913).

As the Hitler youth grew its power and influence grew with it. It was a propaganda machine for inculcating Nazi ideology into the young; it dominated the schools and formed the Patrol Service (Streifendienst), which functioned as a kind of junior Sipo; and as the war progressed the youthful loyalty of its members was ruthlessly exploited. At twelve a boy was trained in the use of a rifle and machine gun and at fourteen he attended a military training camp for a month. From 1943, 15–17-year-olds manned anti-aircraft guns and youngsters performed many civil defence duties, such as fighting fires, patrolling the streets, and digging tank traps. They were an especial menace to shot-down Allied airmen. During the last months of the war the Hitler youth also became an important part of the Volkssturm (see Germany, 5); during the battle that led to the fall of Berlin, Axmann committed young teenagers to front-line combat in which few survived; and a number were enlisted into the abortive Werewolves guerrilla organization. See also children.

Bibliography

Rempel, G. , Hitler's Children (Chapel Hill, NC, 1989).
Sosnowski, K. , The Tragedy of Children under Nazi Rule (Poznań, 1962).

Hitler Youth Founded in 1926 as the youth organization of the SA, it had around 100,000 members by 1933. Given the Nazi aim of controlling all cultural aspects of the Third Reich, and the desire to indoctrinate especially the young as the future bearers of responsibility, it was developed into a national mass organization, as all other youth organizations (apart from Roman Catholic ones) were forbidden. From the ages of 10 to 14, children were expected to join separate groups for boys or girls respectively, while those aged between 14 and 18 were encouraged to join the Hitler Youth proper for boys, and the League of German Maidens for girls. In 1936, these youth organizations were given official sanction as an educational institution alongside the school and home, while membership was finally made compulsory in 1939, when they had almost nine million members. As many children joined only with the minimum degree of commitment required, it is unclear to what extent the Hitler Youth was successful in inculcating the young with a Nazi world-view.

Hitler Youth A NAZI agency to train young Germans. In 1931 Baldur von Schirach was appointed Youth Leader of the Nazi Party. In 1936 HITLER outlawed all other youth organizations and announced that all young Germans should join the Jungvolk (Young Folk) at the age of 10, when they would be trained in out-of-school activities, including sports and camping, and receive Nazi indoctrination. At 14 the boys were to enter the Hitler Youth proper, where they would be subject to semi-military discipline, out-door activities, and Nazi propaganda, and girls the League of German Maidens, where they would learn motherhood and domestic duties. At 18 they would join the armed forces or the labour service. By 1936 3.6 million members had been recruited, and by 1938 7.7 million, but efforts to enrol young people were failing, so that in March 1939 a conscription order was issued.