Hitler Youth: The Hitlerjugend in War and Peace 1933–45

Index

INTRODUCTION

Hitler salutes massed ranks of the Marine Hitlerjugend, the naval section of the Hitler Youth, in 1938, accompanied by Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth Leader.

The Hitlerjugend (the Hitler Youth), initially formed in 1922 by the nascent Nazi Party, promised young Germans excitement, achievement, comradeship, adventure and a great future in a great Germany. It was a potent message at a time when Germany, defeated in World War I only four years earlier and heavily punished by the victorious Allies, was a pariah among nations. The Hitler Youth gave young people what they were promised, but that was not its only purpose. What the Nazis meant to do was create a generation which knew nothing but Nazi principles and Nazi ideology, and to ensure that they reared their own children in exactly the same way.

The youth were vital to Adolf Hitler’s purpose: to create a ‘Thousand Year Reich’ whose capital, Germania, would be the centre of the world. ‘He alone who owns the youth gains the future’, Hitler used to say, and he knew very well how he wanted the young to be prepared to carry on the torch across the centuries. He said in 1933:

‘I begin with the young. We older ones are used up. We are rotten to the marrow. We are cowardly and sentimental. We are bearing the burden of a humiliating past, and have in our blood the dull recollection of serfdom and servility. But my magnificent youngsters! Are there any finer ones in the world? Look at these young men and boys! What material! With them, I can make a new world. This is the heroic stage of youth. Out of it will come the creative man, the man-god …. When an opponent declares I will not come over to your side, I say calmly Your child belongs to us already …What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing but this new community.’

Nazification

The Nazification of the young began very early, at age six, but recruitment was selective and depended first of all on passing a test for racial, that is Aryan, ‘purity’. The mystical Aryans, ostensibly from prehistoric India and Iran, were supposed by occultist philosophers like the Austrian Guido von List to be the sole founders of culture and civilisation. The Nordic or Germanic peoples – blond or dark blond, blue- or light brown-eyed, with the appropriate head shape – were presumed to be the most noble of all Aryans, so that, to be acceptable, recruits had to display their characteristics.

Their Aryan ancestry proven, entrants were admitted to the Jungvolk. Twelve years in the Jungvolk and the Hitler Youth accustomed them to spartan conditions, hard physical work, rigorous sports, ideological training and unthinking conformity to the Nazi ethos. Although this regime was uncompromising, force was not the main weapon used to produce youth modelled along these lines. The Nazis understood what appealed to the young, most especially their yearning for importance, so often suppressed by older generations. They therefore set out to lure young Germans into the Hitler Youth through the boyish love of power displays – particularly sports and military-style parades – their natural fascination with weapons and uniforms, and the offer of outlets for male bonding and male aggression. Once netted, German youth was wide open to infusions of Nazi nationalism, militarism, racism, anti-semitism, the concept of superior and inferior races and the disposability of homosexuals, the mentally disabled and anyone else who did not fit the matrix of Aryan perfection.

Other youth organisations

Youth organisations as such were nothing new in Germany. By 1920, there were over 2000 groups and organisations, of which the most popular was the Wandervogel, formed in 1901. Wandervogel interest revolved around love of the countryside and the activities it afforded – hiking, skiing, camping – all later promoted in the Hitler Youth as healthy and appropriate for the builders of the Nazis’ New Order.

Adolf Hitler receiving flowers from a small boy whose shirt is decorated with the Nazi swastika. In the background three girls wait their turn, with two Hitler Youth behind them. In his book, Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer asserted that Hitler had no idea how to treat children as individuals.

The youth groups were often critical of the liberal Weimar government set up in Germany after World War I. Adolf Hitler had his own reasons for demonising the Weimar ministers as craven traitors who had accepted the Treaty of Versailles, which, in his view, made Germany little more than the creature of the victorious Allies. Consequently, since youthful idealists and Nazi fanatics appeared to have a hatred of the government in common, it seemed logical that thousands of young Germans would be ready and waiting to join when Hitler officially approved the establishment of the Hitler Youth on 27 July 1926. That, at least, was the theory.

In reality, the Hitler Youth first had to overcome the rival youth movements, some religious, some political, some social. This made recruitment a slow process, not solved to Nazi satisfaction until after Hitler took power as German Chancellor in 1933 and all non-Nazi youth movements, except for the Catholics, were banned.

When the Catholic associations were likewise forbidden in 1936, they carried on in secret, joining several other groups which operated underground. Some of them, such as the famous Wiesse-Rose, the White Rose students’ movement centred around Munich University, actively campaigned against the Nazi regime. They suffered brutal suppression, long terms in prison or the concentration camps and, for the most stubbornly resistant, the death sentence.

Hitler Youth wrongdoing

The Hitler Youth itself was by no means lily-white, despite the dazzling image created by Nazi propaganda and the dramatic shows of youth solidarity displayed at the Nuremberg and other rallies. Within both the Jungvolk and the Hitler Youth, all manner of crimes were committed. Rules were broken, discipline defied, moral imperatives (especially those dealing with homosexuality) were ignored and the movement acquired a reputation, never officially admitted, for brutality, decadence and evil influence.

Captured by the Americans, on 23 March 1945, at Frankenthal in Rheinland-Pfalz, this member of the Volksstürm – the ‘People’s Army’ – is frisked for weapons.

Nevertheless, whether they abused it, defied it or embraced it, Nazi rule in Germany meant ultimate catastrophe for a whole generation of young Germans. Thousands who joined the Hitlerjugend Division that was formed in 1943 were killed on the frontline. Thousands more died in the Volkssturm, the People’s Militia formed in 1944. More died in guerrilla attacks on Allied troops as they rolled inexorably into Germany and closed in for the kill on the ‘Thousand Year Reich’ in 1945.

When Nazi Germany finally surrendered on 7 May 1945, 19 years of the Hitler Youth came to an end. The defiance of those who resisted in movements like the Weisse-Rose, shortened their lives or left them scarred by nightmare experiences at the hands of Nazi interrogators. Others, transformed in the Hitler Youth into model Nazis, found they had been led to believe in dreams of greatness that never came true, and to expect a glorious future which turned instead to the dust of total disaster.

BEGINNINGS

Flag bearers of the Hitler Youth march past enthusiastic crowds to honour Admiral Adolf von Trotha at a commemoration of the anniversary of the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

On 19 March 1922, an invitation to German youth appeared in the Völkischer Beobachter, the newspaper of the National-sozialistische Deutsche Partei (NSDAP, also known as the Nazi Party):

‘We demand that the Nationalist Socialist Youth, and all other young Germans, irrespective of class or occupation, between 14 and 18 years of age, whose hearts are affected by the suffering and hardships afflicting the Fatherland, and who later desire to join the ranks of the fighters against the Jewish enemy, the sole originator of our present shame and suffering, enter the Youth League of the NSDAP …’

No subscription would be charged and all that was required of potential recruits was ‘love of one’s country and people, enjoyment of honest open combat and of healthy physical activity, the veneration of ethical and spiritual values, and the rejection of those values originating from Jewry …’

With the violent language that would soon become customary for their pronouncements, this statement set out the fundamentals that fuelled the Nazi purpose. Firstly, there was fury at the fate of defeated Germany, once a mighty military and imperial power, but now, after losing World War I, a remnant of her former self. Burdened with war guilt and reparations, her colonies confiscated and her armed forces dwindled to impotence, Germany had also suffered the loss of 13 per cent of her territory in Europe to new neighbouring countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia. Secondly there was the atavistic hatred of the Jews who, the Nazis believed, had conspired with their other great enemy, the Communists, to engineer the ‘great betrayal’ which ended World War I: the Treaty of Versailles. It was this treaty, signed in 1919 by the Nazis’ third most hated body, the Weimar government of inter-war Germany, that Adolf Hitler had personally sworn to overturn.

Hitler’s rise

After the World War I, Hitler joined the propaganda unit of a volunteer corps made up of army veterans. His job was to spy on political meetings and bookmark the liberal, socialist and other left-wing organisations so detested by military and other right-wing groups. One organisation examined by Hitler in 1919 was the seemingly innocuous German Workers’ Party which came under suspicion because of the second word in its title. In investigating the German Workers’ Party, Hitler saw an excellent opportunity. Gradually he infiltrated the Party, took it over, renamed it Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Partei (NSDAP), and transformed it into an organisation with an extremely ambitious agenda. This was to restore Germany to its former greatness, turn her into a power which other nations would fear and respect, and punish the ‘November criminals’ whose signatures on the Versailles Treaty had brought the Fatherland so low.

German youth was to play a significant part in Hitler’s grand design. He envisaged them leading the Nazi spearhead into a glorious future brought about by the dawn of the ‘Aryan millennium’. Initially, the idea of youth participation came from Gustav Adolf Lenk, a young man who polished pianos for a living. After hearing Hitler speak at open-air meetings in Munich, Lenk became a keen devotee of National Socialism. At the end of 1921, he applied to join the Party, only to be told that, at 17, he was not old enough. Unabashed, Lenk enquired whether he could join the Party’s youth section. There was no youth section, but it was suggested that he create one.

At first, there was some opposition from within the Party. Nazis like Adolf Drexler, one of the founder members, believed that since the Party was itself so new, consolidation should take precedence over expansion. However, Hitler approved of Lenk’s idea and pulled rank on all of them. He talked Drexler round, sent a circular informing all Party members that a youth section was to be set up and followed it up with the invitation which appeared in the Völkischer Beobachter.

A problem immediately made itself apparent. Numerous, well-established rivals were already on the scene, which doubtless explained why the initial response to the Nazi Youth League was so paltry. On 13 May 1922, the Nazi Party hired a large Munich beer hall, the Bürgerbräu Keller, for a public meeting at which the official founding of the Youth League would be announced. A large number of people turned up and crowded into the beer hall to hear speeches by Hitler, the leader of the Sturmabteilung (the SA, or Nazi storm-troopers) Johann Ulrich Lintzch, and Gustav Lenk. However, there were only 17 youths among them.

The German Youth League

Lenk was nevertheless formally appointed Youth League leader and immediately began organising. Within a short time, he announced that the Youth League would consist of two sections which were forerunners of the later Jungvolk and Hitler Youth. The younger section, the Jungsturm Adolf Hitler, was for 14 to 16 year olds, and the senior section was for youths aged 16 to 18. Though still only 18, not especially charismatic and, compared to Hitler, no public speaker, Lenk was dynamic, innovative and endlessly energetic. He had to be, considering the formidable challenge presented by his rivals who had several years’ seniority among their credentials. In 1913, German youth movements were so far developed that 13 federations – including the Wandervögel (Birds of Passage) founded in 1896 and the Pathfinder Boy Scouts of 1908 – were represented at the celebrations for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s accession to the throne. On 12 October 1913, a year before the outbreak of World War I, Free German Youth Day saw a parade of upright young men – every one abstainers from alcohol and cigarettes – who were devoted, like the putative Nazi Youth League, to healthy, outdoor, back-to-nature activities.

Strong competition

The Nazis were therefore offering little that was new, and did not aim to cater for other interests already well covered by more specialist organisations. For instance, the Evangelist youth movement which had originated in 1883, and the Catholic youth movement of 1909, took care of the youth’s spiritual side. The Germania federation was one of two concentrating on abstinence, while the workers’ socialist movement, founded in 1903 was, by its very nature, the political opposite of the hard-right Nazis.

Lenk nevertheless persisted and gradually, units of the Youth League were established in Nuremberg, Zeitz, Dresden, Hanau and Dortmund. Outside Germany, Lenk managed to plant the flag of the Youth League among the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia and also in Austria, where he had contacts with the Nazi Party in Vienna. On 28 January 1923, the Jungsturm Adolf Hitler made its appearance at the first Nazi Parteitag (party day), a precursor to the later Nuremberg rallies.

There, the boys were solemnly presented with special pennants which featured the Nazi Party’s swastika symbol on a white background, an early instance of the dramatic pageantry which was to be so dominant in Nazi stagecraft.

Hitler’s failed putsch of 9 November 1923. This picture shows a lorry-load of uniformed ‘shock’ troops, including some youths, in a street in Munich.

All the same, despite the public show, the growth of new units and a promotion for Lenk as ‘national’ rather than ‘regional’ leader, the Youth League was still a relatively minor organisation. This became apparent in May 1923 when Lenk thought he was in a position to publish a special youth magazine, the Nationale Jungsturm. Subscribers proved to be too few and the magazine failed. Renamed the Nationalsozialistiche Jugend, it ended up as a supplement to the Völkischer Beobachter.

Pre-war Germany offered many opportunities for organised youth activities. The Wandervögel, founded in 1896, stressed the attractions of the countryside.

This was an embarrassing setback for Lenk. However, he had pushed back frontiers that still eluded the Nazi Party as a whole. In 1920 and 1921, attempts had been made to fuse the Party in Munich, its centre in Germany, with like-minded groups in Hanover, Czechoslovakia and Upper Silesia in Poland. These attempts had foundered because these groups refused to accept Hitler’s terms that they accept him as sole leader. The situation was no different two years later in 1923, but with 55,000 members, the Nazi Party had outpaced all the other organisations in Munich. The Bavarian capital was a political hotbed, seething with opposition to the Weimar government. Among the right-wing groups, the Nazis were therefore in pole position to take advantage of the hatred felt towards Weimar ministers and their acceptance of the Versailles Treaty. Unrest from both the political right and left had produced an atmosphere of chaos, barely kept under control by troops. The fragile balance of Germany was put in even greater doubt by the desperate financial crisis which occurred in June 1923 when the German Mark collapsed under the weight of reparations payments, and inflation began to run riot through the economy.

The French occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923 and their subsequent seizure of coal, timber and other materials as reparations in kind had provoked strikes, street demonstrations and sabotage, and so set a perfect scene for the Nazi Party’s first rally. On 27 January, flags, banners, pennants and the Aryan swastika emblem – since 1920 the symbol of the Nazi Party – plastered the streets of Munich as, to vociferous applause, Hitler raged against the Treaty of Versailles, and the Weimar government and all its works.

The Munich putsch

The reception he received seems to have persuaded him that the time had come for a putsch. This was intended to be Hitler’s bid for power which would begin with the kidnapping of Bavarian government leaders. On 9 November 1923, the fourth anniversary of the proclamation of the Weimar Republic, Hitler marched 3000 Nazis to the Bürgerbräu Keller and invaded a political meeting held by the Bavarian state commissioner, Gustav von Kahr. Hitler leapt onto a chair, brandishing a pistol. He fired a shot into the ceiling and proclaimed: ‘The National Revolution has begun!’

But there was no revolution. The Bavarian police intervened and Hitler was forced to escape to avoid arrest. The authorities caught up with him two days later, and on 1 April 1924, after a five-week trial, Hitler and other leading Nazis were sentenced to imprisonment. Hitler received a five year sentence, though he was released on parole after only eight months. Both the Nazi Party and the Youth League were disbanded and outlawed on Weimar government orders.

Dressed somewhat self-consciously in his rural outfit, cap at a jaunty, casual angle, this member of the Wandervögel poses for the camera with the organisation’s banner.

However, those who believed that this was the end of Adolf Hitler had not been listening properly at his trial. He had used the dock like a podium, boldly peddling his Nazi message and asserting that Germany and the whole world would one day come round to his way of thinking. His performance made him better known in Germany than he had been before the attempted putsch, for which he was proud to claim sole credit.

Lenk’s continued efforts

Meanwhile, Gustav Lenk twice attempted to re-found a youth movement under innocent-sounding names: the Patriotic Youth Association of Greater Germany or the Greater German Youth Movement. The Bavarian authorities guessed that these were simply covers for the Nazi Youth League, and Lenk joined Adolf Hitler and the other Nazi leaders in Landsberg fortress. Hitler was released on 1 December 1924, and