In modern times, the recruitment of children into a political organization and ideology reached its boldest embodiment in the Hitler Youth, founded in 1933 soon after the Nazi Party assumed power in Germany. Determining that by age ten children's minds could be turned from play to politics, the regime inducted nearly all German juveniles between the ages of ten and eighteen into its state-run organization. The result was a potent tool for bending young minds and hearts to the will of Adolf Hitler.
Baldur von Schirach headed a strict chain of command whose goal was to shift the adolescents' sense of obedience from home and school to the racially defined Volk and the Third Reich. Luring boys and girls into Hitler Youth ranks by offering them status, uniforms, and weekend hikes, the Nazis turned campgrounds into premilitary training sites, air guns into machine guns, sing-alongs into marching drills, instruction into indoctrination, and children into Nazis. A few resisted for personal or political reasons, but the overwhelming majority enlisted.
Drawing on original reports, letters, diaries, and memoirs, Kater traces the history of the Hitler Youth, examining the means, degree, and impact of conversion, and the subsequent fate of young recruits. Millions of Hitler Youth joined the armed forces; thousands gleefully participated in the subjugation of foreign peoples and the obliteration of "racial aliens." Although young, they committed crimes against humanity for which they cannot escape judgment. Their story stands as a harsh reminder of the moral bankruptcy of regimes that make children complicit in crimes of the state.
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Hitler Youth
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Information
Publisher
Harvard University PressYear
2009Print ISBN
9780674019911
9780674014961
eBook ISBN
9780674039353
and
saw
Riefenstahl’s
film
repeatedly
at
the
theater.
“He
was
illumi-
nated
and
revered:
the
Führer,
my
Führer.”
292
All
of
this
demagoguery
was
well
engineered,
and
for
a
higher
pur-
pose.
The
Third
Reich
needed
its
young
generation
to
continue
what
it
now
was
molding
as
tradition,
to
ensure
a
fresh
reservoir
of
leaders
for
the
most
ambitious—and
of
obedient
followers
for
the
more
compla-
cent.
Above
all,
it
needed
young
Germans
to
fight,
sooner
rather
than
later,
against
foes
who
had
long
been
excoriated
by
propaganda.
Con-
tinued
allegiance
to
Hitler,
of
the
kind
Schirach
had
shown
since
1925,
was
key
in
this
effort.
The
Reich
Youth
Leader
expressed
it
succinctly
when
he
said,
in
1939:
“We
are
marching
to
the
Führer—and
if
he
wants
us
to,
we
shall
also
march
for
him!”
293
Serving
in
the
Hitler
Youth
69
Table of contents
- Contents
- 1 “Make Way, You Old Ones!”
- 2 Serving in the Hitler Youth
- 3 German Girls for Matrimony and Motherhood
- 4 Dissidents and Rebels
- 5 Hitler’s Youth at War
- 6 The Responsibility of Youth
- Abbreviations
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Index
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Yes, you can access Hitler Youth by Michael H. Kater,Michael H. KATER in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & 20th Century History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.