essay about hitler youth

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How the Hitler Youth Turned a Generation of Kids Into Nazis

By: Erin Blakemore

Updated: June 29, 2023 | Original: December 11, 2017

The Boy Scouts’ motto was “Be Prepared.” But nothing could prepare Max Ebel, a German teenager, for what happened after Hitler banned the Boy Scouts. As other boys cheered, the 17-year-old was  surrounded by a gang of Nazi Youth—one of whom had a knife. Ebel’s refusal to leave scouting behind had just turned into a fight for his life.

From Boy Scouts to Hitler Youth

It was 1937, and the Boy Scouts were one of many youth organizations on the Nazis’ verboten list. Now, every non-Jewish boy in Germany was required to be part of the Hitler Youth, the Nazis’ youth arm, instead. Ebel, a pacifist who distrusted the Nazis, refused—and paid the price.

The Boy Scout was harassed and then  attacked by a group of Nazi Youth. In an attempt to force him to join, one of the members stabbed him in the hand. Ebel fought back, grabbed the knife, and cut the other boy’s face. Later, realizing his life was in danger, he escaped Germany and eventually became a U.S. citizen.

Ebel was just one of millions of young Germans whose lives were changed by the Hitler Youth—a group designed to indoctrinate kids into Hitler’s ideology, then send them off to war.

By the time Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, hundreds of thousands of kids were members of youth organizations like the Boy Scouts, which was invented in England in 1909 and quickly spread to Germany. But there was also another powerful youth movement afoot—one invented by the Nazis. Since 1922, the National Socialists had had a youth arm designed to train and recruit members for its paramilitary. As the Nazis became more powerful, their youth arm grew.

The Nazis' Youth Movement Surges

In January 1933, there  were 50,000 members of the Hitler Youth. By the end of the year, there were more than 2 million. And as the 1930s progressed, the Nazis waged war on the groups so popular among German youth. First, they banned children’s groups associated with political movements like Communism. And in 1936, they banned all youth groups—including the Boy Scouts—and forced members to become part of the Hitler Youth instead. Jewish children were banned from participation.

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Banning scouting sent a message—obey, or be punished. It had a practical effect, too: Since other scouting organizations were banned, the only way for kids to get scouting experience was to join the Hitler Youth. As Germany hurtled toward war, children who refused to join were alienated, then punished. By 1939, over 90 percent of German children were part of the Hitler Youth organization.

For the Nazis, the group had other benefits. Not only did it allow the Third Reich to indoctrinate children at their most impressionable, but it let the Nazis remove them from the influence of their parents, some of whom opposed the regime. The Nazi Party knew that families—private, cohesive groups not usually under political sway—were an obstacle to their goals. The Hitler Youth was a way to get Hitler’s ideology into the family unit, and some members of the Hitler Youth even denounced their parents when they behaved in ways not approved of by the Reich.

Hitler's Youth Co-opted Boy Scouts Traditions

Though the Boy Scouts were banned, the Nazis co-opted many of its activities and traditions. Hitler Youth took part in typical scouting-type activities like camping trips, singing, crafts and hiking. They went to summer camps, wore uniforms, recited pledges and told stories over campfires.

But over time, the activities changed. Though girls’ groups focused on things like rhythmic gymnastics and winter coat drives, the boys’ groups became more like a mini military than a Boy Scout troop. They imposed military-like order on members and trained young men in everything from weapons to survival. And all groups included hefty doses of propaganda that encouraged an almost religious devotion to the Führer.

Alfons Heck’s experience was typical. As he told the Boston Globe in the 1980s, he couldn’t wait to become a full-fledged Hitler Youth member and relished marching, singing and attending rallies. “I belonged to Adolf Hitler, body and soul,” he recalled. It took him years to step away from that indoctrination after the end of World War II.

Some boys refused to join the Hitler Youth and took their youth groups underground. One such group, the Edelweiss Pirates, even attacked Hitler Youth members and worked to sabotage their activities.  About 5,000 Edelweiss Pirates are thought to have defied the Nazis, scribbled anti-war graffiti on walls, and participated in various types of violent and nonviolent resistance. In 1944, six were  hanged in Cologne without a trial due to their suspected involvement in the black market. Scouts in occupied countries resisted, too: In France, for example, Boy Scouts  rescued 40 Jewish children from deportation, and in  Auschwitz , a group of Polish boy scouts resisted and even escaped the Nazis.

The Hitler Youth Become Soldiers

As the war ground on, it became clear that the Hitler Youth’s real goal was to create more soldiers for the Reich. Children who had been saturated in Nazi ideology for years made obedient, fanatical soldiers. Eventually, those soldiers became younger and younger. Starting in 1943, all boys 17 and older were forced to serve in the military.

In 1945, the desperate Nazi leadership began pulling younger boys out of school and sending them to the front. These inexperienced children were essentially conscripted for suicide missions—and if they balked, they were  executed . Those who survived faced harsh treatment at the hands of the Allies who captured them.

After the war, the Hitler Youth was disbanded. Today, the group is considered one of the most chilling facets of the Nazi regime—proof that a totalitarian state can use children to feed its armies and further its hateful ideologies.

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History | February 17, 2023

Hans and Sophie Scholl Were Once Hitler Youth Leaders. Why Did They Decide to Stand Up to the Nazis?

Archival evidence offers clues on the radicalization of the German siblings, who led a resistance movement known as the White Rose

Jud Newborn

Co-author,  Sophie Scholl and the White Rose

Hans Scholl and his younger sister Sophie entered the atrium of the University of Munich with about 1,700 copies of their sixth anti-Nazi leaflet packed into a suitcase. It was February 18, 1943—the same day Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, seeking to boost morale after the German Army’s defeat at Stalingrad , held a fanatical rally calling for “ total war .” The hall, with its classical colonnades and skylight, was empty but would remain so for only ten more minutes. Quietly, the siblings placed stacks of leaflets outside classroom doors on every floor.

On their way to the exit, the Scholls realized they still had around 100 pamphlets left. Mounting the stairs again, they reached the atrium’s highest gallery. From there, the pair pushed the flyers over the balustrade, sending them floating down to the floor. Below, a janitor named Jakob Schmid spotted the leaflets. As he bounded up the stairs, determined to catch the culprits, the bell rang for the change of class, and students began pouring into the atrium. Schmid reached the third floor, where he stopped Sophie and Hans. “You are under arrest!” he cried out . The two siblings froze.

On the morning of February 22, 1943, just four days after their arrest, Sophie, Hans and their comrade Christoph Probst stood before the notorious People’s Court during a show trial —a mock proceeding designed to influence public opinion rather than deliver real justice. The three were found guilty of treason and beheaded that afternoon by guillotine , a method of execution revived for broader use under the Nazis. Hans was 24 and Probst 23; Sophie was 21.

Today, the Scholls are celebrated for their pivotal role as members of the White Rose , a small, clandestine, anti-Nazi resistance group. They joined the activist network after becoming disillusioned with the Hitler Youth, in which they were both leaders as teenagers. Castigating the German middle class for abandoning its Christian values and leadership roles, the White Rose set out to rouse the masses from their “ slumber ” and encourage passive resistance against the fascist regime.

The White Rose’s core consisted of six University of Munich students—Hans, Sophie, Probst, Alexander Schmorell , Willi Graf and Traute Lafrenz —and a philosophy professor named Kurt Huber . (All except Lafrenz were eventually executed by guillotine.) A loose network of supporters and sympathetic acquaintances aided the group’s resistance efforts by distributing leaflets and providing money to purchase supplies, among other contributions.

Sophie Scholl and the White Rose

The gripping story of the Munich university students who set up an underground resistance movement during World War II

By all accounts, the White Rose activists were among the first within Germany to speak out widely against the mass murder of Jews, in their second leaflet in June 1942. Their legendary distribution of flyers at the University of Munich appears to have been the only fundamentally political public protest against Nazism to be staged by Germans during the 12 years of Adolf Hitler’s rule. The last words of the group’s fourth leaflet became its legacy: “We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!”

Eighty years after their executions, the leaders of the White Rose are counted among the greatest Germans of all time. Numerous schools, streets and plazas are named for them, and monuments honoring their activism appear throughout the country. They have been the subject of plays , documentaries and feature films . One of these movies, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days , was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2006 Academy Awards.

Yet two mysteries about the White Rose long bedeviled laypeople and scholars alike: What motivated the 1937 transformation of the teenaged Hans and Sophie from fanatical acolytes of Nazism to passionate anti-Nazis? And why did Hans and his friends choose the “White Rose” as the name of their resistance organization?

The answers to these two questions appear to be interwoven. According to previously ignored Gestapo interrogation transcripts, along with my own subsequent research , anti-gay Nazi policies played a pivotal role in the radicalization of the Scholl siblings, helping to turn them into exemplars of civil courage .

On December 13, 1937, Hans, then a fresh-faced, 19-year-old cavalry recruit and Nazi stalwart, was suddenly arrested by the Gestapo. Another 20 teens from his hometown of Ulm were also rounded up. Of the charges against Hans, the most serious was that of homosexual activity, “perpetrated” when he was 16.

The files surrounding Hans’ first arrest have been accessible in Düsseldorf since the Nazi era. But they remained largely unexamined for almost six decades. Only in 1999 did German sociologist Eckard Holler discover the documents, which he discussed in an obscure booklet on the German Youth Movement that attracted little notice. Then, in 2003, the Center for White Rose Studies published English translations of the transcripts in book form.

Even after these titles were published, Inge Scholl , the siblings’ oldest sister and the self-proclaimed keeper of their story, remained the main source of information on the arrest. She’d thoroughly misled the public in her 1952 book, The White Rose , and consistently thereafter, creating the false narrative that Hans was arrested solely for joining the illegal youth group d.j.1.11 (short for “Deutsche Jungenschaft vom 1.11.1929,” or “German Boys’ Federation from November 11, 1929”) in 1937.

Gestapo records show there was much more to the story. Prior to December 1936, when all youth organizations other than the Hitler Youth were declared illegal, many young Nazis felt no contradiction in belonging to alternative groups like the d.j.1.11. Hans, for his part, became involved with the d.j.1.11 well before it was outlawed.

Homoeroticism, but not outright homosexuality, was a fundamental element in all-male groups like the d.j.1.11., evolving out of the turn-of-the-century Wandervogel (“ Wandering Birds ”), an anti-bourgeois movement formed in response to the industrial age.

Hans Blüher, the primary proponent of the Wandervogel, described homoeroticism as a kind of glue that bound these young men together as they wandered through nature, its energy sublimated and directed outward for the vital task of cultural renewal. As one of Blüher’s own nature-loving mentors put it : “Where does the vitality that is capable of giving rise to such a movement of masculine youth come from, if not from men who, instead of loving a wife or becoming the father of a family, loved young men?”

For most members of such youth groups, these adolescent attachments were simply a phase that passed as they grew older and began dating girls. For Hans, however, things were different.

Sexual relationships between men were anathema to Nazism. The notorious Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code, which outlawed such behavior, was made far more stringent in September 1935. Mere allegations led to wide-scale persecution, including the arrests of more than 100,000 men , as well as the imprisonment of at least 50,000. Some 5,000 to 15,000 of these individuals were sent to concentration camps, where they were treated with contempt, subjected to punitive labor and sometimes castrated, all while wearing a pink triangle on their uniforms.

Up until his 1937 arrest, Hans had thought himself the ideal Nazi youth: decisive, devoted, even fanatical. He hadn’t even known that same-sex intimacy was a crime, or so he claimed in his Gestapo interrogations . Nonetheless, he admitted to continuing his relationship with a “special friend,” the younger Rolf Futterknecht , for nearly two years. He described it to the Gestapo as “an overpowering love … that required some means of relief.”

Only 6 of the approximately 20 boys rounded up were indicted, and just 2 were ultimately tried and convicted. One of them was Hans, whom the Gestapo had entrapped in a web of corroborating evidence from which he could not extricate himself.

The Gestapo transcripts reveal remarkably candid testimony in which Hans strove to justify himself while protecting Futterknecht. “I am inclined to be passionate,” Hans said. “I can only justify my actions on the basis of the great love I felt for [him].” Later in the interview, Hans added, “I can hardly comprehend my behavior today.”

The circumstances of Hans’ arrest raised unexpected concerns in his mind about his sexuality. Indeed, in the very first letter written to his parents from prison in Stuttgart on December 14, 1937, Hans revealed that he had long carried a deep, secret burden regarding his sexual urges. “Through my tireless work on myself,” he told them, he thought he’d managed to be “washed clean again.”

Hans was found guilty on June 2, 1938, with the state’s prosecuting attorney asking for a one-year prison sentence. But the normally harsh judge decided on just one month, which he counted as time already served. The judge cited Hans’ exemplary record, a general amnesty for members of illegal youth groups and the many strong testimonials offered in his defense, ruling that the teenager’s same-sex relationship had amounted to an adolescent aberration.

The traumatic experience of having the Gestapo dig into the most intimate details of his life and put him on public trial for something he thought he’d successfully suppressed fed a gradual transformation in Hans’ views. Soon, his feelings about Nazism turned from admiration to loathing. As early as December 18, 1937, in a letter to his parents from prison, Hans vowed to redeem himself by becoming “something great for the sake of mankind.”

Beyond the roots of Hans’ radicalization, one of the longstanding mysteries surrounding the White Rose was the origin of its name. Though scholars can’t say for certain, many have good reason to believe a banned novel called The White Rose , first published in Germany in 1929, found its way into Hans’ hands. Its left-wing author, who wrote under the pseudonym B. Traven , was most likely an actor and communist revolutionary who used the stage name Ret Marut . He fled from Germany to Mexico following the collapse of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919.

The reclusive Traven, who had a dozen passports with different aliases, never revealed himself to the public. He wrote at least eight novels in exile before the Nazi takeover in 1933, though only one was a resounding success: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , which inspired the classic 1948 film by John Huston, with Humphrey Bogart as its star. Once the Nazis came to power, Traven’s radical writings were deemed so inimical that his entire oeuvre was tossed onto bonfires. Still, his novels were widely read by members of youth groups like the d.j.1.11. The White Rose may also have been known to Schmorell, Hans’ closest collaborator and a co-founder of the resistance group.

In Traven’s novel, the White Rose is the name of an idealized hacienda , or large estate, where mixed-race mestizo peasants live in harmony until a ruthlessly exploitative American oil executive arrives on the scene. The businessman orders the murder of the village’s illiterate leader, then presents the dead man’s signature on a bill of sale for the oil-rich lands. The local governor tells the villagers he will try to win back their freedom, even though he knows his efforts against the imperialist juggernaut will fail.

This story would have resonated powerfully for Hans and Schmorell as the idea of creating a group to resist the Nazis coalesced in their minds. (Hans was by no means a communist, but Schmorell was decidedly socialist in inclination.) Its rejection of racial prejudice, as well as its denouement, shared a kinship with the spirit and message of the German White Rose. As the governor tells the displaced citizens toward the end of the book :

I promise you I’ll do everything in my power to discover the truth. And I promise you that when I’ve found the truth, the White Rose won’t have been plucked for nothing. If, perhaps, it can never bloom again in all its beauty, it shall certainly not fade away, never. It shall bear fruit that will ripen. And that shall be the beginning of the liberation of the country and its citizens.

When asked about the origins of the “White Rose” name during his Gestapo interrogation on February 20, 1943, Hans offered a rambling response, adding, almost offhandedly, “It is possible that I chose the name on an emotional basis because at the time, I was under the influence of Brentano’s Spanish ballad ‘Die Rosa Blanca.’” This explanation has been widely accepted in Germany. But there are no Spanish romantic ballads by Clemens Brentano of that name.

There was , however, a decidedly romantic poem titled “ La Rosa Blanca ,” and it was the epigraph to the 1929 and 1931 German editions of Traven’s The White Rose , a leftist, utopian novel about deceit, exploitation and oppression:

Along the edge of the barranca, Bathed daily by the Golden Sun, Caressed by Lady Moon at night, Faithfully blooms the White Rose.   Every day at dawn, The birds sing thy praise; How thou’st bloomed since God created thee, Forever flourish, White Rose.   And though one day I too must wither, White Rose, may’st thou bloom on, And my last life’s breath Will be my farewell kiss to thee.

If, as now seems likely, Traven’s novel was a primary inspiration for the group’s name, why did Hans give the Gestapo such a vacuous explanation? Perhaps he didn’t want the secret police to know he’d been influenced by a communist author. But another intriguing explanation comes to mind. Hans may well have been trying to divert the Gestapo’s attention away from Josef Söhngen , a 47-year-old gay bookseller who secretly nurtured the White Rose by providing a meeting place, a cellar in which to hide the group’s duplicating machine when needed and an endless supply of banned books from his secret cache.

Though other members of the White Rose frequented Söhngen’s bookstore, it was only Hans who became close friends with him. Hans often would turn up outside the door to Söhngen’s apartment late at night, seeking solace through the kind of intensely intimate conversation he almost certainly could not share with others.

From July to November 1942, Hans, Schmorell and Graf were forced to take a break from their studies—and their burgeoning activism—to serve as medics on the Eastern Front. There, they witnessed with their own eyes the misery of Jewish prisoners in the Warsaw Ghetto . “Warsaw would sicken me in the long run,” Hans wrote to his parents in July. “Half-starved children sprawl in the street and whimper for bread. … The mood is universally doom-laden.”

Appalled by the violence and injustice they’d witnessed, the friends returned to Munich determined to step up their resistance efforts by distributing leaflets throughout Germany and Austria. Ultimately, the White Rose circulated at least 7,000 leaflets in 16 major cities, from Munich to Frankfurt to Vienna to Berlin, conveying the impression that the group’s membership was widespread, not just a handful of indefatigable students hand-cranking out pamphlets in Munich.

The leaflets were like nothing the Gestapo had ever seen—not rigid ideological tracts aimed at the working classes, but passionate, erudite manifestos that quoted Friedrich Schiller, Plato and Laozi. “The guilt of Hitler and his accomplices goes beyond all measure,” read the group’s fifth leaflet . “Tear up the cloak of indifference you have wrapped around your hearts. Make your decision before it is too late !”

Hans regularly showed drafts of the White Rose’s leaflets to Söhngen. While Hans had previously suggested distributing leaflets at the university to other group members, he only confided in Söhngen and Sophie after deciding to execute the plan. The bookseller sharply warned Hans not to take such a dangerous risk.

When the Gestapo ransacked Hans’ apartment on February 18, they found a letter from Söhngen that Hans had hidden under clothing in a bureau drawer. The discovery led the Gestapo to search Söhngen’s apartment, where they found every missive the bookseller had received from Hans from the time they first became acquainted in Munich. Söhngen was arrested soon after.

The Gestapo already had a file on Söhngen as a gay man who’d had a soldier visit him at night in the months prior to his arrest, presumably for a sexual liaison. During Söhngen’s interrogations, however, investigators focused narrowly on the White Rose. They attempted to intimidate the bookseller by asking repeatedly if he was aware that Hans’ record had been “besmirched” by his 1937 arrest and 1938 conviction. Söhngen, of course, denied it.

It was only in August 2018, when she was almost 100 years old, that Traute Lafrenz , a member of the White Rose and a former girlfriend of Hans, felt able to speak openly about her frequently discussed romantic relationship with the resistance leader. Along with my colleague Robert Zoske, a Lutheran pastor and the author of a 2018 German biography of Hans, Be a Flame! Hans Scholl and the White Rose , I’d been encouraging Lafrenz to discuss her past. In a recorded phone conversation with Zoske, Lafrenz explained that Hans had had a “deep problem” that “tormented him greatly”—one that he kept “dreadfully secret.”

Hans had attempted “to eliminate this conflict by focusing on higher ideals,” she said, but he could “never free himself of it.’” This burden was “so significant for him” that it “formed his character profoundly.” Lafrenz further confirmed that, contrary to legends about their supposedly passionate but short-lived relationship, the pair had never engaged in any sexual activity.

As for Hans and Söhngen, there is no evidence indicating the two shared a sexual relationship. But they both felt deeply marginalized by Nazi society and politics. Hans’ feelings of being stigmatized for his earlier arrest would only have increased his trust in the bookseller as a key confidant.

In a 1946 account submitted to the Munich Institute for Contemporary History ’s collection of postwar eyewitness testimony, Söhngen said that Hans had “simply [been] the young friend who came to me to escape the constant stress.” The two would discuss poetry or religion, “or often relax in silence with a glass of wine.”

Their correspondence while Hans was on the Eastern Front was warm and deep but careful given the military’s censorship of letters. In one missive written toward the end of his service, on September 9, 1942, Hans ecstatically praises the wide-open expanses of Russia, saying they are “as boundless as love itself.” He writes exuberantly about the liberating effect of this environment, which allowed him to acknowledge “fantasies” he had not dared give voice to in the stultifying confines of Germany. And he tells Söhngen how eager he is to share his experiences in full when they are finally together again, as his feelings are “far too weighty for a mere piece of white paper to bear.”

When the Gestapo later ransacked Hans’ flat, they found Söhngen’s careful reply hidden in a bureau drawer. “Such a radiantly beautiful autumn day it was when your so very lovely letter arrived—so beautiful that this day will remain with me as the pinnacle of all that which I hold beautiful,” he’d written. “Moreover, it opened up your innermost being to me, and I now believe I can see clearly that of what I had only before had an inkling. I have grown very reserved in my readiness and so take joy to find confirmation.” Söhngen seemed to have read between the lines, interpreting Hans’ words as a willingness to finally accept his own sexuality and (perhaps incorrectly) consider pursuing a deeper relationship with the bookseller himself.

Hans’ final words before his execution included messages for each of his closest friends and family members. In his sister Inge’s original unpublished eyewitness memoir, submitted, like Söhngen’s, to the Institute for Contemporary History in 1946, she states that her brother’s last message was directed to an unnamed individual, shared while a “tear ran down his cheek” as he bent over to hide his emotions. Inge avoided stating the gender of that anonymous person, but later on, in her 1952 book, she identified them as a woman. By then, she’d taken to presenting Hans as a lothario, so many readers and researchers presumed she was referring to one of his girlfriends.

Inge didn’t publish the words of this last, mysterious farewell. Söhngen, however, knew the precise contents of this message, as Hans’ mother had conveyed it to him personally. The bookseller included it in his memoir: “The most beautiful and yet sorrowful acknowledgment, from his mother … mere minutes before his execution: ‘If I should survive these times, I would want to be as ready as [Söhngen] was, to help students—even at risk of my own life.’”

Hans’ strategy of downplaying the duo’s relationship seems to have worked. Though Söhngen was sentenced to six months for failing to turn in two leaflets he’d admitted to receiving anonymously by mail, he was only required to serve three months and was otherwise judged to be an unimportant figure in the White Rose investigation.

Only minutes after delivering his final message, Hans—long tormented for loving men, who had promised to become “something great for the sake of mankind”— called out as he crossed the Gestapo prison’s cobblestoned courtyard on the way to the guillotine, declaring, “Long live freedom!”

This article was adapted from an essay previously published on Jud Newborn’s website.

Editor's Note, March 3, 2023: This article previously stated than Söhngen's case was dismissed. In fact, he served three months.

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Jud Newborn | READ MORE

Jud Newborn is a New York-based author, writer and curator, as well as a multimedia lecture and storyteller. He has presented his programs throughout the USA, at the United Nations and from Canada to Cape Town. Awarded his PhD with distinction by the University of Chicago, he served as the founding historian and co-creator of New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. He is the co-author of the critically acclaimed Sophie Scholl and the White Rose and is currently working on the first American feature film about the White Rose. Website: judnewborn.com

The Impact of Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany

Embark on a historical exploration with “The Impact of Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany.” This expert essay delves into the significant role played by the Hitler Youth, a youth organization established during the Third Reich. Unravel the complexities of its influence on German youth, serving as both a paramilitary training ground and a tool for ideological indoctrination. From societal expectations to the pervasive nature of Nazi propaganda, the essay examines the multifaceted dimensions of the Hitler Youth experience. As World War II unfolds, witness the tragic consequences for these indoctrinated youths and reflect on the lasting legacy of this dark chapter in Nazi history. Explore the cautionary tale it presents, urging societies to safeguard the autonomy and critical thinking of future generations against extremist ideologies. Additionally, PapersOwl presents more free essays samples linked to Nazi Germany.

How it works

In the complex tapestry of Nazi Germany, the Hitler Youth emerges as a significant thread, weaving its way through the lives of countless young individuals during the turbulent era of the Third Reich. This youth organization, founded in 1922, aimed to indoctrinate German youth with Nazi ideology, molding them into the future torchbearers of the Aryan race.

The Hitler Youth, or Hitler-Jugend in German, encompassed various branches catering to different age groups. From the Jungvolk for younger boys to the Hitler Youth proper for older adolescents, the organization played a pivotal role in shaping the minds and values of German youth.

It served not only as a paramilitary training ground but also as a powerful tool for ideological indoctrination.

One cannot discuss the Hitler Youth without acknowledging the intricate dance between coercion and voluntary participation. While some joined enthusiastically, others found themselves compelled by societal pressure and the omnipresent influence of the Nazi regime. Participation became not only a rite of passage but a societal expectation that shaped the fabric of German youth culture.

The indoctrination within the Hitler Youth was pervasive, extending beyond physical activities to include a complete overhaul of education, leisure, and even family dynamics. The emphasis on racial purity, anti-Semitism, and loyalty to Hitler permeated every aspect of a young person’s life. The Hitler Youth, in essence, became a microcosm of the Nazi regime’s totalitarian control over the collective consciousness.

As World War II unfolded, the Hitler Youth played a direct role in the war effort. Young boys were thrust into military service, and their fervent loyalty to the Nazi cause was exploited to the fullest extent. The tragic reality is that many of these indoctrinated youths faced dire consequences as the war reached its inevitable conclusion, their dreams of Aryan supremacy crumbling along with the regime they served.

In retrospect, the legacy of the Hitler Youth is one of both tragedy and caution. It serves as a stark reminder of the potency of propaganda, the malleability of young minds, and the dangers of unchecked ideological fervor. While the organization itself crumbled with the fall of the Third Reich, its echoes persist in history as a cautionary tale, urging societies to safeguard the autonomy of youth against the manipulative forces of extremist ideologies.

In conclusion, the Hitler Youth stands as a dark chapter in history, illustrating the profound impact of totalitarian regimes on impressionable young minds. Its story is one of ideological fervor, societal pressure, and the tragic consequences of unchecked indoctrination. Understanding this historical phenomenon is not merely an exercise in revisiting the past but a crucial endeavor in safeguarding the principles of autonomy, critical thinking, and ethical education for future generations.

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Hitler Youth

a. Explain the nature and the purpose of the ‘Hitler Youth’ movement.

During the years 1922-1945 a "Hitler Youth" movement was created, the nature and purpose of the "Hitler Youth movement" included many reasons such as it allowed Hitler popularity with young people because they were Germany's future therefore played a vital role in a better Germany, this gained Hitler a chance for naïve children to follow his command. There were many different groups in Hitler youth, some for girls and some for boys. They were: Deutsches Jungvolk which translates to Young German Folk, this group was for boys aged 10-14, There was the Jung Madel which translates to Young Girls and this was for girls aged 10-14, When the boys got older they would join the Hitler Jugend (Hitler youth) for boys aged 14-18, but when girls got older they would join the Bund Deutscher Madel (League of German girls) for girls aged 14-18.   Hitler wanted to introduce young boys into a soldier life so that one day they would fight to protect their country in order to allow Hitler more power. The youth movement for girls put them in their place and presented to them what was expected of them as young woman to be the future mothers of important pure bred Germans.

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The nature of "Hitler Youth" was to prepare young boys for service in the military, it allowed them to learn skills such as: marching, bayonet drill, grenade throwing, trench digging, map reading, gas defence, use of dugouts, how to get under barbed wire and pistol shooting. Another purpose was to keep track of what the peers of young children thought of this new Governments policies and Nazis would persuade the members of the group to tell them whether their parents spoke highly of Hitler or not, if not their parents would be arrested and sent away for "re-education". Movements were set up also to raise money for Nazi charity, young boys or girls would be sent to collect money from the public for the military’s needs. Joining the Hitler Youth movement gave youngsters opportunities to go away on holidays to harden their character by having their physical and mental strength disciplined and improved in order for them to obey the Nazi government in a brainwashing sense. The main purpose of the Hitler Youth was to indoctrinate the young into becoming Nazis. The Hitler youth was a way of fulfilling Hitler’s desire for Germany to have a master race.  

b. Explain the reasons for Nazi policies towards women.

One of the policies the Nazis had for women was the law for the hereditarily diseased offspring this would have all women that were either mentally ill or not physically perfect fertilized, the reason for this is because Hitler believed that the Germans were  a master race this meant that there was no place for imperfect people. If these women had babies there children have a chance of being imperfect, so Hitler believed that these women should not have babies.  By 1937 almost 100,000 women had been sterilised.

In Germany the birth rate was going down, and this wasn’t good for Hitler because the young were a big part in making Germany strong, they were the and he needed a bigger population to provide the army with more soldiers, so as a answer he increased the birth rate by giving couples marriage loans, people of German nationality who marry can be granted a loan of up 1,000 reichsmarks, the conditions are as followed: That the future wife has spent at least six months in employment, That the future wife gives up her job, That the future wife promises not to take up employment so long as her future husband earns more than 125 reichmarks a month. But to increase the birth rate couples had to have children, Hitler encouraged people to have children by cutting the loan by a quarter for having a baby after the loan, if they had another second child it would be cut by half, and after four children they would owe nothing, this was a clever way of getting people to have more children.

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About This Lesson

In the previous two lessons, students learned about how the Nazis used laws and propaganda to compel and persuade the German public to accept, if not support, their idea of a “national community” shaped according to their racial ideals. In this lesson, students will continue this unit’s historical case study by looking at how the Nazis trained young people, through schools and youth groups, in an effort to build a foundation for the future of that “national community.” Students will learn about the experiences of people who grew up in Nazi Germany through a variety of firsthand accounts that show the appeal the Nazi program held for many youth and the limits of that appeal for others. This lesson also reveals some of the dilemmas and isolation experienced by those young people who were deliberately excluded from the Nazi universe of obligation. The lesson both begins and concludes by providing students with the opportunity to discuss the role of young people in any society and the proper goals and methods for their education.

Essential Questions

Unit Essential Question: What does learning about the choices people made during the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazi Party, and the Holocaust teach us about the power and impact of our choices today?

Guiding Questions

• How did the Nazis attempt to enlist young people in their efforts to create "in" groups and "out" groups in German society in the 1930s? How did young people respond to these attempts?
• What were the consequences for young people who were excluded from the Nazi vision for a "national community"?
• What is the role of education in preparing young people for their role as citizens? What might be the difference between preparing students to live in a dictatorship versus a democracy?

Learning Objectives

• Through close reading and discussion, students will identify the range of choices that young people faced in Nazi Germany and how the Nazis used schools and youth organizations to mold young people to embrace their nationalist and racist ideologies.  
• Students will also develop their ideas about the role young people should play in any society and how they should best be educated for the future.

What's Included

This lesson is designed to fit into one 50-min class period and includes:

• 3 activities
• 3 teaching strategies
• 2 assessments
• 3 extension activities

Additional Context & Background

In his book Mein Kampf , written in the 1920s, Hitler said, “Whoever has the youth has the future.” As the Nazi Party grew during the Weimar era, they devoted substantial time, effort, and resources to winning over Germany’s youth. Hitler hoped, once he was in power, that “these young people will learn nothing else but how to think German and act German....And they will never be free again, not in their whole lives.”

Schools had a key role to play in the Nazi efforts to inculcate in German youth a philosophy centered on the idea of a racially pure “national community.” Throughout the 1920s, German schools adhered to a conservative educational philosophy—emphasizing social hierarchy and obedience to authority—that was already consistent with the Nazi worldview. After they came to power in 1933, the Nazis quickly passed new laws to make public education further reflect and teach their nationalist and racial ideologies. Jewish teachers were fired from their posts, and other teachers were encouraged to join the National Socialist Teachers League; by 1936, over 97% of teachers were members. Nazi leaders also created new curricula and textbooks to be used throughout the country. All students took classes in “race science,” while Nazi racism infused materials in every class, including literature selections in reading and word problems in math.  

The Nazis also sought to win over Germany’s children and teenagers through party-sponsored youth groups. In the 1920s, the Nazis had already begun to organize groups that would train young people according to their principles. By 1936, all “Aryan” children in Germany over the age of six were required to join a Nazi youth group. At ten, boys were initiated into the Jungvolk (Young People), and at 14 they were promoted to the Hitler Youth. Their sisters joined the Jungmädel (Young Girls) and were later promoted to the League of German Girls. Although membership in the Hitler Youth organizations was compulsory, many young people did not have to be forced to join. In fact, they were eager to do so, because membership in Nazi youth groups offered a feeling of excitement, belonging, and even power.  

Yet support for the Hitler Youth was never as widespread and strong as Nazi leaders would have liked. Young people skipped some meetings and activities, even though attendance was compulsory, and their loyalty could be inconsistent. Their reasons for losing enthusiasm for Hitler Youth activities were not always political or moral; sometimes young people grew tired of the many requirements or just got bored. In 1939, the Social Democratic Party, which had been outlawed by the Nazis and was operating in secrecy, published a report on German youth that described some of this discontent. It said that “young people are starting to feel particularly burdened by the lack of freedom and the mindless drills practiced by National Socialist organizations. So it is no wonder that signs of fatigue would be particularly prominent in their ranks.” 1

The resources in this lesson explore more deeply both the allure of the Hitler Youth to some young Germans and the reluctance felt by others. Examining these resources closely reveals not only the range of reactions but also a range of choices available to German youth in response to the Nazis’ efforts to win them over in the 1930s—and a range of consequences for those choices, as well.

Meanwhile, those young Germans who were excluded from the “national community” by the Nazis had markedly fewer choices and faced difficult and often dangerous dilemmas. Jewish children were prohibited from joining Nazi youth groups and excluded from that social world so central to many of their classmates in the process. Their supposed inferiority was pronounced repeatedly before them and their peers in school every day. And the seemingly infinite number of laws and rules that singled them out in Nazi Germany emphasized their “otherness” in the eyes of true “Aryans” in painful ways. The resources in this lesson include reflections by both a Jehovah’s Witness woman and a Jewish man who attended school in Nazi Germany, both of whom faced excruciating dilemmas related to their use of the ubiquitous “Heil Hitler” greeting.

• 1 “SOPADE: Reports on German Youth” (1938), in The Third Reich Sourcebook, ed. Anson Rabinbach and Sander L. Gilman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 252.

Preparing to Teach

A note to teachers.

Before teaching this text set, please review the following information to help guide your preparation process.

Setting Up for Four Corners

The first activity in this lesson includes the Four Corners teaching strategy. We recommend that you set up the room for this activity before class begins. Create four signs that read “Strongly Agree,” “Agree,” “Disagree,” and “Strongly Disagree,” and hang them in different corners of the room.

Related Materials

• Teaching Strategy Four Corners

Considerations for the Little Paper Activity

In this lesson, students will be using a variation of the Big Paper strategy,  “Little Paper,” to analyze accounts of the lives of young people in Nazi Germany told from a variety of perspectives. Because it is likely not practical for every student to analyze every document in this lesson, this activity is designed to enable each student to look at accounts of four or five different experiences.

One thing to keep in mind with this activity is timing. Some students may be slower readers, or take longer to comment on a text, while others are faster. To account for these differences, consider asking students to swap readings with another student who finishes at the same time as them, rather than rotating the handouts clockwise. In addition, you’ll want to ensure that students have plenty of margin space to comment on their little papers, so be sure to tape the handouts on a larger sheet of paper in advance.

• Teaching Strategy Big Paper: Building a Silent Conversation

Previewing Vocabulary

The following are key vocabulary terms used in this lesson:

• Indoctrinate
• Disillusion
• Comradeship

Add these words to your Word Wall , if you are using one for this unit, and provide necessary support to help students learn these words as you teach the lesson.

• Teaching Strategy Word Wall

Save this resource for easy access later.

Lesson plans.

Reflect on the Role of Young People in Society

• Tell students that in this lesson, they will be looking at the experiences of young people in Nazi Germany, and especially how the Nazis attempted to enlist many of them in the process of building a “national community” that excluded non-”Aryans.” But first, students will engage in an activity to help them think about and discuss the role of young people in society more broadly.
• Pass out the handout  Youth in Society Anticipation Guide and give students a few minutes to respond to each statement.
• Then lead a Four Corners activity in which students position themselves in corners of the room near signs reading “Strongly Agree,” “Agree,” “Disagree,” and “Strongly Disagree” to indicate their opinion about each statement.
• Discussing every statement on the anticipation guide could easily take the entire class period, so choose two or three of the statements that you think are of especially high interest to your students for the activity. Read one of the statements and instruct students to move to the corner of the room that represents their opinion.
• Then let students from each corner explain their opinions. Make sure at least one person from each corner has the opportunity to speak, and tell students that if they are persuaded by the argument of a classmate in another corner, they may change their mind and move.
• Repeat this process with as many statements as you can discuss in about ten minutes.
• Handout Youth in Society Anticipation Guide

Analyze Accounts of Youth Experiences in Nazi Germany

• Tell students that they will now examine a variety of firsthand accounts from people who were teenagers in Nazi Germany. Many of the ideas they responded to on the anticipation guide in the opening activity will come up in these readings.
• What messages were being sent to young Germans about the proper way to think and act in Germany in the 1930s? What messages were sent about how young people should think about their universe of obligation?
• Why might these messages have appealed to some German youth? Why might they have frightened, angered, or confused others?
• What options did young Germans have about how they could respond to the pressures they faced? What factors may have expanded or shrunk the number of options available to them?
• How were young people from groups targeted by the Nazis affected by the changes in German society in the 1930s?
• Changes at School under the Nazis (04:13): testimony by Kurt Klein
• Friendship and Betrayal (02:55): testimony by Ellen Kerry Davis  
• After watching the videos, briefly discuss how Klein’s and Davis’s testimonies help to answer the questions above.
• Tell students that they will now use the same series of questions to respond to a variety of documents about youth in Nazi Germany in a “Little Paper” activity (a variation of Big Paper ).
• Divide the class into groups of four or five, and have each group sit in a circle. Then give each group either Youth in Nazi Germany Reading Set 1 or  Youth in Nazi Germany Reading Set 2 . Each student should start with one reading from their assigned reading set. As students read, they should annotate the text by highlighting or underlining portions that help to answer the questions above. They can also write comments and observations in the margins about young people’s experiences.  
• After a few minutes, students will then pass their handouts to the person on their right, and they will repeat the process with the new handout. This time, however, they can respond to the comments and annotations the previous student made. Repeat this process at least once more, or (time permitting) until students have had a chance to work with each handout in their group.
• When the process is complete, have students return each handout to the student who read it first so that student can see the written discussions that followed his or her initial comments.
• How did the Nazis attempt to educate young people to accept, if not support, the dictatorship? How would education be different if the goal were to teach young people how to be citizens in a democracy?
• What did you notice about the variety of ways young people responded to education and youth groups in Nazi Germany? Did any of the responses surprise you?
• What options did German teenagers have in terms of how they could respond to the pressures they faced? What were the consequences of some of those choices?
• Video Changes at School under the Nazis
• Video Friendship and Betrayal
• Handout Youth in Nazi Germany Reading Set 2
• Handout Youth in Nazi Germany Reading Set 1

Revisit the Role of Young People in Society

• To close the lesson, or for homework, ask students to review their responses to the anticipation guide they completed at the beginning of the lesson.
• After they review the anticipation guide, assign students to select two of the statements from the list and copy them into their journals. After each statement, they should write a short reflection explaining how the firsthand accounts they studied in this lesson connected to, extended, or challenged their initial opinions about them from the beginning of the lesson.
• Teaching Strategy Connect, Extend, Challenge

Check for Understanding

• Evaluate students’ reflections from the closing activity of this lesson to help you assess both their understanding of the role young people played in the Nazis’ ideal “national community” and their thinking about the broader question of the role of young people in society. To use these reflections as an assessment, ask students to write them on a separate piece of paper or notecard to turn in (if you have established that their journals are private).

For a more formal assessment, assign students to write an argumentative paragraph in response to the following prompt:

In his book Mein Kampf, written in the 1920s, Hitler said, “Whoever has the youth has the future.” How did Hitler and the Nazi Party use schools and youth organizations to reflect this idea? How did young people choose to respond, and how did these choices challenge the way they saw themselves and understood their identities?

• Lesson The Power of Propaganda
• Lesson Youth and the National Community

Extension Activities

Explore the Roles of Obedience and Conformity

The reading Models of Obedience explores the roles that obedience and conformity played in the upbringing of children in Nazi Germany. You might use this reading to extend this lesson’s exploration of young people’s role in society and the proper goals of education. The connection questions following the reading probe the tension between the importance of teaching children to obey and the possibility that at some point the inclination to obey can become harmful. Use the questions as the basis for a class discussion about the differences between obedience and conformity and the times or circumstances in which each of these behaviors may be useful or dangerous.

• Reading Models of Obedience

Further Explore Resistance to Nazi Education and Propaganda

The reading Even If All Others Do—I Do Not! explores how one German parent, Johannes Fest, coped with his opposition to Nazi policies and shared his opinions with his family. To more fully explore the question of choices and resistance, share this reading with students and discuss the connection questions that follow.

• Reading Even If All Others Do—I Do Not!

Do the Children Have the Power?

The reading The Birthday Party describes a situation in which a 14-year-old Hitler Youth leader felt empowered to challenge another boy’s father for keeping his son home from training exercises because he had a cold. You might read and discuss this reading with students and ask them what light it sheds on both the allure of the Hitler Youth for some young Germans and the influence it had on their behavior. You might also ask students how this helps them interpret the meaning of Hitler’s belief that “Whoever has the youth has the future.”

• Reading The Birthday Party

Materials and Downloads

Quick downloads, download the files, get files via google, explore the materials, changes at school under the nazis.

Friendship and Betrayal

The Power of Propaganda

Kristallnacht

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