Definition of Hitler Youth

For him movement National Socialist in the Germany of the 30s, or you were with him, or you were an enemy, there was no middle ground. And they tried to get everyone who could accept to be with them, also indoctrinating the youngest so that they would continue to believe their slogans, turning them into loyal Nazi fanatics. To do this, they had a powerful instrument: the Hitler Youth.

The Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend in the original German) were a Nazi Party organization (NSDAP) aimed at young people aged 10 to 18, to whom it offered a program of physical activities and training.

It was founded in 1922, growing little by little in the number of affiliates until it soared with Hitler's coming to power in 1933; Suffice it to say that that year they barely exceeded 100,000 members, while a year later they almost reached three million.

This was helped by the banning of some organizations youth, others will merge with the Hitler Youth dissolving, and many parents will point their children after joining the party in order to find a job or thrive in the one they already They had.

In 1940, the last year for which we have reliable data on the number of enrollees, this rose to eight million.

The formative activities of the Hitler Youth were destined to achieve “a better citizen”, a maxim under which children were indoctrinated to make them better Nazis.

A good example of this indoctrination is that many kids denounced their own parents for criticizing the Reich and the Führer at home, where they believed they were safe from being heard by someone loyal to the party.

In this regard, Hitlerjugend they were erected in one more link of the apparatus repressive of the Nazi regime.

For their part, physical activities were intended to strengthen young people to make them, in the future, better Aryans and soldiers of the Reich.

Thus, among these activities was shooting. This paid off with a German army (Wehrmacht) very prepared and disciplined that put in check to some very superior allied troops in number.

From the moment the war breaks out, the Youth participate in it, first with auxiliary tasks, but finally entering into combat.

In the early 1940s, and as Germany still had the upper hand in Europe, members of this organization carried out tasks such as attention and company to the wounded, clearing rubble, or assistance to the authorities, both civil and military.

The end of the war, with the collapse of the Nazi regime and its war machine, brought the members of the Youth to the battlefield.

An early example of this was the Waffen-SS 12th Panzer Division, formed in January 1943, shortly before the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, which would mark the beginning of the end of the Axis.

This division fought in the Battle of Normandy, being responsible for some crime of war, and later also fought in the theater eastern operations.

In the final Battle of Berlin, in 1945, the members of the Hitlerjugend they were mobilized and armed.

In the last effort of endurance of the Reich, very young children fought, whose sacrifice did not seem to matter to the Nazi leaders. Mainly, they were armed with Panzerfaust, a very easy to use anti-tank weapon (it was practically not necessary instruction to use) and highly effective against enemy tanks.

Enrolled in the Volkssturm (the popular militia formed by elderly people to serve in the armed forces, and by these children), many members of the Hitler Youth roamed Berlin on bicycles with their Panzerfaust to go attack Soviet tanks and vehicles.

After the war, the organization Hitlerjugend it was abolished.

As part of the denazification program, and like all the other organizations that orbited the Nazi party, as well as the Nazi party itself NSDAP, while beginning a pedagogical effort to deprogram the children whose brain had been washed by the "educators" National Socialists.

As a curiosity, it should be noted that Joseph Ratzinger, better known by Benedict XVI, the name he used to serve as Pope, was forced to enroll in the Hitler Youth, and was even mobilized, although only in infrastructure defense tasks (the BMW factory in Munich) and the building of antitank defense infrastructures.

Photo Fotolia: kurgu128

Themes in Hitler Youth