Youth Organizations in the Third Reich
From the movement’s inception, leaders of the National Socialist Party placed a high priority on winning the hearts and minds of German youth, whom they viewed as the future of the nation and hoped to mold to their purposes. The Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend, or HJ) represented the party’s second oldest paramilitary organ, after its adult counterpart, the Storm Division (Sturmabteilung, or SA), upon which it was modeled. The organization began its existence as the Youth League of the Nazi Party (Jugendbund der NSDAP) in March 1922; it was restructured as the Greater German Youth Movement (Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung) in 1924. In July 1926, this now official youth organization of the Nazi Party became the Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth (Hitler-Jugend, Bund Deutscher Arbeiterjugend), and was officially incorporated into the SA.
By 1930, the Hitler Youth had already recruited twenty-five thousand members. Following the Nazi assumption of power, the new Reich youth leader (Reichsjugendführer), Baldur von Schirach,1 assumed control of the HJ and began to promote the program in earnest, organizing a general membership of boys from fourteen to eighteen and a corresponding junior branch, the German Young Volk (Deutsches Jungvolk). Hitler Youth members received both physical and paramilitary training and ideological indoctrination. A key component of Schirach’s strategy was to create from the Hitler Youth’s ranks competent and loyal soldiers for future wars and citizens ideologically committed to the Third Reich and its policies. On December 1, 1936, the Law Concerning the Hitler Youth (Gesetz über die Hitlerjugend) called for the assimilation of all German youth into the appropriate youth organizations. Although the law made membership obligatory, compliance was not universal, and two ancillary decrees issued in March 1939, making youth service compulsory and nonmembership a punishable offense, were ultimately necessary to ensure thoroughgoing conformity with the initial legislation.2
1. In 1940, Artur Axmann replaced Baldur von Schirach as Reich youth leader; Schirach himself became Gauleiter of the Reichsgau Vienna from 1940 until war’s end.
2. For a discussion of the Hitler Youth organization, see Michael Kater, Hitler Youth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
Document 7-1. A young boy leaps into the clasped arms of his schoolmates during outdoor physical education exercises at the Hilter Youth training facility in Memmingen, Germany, USHMMPA WS# 30590, courtesy of the Holocaust Museum Houston.
Concerned with the conspicuous lack of compliance with the December 1936 law in the Reich capital region, the director of Berlin’s Deaf Athletes’ Association used the popular youth supplement to the association’s monthly newsletter to cajole young athletes belonging to his organization to join the now obligatory Hitler Youth. “The highest achievement in sports does not shield you from the fact that service to Hitler’s Reich is the highest service of all,” Director Werner Thomas3 reminded his young charges.
3. Werner Thomas (b. 1908) joined the Nazi Party in May 1930. No information is available on his postwar fate.
Thomas’s enthusiasm for the Nazi movement contained an element of irony. As deaf individuals, members of his athletic organization, both young and old, already represented potential targets of the regime’s thoroughgoing eugenic policies.4 Since January 1934, they had been subject to the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases,5 legislation mandating compulsory sterilization for specific disorders and disabilities, including hereditary deafness. In October 1935, the Marital Hygiene Law (Ehegesundheitsgesetz) further prohibited the marriage of “Aryans” with persons possessing “diseased, inferior or dangerous genetic material,”6 among them the hereditarily deaf. A staunch National Socialist, Director Thomas may have felt that he and his associates belonged intrinsically to Germany’s Volksgemeinschaft, but a segment of Nazi policy makers certainly thought otherwise.
4. See Horst Biesold, Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany, trans. William Sayers (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1999); Donna Ryan and John Schuchman, eds., Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2002).
5. For a broader discussion of the Nazi sterilization law and its ramifications, see chapter 6.
6. Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 175.
Document 7-2. Editorial of W. Thomas, director of the Berlin Deaf Athletes’ Association, Youth Supplement of the Newsletter of the Berlin Deaf Athletes’ Association, May 1, 1937, USHMMA, RG-10.320, Horst Biesold Collection (translated from the German).
My dear young comrades!
A sorry circumstance compels me to express my opinion on the Hitler Youth question. [I understand that] nearly 100 percent of the youth from the Leipzig and Dresden sports associations render their services in the Hitler Youth with a joyful heart. It is simply humiliating that so many young athletes from the Berlin community are still opposed to joining. As an old SA man of many years standing, I have early on been able to have many valuable experiences which demonstrated to me that the education afforded by the Hitler Youth and SA is very useful: because there our youth will learn iron discipline, comradeship, and the will to sacrifice. There they will ripen into splendid and proper men—better said, into the best National Socialists.
As deaf persons, we will never be called into the Labor Service, into the Wehrmacht, and so on, and service in the Hitler Youth offers you your last opportunity to go through a rigorous training.
The highest achievement in sports does not shield you from the fact that service to Adolf Hitler’s Reich is the highest service of all!!!
In accordance with the proclamation of our Reich Sports Leader von Tschammer u. Osten7 and that of the leader of our association, Pg. [Party Comrade] Siepmann, I enjoin you for the last time, dear comrades: those of you who are not yet eighteen should report to the leader of Troop G/2, Scharführer Müller, before May 12. Otherwise you will be excluded from our excellent sports association.
7. Hans von Tschammer und Osten (1887–1943) had held the position of Reich Sport Leader (Reichssportführer) since 1933. As such he played a major role in the planning and organization of the 1936 Winter and Summer Olympic Games, held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Berlin, Germany, respectively; during these competitions he supported a ban of non-Aryan competitors on Germany’s Olympic team, a policy widely condemned in the international press. Von Tschammer died of pneumonia in 1943 and was succeeded as Reichssportführer by Arno Breitmeyer.
At this opportunity, I would like to make all Hitler Youth members cognizant that when one of you is dishonorably discharged from your troop, you will also automatically forfeit your membership in this sports association.
In conclusion I appeal to all the esteemed parents and also to my association comrades to show their complete understanding for my actions, which are necessary for the future of our nation.
Everything for Germany!
For many youngsters in the regime’s early years, membership in the Nazi youth associations proved neither an irksome obligation nor a burdensome chore. In many ways, the HJ extended to adolescents many of the same leisure and outdoor activities formerly afforded by earlier exponents of the German youth movement, such as the Scout Movement (Pfadfinder) and the Youth Leagues (Bündische Jugend), both banned after 1933. Likewise, the well-appointed uniforms, the carefully orchestrated pageantry and ritual, and the ubiquitous competition among units for sport and service awards combined to give youngsters a sense of belonging, unity, and purpose. For youths in remote or rural areas, moreover, the Hitler Youth often provided an initial opportunity to come into contact with children from diverse regions, to erect an official clubhouse or sporting field in their small hamlets, or to visit new places on weekend or camping expeditions.
The emancipatory possibilities that came with the Nazi youth movement were potentially even greater for
German girls and young women. Through the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel, or BDM), girls could escape from the narrow confines of home and family and participate in the kinds of activities and outings usually reserved for boys. Although its ideological aim was to prepare German females for their future roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers, the BDM also offered young women an outlet for experiences outside the spheres of school and the parental home and presented further educational and vocational opportunities that they were unlikely to derive elsewhere. The organization also afforded its paid and unpaid functionaries a conduit to participation in political activity, albeit within a limited context.
Like the Hitler Youth, the BDM had its origins in the 1920s, first as the Mädchenschaften (Girls’ Organizations), then as the Schwesternschaften (Sisterhood Organizations) of the HJ. In 1930, the Bund Deutscher Mädel in der Hitler-Jugend (League of German Girls within the Hitler Youth) was founded as the official female branch of the Hitler Youth organization. Before the Nazi rise to power in January 1933, the BDM did not attract a mass following, but membership expanded rapidly throughout the 1930s, until participation for eligible girls became compulsory in 1936. The BDM’s core constituency consisted of girls from fourteen to eighteen years of age, with a corresponding junior branch, the Jungmädel (Young Girls’ League), for girls aged ten to fourteen. In 1938, a third component, the BDM Union for Belief and Beauty (BDM-Werk Glaube und Schönheit), offered a voluntary association for young women aged seventeen to twenty-one that served as a bridge to membership in the National Socialist Women’s League (NS-Frauenschaft, or NSF).8
8. See Gisela Miller-Kipp, ed., “Auch Du gehörst dem Führer”: Die Geschichte des Bundes Deutscher Mädel (BDM) in Quellen und Dokumenten. Forschungsreihe Materialien zur Historischen Jugendforschung (Weinheim: Juventa Verlag, 2001).
Anecdotal evidence suggests that, especially before World War II, the BDM enjoyed a great deal of popularity among German girls and elicited far more eager participation among its young female cohorts than did the Hitler Youth among boys, not least because of the latter’s rigorous paramilitary training. For some, no doubt, the League of German Girls exerted an unsettling influence, as when its ideological indoctrination or stance on religion and traditional authority figures clashed with deeply held values. Enthusiasm for the league likewise declined during the war years as public service duties increasingly replaced outings and recreational activities. BDM members ran charity and collection drives, volunteered as nurse’s aides, and organized care packages for troops at the front. After 1943, older members might be conscripted to work in armaments factories or other industries or to aid in the war effort as auxiliaries in civilian air defense. Whatever their role, for many young women the League of German Girls presented both difficult challenges and rewarding experiences, as three long-term members recalled in 1946.
Document 7-3. Young women remember the League of German Girls, 1946, in Gisela Miller-Kipp, ed., “Auch Du gehörst dem Führer”: Die Geschichte des Bundes Deutscher Mädel (BDM) in Quellen und Dokumenten. Forschungsreihe Materialien zur Historischen Jugendforschung (Weinheim: Juventa Verlag, 2001), 315–16 (translated from the German).
Ursula G., 19 years old
I have, perhaps because I am an only child, always sought the companionship of persons my own age, and always felt drawn to my circle of schoolmates as well as to those of the National Socialist youth movement. I participated in many camping trips and outings, as well as several training courses. Each time I had the good fortune to have genuine “leaders” [to follow]. Never did I have the feeling that I was being “educated” or directed towards certain thought processes. More often than not, I encountered people who guided me in a very subtle manner really to reflect upon things that up to that time had remained a mystery to me. Those were people who—as far as I may judge—had a real understanding for us girls and were truly examples to us. I didn’t just take pleasure in earnest discussions with my comrades, but also enjoyed taking part in play, sports, camp life, and in both solemn and festive ceremonies. Often in these instances I had the task of writing reports concerning the experiences in our young circles for school and camp journals as well as for newspapers and magazines; and this always made me so happy that for a long time it was my wish to build my later career on such activities.
During the year 1944 our school was almost completely closed because we were so often utilized for wartime public service. I helped in agricultural work, in our canning factory, was a temporary mail delivery girl for two months and from time to time dug trenches. [. . .] After three months in the Erzgebirge,9 we came to E. Here I witnessed Germany’s collapse, and with it, the collapse of everything I lived for in terms of belief, enthusiasm, ideals. [. . .]
9. This refers to a small mountain chain in eastern Germany.
Karin K., 20 years old
Besides school there came to us a new form of social interaction: at ten years of age there began the compulsory membership in the Young Girls’ League [Jungmädelbund]. I will not lie when I say that we all greeted this at first with a great deal of enthusiasm. They appealed to us with those things that gave us pleasure. We played together, learned songs, or our leader read fairy tales to us which we acted out on parents’ nights. Everything ideological was still quite foreign to us. Certainly, we each received a uniform, but this appealed to our pride, and all that marching was certainly not at odds with our disposition—belonged to that part of us that was young, anyway as I imagine it. Perhaps it was wrong to make this urge stronger in us, instead of instilling maidenly virtues in us. They also knew how to goad our ambition. Wasn’t it tempting to be a pennant bearer or a leader [Führerin10] oneself? We could not recognize at the time that the truly good thing—namely the sincere striving and the readiness to give one’s complete effort—would be misused. For us Berliners there was so much enthusiasm! What we all saw, what we experienced! The Hitler Youth was always on hand.
10. That is, a low-level leader of the BDM.
Elisabeth K., 19 years old
My home is East Prussia. I was born in L., a small town nestled between clear lakes and dark forests in Masuria.11 In 1937, at the same time that I was transferred to a secondary school [Oberschule] for girls, I was accepted into the Jungmädelbund. This new environment overwhelmed me, and I changed much as a result, became more self-sufficient, more self-confident. I was motivated by all the playing, singing, and sports, and at first I took pleasure in the strict discipline and order. This time brought me many wonderful hours in the company of people of my own age, and I never thought of the work in political terms. But with all this came the first serious conflict in my life. I grew up in a strict Christian household and had never encountered other kinds of beliefs or convictions. Now there was this thing which brought me great pleasure, but which clearly stood in complete contrast to my earlier way of life. I suffered very much from this dichotomy, and always tried to unite the two opposites until I realized that this was not possible if I did not wish to deceive myself. Later, when my father was drafted into the military and my mother experienced difficulties in running our store, I withdrew completely, except for the demands which school imposed.
11. This area of East Prussia, famed for its lakes, was ceded to Poland in 1945.
Nonconformity and Dissidence: The Edelweiss Pirates
As the late German historian Detlev Peukert ably demonstrated, Nazi leaders’ assertions that their organizations successfully assimilated and mobilized German youth portrayed only one facet of the Third Reich’s social reality. The more readily the Nazi Party exerted coercion to bring German adolescents into its ranks, the more conspicuous became the pattern of nonconformity.12 By the late 1930s, a surprising number of German teenagers, chiefly males, were rejecting the discipline and regimentation of party youth organizations in favor of the free and spontaneous lifestyle of informal clubs and gangs. Growing in numbers during the war
years, these youths, aged fourteen to eighteen, particularly vexed Nazi authorities, for most belonged to precisely that age cohort whose chief socialization had taken place under the all-pervasive influence of the Nazi state. Some of these teens stemmed from the upper middle classes, such as the well-documented “Swing Kids” (Swingjugend), youths of both sexes who doffed their Hitler Youth and BDM uniforms for English-cut suits and defied the ban on public assembly to gather in illegal clubs and at the homes of consenting (or absent) parents to listen to jazz and swing numbers and dance the jitterbug.13 Perhaps more numerous and unconventional, at least in Nazi eyes, however, were those working-class youths from western Germany who styled themselves as “Edelweiss14 Pirates.” Throughout the industrial Rhine and Ruhr regions, teenage boys gathered in loose associations to spend their evenings and weekends together, away from the probing gaze and controlling grasp of the Hitler Youth. Although they organized in small groups of a dozen or more under various epithets—the Kittelbach Pirates from Düsseldorf, the Cologne Navajos, or the Essen Roving Dudes—each group identified itself as belonging to the network of Edelweiss Pirates, recognizable to each other and to the experienced observer by their costume: the invariable checkered shirt, neck scarf, short trousers, white socks, and clogs. Many of these young men had once been members of the Scout Movement (Pfadfinder)or the Youth Leagues (Bündische Jugend15), now banned in Nazi Germany, and many of their activities—camping, hiking, singing ballads—mirrored the activities of the Weimar-era German youth movement.16 Unlike these organized associations, however, the Edelweiss Pirates came together spontaneously because they knew each other: as neighbors, schoolmates, teammates in local sports associations, or coworkers. Most had finished their formal schooling17 but were not yet of draft age; many were apprentices or, during the war years with their shortage of manpower, already earning a steady wage as unskilled laborers. In eschewing the activities organized by Nazi Party associations, these young people had sufficient free time to meet at a nearby street corner, bar, or park and venture weekend outings in the surrounding countryside, despite wartime restrictions on travel and tight police controls. Teenaged girls often accompanied the group on excursions, a factor that distinguished Pirate bands from the gender-segregated Nazi youth organizations. Female companionship also afforded young members an opportunity for uninhibited romantic and sexual encounters eagerly embraced by developing teens but associated with indecency and delinquency by Nazi officials.
Children during the Holocaust Page 36