by Heath, Tim
Anita viewed the gynaecological examination as one that had been totally unnecessary:
I was only just ten years old for God’s sake and it would have been totally absurd in every respect for that doctor to have reasoned that I may have lost my virginity in any way. These of course were all post-war theories given to me by American and British physicians who asked me personally about the membership process and the medical examinations performed. Looking back though, it is now quite easy to see why the vaginal examinations were conducted as we were to form the basis of Hitler’s breeding experiments and the mothers of his ‘Master Race’ dream. We later learned much about the Lebensborn or Fountain of Life project, and it was very obvious that we Aryan girls were the chosen subjects for this programme. Whether we liked it or not the state was going to choose for us the German men who were going to make us pregnant in order to preserve and continue the very finest of the German race. Really, we had no future if you think about it and we were just to be used to produce offspring.
For the girls who had been cleared to join and had passed their medical examination and were fit for enrolment within the Jung Madel, the ordeal was not over. At school a simple enrolment ceremony would be conducted. The student wearing the traditional German school uniform would stand next to the flag bearing the Swastika and swear an oath to Adolf Hitler. Usually the student repeated the words after her teacher read them out, all the time with her right arm raised in the Nazi salute. Once the enrolment ceremony had been conducted, the student was then given her uniform that consisted of a white blouse with black tie, navy-blue skirt and brown jacket, and a Hitler Youth membership badge. The badge was a small metal, diamond-shaped pin with a silver-backed, central, black-Swastika emblem on a red and white enamelled background. The badge could be worn either on the girl’s blouse or jacket lapel. Girls had to wear shoes or sandals with white socks, though a pair of black, leather, military-style boots was also supplied. The student would have to keep her uniform and footwear in good condition at all times, and wear her uniform at all important Nazi Party events.
For the girls who joined the Jung Madel, there lay ahead a strict regime of hard physical exercise and political commitment which served to hone them to Nazified perfection. This would set them aside from the youth of other countries and cultures around the world. To emphasize the physical prowess and sheer perfection of the young female Hitler Youths, the Jung Madel, like its sister organization the BDM, had squads of young girl athletes who competed in many sporting tournaments all over the world during the years before the outbreak of the Second World War. At the Youth Olympiad held in Tokyo in July 1939, a young girl named Hanna Butthinghaus won the ballwurfwettkampf (medicine-ball throwing event) for Germany. Miss Butthinghaus, a Berlin schoolgirl, was pretty, with dark hair and large brown eyes. The German photographer Schirner photographed her at the event holding a medicine ball, her white sports vest emblazoned with the Swastika.
The young girls’ school education would be greatly supplemented by the teachings of the Jung Madel. The young girls had to study Hitler’s Mein Kampf. They were frequently expected to recall passages and to explain their interpretations of the content.
Much emphasis was placed on Nazi ideology, culture and ethos, and, of course, the role of the female in Third Reich society. The teachers would go to great lengths to ensure that their pupils fully understood what they were being taught. To further enhance the appeal of the Jung Madel, students were treated to camping excursions, the most popular of which were based in Grunewald Forest with its adjacent lakes and sandy beaches. Along with the usual exercise routines that were often the prelude to the daily events, the girls were taken on hiking trips into the woods, where they carried their banners and sang patriotic songs. They also learned to do many things that only boys had previously been allowed to do. In a sense, the Jung Madel was giving its female students a taste of equality, while at the same time a sense of comradeship, in much the same way as a military regiment.
Girls were given detailed instruction on how to cook and prepare different kinds of foods. They were expected to find and cut wood for their fires, and take turns cooking on their camping trips. Anita von Schoener:
I remember the first time I ever went to one of the summer camps at Grunewald Forest as a Jung Madel. It was the first time that I had ever been away from home and my mother and father. It was also the first time that I had ever journeyed on a train and I was just so overwhelmed by it all. So many emotions tore through me, I was crying with sadness and yet was overcome with happiness too. My mother and father could never have taken me to the countryside, as we just did not have the money or the means to do those things. Later, however, the Nazi Party ensured that even poor families received financial subsidies so as they could have proper holidays.
I think every one of the ‘Mitte’ girls felt exactly the same way. The journey on the train was spectacular to me as all of the different scenery lazily passed by with the gentle rocking of the train. We girls spent most of our time hanging out of the windows flailing our arms in the warm wind and shouting out to people we saw on the way. ‘Heil Hitler!’ we would cry and the people would wave back at us. We felt like different girls in our crisp uniforms and polished boots, and I found the countryside landscape breathtaking as the factories with their tall, blackened chimney stacks slowly disappeared, giving way to open fields, rivers and woodland. The train stopped at a station and we were surrounded by woodland. We all disembarked from the train and lined up as we had been taught. Two Jung Madel leaders or Jungmadelgruppenführerin as they were known, then took a roll call to ensure all of the girls were present and that no one had been left on the train. Once they were satisfied that we were all there we moved off on the short hike to the summer camp, which was around a mile from where the train station was. Upon arrival at the camp, we formed into a line in front of a flagpole and the leaders raised a flag bearing the Swastika. This was one of the first things we had to do upon arrival at camp.
Afterwards our tents had to be arranged and a fire was lit and a meal prepared. The meal nearly always consisted of German sausages that we loved. We girls could talk amongst ourselves until we had to retire to our tents, or billet, as the English people call them and prepare for bed. We were not permitted to be up late into the evenings and often had to be in bed by 8.00pm, our teachers and leaders insisting that sleep was vital for mental sharpness.
On the first morning we were awoken at between 7.00 and 8.00 am by the leaders, and after washing and changing into our gym kit we had to exercise outside the tents for half-an-hour, sometimes a little longer. Afterwards we were taken down to a small river where the water was fairly shallow. We removed our clothing and jumped in, splashing one another and messing around; it was wonderful even if a little chilly during the early dawn. After being instructed to leave the water we dried ourselves and often only put clothes on again once back at camp. Once at camp, we dressed into our proper uniforms and did our hair – usually we did this amongst ourselves.
Once ready, we had breakfast that usually came fresh from the local farms in the area, as we often collected our own supplies as part of the activities. When the day began, it was a mixture of basic survival skills, like how to make a fire and how to shelter from bad weather and things, and also what foods were available in the woods. We also did climbing and orienteering, which was very enjoyable to us. In fact we learned many new skills that put us on equal terms with the boys, and we were then able to apply the new skills we learned back home into our everyday lives. One thing I did find unpleasant was when a rabbit had been snared in one of our wire traps that we had been taught to make. Our group leader grabbed the rabbit quickly by its back legs and it began to shriek, and then she delivered it a heavy blow with a short club to the base of its neck. I had never before seen a wild rabbit in the flesh, let alone seen one trapped and killed. It was a pretty little thing and I didn’t like it at all what was happening. After a few convulsing spasms and some
passing of urine the rabbit was still. Katharina, our group leader, laid it down onto the ground and we could see the fleas coming out of the dead rabbit’s earthy-brown fur, and one of the girls said, ‘Errr, I think I am going to be sick.’
I was amazed at it and couldn’t help stroking it, but the teacher ordered us to move away quickly as the fleas might jump onto us.
‘You must always wait until the rabbit is cold before you can handle it,’ were her words of wisdom.
From a short distance she then showed us how to skin and prepare the rabbit for cooking, tossing its entrails into nearby bushes. We all stood watching in disbelief with our hands over our mouths, we all felt sick. The rabbit, along with others that had been snared that day, were later cooked with some vegetables in a kind of a stew. When it was served, many of us just poked at it, afraid to eat the rabbit, though some stern words from our leader soon made us try it. I have to admit it was a meal that I enjoyed thoroughly, and we had bread with it too. In fact, I had not eaten that well in a long time, and I felt so much fitter and stronger on my return home to the Mitte.
To many of the girls, the Jung Madel became a kind of family. It was an organization specifically designed to function in much the same way as a large family. The Nazis were anxious, as with the boys, to detach the young girls as much as possible from their parents and elders. The Nazis held the view that their elders still retained much of the predominantly old and worthless German attitudes, which could not be tolerated within Germany’s Hitler Youth. There was a kind of pecking order that all the girls would respect and adhere to at all times.
A system of rank was devised, which operated in much the same way as Germany’s military forces. Under von Schirach’s direction, the Jung Madel was arranged into squads, platoons and companies. Each company was within a territorial formation based upon a system referred to as the gau. The gau was a term used for the territorial and administrative divisions of Germany for the purposes of the Nazi Party. There were two gau: the untergau and the obergau, lower and upper respectively. All were organized into the Gauverband (Association of Gau) and were subject to the authority of the Reichsjugendführung (Reich Youth Leadership). All affairs relating to the BDM fell under the scrutiny of the Reichsreferentin-BDM or official in charge of the BDM, and Jung Madel-Untergauführerin respectively. Within the embrace of the Jung Madel individuals were encouraged to strive toward proficiency within the organization and earn medallions and awards along the way. The Jung Madel rank system was as follows:
Jungmadel
Jungmadelschaftsführerin
JM-Scharführerin
JM-Gruppenführerin
JM-Ringführerin
JM-Untergauführerin
The Jung Madel motto was much the same as that adopted by the Bund Deutscher Madel: ‘Be faithful, be pure, be German’.
Baldur von Schirach quoted to the girls in one of his patriotic speeches: ‘We do not need intellectual leaders who create new ideas, because the superimposing leader of all desires of youth is Adolf Hitler’.
Dora Brunninghausen, another ten-year-old who joined the Jung Madel in 1933, admits that she came to value the Jung Madel more than her own family as time went by:
Having come from a ‘Mitte’ family, I viewed the Hitler Youth as a kind of deliverance if you like. In our house the standing of females was pretty much clear. I loved yet resented my older brother who had joined the Hitler Youth (for boys) before me. He was always treated differently, especially by our father. Mother and me were bullied to a certain extent and I was made to feel worthless at times as if I had no role. I grew tired and resentful of my father and felt intimidated around him. Fathers back then were sometimes very hard on their daughters and my father was very strict. If I did anything wrong most times it was the father who did the hitting. I used to get hit with a leather belt and that would really hurt. I could not wait for the times when I went away with the Jung Madel. Things were different with them, and we girls respected and had a common bond with one another, something which lacked severely in our home lives. I still had a love for my father but it was not a deep love, not like it should have been.
In 1933, Germany was still six years away from another world war. The years prior to the outbreak of war in 1939 were considered by many German girls as some of the best years of their lives. For the Jung Madels, their entry into the world of Adolf Hitler and his politics was just the beginning of what was to be a fantastic rollercoaster ride of summer camps, better nutrition, new friendships, and the chance to parade before the world in some of the biggest political rallies ever staged. At the same time, their attitudes were being altered to the ways of Nazism and they began to view the world around themselves very differently. The Mitte girls had come of age, and, through the dark world that was now absorbing them, they sought their place in Hitler’s Third Reich. Here, for once, they could escape from their dull and almost Georgian lifestyles and be made to feel a part of something worthwhile and special. Many, however, were just too young and a little too naïve to see the danger signs.
Chapter Three
Sugar on the Dog Shit
The education formulae devised for ten to fourteen-year-old girls in Nazi Germany, was in total contrast to that of the pre-Hitler era. Huge changes had taken place within the entire education system. Hitler’s ever-present suspicion and paranoia of the old generation led him to rid Germany’s schools of many of the old and established teachers, whom he considered as unfit to teach his new Hitler Youth generation.
There were very few actual textbooks in German schools, and the Nazi schools did not use textbooks at all. In fact, the only real textbook that many young Germans girls and boys owned was Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. There was an official teachers’ handbook titled Education and Instruction, Official Publication of the Reich and Prussian Ministry of Knowledge, Education, and National Culture. This manual was the work of Dr Bernard Rust. It outlined a schedule emphasizing primarily physical education, including only those of an academic nature that were viewed as an important factor in the creation of a ‘good Nazi’.
The Nazi education curriculum included Nazi versions of German history, ideology, art and eugenics. A proportion of the mathematical subjects taught had military applications. For example, some mathematical problems involved the calculation of bomb-fall, and munitions trajectory and delivery.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, many of the old teachers had been replaced by those who were fanatical Nazis, and therefore familiar with the doctrine, and its principles and ideals, especially where the youth were concerned. When war broke out in later years, the changing situation of both social and geographical natures that came with it were also absorbed into the education system. For example, firstly Russia was regarded as an enemy of the German nation, and then an ally when Hitler and Stalin entered into a non-aggression pact early in the war. This was in reality a ploy devised to stall possible Russian intervention while Hitler achieved his early territorial objectives in Western Europe. This precariously short peace was soon shattered by Hitler’s attack on Russia when Operation Barbarossa was launched in 1941. Russia was then once again defined as the enemy.
Where ten-year-old Jung Madel girls were concerned, it was made clear as to what the Nazi regime expected of them. Girls were not permitted to wear any nail varnish on their fingernails or makeup on their faces. They were expected to grow their hair long when it would then be put into plaits or a bun. Girls were educated within a single-sex environment, under the motto ‘Church, Children and Cooking’.
The seeking of normal interaction or contact with members of the opposite sex, other than the playing of games if parents permitted it in the streets where young boys joined in, was spurned. This is something that affected their sexual attitudes later in their adolescence, especially where relationships with males were concerned.
Foreign languages were no longer taught in schools, though English was a unique exception in the early years of the Nazi education curr
iculum, as being perhaps the only ‘foreign language’ allowed to be taught in schools in Germany. Later, English too was omitted in favour of a total commitment to only German being spoken in the Reich.
Sadly, many of the subjects taught, including that of science, was selective. For example, only science that could be applied to both cooking and childcare was considered acceptable to be taught to girls. The subjects of primary importance to the Nazis where young girls were concerned, were those of physical fitness, health and the ability to produce children. Cleanliness was also a vitally important subject, with great emphasis placed upon the personal hygiene of the individual. These would be the only necessary attributes required for German girls in Hitler’s Third Reich, and consequently, their education deviated very little from that required by the state.
Tremendous efforts were put into the physical-exercise programmes that encompassed nearly every conceivable form of physical activity, including naked dancing. Regular health checks were conducted, and parents were warned that their daughters must have the absolute minimum of eight hours’ sleep each night. The German maiden had to be beautiful, supple, radiant and strong, yet at the same time athletically graceful.
Perhaps the saddest thing of all was the government-teacher conspiracy that ensured a degree of illiteracy was maintained within the female population, in an attempt to prevent the girls from having any forms of serious career opportunity later in life. As a result of this abuse of the education system, many girls could only ever hope to perform menial tasks, until required to leave work to marry and produce children. Thankfully, after the war the implementation of the Allied re-education programme saved many young German girls, who then pursued careers as doctors, scientists, politicians and schoolteachers.