Youth in Nazi Germany (UK)

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.’ ¹

Schools had a key role to play in the Nazi efforts to inculcate in German youth a philosophy centred on the idea of a racially pure ‘national community’. Throughout the 1920s, German schools adhered to a conservative educational philosophy, emphasising social hierarchy and obedience to authority, that was already consistent with the Nazi world view. 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 per cent 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 maths.  

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 organise groups that would train young people according to their principles. By 1936, all ‘Aryan’ children in Germany over the age of 6 were required to join a Nazi youth group. At 10, 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 organisations 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.  

However, 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.’ ²

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. The seemingly infinite number of laws and rules that singled them out in Nazi Germany – insitutionalised by the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 – emphasised 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.

• 1Max von der Grün, Howl Like the Wolves: Growing Up in Nazi Germany (New York: W. Morrow, 1980), 118–19.
• 2‘SOPADE: Reports on German Youth’ (1938), in The Third Reich Sourcebook, ed. A. Rabinbach and S. L. Gilman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 252.

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.

In this lesson, students will be using a variation of the Big Paper strategy, ‘Little Paper’, to analyse accounts of the lives of young people in Nazi Germany told from a variety of perspectives. It is not practical for every student to analyse every document in this lesson, so this activity is designed to enable each student to look at accounts of perhaps 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 and annotate their little papers, so make sure you have stuck the texts into the middle of A3, flipchart or sugar paper in advance. 

• In the extension, the image Antisemitic Children’s Book, and others within the Visual Essay: The Impact of Propaganda, portray inaccurate, offensive stereotypes of Jews. Teachers have the responsibility to acknowledge that these images contain stereotypes and to prepare their students to discuss the material in a thoughtful and respectful manner.
• You might set this tone by asking students to refer back to the concept maps they created for stereotype in Lesson 3: Single Stories, as well as their journal responses to Chimamanda Adichie’s The Danger of a Single Story, before working with the images in this lesson.

The following are key vocabulary terms used in this lesson:

1. Educate
2. Indoctrinate
3. Disillusion
4. Comradeship

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

This extension introduces students to the methods and impact of Nazi propaganda. By analysing propaganda images that appeared in Germany during the Nazi era, students can reflect on the impact of media and political messaging in their lives today as well.

Before you do this extension, you may want to ensure that your students understand what propaganda is. Tell students that when governments or politicians use media to persuade people, we often call that propaganda. Explain that Hitler established the Bureau of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment in 1933 and appointed Joseph Goebbels as its leader (see the reading Shaping Public Opinion for further information). Consider providing students with the following definition:

Propaganda: Information that is intended to persuade an audience to accept a particular idea or cause, often by using biased material or by stirring up emotions.

Use the following steps to analyse examples of propaganda with the class:

• Tell students that they will analyse propaganda images used by the Nazis (please see Notes to Teacher to ensure this task is approached sensitively). 
• By analysing such images, students can see that the Nazis created some propaganda that denigrated Jews and other so-called inferior races, while they created other propaganda that glorified ‘Aryans’. The goal of both approaches was to influence the beliefs, feelings, and actions of individuals in Germany about who should be included and excluded from the ‘national community’ (Volksgemeinschaft). 
• The Nazis used this idea of a Volksgemeinschaft to advance the idea of a racially pure and harmonious national community united in its devotion to the German people, their nation, and their leader. In their effort to reshape the ‘national community’ according to their racial ideals, the Nazis enacted hundreds of laws, policies, and decrees, and created propaganda, some of which the students will be looking at now.
• Give students images from the Visual Essay: The Impact of Propaganda. The images Hitler Youth Propaganda and Antisemitic Children’s Book are particularly relevant, though there are other images too.
• Have students analyse the image using a strategy such as Crop It or See, Think, Wonder. After students have analysed images, lead a class discussion. Consider drawing from the following questions:

  • Do you notice any themes or patterns in this group of propaganda images?
  • Why do you think the Nazis created propaganda that targeted children? 
  • Based on the images you have analysed in this lesson, how do you think the Nazis used propaganda to define the identities of individuals and groups? What does the propaganda suggest about the ‘national community’ they sought to create?
  • How did the Nazis use propaganda to further their goal of creating this ideal ‘national community’?