Authors: Lynn H. Nicholas
They were beautiful children.… They sang together, and no people sing in unison as the Germans do, thousands of them, in the open
air, young voices, still soprano, and the hills echoing! It made one feel sentimental.
An enormous banner stretched across the hillside [and] dominated the camp. It was so huge that you could see it from the farthest point. It was so prominent that every child could see it many times a day. It was white, and there was a swastika painted on it, and besides that only seven words, seven immense black words:
YOU
WERE
BORN
TO
DIE FOR
G
ERMANY!
There’s lots of time to think when one drives a car. From Murnau to Munich thoughts kept racing through my head. “Little child, why were you born?” My father, who was a minister, would have said, “To serve God and your fellow man.” My teachers would have said, “To become the most you can. To develop the best that is in you.” Times change.
When I looked at my speedometer I was driving sixty-five miles an hour. I wanted to get away from there.
19
Nowhere was this upsetting message driven home more effectively than at the most important ceremonies of all for the Hitler Youth, and indeed for any Nazi: the Nuremberg Party Days. These weeklong propaganda extravaganzas were given international press, newsreel, and radio coverage, and were the occasion for major Nazi policy announcements and showcasing of their military might. In the cast of some 700,000, Nazi youth formations held star billing and each region and organization sent only its best. Planning and training went on all over Germany for months before the event. In 1938, hundreds of trains brought more than 80,000 Hitler Youth and BDM girls to the convocation. They were lodged in an enormous tent city at Langwasser, just outside town. The two-mile march to this encampment through the “narrow inner city, which was a sea of flags,” was already euphoric for ten-year-old Alfons Heck:
The sidewalks were packed with people and occasionally young women would rush up and plant a kiss on the cheeks of the marchers. Add to that the sound of dozens of bands placed at strategic locations, and you have an inkling of the overwhelming atmosphere of belonging to something majestic, which was called
Deutschland
.
On the Day of the Hitler Youth, the boys and girls, carrying hundreds of flags, marched into the stadium and, after performing complex marching maneuvers, lined up to hear Hitler. Alfons, one of the youngest and smallest participants, who was given a place in the front row, would never forget the emotional impact of the speech:
Here was our mighty leader, telling us quite humbly how hard his own adolescence had been, how little hope it had held … especially after the bitter defeat of World War I.… And then his voice rose, took on power and became rasping with a strangely appealing intensity. It touched us physically because all of its emotions were reflected on our faces. We simply became an instrument in the hands of an unsurpassed master.… “You, my youth,” he shouted, with his eyes seemingly fixed only on me, “are our nation’s most precious guarantee for a great future.… You, my youth,” he screamed hoarsely, “never forget that one day you will rule the world!” … We erupted into a frenzy of nationalistic pride that bordered on hysteria. For minutes on end, we shouted at the top of our lungs, with tears streaming down our faces:
“Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!”
From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler body and soul.
20
Hitler had good reason to encourage his youth. As he spoke that day at Nuremberg, Germany teetered on the brink of war over control of the Sudetenland, a large slice of Czechoslovakia bordering on Germany where the majority of the population were ethnic Germans. Indeed, his final Nuremberg speech, two days later, was so threatening that American correspondents listening in Prague expected to see German bombers overhead the next day, and the Czech government proclaimed martial law in its German districts.
21
But the excited Hitler children were oblivious to these realities. After the speeches, everyone gathered around a huge bonfire, which “lent an air of mysticism reminiscent of ancient Teutonic festivals,” and sang Hitler Youth songs while Baldur von Schirach handed out medals—including one to the astonished Alfons Heck. This, like everything else, was not spontaneous or personal: for propaganda reasons, the troop leaders had been ordered to find two of the newest Jungvolk boys to present to the Reich Youth Leader.
At age fourteen there was another major transition, when the Jungvolk and Jungmädel became Hitler Youth and BDM members, respectively. Only the Jungvolk’s own leaders stayed behind to bring along the new recruits. Things immediately became more serious. While the outings and indoctrination sessions continued, the HJ and BDM teenagers were now used for any number of community services, political activities, and military construction projects by mainstream Nazi agencies that competed ferociously for control of their services. The prewar HJ/BDM bureaucracy was enormous. Thirteen different departments made films, printed books, published newspapers and propaganda, and organized local formations.
They ran a medical service; had a foreign department; organized a plethora of military, industrial, and agricultural training programs; and set up elite schools and leadership training programs. The Hitler Youth even had its own junior Gestapo, which would eventually emulate its big brother in every way.
The young people required to enter the HJ/BDM ranks were not usually aware of the octopus-like aspects of the organization. The majority simply joined a local
Kameradschaft
of fifteen members. Three
Kameradschaften
made a
Schar
, and three
Scharen
made a
Gefolgschaft
. The latter units had their own flags and team spirit, and their carefully chosen leaders, following the Führerprinzip, had absolute power over their subordinates. The groupings, ever larger, continued until the
Obergebiet
of some 375,000, of which there were six in the whole country. The BDM structure was the same; only the names were different.
There is no question that, throughout its existence, the HJ/BDM performed important community service, especially in poor areas. But there was enormous variance in the enthusiasm levels and organizational efficiency of the units, due in large part to the lack of well-trained leaders who could deal with the Hitler Youth’s explosive growth. Exciting ceremonies did not happen every day, and inexperienced unit chiefs, “for lack of knowing anything better to do, let us stand in formation for hours, saluted each other, and marched us around the block,” noted one bored participant.
22
By 1937, the compulsory HJ activities had begun to seem dangerously routine to some members and many of the exercises pointless.
23
Teachers in many schools, irritated by constant press attacks from the HJ leadership, began to reassert their power. A Nazi official complained, “They have even begun giving the pupils homework on the days when they have activities, with the result that they stay away.”
24
Administration and financial accountancy left much to be desired among the paperwork-shy youth leaders, and morality was far from perfect. Youth was supposed to lead youth, but the resulting discipline was often lax. There were cases of homosexuality, teenage pregnancy, and other promiscuity. A twelve-year-old Jungmädel in Aachen got in trouble for passing a dirty song around her unit. Recruiters for the SS were shocked at the situation in the inner city of Frankfurt, where they found “signs of degeneration” and all sorts of physically and racially unacceptable boys in the HJ ranks. They were particularly upset by the “feminine elements” in some units, lads who not only had “broad pelvises, narrow shoulders, secondary female sexual characteristics” and “feminine movements,” but also sported longish hair, were “heavily perfumed,” and were
fit only for “aesthetic functions” such as leading discussion groups.
25
No one mentioned that this description fit not only the plump Youth Leader, Baldur von Schirach, but even more so the rotund and jewel-bedecked Luftwaffe chief, Hermann Göring.
To counter these trends more interesting volunteer options were promoted. Boys could apply for Motorized, Naval, Aviation, and even Mounted Hitler Youth units. These were immensely popular and, of course, provided even greater premilitary training. To make sure that all boys would have such training, Hitler authorized the creation of a massive network of HJ War Preparation Camps (WEL). Those still in school went during their vacations, and employers of young workers were required to give them leave.
26
Once the war began, those sent to the WEL camps and recruited for paramilitary units were younger and younger. In 1942, Alfons Heck, aged fourteen, four years after his epiphany at Nuremberg, was taken into an Aviation unit, and to his immense satisfaction, had completed thirty solo glider flights by the end of his Easter vacation. From that time on his only ambition was to fly fighter planes.
27
Boys in these units were sometimes excused from duty with the other agricultural and labor services that were otherwise routinely required of all young people.
Thousands of other children were kept busy by the Hitler Youth’s endless competitions in everything from sports to carpentry. The National Vocational Competition had 3.5 million entrants by 1939. The contestants competed first at the local level and then moved up to the national championship. The winners of each branch contest, which included coppersmiths, electricians, and so forth, were taken to Berlin to be feted and to meet Hitler.
28
This did not always turn out as the Nazis had planned. The 1944 Reich Electrician winner was Herman Rosenau, a half-Jew who had been sent off like everyone else to a WEL camp by recruiters who, by that late date, were more interested in cannon fodder than racial profiles. Herman, previously excluded from Hitler Youth membership, did well at the camp and won badges for firefighting and other talents. Later he remarked:
I must say I enjoyed the time I spent and the duties I had.… It was the first time I wasn’t excluded from taking part. No one treated me like some kind of an exotic crippled insect. I was a normal person like everyone else. Being an outcast even during school days, when my good friends … had become leaders in the HJ was naturally depressing.
Rosenau did not get to see Hitler, who by April 1944 no longer ventured out much into bomb-shattered Berlin, but received his prize from
Dr. Robert Ley, head of the German Labor Front, and was interviewed on the radio before dining with a group of the highest Nazi officials. Herman was delighted: “For me personally this was a triumphant situation. There I sat, a ‘sub-human’ with all the big men, and not one of them knew who I really was.” The Hitler Youth leadership, once enlightened, canceled the award and asked for the medal back. Herman did not return it: “I had my pride.… After all, I had been declared winner of a national competition.”
29
Physical fitness was one of the unathletic Führer’s healthier obsessions. Fit bodies would prepare children for battle and hard labor. Competition and team spirit, as any sports fan knows, can easily be manipulated into the most fanatic dedication and mutual sacrifice. On the more practical side was the fact, clear to any boarding school headmaster, that athletic competition was an excellent outlet for adolescent energy and aggression. Soon an enormous program, once again totally centralized under the Hitler Youth, was under way. Athletic achievement medals were awarded at every level of youth organization. The National Sport Competition, begun in 1935, involved some 80 percent of all teenagers by 1939. The choice of sports was not like that of most countries, however. Nothing could have been further from the vaunted playing fields of England. Emphasis was not on soccer, hockey, or rugby, but was oriented toward gymnastics, running, swimming, and shooting, which were useful in the ubiquitous “terrain” competitions.
By 1936, a separate office had been set up by Baldur von Schirach to deal with “military sports” as distinct from the others. Its shooting instructors were kindly provided by the SS, and later, at the behest of the famous future Desert Fox, General Erwin Rommel, by the regular Army. The program was a big success, and by 1939, 51,500 boys had qualified for the exclusive Hitler Youth Marksmanship Medal.
30
The more bucolic aspects of life were not left out of the HJ/BDM equation. For girls and boys who had finished their schooling, a period of work on the land or in other worthy pursuits run by the government was obligatory before they could enter regular employment or continue their studies. From the beginning, the “Blood and Soil” theories of the Nazis had glorified rural life and the peasant as the purest element of the Volk. It was felt that young people should be brought back from the cities, whence industry had lured them, and should be encouraged to remain in the country. In 1934, the Prussian state government had mandated a compulsory Land Year for children aged fourteen to eighteen who had completed their schooling. The estimated 25,000 youngsters were to live in rural
homes controlled by the Ministry of Education. “The people,” declared the law, “must be brought back to nature”; doing so would lead “to the selection of the racially valuable” and create “political-soldierly characters as against weak intellectuals.” An American diplomat reporting on the law also noted that the program would “relieve unemployment” and that it appeared to be “another attempt to indoctrinate the children of Germany with National Socialist ideas.”
31
Not to be outdone, von Schirach’s Reich Youth Directorate (RJF), heavily supported by Himmler and the SS,
32
soon instituted its own competing Land Service. From the leadership levels of the HJ/BDM, youth wardens were appointed to organize rural children and promote child welfare especially in southern and eastern Germany, where conditions were often very primitive. Their activities included improving schools, health care, and nutrition as well as prevention of excessive child labor and promotion of “genetically healthy” marriages. Melita Maschmann noted: