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The Hitler Youth The Other Victims of TH PDF
The Hitler Youth The Other Victims of TH PDF
Grainne
Feick
German
160B
Spring
2013
The
Hitler
Youth:
the
“Other”
Victims
of
the
Nazi
Regime
accomplices to the atrocities of cruel regimes. The Nazi Party, the German fascist
political party led by authoritarian leader Adolf Hitler from 1920-‐1945, was especially
notorious for its indoctrination of German youth in order to serve the ultimate goals
of their regime. The Nazis had extremely ambitious objectives, including the firm
belief that it was crucial to preserve the Aryan race by protecting it from what they
deemed “undesirables.” Hitler knew that his success rested in large part on
inculcating his German Nationalist principles and anti-‐Semitism into the minds of the
youngest of German citizens. He said in his speech at the Reichsparteitag in 1935, “He
alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.” The fact that the Hitler Youth played
such a crucial role in Hitler’s grand scheme for Nazi Germany indicates a disturbing
manipulation of children’s brains, brains that were not yet fully developed, were
authority figure. By examining the specific stories and personal accounts of members
of the Hiltler-‐Jugend (HJ)—the Hitler Youth, and in the girl’s case, the Bund Deutscher
Mädel (BDM)—League of German Girls, and their range of experiences as adults, this
paper will seek to answer the question, “What were the effects on these children,
especially after history proved the Nazi regime to be one of the most cruel and
heinous regimes in the history of the modern world?” My paper argues that in many
ways the children of the Hitler Youth were as much victims as all the other victims of
infiltration of these children’s lives as they moved from family life to Nazi life.
Children entered the Hitler Youth on April 20th (Hitler’s birthday) of the year of their
themselves as a superior race—“We viewed rows of pictures showing the heads and
bodies of men and women who were supposedly representatives of various racial
groups. We soon learned that the blond, tall, slender, and straight figures were the
Nordic, Aryan types that we were all supposed to be. The dark, small, thick, and bent
bodies, on the other hand, belonged to undesirable…and less worthy races. We should
Some parents were unsettled and even outraged at the thought of their
children joining the Hitler Youth, because they didn’t want such interference in their
longer had a choice; the German state was prescribed as the foremost authority, and
priority, in their children’s lives. In a number of cases, children even turned in their
Schools worked in tandem with the HJ to foster full allegiance to the German
“cause.” In her study, “Propaganda and Children in the Hitler Years,” Mills states: “No
single target of nazification took higher priority than Germany's young. Racism was
taught in public schools as a scientific fact (Mills). A typical math problem asserted:
“The Jews are aliens in Germany.” Then asked, [If] “there were 66,060,000 inhabitants
in the German Reich, of whom 499,682 were Jews….What is the per cent of
aliens?”(Mills).
Some
concepts
may
have
been
beyond
what
children
could
comprehend,
but
the
anti-‐Semitic
images
were
simple,
constant,
and
powerful
enough
inflict human subjects with ever increasingly strong electric shocks. Despite the fact
that the subjects screamed out in pain, the participants followed the command of
those in charge, who instructed them to keep pushing the “buttons.” The point of the
experiment was to prove that people defer to authority figures, even when their
instincts might be in conflict with what they are being told to do(Milgram Study). In
the case of the HJ, children were co-‐opted by powerful authority figures at such an
early age that they did not even have a chance to develop their own instincts.
Alfons Heck was a fanatical member of the HJ. He succumbed completely to the
charismatic Hitler and the Nazi propaganda. He says, "We children never had a chance
unless our parents were brave enough to resist the Nazi tide. Few adults
were…Perhaps I would not have been such a firm follower if I had been raised by my
parents. My father hated the Nazis with a passion…but our farm was 200 miles away,
so I didn’t see my parents often”(Ayer). His education was entirely directed by Nazi
doctrine and propaganda. In his memoir, Heck admits “It took several years of painful
re-‐education, years to accept, reluctantly, our slaughter of millions of innocent people,
Irma Grese was “a fanatical member of the HJ organization for females, the
Nazi
style
discipline
was
learned
by
watching
and
practicing
cruelty
on
inmates,
and
engaging
in
promiscuous
sex
with
male
SS
guards”(Kater).
Such
“discipline”
was
intended to strip the young female SS recruits of all humanitarian ethics. Irma moved
to Aushchwitz, where she was known for her Aryan beauty and the relentless torture
she inflicted upon inmates. She was eventually captured by British soldiers and tried
at Bergen-‐Belsen. Many were shocked that “such a lovely woman would be capable of
such evil…Grese was convicted of war crimes, and hanged at Hamelin prison in
December of 1945. Together with two other condemned SS women she had stayed up
the night before, laughing and singing non-‐stop the well known Nazi hymns”(Kater).
The following day, when her execution took place, Grese’s face showed no signs of
regret, and she told the hangman to kill her quickly. She was twenty-‐two years old.
Although there can be no justification for her culpability in the crimes that she
committed, the fact that all German youth were exposed to unrelenting Nazi
propaganda, and extreme forms of hatred, and few were impervious to the effects,
begs the question as to whether or not Grese would have committed such crimes had
she not been a victim of probable brainwashing beginning at a very early age. Her
seeming lack of remorse or regret in her last hours is a telling example of the effect
I was fortunate to be able to conduct an interview with Heijo von Morgen, who
was a member of the HJ as a child, and still lives in his family’s castle in Bodenburg,
Germany. After his father died in a racecar accident, when Heijo was a young boy,
Heijo’s mother remarried. Her new husband’s brother was Gottfried von Cramm, the
best tennis player in Germany at the time. Gottfried was friends with the King of
Sweden,
and
socialized
with
various
English
diplomats
while
staying
with
the
king,
which
the
Nazi’s
did
not
approve
of.
They
jailed
Gottfried,
allegedly
for
a
homosexual
relationship he had with a Jewish actor. Important people from around the world sent
angry letters to Hitler, which indicates the influence that Heijo’s family had, and was
probably the reason why Hitler released Gottfried early, or at all-‐-‐because gays were
ruthlessly persecuted in Nazi Germany. The Nazis, nevertheless, considered Gottfried
an asset and a sports role model for the HJ, and (after Hitler imprisoned Gottfried)
propaganda, but Gottfried refused to join their party. Heijo said, he knew from his
Heijo recalls the Nazis keeping a very close eye on his family. In discussing his
involvement in the HJ, Heijo said that it was not voluntary, and that Nazis knocked on
his door when he turned ten, and wrote down his name. He said that most
propaganda geared towards children wasn’t necessarily used to get children to join-‐-‐
that was mandatory, but propaganda was a way of brainwashing them to support
Hitler. Heijo said, “I had to come to the Hitler-‐Jugend and obey by the rules of Hitler,
you were forced to Hitler. If you didn’t go there, (to HJ meetings) the Nazis came and
fetched you, you couldn’t say no. I had to pretend I loved Hitler, or I would get beaten,
so I had to live a lie. In all of the Hitler Youth, I would say that 80% of my peers were
for Hitler. In our meetings, which we had 2-‐3 times a week, we sang songs for Hitler,
we played games in the woods, and we fought against each other-‐-‐that’s what the
youth did in this time during the Hitler youth groups.” During his time with the HJ,
Heijo lived in Berlin. After it was bombed by Allied forces, his family fled to their
castle
in
Bodenburg,
where
Heijo
currently
resides.
He
said,
“After
my
family
moved
to
Bodenburg
due
to
bombings,
one
of
the
leaders
there,
shortly
before
the
war
ended,
came to me and asked if I could come to his Hitler Youth meetings, but my mother
covered for me and said ‘my child is ill and couldn’t come,’ so this was the end of the
When asked if there were any memories from the Nazi regime that stay in his
head as particularly shocking, Heijo said, “I remember being on the street in Berlin
with my mother when I was 5 or 6 years old. I remember the black dressed Jews in
the streets with a yellow star on their arms, and they were being violently beaten. So I
saw those things, as well as police crashing windows of Jewish shops. From that
moment I knew exactly that there was something wrong. When a 5 year old knows
there is something wrong with Nazis, then others must have known. People may lie
and pretend they did not know, but they did.” I asked Heijo whether or not his
teachers tried to influence him, to which he answered, “My teachers were all hardcore
Nazis who were very old and idle, because all the young and strong teachers were
needed for war. My teachers spoke fantastic things about Hitler, we had to sing songs
against the Jews everyday, as well as Hitler songs. We were rewarded for singing the
anti-‐Jew songs well, and we read ‘The Poisonous Mushroom’ in school. After the war
ended, it was a hard time to be there [at school] if you were a Hitler fan. The teachers
did not discuss it any further, and we carried on as if nothing had happened. I was fine
with not addressing it any further.” Heijo also remembers, “I was very happy [when
the war ended], I embraced the Americans when they came to our little town. They
brought us gum and candy and board games and I remember how good the chocolate
was
that
they
brought
me.
I
really
liked
the
Americans….my
Hitler
Youth
group
peers
didn’t
like
to
speak
about
it-‐-‐
[the
end
of
the
war
and
Hitler’s
defeat],
and
we
never
did. Everyone went back to normal life and denied everything-‐-‐you couldn’t speak
with people.”
The last thing I discussed with Heijo was his impression of the propaganda
films that emerged during the time. I talked in particular about “Erbkrank,” and the
“Eternal Jew,” both of which Heijo was familiar with. He said, “I saw them when I was
young, and they were awful. Nazis just used it to put all of the blame on others. I didn’t
watch the full videos during the war, just excerpts on television, but after the war, I
saw the whole films and they were terrible things. For us children in the Hitler Youth
it was a burden, and we didn’t talk about it (propaganda films). It was not a social
group to make friends. We just did what we were told to do, and nothing more.”
Looking back on his experience, Heijo expressed that he has no regrets, because he
does not think the regime influenced him or brainwashed him as it did for many of his
HJ peers. Heijo’s experience corroborates Heck’s claim that only those with savvy
families were able to resist Nazi indoctrination. Heijo’s prominent family, with their
him, so that the propaganda did not penetrate his world. Heijo’s account, however,
generally confirms the success of the Nazi propaganda machine, since around 80% of
indoctrination that occurred in German schools, also confirms the extent to which
BDM.
As
Heijo
said,
it
seems
that
many
just
wanted
to
forget
and
move
on.
Whether
or
not
that
was
really
possible
is
hard
to
know.
Cynthia
Sandor
tells
the
story
of
finding
her mother’s diary and being shocked to read that she was a member of the BDM.
Once confronted, however, her mother, on her deathbed, speaks almost fondly of her
experiences. The book is disappointing in its lack of revelations and serves mainly as a
vehicle for rationalizing the past and vouching for her mother’s character. She says,
“Today, you will realize that children, such as my mother of the Hitler Youth, lived this
part of their lives through their own innocence. They were not aware of the atrocities
that were secretly held around them… The full extent of the Nazi ideology did not
permeate my mother’s being. Instead, she extrapolated the good from a horrific
period in human history and continually strived to become a better human being,
wife, and mother”(Sandor). But why did her mother plan never to tell her own
daughter about her experiences? Why did she act as if that part of her childhood
never happened?
and where children are sheltered from the grim realities of life. That however, is the
Childhood ended at the age of ten. From retired Pope Benedict XVI, to Alfons Heck,
former members of the Hitler Youth have had to live with the stigma attached to
having once been associated with one of the most heinous political regimes in modern
history. Even a prominent official at the Vatican once tried to deny any association
between Benedict and the HJ. One former HJ member, Henry Metelmann, wrote, “I
that
he
was
unwittingly
sucked
into.
It
is
interesting
that,
when
released,
after
serving
in
prison
as
a
POW,
he
became
a
dedicated
Communist
and
peace
activist—a
180
°
turn from all that Nazism represented (BBC). Another former HJ, Manfred Rommel,
has said, “They surgically removed not only God but also virtues like loving one’s
neighbor, or love of truth, and placed loyalty to the Fatherland-‐equated with the
Führer-‐at the center of their ethic. Of course it was a false ethic.”(Knopp). Wolfgang
In most of the accounts of children’s experiences after the HJ, there is despair,
disillusion, denial, guilt and shame. Most were not as impervious as Heijo managed to
be. As this paper reveals, these vulnerable children, who had represented the future
for the Nazi regime, suffered in their own ways and were the “other” victims of a
brutal regime. Nothing can diminish the horrors suffered by the Jews and other
groups who were persecuted and killed by the Nazis, but much less has been said
about the horrors of the ruthless Nazi brainwashing and conscription of the children
of Germany. Heck said of Hitler’s Youth, “Tragically now, we are the other part of the
Holocaust, the generation burdened with the enormity of Auschwitz. For we became
want to please those in charge, and to want to feel important. “Never before in
German history had the young been so courted-‐and never so abused”(Pine). Hitler
manipulated and abused the innocence and vulnerability of millions of youth, who
somehow had to readjust their ideas of good and evil after Germany’s defeat. For lack
of
much
firsthand
evidence,
it
is
difficult
to
assess
the
full
impact
that
the
HJ
and
DBM
had
on
a
generation
of
German
children,
but
what
does
exist,
shows
that
many
were
1945, from being fully engaged with the idea that they were important players in an
illustrious grand scheme for German greatness, to somehow understanding that they
had been tools of the most evil and destructive regime in modern history. Again, in the
words of Heck, “I never once thought of myself as anything but a decent, honorable
young German, blessed with a glorious future. Suddenly I was an especially tainted
citizen of the most despised nation on the face of the earth…I developed a harsh
resentment toward our elders, especially our educators…They had delivered us, their
How does one reconcile this assault on their formative years? And by those
whom they so resolutely believed in? One of the most startling revelations in my
interview with Heijo was when he said no one talked about “it” when the war ended.
Given the fervor of his teachers and the majority of his peers, how was it possible to
go from such all-‐encompassing “passion” to sudden, complete silence? How numbing
and confusing for the German young people. It seems that many did attempt, however,
to erase that part of their youth. As Peter Leighton-‐Langer wrote of former members
of the HJ: ‘The attitude to that period of their lives ranges from deep shame to
resentment against those who misled them for so long. Whichever way it is, however,
they do not want to be reminded of it…People who have had no experience of all this,
tend to say ‘talk about it and get rid of it’. But it isn’t like that. You can talk about it till
the cows come home but scars break open and bleed again. You can never get rid of
it”(Lewis).
Manfred
Schroeder,
one
former
Hitler
Youth
said,
“At
night
when
I
have
trouble
falling
asleep,
instead
of
counting
sheep,
I
think
of
the
final
days
of
the
Führer,
and it gives me such peace of mind that I fall asleep”(Bartoletti).
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