Welcome to this rapid revision video looking at life in Nazi Germany. This time we're focusing on children and young people. Let's start with an overview. What were Nazi attitudes to the young? Boys and girls were supposed to have very different roles.
The Nazis considered both boys and girls to be equally important though, but their aims for each were entirely different. Both were expected to become entirely loyal to Hitler and the Nazis. This is reflected in their policies towards them and the groups that they created for them. Let's consider the boys first of all. The ultimate aim for boys was to create strong, healthy and brutal men.
Hitler hoped that these boys could have the military discipline and skills instilled into them from a young age so that when war came they would be ready to fight and to win. He said, I want a brutal, domineering, fearless, cruel youth. It must bear pain.
There must be nothing weak or gentle about it. But what about girls? Hitler wanted girls to be healthy and fertile so that they'd become could become mothers to lots of racially pure children.
They were to be loyal housewives and he compared the experience of women in childbirth to the experience of men in battle. He said every child that a woman brings into the world is a battle waged for the existence of her people. Let's have a deep dive first of all into the boys, particularly the Hitler Youth.
Nazi youth sections have been set up in the 1920s but after Hitler took power they were drastically expanded. Other groups like the Boy Scouts were banned. and if children wanted to play organized sports they had to join a Nazi team. The Nazi groups for boys were the Pimpfer or Little Fellows. These were for children aged between about six and ten.
The Deutsche Jungvolk or German Young People. These were for boys aged about 10 to 14. And finally the Hitlerjugend or Hitler Youth for children aged 14 to 18. These groups were compulsory from 1936. So what sort of activities did they get up to? There were three main purposes of the Hitler Youth.
First, political loyalty. Boys were expected to learn about Hitler and Nazi ideas and swear to serve Hitler. Baldur von Schurach, who was leader of the Hitlerjugend, organized lessons on German heroes and encouraged members to denounce Nazi opponents, even their parents.
Physical and military training was also important. Emphasis was given to being fit and healthy. Military skills like camping and fieldwork, shooting and even gliding and flying lessons were prepared.
These meant sure that the boys when they graduated were ready to join the armed forces. And also character moulding. Members were expected to be competitive, unsympathetic and brutal.
They were taught to mock the weak and look up to the strong. This aided the other aims. An illustrative example of this is this source here which shows how children were supposed to be able to earn their Hitler Youth Achievement Award a little bit like a scout badge. Consider these different requirements and how they fit the aims that we've just mentioned. It says first of all complete the following lessons.
Life of Hitler, Germans abroad, Germany's rightful place in the world, national holidays of the German people, five flag oaths and six Hitler Youth songs. That's really all about political loyalty. Complete the following athletic tests. Run 60 meters in 10 seconds, long jump 3.25 meters, throw a small leather ball 35 meters, pull up on a bar twice, somersault backwards twice and swim 100 meters.
This is more about physical and military training. And then we've got hiking and camping tests. A day's hike of 15 kilometers, that's about 10 miles. Camp in a tent for three days.
Put up a two-man tent and take part in putting up a 12-man tent. Make a cooking pit and find water for cooking. Know the names of the most important trees and use the stars to find your place on a map. This would make the children independent and teach them some military skills. And finally and most obviously the military skill of target practice.
Hit a bullseye on a target at a distance of eight meters with an air gun. So if you managed to do all that you'd get your Hitler Youth Achievement Award, but also the Nazis would have made you much closer to being a real soldier. Now let's consider the activities for girls. As with the boys there were different groups for the girls of different ages. Firstly there was the Jungmädel or the young maidens aged between 10 and 14, and then the Bund Deutscher Maidel, the League of German Maidens for girls aged 14 to 18. Sons stayed on voluntarily to the age of 21. Some of the aims of the BDM were similar to those of the HJ.
Political loyalty. Physical strength. However, a third and fourth were related directly to Nazi attitudes for women. If you're unfamiliar with these, you might want to go back and watch my video on that.
One was domestic skills. Girls learned skills to be mothers and housewives. But also so-called racial hygiene. Girls learned racist ideas and how to identify an Aryan partner to marry.
This source here gives us a further idea. Ilse McKee remembers her time in the BDM. This was written in 1966, after the war and after she had left Germany. Weekends were crammed full with outings, camping and marches where we carried heavy packs on our backs. It was fun in a way and we got plenty of exercise but it had a bad effect on our school reports.
I'll pause there. Let's remember that actually going to university or having a high education for the workplace was not considered a requirement by the Nazis so this shows that the activities of the BDM were focused towards other things. Okay continuing. Girls of my age had to attend evening classes conducted by young girls.
usually hardly any older than ourselves. We were of course lectured a lot on Nazi ideology. There we can see the political loyalties aspect coming back in.
We were told from a very young age to prepare for motherhood as the mother in the eyes of our beloved leader was the most important person in the nation. We were Germany's future. So that's quite revealing as to what girls were asked to do as part of their groups.
What impression do you get? Do you think Ilse McKee enjoyed this or do you think that she'd later gone on to regret it? Were these policies actually effective?
Not all children took part in the Nazi youth programs, but the vast majority did, especially after attendance was made compulsory. By 1939 almost 9 million young people were involved. However, these sources give contrasting views from participants. Our first source is from the book The Youth in the Third Reich by Arno Kloon. He wrote this in 1982 based on his own experiences.
What I liked about the Hitler Youth was the comradeship. I was full of enthusiasm. What boy isn't fired up by ideals such as comradeship, loyalty and honour and the trips off into the countryside and sport?
Later negative aspects became obvious. The compulsion and obedience were unpleasant. I preferred people to have a will of their own.
In our troop the activity was almost entirely boring military drill. Then contrast that with this. This is from Henry or Henrik Metelman's book A Hitler Youth. He later served in the tank company in World War II and then became a peace activist after the war.
You felt you belonged to a great nation again. I was helping to build a strong Germany, but my father felt differently. He warned, Henrik, don't tell them what I'm saying to you. I argued with my father because I was a great believer in Hitler's regime, which was against his background as a working man.
So you can see here how the Hitler youth used to set children off against their parents even. Henrik later changed his ideas and became a peace activist and very much renounced the Nazis after the war. But as a young man, you can see how the propaganda had drawn him in. Much as the Nazis tried to influence children's free time, they also tried to change schools. The Nazi aims for boys and girls were also reflected in changes to the school curriculum.
Boys and girls already went to separate schools in Germany and they went into the age of 14. So changing the curriculum to suit Nazi aims for boys and girls was actually pretty straightforward. The Reich education minister Bernhard Rust said that the whole purpose of education is to create Nazis and this is how we tried to achieve that aim. In 1933 a law to allow the sacking of non-Nazi teachers was passed. Indeed, hundreds were sacked.
All teachers had to swear an oath of loyalty and join the Nazi Teachers League. This league trained teachers in political education and this was compulsory. By 1939, 200,000 teachers had attended. What might a typical school day have looked like?
Teachers and pupils greeted each other with Nazi salutes and saying Heil Hitler. Portraits of Hitler and Nazi banners were hung in schools. Regular lessons like German and History were taught in the were twisted to put an emphasis on German heroism.
Maths problems focused on military applications or calculating how much disabled people might cost to care for, all in line with horrible Nazi ideas. For example, this is taken from a German textbook at the time. It compares the cost of housing the disabled in hospitals with workers wages. Pretty messed up. New lessons taught purely Nazi ideas such as racial study and party beliefs.
Here we can see an illustration of a racial study lesson. Children are being taught about negative stereotypes of Jewish people. Political speeches were broadcast on school radios too.
Both boys and girls did more PE with a military emphasis for the boys and all textbooks were approved by the Nazis containing Nazi ideas. Girls learned more domestic skills like cooking and child care. Again the end result was supposed to make boys into soldiers and women into housewives.
A summary of our final points. Like every aspect of society, the Nazis had specific aims for boys and girls and aimed to make them loyal Nazis in the future. Boys joined the Hitler Youth and associated organisations.
They were taught military skills and discipline. Girls joined the League of German Girls and associated organisations too. They were taught domestic skills and so-called racial hygiene. Both were taught loyalty to the Nazis and physical health and strength. Schools got a new curriculum that supported these aims too.
All this was geared towards boys becoming soldiers. and girls becoming housewives and mothers. Most German children participated, especially after membership was made compulsory in 1936. That concludes this rapid revision lesson. I hope it's been useful to you, and if it has, please do drop this video a like and subscribe to the channel. It really helped because I'm actually not able to monetize or promote many of these videos because of the subject matter, but I'd rather make it accurate and complete and not be able to do that rather than have to water it down.
After all, this is meant to be a learning experience, and I don't believe in watering it down just because it's unpleasant, even if sadly... the YouTube algorithm disagrees. But anyway if you are able to help me be very grateful.
If not thanks anyway for watching and goodbye.