describe the method of up bringing of children in hittler's jermany
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Even in the early years of the Nazi Party, when leading the nation was a distant dream, Hitler placed great emphasis on the importance of children. Unlike other political leaders, Hitler did not disregard young people or underestimate their political value. His vision of an enduring Third Reich was based not just on the loyalty and obedience of adults but also their offspring.
Hitler wanted the National Socialist movement to appeal to all levels of society, including the young. He wanted to provide children in Nazi Germany with a sense of purpose, achievement and community, something conspicuously absent during his own listless childhood.
Finally, and perhaps most significantly, Hitler’s youth policies aimed at filling the minds of young Germans with ideas about racial purity, Aryan supremacy, German expansion and future military conquests. In 1933, Hitler wrote of Nazi policy:
“My program for educating youth is hard … weakness must be hammered away. In my castles of the Teutonic Order, a new youth will grow up, before which the world will tremble. I want a brutal, domineering, fearless and cruel youth. Youth must be all that. It must bear pain. There must be nothing weak and gentle about it. The free, splendid beast of prey must once again flash from its eyes…That is how I will eradicate thousands of years of human domestication…That is how I will create the New Order.”
Education
As a consequence, education and training became important tools and children in Nazi Germany were subjected to intensive propaganda. The NSDAP government used the state education system to disseminate Nazi ideology, enhance loyalty to Hitler and prepare millions of German boys for military service.
During the mid-1930s, the Nazis gradually implemented a party-controlled education system. It began by forming its own teachers’ union, the Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund (Nazi Teachers’ League). Teachers of Jewish origin, liberal or socialist political beliefs were bullied and frog-marched out of the profession; non-Nazi teachers were pressured to join the Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund or face losing their jobs.
As the Nazis infiltrated schools, they shaped the curriculum to convey their own values and political beliefs. At the forefront of the Nazi syllabus was racial education, ‘enlightening’ children about Aryan supremacy and the despicable traits of untermensch (sub-human people and races).
‘Nazified’ subjects
The most important subject in this process was history, which was used to convey and reinforce Nazi values and assumptions. Pro-Nazi histories reinforced the myth of Aryan supremacy in Europe. They were filled with tales of Germanic heroes and warriors, political leaders and military conquests.
Nazi beliefs were also reinforced in the geography syllabus. In this subject, German children learned about the unfair division of territory in the Treaty of Versailles, the inappropriate re-drawing of European borders and the need for lebensraum (‘living space’) for the German people.
Physical education and sport were also priorities in the Nazi curriculum. Other academic subjects, such as mathematics and the sciences, were neglected in contrast.
Nazi youth groups
The Nazis did not rely solely on schools for the indoctrination of children. Much better known to history are groups like the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth), a Nazi-run organisation partly inspired by the British scouting movement. In July 1926, a young party member named Kurt Gruber established the Hitler Youth. He then worked to integrate it into the Sturmabteilung or SA. By 1930, the Hitler Youth contained more than 25,000 boys between the ages of 14 and 18. It served as a valuable feeder group for the SA. Some older members of the Hitler Youth also participated in SA-orchestrated protests, pogroms and street violence.
Hitler Youth under Schirach
children in nazi germany
Baldur von Schirach with a member of the Jungvolk
Hitler’s rise to the chancellorship in 1933 prompted a significant spike in Hitler Youth membership. The Nazi leader appointed Baldur von Schirach as Reichsjugendfuhrer (German youth leader) and tasked him with expanding and organising the group on a national level. German schools were infiltrated by Nazi propaganda in the mid-1930s, they were also used to promote and expand the Hitler Youth. Many schools became feeder groups for the Hitler Youth, with children pressured into joining.
The Nazis also funnelled children into the Hitler Youth by banning alternative or rival groups, such as the Boy Scouts and various Catholic youth leagues. The membership of these banned groups was often acquired and swallowed up by the Hitler Youth.
By the end of 1937, the leadership of the Hitler Jugend claimed it had as many as five million members or 64 per cent of all German adolescent boys
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