Nazi Policies Towards the Young

Whoever has the youth has the future

In 1932 the Hitler Youth, founded six years earlier as the boys wing of the party, had around 100,000 members. By the end of 1933 it had 2.3 million, because every rival youth group except the Catholic ones had been dissolved and their members transferred. By 1936 it had 5.4 million, and a law of 1 December 1936 made it the only youth organisation in Germany. By 1939, when membership became compulsory, it had 8.7 million, almost every German between ten and eighteen. Hitler said why in a speech of 1938: the young would enter the Jungvolk at ten, the Hitler Youth at fourteen, the party or the Labour Service at eighteen, the army after that, and they will never be free again for the rest of their lives. The schools did the same work by day: Jewish teachers were dismissed in April 1933, 97 per cent of the rest joined the Nazi Teachers League, PE took five hours a week, and a new subject called Race Studies taught children how to measure a skull. The exam asks what the Nazis wanted from the young, how the youth movement and the schools were used to get it, and how far they succeeded. The success question is the hard one: by 1939 almost everyone was enrolled, and nobody knows how many believed. This module gives you the dated evidence and the shapes.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with the moment it mattered, because a bare definition earns nothing in a 12-mark answer.

Building the youth state, in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• Jewish and politically unreliable teachers are dismissed under the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service
• Schirach is made Reich Youth Leader and rival youth groups are dissolved
• The Catholic youth groups, protected by the Concordat, are finally closed
• The Law on the Hitler Youth makes it the sole youth organisation of the state
• The first Adolf Hitler Schools open to train a party elite
• Membership of the Hitler Youth becomes compulsory for all ten to eighteen year olds

Why did the Nazis put so much effort into the young?

No other part of the population was organised as completely as children. Which explanation best accounts for it?

• The regime expected to last a thousand years and needed a generation that knew nothing else; boys were to be the soldiers of the war Hitler was planning and girls the mothers of the next army; adults who had grown up under the Kaiser and the republic could be watched but not remade, whereas children could be shaped from the age of ten; and a child in uniform at home was a check on the parents, who could be reported for what they said at the table.
• German children demanded a youth movement and the state provided one.
• The Hitler Youth was a way of keeping unemployed teenagers off the streets.
• The churches asked the Nazis to organise the young.

Boys and girls: what each was trained for

The question may ask about the Hitler Youth or the League of German Maidens or both. Know what was the same and what differed, because the difference is the Nazi view of the sexes in miniature.

Question 1: inference from a source

Source A: a description of a page from a German school mathematics textbook published in 1936. One problem reads: A bomber on take-off carries 12 dozen bombs, each weighing 10 kilograms. It flies to Warsaw, the centre of international Jewry, and bombs the town. On take-off with all bombs on board and a fuel tank of 100 kilograms it weighs 8 tonnes. What is the weight of the empty aircraft? Another asks how much the state spends each year on a family of hereditary alcoholics compared with a healthy family. A student infers that the Nazis used every school subject, even mathematics, to teach their ideas. Tap the TWO details that support that inference most directly.

• The bombing problem names Warsaw as the centre of international Jewry, which has nothing to do with the arithmetic.
• The problem asks for the weight of the empty aircraft, which requires subtracting the bombs and the fuel from 8 tonnes.
• A second problem asks pupils to compare state spending on a family of hereditary alcoholics with a healthy family, which teaches eugenics through a sum.
• The textbook was published in 1936 and used in secondary schools.
• The bombs are counted in dozens, so the pupil must first convert 12 dozen to 144.

Control of the schools

Select the THREE statements that correctly describe how the Nazis controlled education.

• Teachers were brought under control first: the civil service law of April 1933 dismissed Jewish and politically suspect teachers, the rest were pressed into the Nazi Teachers League, which had 97 per cent of them by 1937, and compulsory camps taught them the new line.
• The curriculum was rewritten: PE rose to five hours a week and a pupil who failed the fitness tests could be expelled, history became the story of German greatness and the betrayal of 1918, biology became Race Studies and eugenics, and girls took domestic science and were kept from Latin and the sciences.
• New schools trained an elite: Napolas from 1933 under the SS, Adolf Hitler Schools from 1937 chosen from the Hitler Youth, and Ordensburgen for the finished product, while university numbers fell from around 128,000 in 1933 to around 58,000 in 1939 as the regime preferred soldiers to scholars.
• The Nazis allowed private and church schools to teach what they liked.
• All examinations were abolished so that no child would fail.
• Girls were given the same academic curriculum as boys to prepare them for university.

Two interpretations of the youth policy

Question 3 gives you two interpretations and asks how they differ, why, and how far you agree. The two below were written for this module to show the shape of the argument; the exam will print real historians. Interpretation 1. The Nazis won the young. By 1939 the Hitler Youth had 8.7 million members, the schools taught race and war from the age of six, and the soldiers who fought from 1939 to 1945 were the most fanatical Germany ever raised. Camping, uniforms, songs and the sense of belonging to something larger than family gave a generation an identity the regime had designed, and most of them kept it until the end. Interpretation 2. The Nazis enrolled the young without winning them. Membership was compulsory from 1939 and near-compulsory before, so the figures measure coercion, not belief. Reports from the Hitler Youth itself complained of boredom, drill and poor attendance by the late 1930s; the Edelweiss Pirates and the Swing Youth showed that thousands of teenagers preferred their own music and their own company; and the schools produced pupils who could recite race theory and had learned little else. Question 3(c) asks why they differ. The answer is what each counts as success: Interpretation 1 reads the membership figures and the conduct of the wartime army; Interpretation 2 reads the internal reports and the rebels, and treats a compulsory number as no evidence at all. This meant that the same 8.7 million is proof for one and nothing for the other, and the judgement in 3(d) turns on which reading of that figure the evidence supports.

In the shoes of Schirach and a teacher

Four decisions between 1933 and 1939. Choose what was actually done, and notice what each choice led to.

• June 1933. You are Schirach, just made Reich Youth Leader. Germany has hundreds of youth groups, Protestant, Catholic, socialist, scouting, with millions of members, and the Hitler Youth has 100,000. What do you do?
• 1934. You are a history teacher in a Berlin secondary school. The new syllabus arrives with instructions to teach 1918 as a betrayal and to begin every lesson with the German greeting. You did not vote Nazi. What do you do?
• 1936. Membership is 5.4 million but the Catholic groups still exist and the Concordat is in the way. What do you do?
• 1939. Internal reports say attendance is falling, the drill bores the older boys, and some are forming their own gangs. What do you do?

From cause to consequence

Because the Nazis expected a Reich of a thousand years, they treated the young as the generation that would carry it and began at the age of _____. Because the rival groups were dissolved in 1933, Hitler Youth membership jumped from 100,000 to _____ million in a year. Because teachers could be dismissed under the law of April 1933, _____ per cent had joined the Nazi Teachers League by 1937. Because the boys were to be soldiers, PE rose to _____ hours a week and shooting began at fourteen. And because enrolment by choice had stalled by the late 1930s, membership was made _____ in March 1939.

Measure the growth

Hitler Youth membership was about 100,000 in 1932 and about 8.7 million in 1939. How many times larger was the 1939 figure?

Question 3(b): the main difference

Question 3(b) asks: What is the main difference between the two interpretations on the callout card? Explain your answer using both. Which answer would score all four marks?

• The main difference is that Interpretation 1 sees the youth policy as a success that won the loyalty of a generation, pointing to the 8.7 million members and the fanaticism of the wartime army, whereas Interpretation 2 sees it as coercion that enrolled the young without convincing them, pointing to compulsory membership, the internal reports of boredom and the Edelweiss Pirates.
• Interpretation 2 says the figures only measure coercion and points to the Edelweiss Pirates.
• I agree with Interpretation 1 because the soldiers of 1939 to 1945 fought to the end.
• They differ because one thinks the policy worked and the other thinks it did not.

A 12-mark paragraph, marked

Question 2: Explain why the Nazis were able to control the young in the years 1933 to 1939. One reason the Nazis were able to control the young was that they removed every alternative. In 1933 Schirach dissolved the Protestant, socialist and scouting youth groups and transferred their members and property to the Hitler Youth, which is why membership rose from around 100,000 to 2.3 million within the year; the Catholic groups, protected by the Concordat, were closed in 1936; and the Law on the Hitler Youth of 1 December 1936 made it the only youth organisation permitted in Germany. This meant that a child who wanted to camp, hike, play sport or simply be with friends after school had nowhere to do it except under a Nazi leader, so that the movement grew to 8.7 million by 1939 without needing to persuade anyone, and compulsion in March 1939 only caught the last few. The Nazis controlled the young because they had first made themselves the only choice. What earned the marks: a cause named in the first sentence; specific support (1933, the figures, the Concordat, 1 December 1936, March 1939); the link phrase this meant that; and a closing sentence that returns to the question. Two more paragraphs, on the control of teachers and the curriculum and on the appeal of the movement itself, the uniforms, camps and belonging, and the answer reaches the top level.

Write the 12-mark answer

Explain why the Nazis were able to control the young in the years 1933 to 1939. You may use the following in your answer: the Hitler Youth; teachers. You must also use information of your own.

• Support that counts: a date, a figure, a law or a name
• Causes of your own: the removal of rival groups, the rewritten curriculum, or the appeal of uniforms, camps and belonging

Question 3(d): how far do you agree?

Question 3(d) asks: How far do you agree with Interpretation 1 that the Nazis won the young? Use both interpretations and your own knowledge. A student has written the case FOR Interpretation 1. Which is the strongest point to set AGAINST it?

• The membership figure proves enrolment, not belief: the rival groups were dissolved in 1933 and membership was compulsory by 1939, so 8.7 million is what the law produced rather than what the young chose, and the internal reports of falling attendance and the Edelweiss Pirates show that a movement which had won its members would not have needed to compel them, which means the policy succeeded at control and cannot be shown to have succeeded at conviction, and a judgement should keep the two apart.
• The Hitler Youth was boring.
• Germany lost the war, so the youth policy failed.
• Girls were not taught to shoot, so the policy was incomplete.