Title
Hitler Youth / Michael H. Kater.
ISBN
9780674039353
Published
Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, [2009]
Copyright
©2004
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (368 p.)
Item Number
10.4159/9780674039353 doi
Call Number
DD253
Dewey Decimal Classification
943.086/0835
Summary
In modern times, the recruitment of children into a political organization and ideology reached its boldest embodiment in the Hitler Youth, founded in 1933 soon after the Nazi Party assumed power in Germany. Determining that by age ten children's minds could be turned from play to politics, the regime inducted nearly all German juveniles between the ages of ten and eighteen into its state-run organization. The result was a potent tool for bending young minds and hearts to the will of Adolf Hitler. Baldur von Schirach headed a strict chain of command whose goal was to shift the adolescents' sense of obedience from home and school to the racially defined Volk and the Third Reich. Luring boys and girls into Hitler Youth ranks by offering them status, uniforms, and weekend hikes, the Nazis turned campgrounds into premilitary training sites, air guns into machine guns, sing-alongs into marching drills, instruction into indoctrination, and children into Nazis. A few resisted for personal or political reasons, but the overwhelming majority enlisted. Drawing on original reports, letters, diaries, and memoirs, Michael H. Kater traces the history of the Hitler Youth, examining the means, degree, and impact of conversion, and the subsequent fate of young recruits. Millions of Hitler Youth joined the armed forces; thousands gleefully participated in the subjugation of foreign peoples and the obliteration of "racial aliens." Although young, they committed crimes against humanity for which they cannot escape judgment. Their story stands as a harsh reminder of the moral bankruptcy of regimes that make children complicit in crimes of the state.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
Frontmatter
Contents
1 "Make Way, You Old Ones!"
2 Serving in the Hitler Youth
Introduction
In Search of Monopoly and Uniformity
Authoritarianism, Militarism, Imperialism
Problems of Training, Discipline, and Leadership
3 German Girls for Matrimony and Motherhood
Introduction
The Bund Deutscher Mädel in Peacetime
The Challenges of World War II
Eugenics and Race
4 Dissidents and Rebels
Introduction
The Varieties of Dissidence
The Empire Strikes Back
5 Hitler's Youth at War
Introduction
Elation and Disenchantment
Detours, Duplications, and Alternatives
The Final Victory
Hitler's Young Women Deceived
6 The Responsibility of Youth
Abbreviations
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
