Hitler Youth Indoctrination

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I am a new member and very aware that YOU know far more about the minutia of the HJ than I do, and I may have nothing to contribute to your forum whatsoever. Moderator Gary has suggested I post this thread to start a discussion: I have scores of books on the HJ and understand the concept of a disciplined youth movement in a Totalitarian State.
I had the good fortune to meet three ex-HJ members (2 HJ 1 BDM) when I was in Germany beginning a 5-year stint in the British Army and already I was steeped in some of the now-discredited titilation they instilled in an English fourteen year old schoolboy. When I consider how much HJ uniform and insignia I could have aquired in Germany 1951 I could weep for my own folly!!!! But I was then more fascinated by the whole concept of the HJ as the most remarkable youth movement ever devised in a Totalitarian State, and that fascination has increased over the years the more I study "Germany 1933-45". I was a boy in the city of Hull during the war, my house was twice hit by German bombs and I saw things I do not want to remember (but do!). I am no Nazi sympathiser and I shudder with horror with what 'they' did - no ifs or buts.
However I have spent much time in Germany and I am in love with the people, the country, and the culture (Beethoven is MY god!!!!)
Get on with it, I hear you say..... Can I begin with an opening thought?
What do you, in this forum, imagine was the scale of the ruthless all-pervading indoctrination of boys and girls when they had reached the age of, say, 14-15? The playtime summer camps were being being replaced by a burning subordination to The State, and I speculate on where this might have led if Germany had won the war. I mentioned to Gary an incident in a BBC architectural programme on Third Reich buildings, and one had a graveyard for SS Heroes - apparently older girls and their temporary SS boyfriends would copulate on these graves to stimulate themselves and instill an SS spirit into the child they were conceiving 'for The State'.
If Hitler's Children were doing that in 1943 what depths would the blue-eyed HJ be plumbing in, say 1951, when I would NOT have been in Germany as part of an army of occupation. This is the starting point for my thread which may be totally out of place in this forum - but it makes a change from badges and buttons!!!!! I personally feel the social and political history of the HJ deserves a study everyone else avoids. ROBERTS
 
Great first post mate.
This isn't just a collecting forum where we discuss little objects, it's a history forum too, which is vital.
Don't be afraid of being unwelcome based on knowledge or whatever. I'm sure you know more than me.
Great topic. I'd continue but it's 5.15am here and I gotta go to work.
 
I am a new member and very aware that YOU know far more about the minutia of the HJ than I do, and I may have nothing to contribute to your forum whatsoever. Moderator Gary has suggested I post this thread to start a discussion: I have scores of books on the HJ and understand the concept of a disciplined youth movement in a Totalitarian State.
I had the good fortune to meet three ex-HJ members (2 HJ 1 BDM) when I was in Germany beginning a 5-year stint in the British Army and already I was steeped in some of the now-discredited titilation they instilled in an English fourteen year old schoolboy. When I consider how much HJ uniform and insignia I could have aquired in Germany 1951 I could weep for my own folly!!!! But I was then more fascinated by the whole concept of the HJ as the most remarkable youth movement ever devised in a Totalitarian State, and that fascination has increased over the years the more I study "Germany 1933-45". I was a boy in the city of Hull during the war, my house was twice hit by German bombs and I saw things I do not want to remember (but do!). I am no Nazi sympathiser and I shudder with horror with what 'they' did - no ifs or buts.
However I have spent much time in Germany and I am in love with the people, the country, and the culture (Beethoven is MY god!!!!)
Get on with it, I hear you say..... Can I begin with an opening thought?
What do you, in this forum, imagine was the scale of the ruthless all-pervading indoctrination of boys and girls when they had reached the age of, say, 14-15? The playtime summer camps were being being replaced by a burning subordination to The State, and I speculate on where this might have led if Germany had won the war. I mentioned to Gary an incident in a BBC architectural programme on Third Reich buildings, and one had a graveyard for SS Heroes - apparently older girls and their temporary SS boyfriends would copulate on these graves to stimulate themselves and instill an SS spirit into the child they were conceiving 'for The State'.
If Hitler's Children were doing that in 1943 what depths would the blue-eyed HJ be plumbing in, say 1951, when I would NOT have been in Germany as part of an army of occupation. This is the starting point for my thread which may be totally out of place in this forum - but it makes a change from badges and buttons!!!!! I personally feel the social and political history of the HJ deserves a study everyone else avoids. ROBERTS

Robert has a good an interesting post started here.
Me, I got intriged by the question on what would have happened to the youth and therefor our parents and gandparents, if the germans would have gained control over the european maen land.
I started looking tings up and I'm still intriged by things I encounter in books, mailletters and so on.

One of the tings that fascinates me is the fact that most of our acctual youth organisations use almost the same techniques and games as they did, so many years ago. However without the political indoctrination. Altough thats not completely true, most youth organisations are supported by one or more political organs whom trie to gain a sort of control over the youth.

Take the scouts. You have the christian and the free ones. I'm almost sure that if the boys and girls in this org are good churchrunners. And they may be even supporters for the church orientated political parties.
You got socialist youth, libaral youth. but all are unther the influence of a political party. Same as they where 75 years ago.

One difference is , of cource, clearly viewn by all. There is no war planned, so the kids aren't ment to be canonfoud or breading stock for futur soldiers.

In answer to the first tought :

I think personaly we wouldn't have to have these toughts for a start, as we all would have been born out of indoctrinated parents. So we all would agree to whatever the actual dictator had been saying withouth questioning the correcteness of things.

On the other hand, it's even more obvious that a upraise of non contentment wold have come and eventually would have broken up the unity of the dictatorship 'vestung europa'. with a great civil war as a result.

but , well, who am I . God only knows what would have happend in this case.
 
Look forward to hearing from you. I was 14 when the war ended and like all boys that age ever since the world began I lusted after a sexual activity that was way out of reach (nearly all girls were virgins when they married) so we made do with titillating stories the truth of which was irrelevant. In 1945 the popular press was full of the 'horror camps' and how Germans were collectively sub-human and totally immoral.
One myth that lasted for about a year was that the Germans had 'baby farms' where blue-eyed blond young men were officially partnered by equally blue-eyed blonde teenage girls to 'produce' offspring for The SS State - the young men and girls were not in love, had no relationship together, just semi-supervised copulation for the state.
In school playgrounds this was deemed heavy stuff - wow!!!! Sex with girls as a school activity!!!! Wow and more wow! Of course it was all nonsense as we soon found out, based on German girls being able to deliver their illigitimate babies without stigma and there never was any 'baby farms'. For me the damage had been done, and I took a serious interest in the HJ and BDM that might have escaped me otherwise. But, but, but, I do wonder if the next generation within a Totalitarian State, a state with no moral purpose other than engneering a Master Race might have attempted to produce genetically perfect infants. If so, the obedient blue-eyed boys and girls whose uniform and insignia we are so expert in might have been the mothers and fathers in such a system. (Have I gone too far?????) ROBERT
 
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Very difficult to know how things would have panned out had the Germans had the opportunity to shape Europe according to Hitler's ideology. One thing is certain though - Russia and eastern Europe in general would be very different places today.

The war in the west was of course a tactical war waged in order to facilitate the conquering of the 'inferior' populations in the east so I'm really not sure what fate awaited the western european countries in the event of a German 'win'. The NSDAP and Hitler were the direct result of Versailles. Would Hitler really have wanted to repress the western nations to that extent again and perhaps risk another post-Versailles scenario but this time all over Europe?

I find it very difficult to imagine Germany being capable of keeping the fire of national-socialism alive over the course of many post-war decades but the thought of what would have happened to Russia and any other country and population deemed unsuitable according to Hitlerean ideology doesn't bear thinking about.
 
Hitler and the West

It is the stuff of nightmares - but would anyone have envisaged the horror and sheer madness of the concentration camps before we saw the result?
I can tell you from experience that in 1945 my own father was incandescent with rage as the truth emerged..... My view is that the Master Plan (long term) was to destroy the entirity of the whole slav population, millions upon millions, replacing the geographical area with breeding stock from approved Nordic races, it did sort of half-start in Norway did it not? The 'products' from Norwegian girls and German soldiers were highly prized and shipped into Germany. I suspect that several thousand English girls would have been used as breeding stock to, in time, repopulate Eastern Europe. Which, for me, is where the HJ come in - I suspect they would have been so indoctrinated with this madness that from being obedient 'kids in shorts' they would grow into the monsters who would implement and oversee this population production. I look into the obedient faces of HJ boys and girls (those aged 14-17) and I see the impending future - Tomorrow Belongs To Me with a vengeance. I am more than ashamed to wish I could have seen how this might have panned out, the madness of it all on a colossal stage.
No, that isn't true, of course it isn't, but I wish there was a computer programme that could simulate What Might Have Been. The HJ Training Manuals give no direct proof of how the youngsters' political and racial minds were being subordinated but they were - SS Guards don't appear from nowhere, not in such numbers. How many concentration camp guards had been not just in the HJ but leaders in that movement? And my experience of the Germans, still, is that they are very compliant and obedient. In the 1950s I was in a position of authority over some detachments in the German uniformed organisation (GSO) and, bloody hell, they did as they were told!
It is such a cliche, that Germanic obedience is disbelieved but I lived in Germany long enough to see how such a Master Plan could have been at least attempted.
Sorry..... I'm going on, but I find the whole edifice of the HJ Movement quite fascinating, like observing a laboratory experiement that was cut short.
Cheers! ROBERT
 
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It seams a rather difficult point of few to think of what would have happend in the germans had won, since so many a things are already being done as the germans ment it to become after the 'final victory'.

In a bizar way the nazi's idea of a pure and complete rase was put into our modern live anyhow. I'm referring tho the genetic manipulations that got tested in labs on animals but may not be tested on humans.

If the sience is capable of doing that, what will happen to natural selection and wouldn't it be obvious that every child born would be a standardicied reproduction of a 'perfect and superior genetic' rase? And that was , so I believe, the ment operation of the nazi regime when they started the arian rase theory.

This means also that, 65 years later, the science has done exactly that what hitler tough to do, only in a less drastic way. If, and only if, this would be allowed to be done, we all be clones from oneanother and what would be the next step then I wander.

When you read the book: Wenn Hitler den Krieg gewonnen Hätte. Die pläne der nazis nach dem endsieg by Ralph Giordano, you'll sertainly meet sevoral things that where accompliged and that the idea of the nazis aren't that stupid after all. As all know, we did get a unified europe, socialism (ussr) has turned out not to work, the scientific work has turned out to do the things hitler and his mates wanted.

If only hitler would have know this 80 years ago....
 
A really interesting “what if” with some many points already touched?

From Versailles, a key point for the Nazi “fights”, to the unrealistic “Final Victory”. And something really important, another key point in Nazi rise to the power, The Economic Depression in 1929. Right when Germany was growing strong after the Hyperinflation times, right when the Nazi party was not that popular, the economic bomb exploded. Definitely, this gave wings to the Nazi Party. No doubt.

But funny enough, we can see the same effects nowadays. For example, in parts of Thüringen (part of ex-“East Germany”), we can see posters of the NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands), where they were none a few years ago.

So they got the power in 1933 and it was clear that a war, sooner or later, was coming.

And the war came, and I believe there was no way for the Germans to win it. Maybe and using our imagination, making much more emphasis in Africa before any attack in Russia, “convincing” (threats, I would say) Franco to let the German troops to pass through Spain at the same time that Gibraltar is on Spanish – Germans hands? Closing the Mediterranean see? Getting Turkey involved? So many “what if’s”.

But now the interesting part, The HJ after the “Final Victory”. Germany will have the vital room that they want it. They would just need people. They would have had plenty of time to find and investigate in the search of the pure race, and exploit it.

Maybe (as happened before and during the world), many of the “not so pure” kids would be allowed to be part of the HJ, as happened with the SS that during the war, many of the conditions to entry were quite relaxed. But without any doubt, there will be a project to prioritize those “perfect” Arian kids. Totally prefabricated and brainwashed kids. Away from the control of their parents. Only under control of the system.

These kids will carry orders and the National Socialism to the end, as their predecessors. And generation, after generation, the process to create a master race with obviously improve. At the cost, of course of those not that pure, which step by step will be at the lowest rank of living.

But also there will be young “resistance” movements (most if not all to be crashed) and a future war? They were soldiers. Before and during the war, most of those kids dreamt of being soldiers, of fighting, on dying. War is always in the mouth of the doctrine, so after the “Final Victory”, there wont be another war for 20-30 years?

But at the end, the end. We have seen that all of the empires, sooner or later, went down.

Anyway, many IF’s. And many hours of conversation with a cup of coffee, glass of wine or a lovely beer between friends.

Regards

Antonio
 
i agree the east would have changed totally, as for the west , hitler admired britain and what it had accomplished, and i think he would have loved the uk to join with germmany against the east, of course that was never going to happen
 
i agree the east would have changed totally, as for the west , hitler admired britain and what it had accomplished, and i think he would have loved the uk to join with germmany against the east, of course that was never going to happen

Hitler made a great error overfieuwing the english when he attacked polland in 39. He should have made a bigger effort to get the brittish over to his point of vieuw.

He did get a chance with , who was it, the same year, but didn't use the occasion to the fullest. He didn't want any war with the uk as he did admire their way of living, but once he started the war, he saw that the english government didn't aprove of his way. and so he had to react. IMO , in the right way, military speaking that is, but didn't puch trough. If he only would have known that he had to continue for e few more months....
 
It is the stuff of nightmares - but would anyone have envisaged the horror and sheer madness of the concentration camps before we saw the result?
I can tell you from experience that in 1945 my own father was incandescent with rage as the truth emerged..... My view is that the Master Plan (long term) was to destroy the entirity of the whole slav population, millions upon millions, replacing the geographical area with breeding stock from approved Nordic races, it did sort of half-start in Norway did it not? The 'products' from Norwegian girls and German soldiers were highly prized and shipped into Germany. I suspect that several thousand English girls would have been used as breeding stock to, in time, repopulate Eastern Europe. Which, for me, is where the HJ come in - I suspect they would have been so indoctrinated with this madness that from being obedient 'kids in shorts' they would grow into the monsters who would implement and oversee this population production. I look into the obedient faces of HJ boys and girls (those aged 14-17) and I see the impending future - Tomorrow Belongs To Me with a vengeance. I am more than ashamed to wish I could have seen how this might have panned out, the madness of it all on a colossal stage.
No, that isn't true, of course it isn't, but I wish there was a computer programme that could simulate What Might Have Been. The HJ Training Manuals give no direct proof of how the youngsters' political and racial minds were being subordinated but they were - SS Guards don't appear from nowhere, not in such numbers. How many concentration camp guards had been not just in the HJ but leaders in that movement? And my experience of the Germans, still, is that they are very compliant and obedient. In the 1950s I was in a position of authority over some detachments in the German uniformed organisation (GSO) and, bloody hell, they did as they were told!
It is such a cliche, that Germanic obedience is disbelieved but I lived in Germany long enough to see how such a Master Plan could have been at least attempted.
Sorry..... I'm going on, but I find the whole edifice of the HJ Movement quite fascinating, like observing a laboratory experiement that was cut short.
Cheers! ROBERT

I believe Scandinavia was setteled by tribes from Germany originally and thats where the nordic race started.
Yes you are right about the English girls being used as breeding stock paricularly the blond, blue eyed English girls.

This thread is a very good discussion :thumbup:

Nick

Nick
 
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