Thursday, December 9, 2010

Hitler Youth!

One thing that we havent been able to go over yet in class is the Hitler Youth, which was basically a massive club like boy scouts that was lead by Adolf Hitler himself. It consisted of teenage men mostly, but women did have their one Hitler Youth that learned how to sew and cook while the boys went out to the countryside and camped and helped put up propaganda. 

I have a book called Hitler Youth by Susan Campbell Bartoletti and i was reading the first chapter which tells a story of a 15 year old boy named Herbert Norkus, who is probably the most famous Hitler Youth member by what happened to him, but he was part of the Hitler Youth and was helping put up propaganda posters around town as they always have to help support the Nazis. One night during a propaganda run, he was attacked by another group of boys of about 40 that were communist supporters. They were called Reds by the Hitler Youth and there would frequently be fights between the two groups. anyways, Herbert was attacked by these Reds and he would escape multiple times until they caught him again. Herbert would run to apartment doors and bang on the door crying for help as the group of 40 Reds kept beating him up and finally Herbert reached the door of someone who was home and opened the door which scared of the Reds and left Herbert lying in the doorway with blood dripping everywhere. The lady took Herbert to the hospital but he died shortly after he arrived.

This death sparked a huge commotion not only within the Hitler Youth but throughout the whole Nazi party. Nazi Party leaders were outraged and staged an elaborate funeral for Herbert. To the Nazis, Herbert became somewhat of a hero or a martyr who had sacrificed his life for the Fuhrer. They declared January 24 as a national day of commemoration for all the Hitler Youth that had fallen. Hitler Youth fights were not all that uncommon and between 1926 and 1932, fourteen Hitler Youth members were killed in street fights, including a 17 year old girl. Herbert was the youngest victim of the time which is why he was singled out by the Nazis, but being inspired by Herbert, thousands more young people joined the Hitler Youth.

I would totally recomend checking out this book because there are many stories of what these kids were doing basically under Hitler's shadow. Hitler believed that the success of Germany started with the youth and that why he started his youth program which would turn these young kids into well trained soldiers, which is why he was so successful at the beginnig of the war.

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