13. The Nazis Used Fashion to Turn Children Into Monsters
The Third Reich committed too many crimes to count. Not least among them is the mass indoctrination of innocent German children, to turn them into brainwashed and hate-filled cogs in their monstrous machine. In 1922, the Nazis established a youth arm to recruit, indoctrinate, and train members for its paramilitary, the Storm Troopers, commonly known as the Brown Shirts. As the party grew in numbers and power, so did the size of its youth arm, which was renamed the Hitlerjugend, or “Hitler Youth” in 1926. When the Nazis gained power in 1933, they made the Hitlerjugend Germany’s sole official youth organization.
The new regime took over and folded preexisting youth organizations into their own, and Hitler appointed a Reich Youth Leader to oversee the takeover. However, not all German children willingly accepted the fare fed them by the Nazis, and some of them adamantly refused to just go along. Through a mixture of youthful courage, and teenagers being teenagers, some sought to express their individuality through a teen lifestyle and fashion that bucked the system. Those kids, who defined themselves in opposition to the Nazis, came to be known as the “Edelweiss Pirates“.
