10. The Nazi Version of the Girl Scouts
While the boys of the Hitler Youth were indoctrinated to become good Nazis – and prepared to become good soldiers – members of the League of German Girls were trained to become good Nazi wives and mothers. Leaders of the female branch were even directed to recruit girls of good genetic stock to mate with SS and Nazi officials in accordance with a selective breeding program known as Lebensborn. After they were recruited, matched with partners, and impregnated, the Lebensborn program helped the girls throughout their pregnancy.
When it came time to give birth, the program afforded the girls’ facilities in which to deliver their babies, and provided them with prenatal and postnatal care. Because the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were deemed Aryan organizations, premarital sex between their members was often encouraged by Nazi officials. The goal was to increase the stock of Aryan babies. Mixed-gender gatherings of the youth organizations, such as the Nuremberg Rallies, often produced bumper crops of teen pregnancies. The most infamous of those, the 1936 Nuremberg Rally, led to an estimated 900 pregnancies and, as seen below, scandal.
