The Hitler Youth, and the Children Who Defied Hitler

17. The Hitler Youth Started Off as the Underage Wing of the Brown Shirts

Scouting and other youth organizations and movements became popular in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the time Hitler came to power, Germany had plenty of social, religious, and political youth groups. The Nazis had their own organization: in 1922, they had established the Jugendbund der NSDAP, a youth arm to recruit, indoctrinate, and train members for its paramilitary, the Sturmabteilung or Storm Troopers, better known as the Brown Shirts. Indeed, after the Brown Shirts, the Hitler Youth was the second oldest Nazi Party paramilitary organization. When the Nazi Party was temporarily banned in 1923 after a failed coup, the Beer Hall Putsch, the Brown Shirts, along with their youth arm, were banned. The Nazi youth organization secretly continued however, renamed in 1924 The Greater German Youth Movement.

16. The Nazi Takeover of German Youth Movements

The ban on the Brown Shirts was eventually lifted. As their numbers and power grew, so did the size of their youth arm, which was renamed the “Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth” in 1926. It was officially incorporated into the Brown Shirts. When the Nazis gained power in January, 1933, the Hitler Youth ranks exploded, and it became Germany’s sole official youth organization. Over time, the Nazis took over and incorporated preexisting youth groups, and Hitler appointed a Reich Youth Leader to oversee the takeover. Eventually, membership in the Hitler Youth became obligatory. The parents of children who were not signed up fell under suspicion and were often brought in for questioning or otherwise harassed by the authorities. Simultaneously, their children were subjected to peer pressure and ostracism by schoolmates and teachers. As seen below, such tactics proved highly effective.

15. The Mass Indoctrination of German Youths

At the end of 1932, the Hitler Youth numbered 108,000. By the end of 1933, the Nazis’ first year in power, their ranks had shot up to 2,300,000, or roughly 30% of Germans aged ten to eighteen. Hitler’s regime wanted the Nazi Party to take charge of all of Germany’s youngsters, and saw other youth organizations as competitors. Early on, within its first year in power, Hitler’s government either incorporated or suppressed openly political youth organizations, depending on their compatibility or incompatibility with Nazi ideology. Apolitical and religious youth groups were allowed to linger on, and many of them lasted until the late 1930s. However, the writing was on the wall, as the Nazis kept up the pressure to unify all youth movements under their control. It was part of a society-wide process called Gleichschaltun, or “coordination”, which sought to impose conformity with Nazi ideology on all of Germany.

14. The Explosive Growth of the Hitler Youth

Young people were encouraged and pressured by the Nazis to join the Hitler Youth – and their parents were pressured to sign their children up. Jews were excluded, and Jewish children were enrolled in their own youth groups in the 1930s. As to Aryan kids, between enthusiasm, coercion, and peer pressure, the Nazi youth organization’s ranks exploded. In December, 1936, membership was made mandatory for all Aryan children. By 1937, more than 5,400,000 kids, or 65% of those aged ten to eighteen, were enrolled. In March, 1939, children were conscripted en masse into the Nazi youth organization, regardless of their parents’ objections. Those who failed to comply were threatened with punishment, as the Hitler Youth became Germany’s sole legal youth movement. By 1940, membership had grown to more than 7,200,000, or 82% of kids in the ten to eighteen years old age bracket.

13. The Age and Gender Divisions of Nazi Youth Organizations

The Nazi youth organization was divided into sections, based on age and gender. There was the Hitlerjugend, or Hitler Youth proper, for boys aged fourteen to eighteen. Its junior branch, Deutsches Jungvolk, or German Youngsters, was for boys aged ten to fourteen. German girls had a parallel organization. There was the Jungmadelbund, or Young Girls’ League, for girls aged ten to fourteen, and the Bund Deutscher Madel, or League of German Girls, for girls aged fourteen to eighteen. The aim was to imbue children with the “correct” ideology in order to Nazify German society. Nazi youth groups sought to impose conformity on Germany’s young, and to that end, there was plenty of uniformity. Not least of all literal uniformity, as kids throughout Germany were made to wear the same uniforms, sing the same Nazi songs, and participate in similar activities calculated to mold malleable young minds into ideal Nazis.

12. Keeping the Kids Constantly Busy With Nazi Activities

Nazi youth group activities were numerous – and deliberately so, in order to dominate the lives of Germany’s children. Membership entailed a significant time commitment. Among other things, the constant activities were intended to leave as little free time as possible for kids to even think about things that might challenge the Nazi world view. The end goal was do away with existing traditions and social structures, and replace them with new mores calculated to better serve the Third Reich. German youngsters were taught Nazi doctrine, and encouraged to report those who went against it – including their own parents, if they criticized Hitler or the Nazi Party. Children were also taught to link those designated enemies by the state – such as Jews – with societal decline, and with Germany’s defeat in World War I.

11. The Paramilitary Aspect of the Hitler Youth

From the start, as an auxiliary of the Brown Shirts, the Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization, intended to train future Nazi fighters and soldiers. Boys were taught to handle weapons, and practiced military maneuvers and drills. To toughen them up and harden their bodies, they were sent to labor in farms in the summer, and encouraged to participate in competitive sports, especially boxing. As a paramilitary organization, the Hitler Youth had a military structure at all levels, from the local, through regional, to national. In 1940, a year into World War II, the Hitler Youth was reorganized into an auxiliary force to perform war duties. Chapters became active in local fire brigades and in recovery efforts after Allied bomber raids, and helped deliver the mail. They also directly assisted the military, via activities such as service alongside antiaircraft gun batteries.

10. The Hitler Youth Were the Nazis’ Most Fanatical Defenders at WWII’s End

As the war dragged on and losses mounted, Germany faced a growing military manpower shortage. So in 1943, the Hitler Youth was tapped as a reserve, and a plan was approved for the formation of an SS division comprised of Hitler Youth – the 12^th SS Panzer Hitler Youth. The Hitler Youth division fought in Normandy in 1944, where it gained a reputation for ferocious fanaticism. As Germany’s situation grew ever more dire, the Nazis increasingly turned to their youth organization. By 1945, Volkssturm units – the Nazi militias – were routinely drafting twelve-year-old Hitler Youth members into their ranks. As the final curtain fell on the Third Reich, Hitler Youth units played a conspicuous role in the last days of the Battle of Berlin. They fought so ferociously for their namesake that only two members of a children’s unit manning the Nazis’ last line of defense survived.

9. Indoctrinating Girls to Become Good Nazi Women

While Hitler Youth boys 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, as potential breeding partners for SS and Nazi officials in accordance with a selective breeding program known as Lebensborn. After they were recruited, matched with breeding partners, and impregnated, the Lebensborn program helped the girls throughout their pregnancy, and afforded them facilities in which to give birth and receive prenatal and postnatal care. Because the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were deemed Aryan organization, premarital sex between their members was often encouraged by Nazi officials, in the hopes of increasing the stock of Aryan babies.

8. The Nazis Encouraged Out of Wedlock Aryan Teen Pregnancies

Mixed gender gatherings of the youth organizations, such as the Nuremberg rallies, often produced bumper crops of teen pregnancies. The most famous of those, the 1936 Nuremberg Rally, led to an estimated 900 pregnancies. It is unclear how many of those pregnancies were the result of consensual sex between Nazi teens, and how many the result of molestation by adult Nazis. However they came about, the number of pregnancies dismayed many. Traditional conservative elements still held some sway at the time, and the Lebensborn crowd had not yet gained an ascendancy. So a temporary stir and kerfuffle ensued. In the end, many of the pregnancies were terminated by abortions, on orders from the Nazi Party.

7. The Edelweiss Pirates

Many German youths enjoyed the camaraderie, competition, and physical challenges afforded them through the Nazi youth movement. However, some youngsters refused to go along with the Third Reich’s program. Resisting the pressure to join the Hitler Youth was difficult and often hazardous, but some brave youth nonetheless refused to simply go along. Best known among those were the so-called “Edelweiss Pirates”, a loose association of youth movements in western Germany that developed in opposition to the regimentation of the Hitler Youth. They took their name from the edelweiss – a hardy white mountain flower, that grows in high altitudes. Like many youth cultures across the ages, the Edelweiss Pirates set themselves apart with a distinctive style of dress that became common among their members.

6. Outdoor Activities as an Escape from the Nazis

Not all anti-Nazi youth groups used the title Edelweiss Pirates. The group in Cologne, for example, went by “Navajos”. However, all such groups shared some common traits. Foremost among them was the encouragement of free thinking. They also rejected the strict gender segregation of the Hitler Youth and League of German Girls, in favor of co-ed activities. Edelweiss Pirates frequently organized camping and hiking trips. The outdoors afforded them the freedom, while temporarily away from the plethora of snoops and snitches, to engage in prohibited activities such as singing or listening to music deemed “degenerate” by the Nazis, like jazz and the blues. They were also able to freely express themselves, and openly discuss topics and voice opinions that would have gotten them in trouble with the authorities had they been overheard by informants back home.

5. The Hardening of Attitudes Towards Anti-Hitler Youth

The Nazis initially dismissed the Edelweiss Pirates as minor irritants and teenaged delinquents going through a phase. Attitudes hardened once WWII began. For example, the authorities blamed the Edelweiss Pirates for collecting anti-Nazi propaganda leaflets dropped by British bombers early in the war, and stuffing them into mailboxes. That was viewed as subversion during wartime, and treason. In another instance, authorities in Dusseldorf complained to the Gestapo in 1943 that the local Edelweiss “gang” was a bad influence on other youth, as well as on young soldiers, who hung out with them while on leave. The report noted: “These adolescents, aged between 12 and 17, hang around late in the evening with musical instruments and young females. Since this riff raff is in large part outside the Hitler Youth and adopts a hostile attitude towards the organization, they represent a danger to other young people.“

4. Initial Relative Leniency Towards the Edelweiss Pirates

Despite the hardened attitudes, local authorities continued to be relatively lenient towards the Edelweiss groups – at least in comparison to how the Nazis usually dealt with adult subversives. For example, penalties for the “delinquents”, who often kept their hair long and their appearance bohemian to set themselves apart from the militarized regimentation all around them, were often limited to a stern talking to, then shaving their heads. That was not enough for SS head honcho, Heinrich Himmler. He wanted an example made of youngsters who failed to show complete loyalty, and he deemed any half measures when dealing with such “subversives” to be unacceptable.

3. From Relative Leniency to Lethal Repression

In 1942, Himmler wrote to his deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, that he wanted the Edelweiss to do a two or three year stint in concentration camps: “There the youth should first be given thrashings and then put through the severest drill and set to work. It must be made clear that they will never be allowed to go back to their studies. We must investigate how much encouragement they have had from their parents. If they have encouraged them, then they should also be put into a concentration camp and (have) their property confiscated“. By 1944, with Third Reich clearly circling the drain, Himmler ordered an even more brutal crackdown. In November of that year, thirteen youths were hanged in public in Cologne, many of them active or former Edelweiss Pirates.

2. The Edelweiss Pirates After the War

The deadly repression failed to break the spirits of the anti-Nazi youth movement. It continued as a defiant subculture, and continued to reject the norms of Nazi society until the “Thousand Year Reich” went down to defeat after a mere twelve years’ existence. After the war, some factions of the Edelweiss Pirates attempted to work with the Allied occupation authorities. Their advances were welcomed, particularly by the communists in the Soviet occupied zone. However, most of the rank and file membership, true to their ethos, turned their backs on the attempt to politicize their movement. They had risked their lives to evade the regimentation of the Nazis, and were not eager to embrace regimentation under the communists. As a result, those who remained in what became communist East Germany ended up as dissidents and social outcasts, and many of them did long stints in prison.

1. The Song of the Edelweiss Youth

In an unfortunate irony, many Edelweiss Pirates in West Germany ended up as reactionary conservatives, even less reconciled to defeat than the Nazis. They became notorious for attacking Germans – particularly women – known to have been friendly or intimate with occupation soldiers. Nonetheless, their post-war conduct does not alter the fact that throughout the Nazi regime, those children had the moral courage to stand up and defy the Nazis, when many grownups cowered in fear and simply went along with the evil all around them.

Hitler’s power may lay us low,
And keep us locked in chains,
But we will smash the chains one day,
We’ll be free again
We’ve got fists and we can fight,
We’ve got knives and we’ll get them out
We want freedom, don’t we boys?
We’re the fighting Navajos!

-Song of the Navajos, a subset of the underground German youth group, the Edelweiss Pirates.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Encyclopedia Britannica – Hitler Youth

Gaddy, K. R. – Flowers in the Gutter: The True Story of the Edelweiss Pirates, Teenagers Who Resisted the Nazis (2020)

History Collection – The Sad Story of Hitler’s Favorite Children

History Learning Site – The Edelweiss Pirates

Holocaust Research Project – The Hitler Youth

Jewish Virtual Library – The Nazi Party: Hitler Youth

War History Online – Exhibition Shows the Dark Side of the Nazi Youth Movement