Broken Lives Read online

  PEER PRESSURE

  German adolescents were complicit in their own Nazification by assisting in the reappropriation of the Youth Movement’s legacy. The original impulse of this high-school-student rebellion at the turn of the twentieth century had been part of an adult life-reform campaign against alcohol and nicotine. At a 1913 meeting at the Hohe Meissner mountain, the Free German Youth vowed that “On their own initiative, under their own responsibility, and with deep sincerity” they were “determined to independently shape their own lives. For the sake of this inner freedom, they [would] take united action under any and all circumstances.” This stress on youthful independence revealed resentment against adult Wilhelmine decadence, even if it was accompanied by a strong dose of nationalism. By taking over attractive activities such as hiking, singing, and gathering around campfires, the Nazi youth perverted the movement’s original meaning into youthful support for a racist dictatorship.25

  The Hitler Youth organization was founded in 1922 as a youthful auxiliary of the adult party and a source for future party leaders. After some rival groups were consolidated in 1926, it grew rapidly to over one hundred thousand adherents by 1932, only to explode into several millions after the Nazi seizure of power. It was subdivided into two age groups, with the Jungvolk comprising boys aged ten to fourteen and the Hitlerjugend proper the fourteen-to-eighteen-year-olds. The initially male group was also complemented by a League of German Girls (BdM), which remained strictly separate from the boys. With the appointment of the suave Baldur von Schirach as national leader in 1933, the HJ became more visible, offering a mixture of paramilitary training and leisure activities. Though it eventually became compulsory for all teenagers, the Hitler Youth considered itself the future elite.26 A snapshot of Rolf Bulwin’s Fanfare Corps shows Nazi indoctrination through participation in rallies of party youth (image 9).

  9. Hitler Youth rally. Source: Ruth Bulwin, Spätes Echo.

  The Hitler Youth gradually assumed a monopoly over all youth activities by absorbing its rivals and forbidding all independent associations. One of the first to be swallowed up was the loose Youth Movement confederation Die Freischar. At Pentecost 1933 Paul Frenzel met with about forty thousand of his comrades on the Lüneburg Heath for a national jamboree. When they heard that all different groups had to merge into a new national league [Großdeutscher Bund], “the older youths shouted in protest” and tore down the Swastika flag. Even the arrival of ten police units could not persuade the angry adolescents to accept the dissolution of their group. But when SA and SS units surrounded the camp, “even the boldest boys had to capitulate to the armed encirclement.” The promise of maintaining some cohesion within the HJ then induced most Freischar members to join. One by one, Boy Scouts, religious groups, and other clubs had to furl their flags and surrender their autonomy.27

  A whole host of reasons persuaded adolescents to join the HJ. Agnes Moosmann simply considered the patriotic recitations, singing of folk songs, and marching “fun.” For Eva Peters, it gave her “a rousing feeling” of independence from home and school to fill out the BdM membership form, because “she wanted to help in the building of the new, third, thousand-year Reich and to carry responsibility.” When he watched “endless Jungvolk columns marching in step” with flags flying and drums thudding, Karl Härtel “felt somehow attracted” and wished “perhaps to become part” of such a dynamic group. Because virtually all of his classmates had already joined, Horst Johannsen “wanted to take part in the Jungvolk” and intended to override his parents’ veto. For Paul Frenzel, the decision was, rather, a way to demonstrate a minimum of conformity, showing that his family was not opposed to the new regime, even if “my enthusiasm was quite limited.”28 But the HJ cared little about motives as long as it could indoctrinate its members.

  In anti-Nazi families, the desire of children to join the Hitler Youth created much generational tension. When a favorite aunt sent Benno Schöffski an HJ uniform with brown shirt, shoulder belt, and black bandana, “my mother got very angry about it and hid the box with its contents.” Even after he was compelled to become a member in 1937, his leftist parents allowed him only a minimum of participation, barring him from any trips. Similarly, when Hans Schirmer spotted his son in uniform he exploded angrily: “He forbade me to go to the Hitler Youth. I could not be a member [because] he as father had not permitted it. And that was that!” Young Hans-Harald “did not understand that. The other boys were also wearing these duds” without any problems. Although he sensed that his Communist father considered “Hitler a criminal,” the youth failed to comprehend the gravity of the offense. All he wanted was to be like his peers.29

  Led by a Führer barely older than their charges, the Hitler Youth offered a raft of attractive activities that strongly appealed to the ten-to-fourteen-year-olds, making the Jungvolk “an especially important instrument of indoctrination.” One fixture was the weekly Heimabend or meeting at a clubhouse that “provided variety and fascinating propaganda of war and victory.” Usually the group leader would present ideological discussions about “heroes of the [NS] movement,” “Germans abroad,” or “the national struggle on the ethnic frontiers.” But more interesting were the many different games, such as cops and robbers, which often led to roughhousing. The boys especially enjoyed war games (Geländespiele) in which two groups would try to capture the flag of their opponents, because that allowed them to run around outside and fight with each other. The evening would conclude with a rousing rendition of propaganda songs such as “The young rise up, prepared to storm! / Let’s hoist the flags higher, comrades!”30

  Even more fun were hiking trips through the countryside or the larger organized camps, pioneered by the Youth Movement. On weekends or vacations, group members would gather in uniform, carrying heavy backpacks full of food, clothes, blankets, and mess kits, in order to hike to a pretty lake, mountain, or forest. There, they would pitch their tents and gather around the fire to hear horror stories, sing folk songs, or sneak up to a rival group to steal its pennant. Rambling gave them a sense of freedom from adult control. In the organized camps, many individual groups would meet to compete with each other in sports, march with bugles, drums, and flags, or listen to speeches by party leaders, extolling the Nazi cause. Karl Härtel was not alone in remembering that hiking through different regions of his fatherland and singing at campfires bonded youth and created “a feeling of true communion with the long-dead generations of our Volk.”31

  Another source of NS popularity was the control of leisure activities through membership in HJ or NSDAP auxiliaries. For all of his Protestant reluctance, Gerhard Krapf was impressed by a show-jumping competition of the NS Rider Corps because he loved horses. Though he was bored by politics, Heinz Schultheis was attracted to the “air-HJ, because here I succeeded in making the jump to flying” actual planes. This was a complicated process, involving learning the physics of flight, weather patterns, and so on. The youths started by building models and then graduated to “‘real’ soaring” in gliders which were pulled by rope down a hill so that they would eventually become airborne. This was an exciting challenge for an adolescent boy, even if the “flight” lasted only two or three minutes. Similarly, Horst Grothus was quite eager to join the “Flying HJ” since he wanted to design airplanes. By gaining a monopoly over activities such as riding, flying, and boating, the Hitler Youth managed to attract even youths who were otherwise opposed.32

  Less popular were the service tasks “for the German Volk and fatherland,” which Hitler Youths had to perform in order to show their engagement in the national community. In general, the young agreed with the egalitarian aspiration of Nazi ideology that required treating all members of the Volksgemeinschaft, the “workers of the fist and the head,” as equals. But most adolescents did not really look forward to standing at street corners in uniform, rattling their tin cans in order to collect money for causes such as the Winter Aid to indigent families according to the Nazi slogan “Nobody shall go hungr
y or freeze.” Similarly the idea of eating merely a vegetable stew instead of sumptuous dinner each Sunday and donating the money saved to the Nazi People’s Welfare was appealing only in the abstract when one had to swallow “a lukewarm, fatty broth from a big vat” on the market square.33

  Since the HJ was a favorite audience for party rituals or visiting dignitaries, its members were always compelled to attend and show their enthusiasm. Hours before such an event, the squads would gather, march in formation, stand in rows on the streets, raise their right arms, and shout “Sieg Heil!” The high point of such demonstrations were Hitler’s speeches, transmitted live via radio and broadcast through loudspeakers. Gerhard Krapf recalled that the Führer would begin “in a low pitch, weighing each word” to sketch the history of the Nazi movement; gradually he would raise his tone and intensity “to recount the injustices of Versailles, building his crescendo up to fortissimo and the audience to a frenzy.” With his voice cracking, he would reach the climax by vowing to return Germany to greatness and sweep the young into “endless jubilation.” Though some resented compulsory attendance, many “went away misty-eyed like after a holiday sermon.34

  The appeal of the HJ also stemmed from its chance to offer leadership posts, giving adolescents unusual scope for action. The 7.7 million members in 1938 needed tens of thousands of leaders to organize their activities. Hence the organization recruited good-looking, ideologically convinced, or personally popular adolescents to lead squads of a dozen members only a few years younger. This commitment to the self-leadership of youth often created strong emotional ties, since these little Führers served as adolescent role models. Once chosen, prospects were trained in special courses how to conduct weekly meetings as well as prepare trips. Eva Peters still marvels “about what the then 14, 15, or 16 year olds all organized, were responsible for and got done.” As Wilhelm Kolesnyk remembered, this leadership role reinforced his resolve: “I only committed to National Socialism when I became a Führer in the German Jungvolk.”35

  The justification for giving the young such latitude was the “deification of youth” as guarantors for Germany’s future. On the positive side, Eva Peters lists “the overcoming of class barriers” in a national community as well as “the realization of the longing for simplicity, authenticity and naturalness” through the “blood and soil” mythology. But in the negative column, she lists far more numerous and disastrous consequences of the HJ-ideology: “The antiliberal and antidemocratic ‘cult of leaders and followers’” denounced respect for human rights. “The living-space ideology and ethnic-racist conception of history” rejected a rational and scientific world view. Moreover, “the break with humanist traditions of the enlightenment” fed a barbarous romanticization of the right of the stronger. Finally “the nationalist exaggeration of the feelings for Volk and fatherland” led to a murderous contempt for so-called lesser peoples and races.36

  The HJ handbook explicated the ideological beliefs members were supposed to internalize in propaganda discussions. It started by emphasizing the “unlikeness of men” that made the Nordic race superior to all others and made dilution dangerous: “The first opposition measures of the National Socialists must, therefore, aim to remove the Jews from the cultural and economic life of our folk.” The second concern was a reversal of the population decline and a return to healthy contact with the soil. The third was the reconquest of territories once inhabited by Germanic tribes and subject to German cultural influences. “This fact justifies the German people’s claim to these regions.” To remedy overpopulation, reach agricultural self-sufficiency, and gain industrial autarchy, the territory of the Reich had to be expanded.37 Though still somewhat in veiled language, this was a blueprint for future war.

  The core of this murky ideology was “a romanticized notion of the Führer” to which the HJ pledge vowed eternal obedience. One propaganda painting showed him “astride a steed, in knightly armor, his mailed fist holding a Nazi banner.” According to Gerhard Krapf, this widely distributed image signified “a supernatural hero whom to follow as a faithful vassal … was ‘the holy duty’ of each German.” Visualized by Hitler’s photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, this conception of leadership sought to meet a popular longing for a strong man, based on the misunderstanding that Bismarck had pursued a power policy of a “mailed fist.”38 Though one infatuated BdM girl gushed, “German youth, Adolf Hitler is your greatest teacher,” when Horst Grothus saw the Führer in person, he “was somewhat disappointed,” since the leader did not look like a Nordic hero. Nonetheless, the cult seemed like a practical application of Max Weber’s conception of charisma, which stressed an irrational emotional bond between leader and followers that required blind obedience.”39

  The ideal type of German youth whom the HJ attempted to produce was a male Aryan fighter or a female mother of the race. Induction into the Hitler Youth was accompanied by the claim, “from now on you belong to the Führer!” Leaders like Hans Queiser understood the “leadership principle” as a mixture of “command and responsibility on the one, obedience on the other side.” In practice, this meant carrying out orders from above without question. Hitler himself had demanded that male youths ought to be “quick as greyhounds, tough as shoeleather, and hard as Krupp steel.” This image propagated strength of character and physical fitness over intelligence and imagination. Hence the HJ hunting knife carried proudly by boys had the slogan “blood and honor” etched into it. Excluded from this male bonding, girls were supposed to develop a different conception of “faith and beauty.”40 While reality fell often short of this ideal, the constant repetition of such slogans prepared youths for service in the coming war.

  Some youths who were just glad to be included were completely swept away by the propaganda and activities of the Hitler Youth. Even mandatory collections and Sunday stew did not discourage Horst Grothus, because “they are talking much better and with pride about our Germany.” Hitler’s successes, such as the conquest of Austria through the 1938 Anschluss, proved to him that “the Nazi policy is correct, unemployment is being rapidly overcome and ‘the national community’ is better than class warfare.” Unlike his skeptical mother, young Horst found it “good that the Nazis hold power. They help Germany regain the greatness which it deserves. They are the leaders of my state.” Even when he heard that a friend and his father were incarcerated in the KZ, he considered it right, commenting, “They are enemies of the Reich and must be rendered harmless.” Though somewhat ambivalent about anti-Semitic violence, he retained his “unconditional enthusiasm” even during the war.41 This was the kind of member the HJ wanted.

  In contrast to reminiscences of “happy times” in the HJ, most memoirs are curiously reticent about anti-Semitism, suggesting that this was a touchy subject. According to Eva Peters, explicit “anti-Semitism played hardly any role in the League of Younger Girls, perhaps only because it seemed self-evident.” Hans Queiser also claimed that he received little Judeophobic material as HJ leader. Many adolescents already had internalized religious or social prejudices against Jews as part of their nationalist upbringing. Even if some Jewish youths wanted to join, they were barred from becoming HJ members for being “un-German.” Time and again, the Hitler Youth participated in anti-Jewish actions such as the boycott of stores, the burning of leftist books, or the destruction of synagogues, even if some members were embarrassed by such violence. Ingrid Bork recalled, “Propaganda in school and during the first year in the Jungmädelbund had already reached me and I found it completely correct that Jews were expelled from Germany.”42

  Feeling excluded, many Jewish youths founded organizations of their own in order to create solidarity against persecution by their peers. Considering themselves “first and foremost Germans whose religious faith happened to be ‘Jewish,’” Tom Angress and Werner Warmbrunn joined the Black Pennant. Derived from the Youth Movement, “its ideology was clear[ly] bündisch, a love of nature, Nietzschean (“be yourself”), adventure (“journey”), romanticism,
—campfires, and the belief that the [Nazis] could eventually go away.” Being with a group of boys their own age made it easier for young Jews to cope with the daily harassment at school. The comradeship of adventure trips all over the countryside and hostile encounters with the Hitler Youth forged lifelong friendships. But in December 1934 this assimilationist group was forbidden. The Nazis preferred the Zionist group Blue-White, which advocated making aliyah to Eretz Israel, thereby removing Jews from Germany.43

  Ultimately even some gentile adolescents began to rebel against compulsory participation in the Hitler Youth, because they did not want to be regimented. Due to the increasing militarization of HJ duty, Gerhard Krapf “[n]ever developed a positive attitude towards the Jungvolkdienst.” He would rather practice the organ than march at the command of a “not too smart and academically very lazy” HJ leader. Having never joined, Joachim Fest did not mind being punished with “mindless exercises in the schoolyard,” since being forced to crawl around in the dirt could not dampen his rebellious spirit. Youths like Paul Frenzel who were already apprentices starting their careers simply considered the HJ duty, made mandatory before the war, as a waste of time. Heinz Schultheis confessed that “the entire Nazi stuff got on my nerves” because he disliked “this constant regimentation and control.”44 Some of the older youths, in particular, began to grow sick and tired of Nazi tutelage.

  To escape such pressure, reluctant adolescents developed a repertoire of avoidance strategies, especially if supported by their parents. While the HJ claimed millions of members, a minority managed not to sign up at all or to escape active participation. Some, like Gisela Grothus, never quite managed to join or simply got lost when their own groups were absorbed into the HJ. Others, like Heinz Raschdorff, substituted membership in less-political groups such as the youth branch of the Reich Colonial League. Still others showed up only sporadically at the weekly meetings or simply faded away from obligatory parades, never to return. When obnoxious HJ leaders came to question Benno Schöffski’s absence, his angry mother threw them out, making excuses about his ill health, lack of money, or insufficient time. Gerhard Krapf was proud that, after a dispute, “I was kicked out of the Hitlerjugend,” ending his duty.45