Explain How Successful Were The Nazis In Controlling Young People In Germany

Maya Monaghan

How successful were the Nazis in controlling young people within Germany?

It was the Nazis' intention to control and influence young people within Germany from the beginning of their live the end. The key to the success of this policy lay in the Nazis taking control and exercising their influence at an early stage, when children were still impressionable and more easily moulded and won over. At school the minds and bodies of young people were shaped by indoctrination to the Nazi cause. This was done by changing and reorganising the curriculum with the emphasis on physical fitness and nationalistic teachings. Every subject focused on Germany and it was very much successful with enforcing Nazi ideology and this helped to enforce young people to concentrate on the rise of the Nazis and the injustice

There was marching in parades with bands. Summer camps that prepared boys for camping out doors. They would also have been taught how to map-read and clean and look after a rifle. Fitness and cross-country running would have been high on the agenda. In between these activities their leisure time was devoted to reading and learning about Hitler and the Nazis. They would read propaganda newspapers such as Die Sturmer and Hitler's autobiography ’Mein Kampf', followed by tests. Before membership of the Hitler Youth became compulsory it is difficult to generalise on why German youth joined the various factions of the Hitler Youth. Different ones joined for different reasons and got different things out of it. Just because they raised their right hands and took the oath does not mean to say that they were thinking of the Fuhrer and of serving the German people. To some it was simply something they had to do in order to join in the 'fun activities'. Again, enforced attendance at lectures on National Socialist ideology did not confirm agreement, it may have simply have been a means to an