The Hitler Youth

- Season 1

(2000)

At the beginning it appeared harmless: the Hitler Youth offered young people an attractive range of leisure activities. Community spirit, a spirit of adventure and self-confidence were just some of the incentives used to attract young people. The massive exertion of influence was only possible because they succeeded in engendering enthusiasm amongst the youngest people.

Obedience, fulfillment of duty, discipline and sacrifice for the female half of the Hitler Youth was aimed at the "training of the future mother" - to produce more loyal young people for the party. Despite the obligations, many young women also saw the Hitler Youth as an opportunity to escape from the confinement of the parental home and an opportunity for emancipation.

The future elite of the "thousand year Reich",were brought up to hate Jews, instilled with the delusion of the "master race", and drilled to be obedient until death. The Nazi regime had access to the everyday lives of young girls and boys, their development, and their futures. The indoctrination also took place in the National Political Institutes of Education, the Third Reich's elite schools.

Whether as helpers with the harvest, collectors of reusable materials or informers, everyone in the Hitler Youth had a role. It would not have been possible to maintain the National Socialist state without the participation of its youngest members. Drilled in unquestioning obedience, there was just one destiny for young people in the end: to be the reserve army for Hitler's war.

Shortly before the end of the war, Hitler sent children into a battle which had long since been lost, and, many young people marched enthusiastically to their imprisonment or death. The effects of the trauma, the abuse of an entire generation, continue up to the present day.