Young people in Nazi Germany

• Hitler Youth


  Youth organisations that taught loyalty to Hitler and military skills
• Hitler Youth organisations


  • Pimpfen (The Little Fellows) (ages 6-10)
  • Jungvolk (The Young Folk) (ages 10-14)
  • Hitler-Jugend (Hitler Youth) (ages 14-18)
  • Jungmädelbund (Young Girls) (ages 10-14)
  • Bund Deutsche Madel (League of German Girls) (ages 14-18)
• By 1938, some eight million young Germans belonged to the Hitler Youth
• Indoctrinate

  Getting people to believe in a set of ideas
• Hitler: 'The weak must be chiselled away. I want young men and women who can suffer pain. A young German must be leather and as hard as krup steel.'
• Hitler Youth training camps

  1. Learning to read maps

  2. Sports and gymnastics

  3. Taught Nazi ideas
• On one occasion, a fourteen year old sentry standing guard at the entrance to a camp shot a ten year old boy who could not remember the password
• Hitler Youth activities

  • Weekend trips, walking and sports
  • The League of German Girls offered some the chance to break free from the female role model of child-care and devotion to the family
• Every youngster had a performance book in which marks for athletics, camping and fighting skills were recorded
• Adolf Hitler Schools


  • Took boys from the Jungvolk at the age of twelve and gave them six years of tough training before sending them on to university of the army
  • The very best of these pupils went on to schools called Order Castles where they were stretched to the very limit of endurance
• During the later 1930s, after membership became compulsory, discipline was tightened even more. Some opposition groups grew, but were harshly dealt with