Hitler knew that he needed propaganda to get mass support from the Germans and he used it greatly.

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Hitler knew that he needed propaganda to get mass support from the Germans and he used it greatly. But he also wanted to indoctrinate more specifically children: he thought, as all dictators, that by indoctrinating children he would get them to know nothing else than him and his doctrine, and therefore to accept his dictature as granted:

"When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side', I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community'" Hitler 1933

"While the older generation could still waver, the younger generation has pledged itself to us and is ours, body and soul!" Hitler 1934

But his plans were not the same for boys and girls: each needed to be prepared for his future role in the state.
Boys were prepared for war, they should be ready to fight and risk their lives for their Führer and their country:

"I want a brutal, domineering, fearless, cruel youth. Youth must be all that. It must bear pain. There must be nothing weak and gentle about it. The free, splendid beast of prey must once again flash from its eyes..." Hitler, 1933

Girls however learnt how to be good wives and good mothers. Their duty was to provide many children to the state:


On mettait au point, toujours dans le secret, des décrets visant les femmes et les jeunes filles. La guerre finie, elles devraient combler l'effroyable perte en hommes en se soumettant de gré ou de force à une politique de repeuplement aussi méthodique que scandaleuse. Le Gauleiter Giessler avait déjà prévenu les étudiantes : elles ne devaient pas continuer à perdre leur temps dans les universités ; mieux valait, avait-il ajouté, "donner un enfant au Führer " (Extrait de "La rose Blanche" de Inge Scholl).

 

In fact the ideal youth for Hitler would certainly have been that which is described in "1984", the book written by George Orwell. Indeed, in this book the children are brutal, domineering... they do not obey their parents, on the contrary it is the adults who fear them because they might give them away as traitors. But the Youth is ready to do anything for 'Big Brother' and 'the party' ().

 

Hitler, education and youth - Part two

How did he organize youth?

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