Wendy Vargas
Period 7
A Hitler Youth by Maschmann
PD US History
6 Weeks Task
I. The Hitler Youth was originally established in 1922
. How Hitler could have commanded a military of soldiers and a citizenry who could perform many of most cruel atrocities known in human history?
i. The answer is complex: it involved many factors such as high-minded promises, increased economic rewards, propaganda, and the inculcation of conscience-free decision-making through the fuhrerprinzip.
2. served to train and recruit future members of the Sturmabteilung
3. Adult paramilitary wing of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP, the German Nazi Party.
4. Members had an idealistic, romantic notion of the past, yearning for simpler days when people lived off the land.
A. The Mission
. The whole German youth inside the region of the Reich are incorporated into the Hitler Youth. (With this degree, Hitler violated his Concordat with the Vatican not to absorb Catholic youth groups.)
2. The whole German youth, outside of home and school, is physically, spiritually, and morally to be educated in the Hitler Youth in the spirit of National Socialism to the service of Volk and Volk (Folk) community.
3. The task of the education of the whole German youth in the Hitler Youth is given over to the Reich Youth leader of the NSDAP. He holds the office of a Highest Reich Authority with its seat in Berlin and is directly responsible to the Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor.
4. The legal orders and general administrative regulations requisite to the execution and completion of this law will be issued by the Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor.
II. Wandervögel
A. "small" group of soldiers
a. A special division, the 12th Panzer Division SS was comprised of "Hitler Youth" and was nicknamed "Candy Soldiers" by the allied troops.
. Distinguished themselves by wearing shorts and hiking boots rather than the starched shirts and creased trousers of the middle class.
2. This youth movement grew rapidly from 1900 to 1914, attracting the attention and grudging admiration of the mainstream political and religious establishment in Germany
B. War contribution
3. The Hitler Youth after the outbreak of the war in 1939 began a variety of war work.
4. Boys actually participated in the War as active HJ members. This was accomplished in several ways:
i. anti-air craft batteries,
ii. Volksstrom (Home Guard)
III. Membership
. In 1923, the organization had a little over 1,000 members.
2. In 1925, ...
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2. This youth movement grew rapidly from 1900 to 1914, attracting the attention and grudging admiration of the mainstream political and religious establishment in Germany
B. War contribution
3. The Hitler Youth after the outbreak of the war in 1939 began a variety of war work.
4. Boys actually participated in the War as active HJ members. This was accomplished in several ways:
i. anti-air craft batteries,
ii. Volksstrom (Home Guard)
III. Membership
. In 1923, the organization had a little over 1,000 members.
2. In 1925, when the Nazi Party had been refounded, the membership grew to over 5,000.
3. At the end of 1933, the HJ had 2,300,000 members.
4. At the end of 1933, the HJ had 2,300,000 members
A. As an example, in the class of Hans J. Massaquoi, 100% of the Aryan pupils in his class became Pimpf. However many of his classmates joined because of their parents or teachers or to be like everybody else. After several months many of the children became inactive and almost all left after one or two years.
IV. Fascism - totalitarian philosophy of government that glorifies the state and nation and assigns to the state control over every aspect of national life.
. A number of historians have regarded fascism either as a revolutionary centrist doctrine, as a doctrine which mixes philosophies of the left and the right, or as both of those things.
2. Mussolini's Doctrine of Fascism states: "The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State-a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values-interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people."
3. Generally, fascist movements endorsed social interventionism dedicated to influencing society to promote the state's interests.
4. Fascists promoted their ideology as a "Third Position" between capitalism and communism.
5. The common aim of all fascist movements was elimination of the autonomy or, in some cases, the existence of large-scale capitalism.
6. Fascists supported the unifying of proletarian workers to their cause along corporatistic, socialistic, or syndicalistic lines, promoting the creation of a strong proletarian nation, but not a proletarian class.
7. Fascists declared their opposition to finance capitalism, interest charging, and profiteering. Nazis and other anti-Semitic fascists, considered finance capitalism a "parasitic" "Jewish conspiracy".
8. Fascist governments nationalized some key industries, managed their currencies and made some massive state investments.
9. Fascists thought that private property should be regulated to ensure that "benefit to the community proceeds benefit to the individual."
0. Fascists claim, "State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when are at stakes the political interest of the State. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement or direct management."
1. Fascists introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic interventionist measures.
Questions
. The important role that scape-goating and denial had a dramatic growth of anti-Semitism within Germany during the 1930s at the time of the Nazi rise to power; Germany was experiencing great economic and social hardship. The country had to pay enormous compensation to the Allies as a result of losing WWI, had to adhere to the Treaty of Versailles, whereby they could no longer have a large army and had to give up land, experienced severe inflation and economic instability and experienced great unemployment. Hitler used the Jews as a scapegoat, blaming them for Germany's economic and social problems. The Nazi party promised to resolve these issues, and in 1932 won 37% of the vote. People were also afraid to speak out, as they were terrified of the brutality of the Nazis. In 1935, when the government passed the Nuremberg Laws that declared that only Aryans could be German citizens. The Nazis believed that the 'pure-blooded' German was racially superior, and that a struggle for survival existed between the German race and those races considered to be inferior.
2. Maschmann drew a clear distinction between "those Jews" and the Jewish people she conversed with during her childhood. She explains "I had learned from my parents' example that one could have anti-Semitic opinions without this interfering in one's personal relations with individual Jews" (p.41). Throughout the book, Maschmann never associates Hitler's propaganda against the Jews with her own Jewish friends. "The Jew" was an evil power, something with the attributes of a spook or monster. Nazi propaganda blamed Jews for virtually all of society's ills. They often compared them to rats in their film propaganda. Rats are legitimately exterminated. The parallels were taken to a literal conclusion. Of course, prior to that, Jews were stripped of most of their rights and private property.
3. The middle class which is primarily susceptible to fascism because they value property highly, and fear of the loss of property and wealth, through unemployment and inflation, is a primary source of the insecurity which fascism feeds upon. Again, a certain level of industrialization is necessary to create that middle class. Fascism exploits nationalism by playing upon feelings of superiority over others. It also exalts militarism as the greatest way to prove superiority, and war as an acceptable, even desirable way of accomplishing national goals. People feel good about themselves if they can forget their insecurities and problems by immersing themselves in an apparently invincible nation.
4. In July 1932, more women voted for the Nazis. The elderly were also attracted to the Nazis, especially those whose savings had gone down in value because of inflation.
5. The German Faith Movement of Hauer and others was not just anti-Jewish, but also anti- Christian; it worked for the decline of Christianity. It also believed it was time for "a new conception of God, not as one grasped by thought, but as the reality of inner experience." As one can imagine Poewe reveals how neither insipid German theological liberalism nor irrational pietism could answer such a challenge, which is surely a lesson for today as neo-paganism battles with Christianity for the hearts of those spiritually searching. It was said of some "their path to National Socialism went through the door of liberal theology"
6. Hitler, unlike many German statesmen in the twenties, was not content with demanding the rescission of the Treaty of Versailles and the restoration of the borders of 1914. He deemed such borders as "a political absurdity of such proportions and consequences as to make it seem a crime." His foreign policy aims were grand and expansionist. He declared that Germany first must defeat France, its "inexorable mortal enemy," so that it would have a free hand to "turn our gaze toward the land in the east." It did not satisfy his ambitions of historical greatness for Germany to become the dominant power in central Europe. Instead, he believed Germany should be the dominant power on the entire continent, unabashedly insisting that it be prepared to wage war against Russia, if necessary, to acquire additional land and soil for the German people.
