Another reason why youths supported the Nazis was education. A factor of education could be classed as peer pressure as teachers taught about the Nazi views, and all supported the Nazis. This was because all the teachers who didn’t go along with the Nazis were sacked.
As a child if you didn’t support the Nazis you would receive little or even no education at all. The boys learnt about the history of the Nazis, biology to explain the Nazi race and population control etc… Geography taught them about the lands. They also did physical education again showing the emphasis on fitness.
Girls learnt about domestic sciences and eugenics and the girls were brought up to solely have the men’s babies, and to learn about looking after their homes.
The girl’s uniforms where based on peasant uniforms, which suggested Hitler was showing/teaching them about being less important than men like peasants compared to them. However the girls were made to look traditional they also were made to wear their hair in pigtails.
A factor of education could be classed as peer pressure as teachers taught about the Nazi views, and all supported the Nazis. This was because all the teachers who didn’t go along with the Nazis were sacked. This brings me to my next point.
One of the other reasons was peer and parent pressure on the youths. This would have more or less made them feel they had to join the Nazi youth movement because everyone else was and it is hard to be the only person not supporting the Nazis as many of the adult Germans found out.
There was even an example of youths being hung for revolting against the Nazis. Even youths whose parents did not support the Nazis ended joining the Nazi youth clubs. This is related to my next point about propaganda.
Propaganda was used through the youth clubs; the Nazis took over all the youth clubs in Germany and banned any other opposing youth clubs. They used youth clubs in order to spread the Nazi messages to youths and by 1936 membership of the Nazi youth movement was compulsory.
Linked to the excitement and activities, propaganda such as training for war in the summer camps made the young men think that war was one big adventure that would be very fun. The propaganda they used on youths was very subtle and they included it in every aspect of their lives so therefore this reason is linked to excitement and activities.
Also education (learning about Nazi views and the Geography of their lands, these were preparing them for war.) Also using propaganda on their parents had a result on the youths. Another example of propaganda in the activities they did was Nazi theory and history of the Nazis.
Basically Hitler set out to control every aspect of the youths and he succeeded. This meant he could incorporate propaganda into all of their day-to-day activities and education.
The last reason I am going to explain is the terror. We all know that terror played a big part in the older generations lives. However it also played a part in the youths lives as well. Referring back to peer/ parent pressure it would have been very scary and hard not to join the Nazis if everyone else in your school had joined them.
This is because firstly the other youths may turn against you or think you are a Jew or another race that Nazis opposed. Also secondly the Nazis may end up taking you away, which I believe happened to some youths who rebelled against the Nazis.
I believe that excitement and activities were the most important reason because they were a lot of fun and to start with no youths would have joined up if it were not fun for them. It is more important than terror because many youths wanted to join up any way so terror didn’t play as big a part as excitement and activities.
I think propaganda was a very important reason because it put across the Nazi messages and prepared youths for war. But it depended on excitement and the activities they did as they used this to put across the messages discretely and without this the propaganda wouldn’t have anywhere to tell/show the youth’s the messages as effectively.
Finally excitement and activities is more important than education because if there were no excitement and activities out of school they wouldn’t find the Nazis a fun party to follow. Education taught them about Nazi views, the lands and biology etc… But out of school they learnt military skills, which kept them interested in the Nazis.
Richard Demko