Hitler had also modified the curriculum to suite his plans of going to war in the not so distant future. He had modified it from being academic to being more physical for the boys to promote militaristic ideals. This change from academic to physical meant that the girls felt that they were not receiving the education that they were entitled to have just a few years back. Hitler promoted subjects like home economics and was taught in advanced for motherhood. Boys in the other hand were taught nazi ideas and militaristic tactics.
By 1936 the Hitler youth movement was compulsory to all children aged between 6-18. This movement slowly taught the youth populations how to survive in a war type environment and also taught them militaristic displine and training in war games like shooting and hunting etc. The Hitler youth movement usually met once a week but slowly the number of days increased and the children had little or no time at home with their parents and many of them could not concentrate on their studies or complete their homework.
Girls at the age of 14 were put under special training and were forced to join the ‘young maidens’ their primary goal in life was to produce as many as offspring as possible. In the young maidens the girls were taught how to prevent diseases and to prepare for motherhood. On this Hitler had remarked ‘look at these young men and boys…with them I can make a new world!’
Boys at the age of 6 were introduced in to the Pimpf (little fellows) at the age of 10 they had to pass an exam to join the Deutschs Jungvolk in where they were taught nazi ideas and militaristic ideas. At the age of 14 the teenagers were enrolled in to the Hitler youth where they were disciplined as they do in the military.
Although there was some rebellious teens the idea of being regimented did not appeal to some of the teenagers. Those teenagers who didn’t join the compulsory group they made their own clubs, which later turned in to gangs. These gangs bought a threat to the Hitler Youth, which had to be eliminated. Their appearances went against what the Nazis considered acceptable they also engaged in activities that the Nazis didn’t approve of either, and their attitudes also intimidated authorities, public and to the Hitler youth. They would often go and beat up members of the Hitler youth they saw. The Nazis had saw this as a huge threat to their authority and retaliated by going to an extremes by hanging the members of the troublesome gangs like the Edelweiss pirates.
Kurt Piehl, former edelweiss pirate in Dortmund, wrote this following text around 1985. ‘Did you ever hear about the "Edelweißpiraten" (edelweiss pirates)? They were loose bands of renegade youths during the nazi era in Germany, objected to the harsh drill of the Hitler youth. Some of them were outright Hitler-youth dropouts; others came from the so-called "Bündische Jugend" (a scout-like movement), which had been a melting pot for young people with very different backgrounds before Hitler took power’. With conditions in German deteriorating through the war, they found more and more loopholes in the system, especially in the big cities alongside Rhine River. Living in bombed out houses, stealing and looting goods from freight trains and defending themselves against Gestapo, Hitler youth, and normal police with knives and guns they made a miserable yet nazi-free living.’
The Nazis had succeeded in replacing the earlier form of youth groups by setting up their own groups, this lead to gangs emerging in the third Reich that opposed the movements. Which made the Nazis to intensify the displine in the youth movements to make sure no more of these gangs emerge.
