From a ‘scouting club’ with 700 members to eight million child soldiers, and why none of them knew it was happening
We haven’t really given much thought to the Hitler Youth yet. It’s actually quite striking, and unheard of today. Because were they actually child soldiers? I’ve wondered about this quite a few times. Was what the Hitler Youth did often simply of their own free will? Indoctrination? Or perhaps a combination of the two, with an element of coercion thrown in… Most of them probably didn’t know any better. You’re young, a child, and suddenly you’re part of the Hitler Youth, where all sorts of things are expected of you. You have no frame of reference, and this is simply normal. Everyday life, nothing out of the ordinary.
How the Innocent Youth Became the Hitlerjugend
The Hitler Youth was actually founded quite early on by the NSDAP. It was established in 1926 as a regular youth wing of the party, something that remains standard practice for political parties to this day. At least, this is the case in quite a few European countries. It’s not at all unusual, and certainly not a training organization for child soldiers. The NSDAP was not yet the major political party it would later become. As a Nazi party without any real authority in 1929, the Hitler Youth was, so to speak, a marginalized political youth club.
As a result, in 1926, the Hitler Youth had only about 700 registered members. These were boys from the working class who also held Völkisch nationalist views, ranging in age from 14 to 18. A notable detail is that membership in the Hitler Youth that year was entirely voluntary. Children were encouraged to join through proactive recruitment campaigns by the NSDAP, and membership was not granted without parental consent.
But how could parents ever have given their permission for their child to join the Hitler Youth?
It really wasn’t that complicated. In 1926, people didn’t know what we know today, not even what they knew in 1942 and 1945. Would you let your child join a Scouting club? That’s exactly the question those parents faced in 1926. Recruitment for a Scouting club and the Hitler Youth isn’t all that different if you take a close look at what the NSDAP promised parents and children. Join the Hitler Youth and you could take part in popular outdoor activities that overlapped exactly with those of traditional German Scouting organizations: camping, hiking, sports, and singing around the campfire. A newspaper ad, millions of pamphlets, and impressive propaganda marches through the cities. This was how the NSDAP managed to reach the children. But it wasn’t just the children; the parents were also inspired in this way. Right to the heart of their patriotism.
In fact, we’re describing how a Scouting organization recruited its members in 1926. The Hitler Youth wasn’t yet what it would later become.
For boys between the ages of 14 and 18, it was, of course, also fantastic and cool to be allowed to wear a uniform and march in formation. Although it was presented as a kind of Scouting organization, the Hitler Youth was already under the control of the Sturmabteilung (SA) at that time. Because in 1922 the precursors of the Hitler Youth were the Jugendbund der NSDAP and Jungsturm Adolf Hitler. These two organisations were explicitly designed to train and recruit future members for the SA. When the group was formally restructured and renamed the Hitlerjugend in July 1926, it was attached to and run directly as a junior branch of the SA. The Hitler Youth remained strictly subordinate to the SA command until May 1932. At that point, it was separated from the SA to become an independent organization directly under the Nazi Party.
So it was essentially a choice between the Hitler Youth and one of the rival communist organizations. The Hitler Youth was therefore allowed to participate in street fights against these communist groups. This immediately fostered a sense of brotherhood, excitement, and a sense of purpose. Young boys of that age are, after all, extremely impressionable, let’s not be naive about that. That’s why this was actually enough for them.
However, this small-scale “scouting organization” would reportedly have had no fewer than 8 million members by the start of World War II. How is that possible?
From “Scouting Movement” to the Nationalization and Nazification of a Whole Childhood
Even before Hitler had absolute, unchallenged power in Germany, the Hitler Youth had grown into a large organization with approximately 107,000 members in 1932. But a major change was on the horizon. There were simply many youth groups in Germany at that time. But when Hitler came to absolute power in 1933, everything changed. The membership of the Hitler Youth skyrocketed to about 2.3 million members. Not because Hitler had suddenly become so immensely popular, but because all other youth groups, Scouting organizations, and so on, were banned. All these children, who had been members of communist and socialist youth groups, among others, were transferred to the Hitler Youth.
However, it was still not mandatory for children to join the Hitler Youth. Or was it? In practice, it was simply mandatory. If you didn’t want to belong to the only youth group left, then you might have been opposed to the regime. If parents wanted their child to play sports or pursue vocational training, there was no choice but to join the Hitler Youth. In reality, children couldn’t just opt out and stay home either. What the children would then face was intense and almost total social isolation. There was no such thing as binge-watching a series or having a gaming session. The social isolation was real and intense.
If you really didn’t want to join, you simply didn’t have to. To a certain extent, free will still existed. But if you were under 18 in 1936, you would already start running into problems. In December 1936, Hitler signed the so-called “Law on the Hitler Youth.” An official law that stipulated that all German children within the borders of the Reich belonged to the Hitler Youth. The Hitler Youth thus effectively became an official government agency and was no longer merely a youth organization of a political party.
Nevertheless, in 1936 it was still not a criminal offense for a child not to be a member. In principle, there were no legal penalties or criminal prosecutions for families who refused to enroll their children. In fact, there were still millions of children who were not members. The families of these children refused membership primarily because of strict religious beliefs or strong anti-Nazi sentiments. And if you finally reached the age of majority by 1939, you were “lucky.” As an adult, you were, of course, no longer required to join the Hitler Youth, although it was highly likely that the Wehrmacht was waiting for you.
In March 1939, the final move was made. There were still millions of children who were not members of the Hitler Youth, and this apparently bothered Hitler immensely. He made membership officially mandatory with the establishment of the Jugenddienstpflicht, or youth service obligation. In essence, this was compulsory service for children between the ages of 10 and 18. If you still refused, you could expect fines and prison sentences. And as if that weren’t bad enough, the Nazis could now simply take your children away from you if you continued to refuse. As a member of the Hitler Youth, your child would then spend the rest of their life in an orphanage under the control of the Nazi regime.
From “Scouting” to Child Soldiers
But okay, your child is required to join an organization that claims to be a sort of Scouting group for kids. That’s not so bad. The reality, however, turned out to be more complicated than this smokescreen.
Wehrsport
The Hitler Youth existed for one purpose only: to replace the children’s critical thinking with total, blind obedience to Adolf Hitler. And with that, the fun of scouting was pretty much gone. The education provided to the Hitler Youth consisted primarily of physical and psychological training. From there, it wasn’t a very big leap to creating child soldiers. It began with things like Wehrsport, or military sports. It was an expression of the Nazis’ belief that a boy’s body belonged to the state to be used as a future soldier. Intellectualism was viewed with contempt. Physical dominance was everything.
Wehrsport was essentially a substitute for regular sports. It was, as it were, a war simulation in which children practiced throwing grenades, crawling through thick mud in trenches, and completing obstacle courses while fully equipped. There was no room for empathy or compassion. To instill these traits in the children, violence took center stage. Boxing and wrestling were mandatory, and unsupervised fights were often held. All of this was done to ensure that the children would no longer feel empathy and would overcome their fears. Perhaps even more importantly, violence was normalized as a legitimate, and perhaps the only, option for resolving problems. As part of the Wehrsport activities, every effort was made to weed out the weak from the groups by organizing marches of well over 30 kilometers. Freezing cold or tropical heat, it didn’t matter. The marches went on, with the children carrying their full, heavy gear.
Indoctrination of Children
Indoctrination, however, required more than physical conditioning, it required replacing one worldview with another. That’s why the Nazis incorporated their own version of the truth into the education system, a true brainwashing indoctrination about just how superior the Aryan race was. German children were taught from a very young age that they were biologically superior and even responsible for all of humanity. Because they were supposedly so superior to other peoples, they had the right to conquer other countries and nations for the so-called Lebensraum, that is, the living space for the Aryan race. Since this was taught to children at such an early age and repeated relentlessly, it’s no surprise that an entire generation was in danger of emerging that truly believed it.
A second aspect also emerged in this context. The indoctrination also involved the dehumanization of minorities. Anti-Semitism, in particular, dominated daily life. Children were even required to sing songs about “Jewish blood,” and no books other than anti-Jewish propaganda were available. Essentially, they were taught that Jewish people were not human beings, but rather dangerous “parasites” infesting Germany. It is debatable whether children of such a young age truly understood what they were singing and doing. However, this was their worldview and their truth, fed to them by an immense propaganda machine working around the clock with a single goal: to indoctrinate an entire new generation into Nazism.
But the eradication of empathy was not yet complete. The Nazis did absolutely everything in their power to banish any form of compassion, empathy, and perhaps even humanity. The children were therefore also taught that human nature is based on a bitter struggle in which only the strongest races survive. There was simply no room at all for compassion, and certainly none for the sick, the disabled, or the weak. And if you did feel any, it was considered a form of biological treason against Nazi Germany.
The Cult of the Führer (Führerkult)
In Nazi Germany, there was really no room for any religions. The only thing that mattered was Adolf Hitler. It became a quasi-religious worship or veneration of Adolf Hitler. Children were taught that Hitler was infallible, that he had been sent by God himself to save Germany. If you look more closely at the matter, it’s not far removed from a true cult. In fact, Hitler’s entire Nazi ideology was like that. For example, children aged 10 to 14 were placed in the so-called Deutsches Jungvolk, a branch of the Hitler Youth for this age group. They were immediately required to take a personal oath to Hitler, the ultimate proof of eternal and exclusive loyalty to him. Yes, with this oath, they even declared and promised to give their lives for Hitler.
What truly defined a cult, and the Hitler Youth as well, was a daily ritual. Every meeting began with the so-called Hitler salute, followed by the singing of the German national anthem. The cycle of propaganda and indoctrination was complete. The children became part of a system they regarded as the truth, simply because they knew no other truth. There was no one to tell them, “This isn’t true” or “This is nothing but propaganda based on lies.” These children couldn’t search for their own truth on the internet. This was simply their reality in a world that had failed them.
The League of German Girls (BDM)
While all underage boys were eventually required to join the Hitler Youth, girls were ultimately required to become members of the Bund Deutscher Mädel. This process followed the same path as that of the Hitler Youth: first unofficially mandatory and eventually required by law. The Bund Deutscher Mädel was also divided into categories. Girls aged 10 to 14 became part of the Jungmädelbund. Girls aged 14 to 18 belonged to the regular Bund Deutscher Mädel. But unlike the Hitler Youth, a third branch was established within this organization: the BDM-Werk Glaube und Schönheit, for girls and young adults aged 17 to 21.
While the boys were brainwashed and indoctrinated with the aim of turning them into real soldiers, the Bund Deutscher Mädel had a different goal. The girls were brainwashed and conditioned to become the mothers of the next generation of soldiers. Let this and the story so far sink in, and you’ll already begin to realize just how ridiculous it all sounds. Although we view it that way now, back then there was no escape for those children.
Physical training was also a central focus for the girls, especially gymnastics, running, and rhythmic gymnastics. The goal was to ensure that the girls grew up healthy so they could have as many children as possible. But the main focus was on household chores. The girls were intensively trained in cooking, sewing, nursing/caregiving, childcare, and managing a household on a strict and limited budget. If you don’t find that shocking enough, the girls also faced the daily reality of being brainwashed into believing that their bodies did not belong to them, but to Nazi Germany. That is why they were strictly instructed on how to select a “genetically pure” Aryan husband. All of this was intended to ensure the future of the Third Reich.
The Illusion of Power
It’s not easy to imagine how this could have affected innocent German citizens as well. And perhaps, above all, how parents could have done this to their children. But what was the alternative? To be seen as an enemy of the state? That would lead to only one outcome: death.
The shocking thing about these brainwashing, quasi-cult organizations or sects was that the brainwashing was extremely effective. To the children, it even felt like simply having fun with their peers. It was anything but the feeling of being in prison. No, it was actually almost like a fun summer camp. It was simply an adventure.
The children were given their own uniforms, which made them feel like they were truly part of a group of like-minded peers. They were all given a beautiful, almost ceremonial dagger. But they also gained a sense of power, with authority and responsibilities over some adults. What these organizations did was make the children feel superior to their teachers and even their own parents. This led to situations where, for example, the children would tell, explain, and perhaps even correct their parents on how a good Nazi should behave.
It is a heavy subject, even to this day. However, the children are not to blame. Multiple studies have repeatedly shown that situations like these are never the children’s fault. It is the adults who have failed the children. After all, children belong to one of the most vulnerable groups in society. Without their knowledge, they were groomed for an existential war. Without their knowledge, they lost their own truth and were conditioned and brainwashed to the point where they believed in only one fabricated truth. And virtually no one was there for them.
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By Nick Ravenshade — Founder & Editorial Director, WarCommons
Header image: Photograph of Joseph Goebbels awarding 16-year-old Hitler Youth Willi Hübner an Iron Cross for the defence of Lauban. March 9, 1945. Source: Wikimedia Commons / Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J31305. CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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