Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler's Shadow

Susan Campbell Bartoletti's Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow traces the experiences of German children and teenagers during the Third Reich, the period of Nazi rule from 1933 to 1945, examining those who joined the Hitler Youth, those who resisted, and Jewish youth who were persecuted.

The book opens with the 1932 murder of 15-year-old Herbert Norkus, a Hitler Youth member in Berlin who was cornered and fatally stabbed by Communist youths while distributing Nazi leaflets before dawn. The Nazi Party declared Herbert a martyr and designated January 24 as a national day of commemoration, drawing thousands more young people into the movement.

Bartoletti traces Hitler's rise to power, beginning with his appointment as chancellor on January 30, 1933. Fifteen-year-old Melita Maschmann watched the celebratory torchlight parade through Berlin and secretly joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), the girls' branch of the Hitler Youth, after her parents refused permission. Other Germans reacted with fear: Henry Metelmann, a German boy near Hamburg who later joined the Hitler Youth, recalled his mother weeping, while nine-year-old Bert Lewyn, a Jewish boy in Berlin, watched his father's dismay. Bartoletti explains that Germany was reeling from the Great Depression and the Treaty of Versailles, which had forced the country to accept blame for World War I, cede territory, and pay enormous reparations. Many Germans longed for a strong leader.

The book details how the Nazis built the Hitler Youth into a militarized mass institution. Children aged 10 to 14 were sworn in on Hitler's birthday, reciting an oath pledging their lives to Hitler. Only children of proven "Aryan" descent could join; Jews were excluded. Boys received paramilitary training; girls trained for domesticity. The Nazis eliminated rival youth groups and, by 1936, made membership compulsory. By 1939, nearly 8 million children wore the brown uniform. Karl Schnibbe, a Hamburg Hitler Youth member, grew tired of the regimentation and punched his unit leader; his expulsion letter was later used against him by the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police.

Bartoletti examines how the Nazis overhauled education. Teachers were forced to join the Nazi alliance or face dismissal. New subjects in racial science and eugenics taught children that Aryans were a superior race and that Jews were enemies of Germany. Jewish students were segregated, bullied, and eventually barred from school. The Nazis censored all media; on May 10, 1933, students and Storm Troopers burned banned books across Germany. Sophie Scholl, a BDM member and talented student, grew disillusioned with Nazi ideology but suppressed her views to pass her graduation exam.

The persecution of Jews escalated steadily. The 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws stripped Jews of citizenship and barred them from public life. On November 9, 1938, the violence reached catastrophic levels in Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass: Storm Troopers, the SS (the elite Nazi paramilitary organization), and Hitler Youth burned 1,300 synagogues, killed more than 236 Jews, and arrested over 30,000. About 118,000 Jews fled Germany, but emigration proved difficult as countries tightened immigration quotas. By 1941, the Nazis forbade Jews aged 18 to 45 from emigrating and forced all Jews to wear the yellow Star of David.

Bartoletti describes how the Nazis prepared youth for war through compulsory labor service and specialist military training. Hitler expanded the army fivefold, and Hitler Youth boys joined sections for motorcycles, gliders, and naval training. After annexing Austria and seizing Czechoslovakia, Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, under a fabricated pretext. Britain and France declared war, and Poland fell within a month under blitzkrieg, a lightning-war strategy of rapid coordinated attacks. On the home front, Hitler Youth collected scrap metal, delivered ration cards, and canvassed for the Winter Help program, a charity drive collecting money and warm clothing. The Gestapo arrested anyone who criticized the war; some children even reported their own parents. As Allied bombing intensified, boys over 15 were drafted as Flak Helpers to man antiaircraft batteries.

Bartoletti traces the Holocaust's origins to the Nazi euthanasia program, Aktion-T4, which targeted disabled people beginning in October 1939. Victims were killed by lethal injection or in gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. Public outrage forced Hitler to officially halt the program after an estimated 100,000 deaths, though killings continued secretly. After invading Poland, the SS deployed Einsatzgruppen (Shock Troops) to execute Jews en masse, murdering an estimated 2 million people between 1941 and 1943. Six concentration camps were expanded into death camps. In 1942, the Gestapo separated Bert from his parents, who were deported to Trawniki, a forced-labor camp in Poland, and later murdered.

The book devotes significant attention to youth resistance. In Hamburg, Helmuth Hübener, a 16-year-old German Hitler Youth member who began listening to BBC broadcasts on a shortwave radio, realized the Nazis were lying to the public. He typed anti-Nazi essays and distributed them with friends Karl Schnibbe and Rudi Wobbe. In February 1942, a coworker reported Helmuth. Tried before the People's Court, a Nazi tribunal for treason cases, Helmuth accepted full responsibility, saving his friends from execution. On October 27, 1942, 17-year-old Helmuth was beheaded.

The most famous resistance group was the White Rose, founded by Hans Scholl and fellow University of Munich students Alexander Schmorell, Christoph Probst, Willi Graf, and Professor Kurt Huber. Sophie discovered the group's leaflets in June 1942 and joined. The leaflets denounced Nazi atrocities, including the murder of 300,000 Jews in Poland. In Warsaw, Hans and his friends witnessed emaciated Jews behind ghetto walls. After serving as medics on the Russian front, the group resumed its work with greater urgency following Germany's devastating defeat at Stalingrad. On February 18, 1943, Sophie flung leaflets over a balcony railing at the university. A custodian spotted Hans and Sophie and alerted the Gestapo. Hans, Sophie, and Christoph Probst were tried, convicted, and beheaded. Hans's last words were "Long live freedom!" (238). The remaining members were also captured and executed.

In the war's final years, the Nazis created the SS-HJ, an elite division of the Waffen-SS (the armed combat branch of the SS) composed of over 20,000 teenage soldiers. During the D-Day invasion of June 1944, the SS-HJ fought ferociously at Caen, France, but also committed war crimes, killing at least 134 unarmed prisoners. In the war's final months, boys as young as 10 defended Berlin. On April 30, 1945, Hitler shot himself. Germany surrendered on May 7.

American soldiers marched captured Hitler Youth through the liberated Dachau concentration camp, forcing them to open freight cars packed with decomposed bodies and view crematorium ovens. At the Nuremberg Trials, 19 top Nazi leaders were convicted of war crimes. No Hitler Youth members were tried; the court determined they had been betrayed by the regime. Bartoletti follows her subjects' postwar lives: Alfons Heck, a former Hitler Youth from Wittlich, emigrated to the United States and became a historian of the Third Reich. Bert learned in 1997 that his parents were machine-gunned at Trawniki. Karl and Rudi emigrated to Utah and were honored in Hamburg for their resistance. Inge Scholl, Hans and Sophie's sister, dedicated her life to preserving their memory; the plaza outside the University of Munich was named Geschwister-Scholl Platz (Scholl Siblings Plaza).

Bartoletti closes by noting that Germany reunited in 1990 as a democracy whose constitution guarantees inalienable rights, and she poses a question to contemporary readers: Could another despot rise to power on the shoulders of young people?