In modern times, the recruitment of children into a political organization and ideology reached its boldest embodiment in the Hitler Youth, founded in 1933. Drawing on reports, letters, diaries, and memoirs, Kater maps the history of the Hitler Youth, examining the means, degree, and impact of conversion, and the subsequent fate of young recruits.
Michael H. Kater is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of History at York University, Toronto.
Table of Contents
Contents 1 “Make Way, You Old Ones!” 2 Serving in the Hitler Youth In Search of Monopoly and Uniformity Authoritarianism, Militarism, Imperialism Problems of Training, Discipline, and Leadership 3 German Girls for Matrimony and Motherhood The Bund Deutscher Mädel in Peacetime The Challenges of World War II Eugenics and Race 4 Dissidents and Rebels The Varieties of Dissidence The Empire Strikes Back Hitler’s Young Women Deceived Elation and Disenchantment Detours, Duplications, and Alternatives The Final Victory 6 The Responsibility of Youth Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Index
What People are Saying About This
Peter Jelavich
Through the prism of the Hitler Youth organization, Michael Kater examines a wide variety of important issues confronting teenage boys and girls during the Third Reich. Faced with increasing pressures to adopt a racist ideology and stereotyped gender roles that conditioned them for war and genocide, they swayed between desire to conform and adolescent rebelliousness, which ranged from sexual promiscuity to (much too infrequent) political opposition. Kater's account, written with clarity and verve, moves freely between analytic generalizations and individual case studies, which cover the spectrum of political, emotional, cultural, and ethical responses to a vicious regime that tried-often successfully-to turn adolescents into its most pliant tools. Peter Jelavich, Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University and author of Berlin Cabaret
This important book is not only an excellent survey of the Nazi attempt to indoctrinate a generation of young Germans and those young men and women who resisted it, but a significant reflection on the problems of converting an indoctrinated generation to the values of democracy.
Peter Loewenberg
An engaging study of the comradeship and feeling of belonging, sense of power and superiority imparted to Germany's young boys and girls as they became ideologically charged paramilitary men and women ready to serve, to follow orders and to sacrifice for Adolf Hitler. Kater has crafted a masterful history essential to comprehending Germany through the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. This will be the definitive history of the Hitler Youth. Peter Loewenberg, Professor of History, UCLA and Dean of the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute
Eric Hobsbawm
This important book is not only an excellent survey of the Nazi attempt to indoctrinate a generation of young Germans and those young men and women who resisted it, but a significant reflection on the problems of converting an indoctrinated generation to the values of democracy. Eric Hobsbawm, author of Interesting Times: A Twentieth Century Life