OBJECTIVE:  Students will be able to discuss the motivations and actions of German youngsters enlisted in the Hitler Youth program of the 1930’s-1940’s and their role in perpetrating the Holocaust.                   

 

MOTIVATIONAL ACTIVITY:  Show students the photograph below, either as a handout or as an overhead film.  For these introductory purposes, the teacher should delete the caption.           

 

German boys giving the Nazi salute. September 1933. Süddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst.   Photograph #21750 (http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/olympics/zcb018.htm) -- Accessed July 27, 2005

 

As depicted in the photo above, there are some major issues to discuss concerning what would become the “in-crowd” as opposed to the Jews, who were socially, politically, culturally, and economically on the way “out”.  As I will later move into the impact of the Hitler years on the present and future Jewish population and culture, I find this to be a good starting point.  Questions that need to be asked include: 

 

1. What is the general scene here?
2. Who is pictured?
3. Is it important that the boys are dressed only in athletic shorts?
4. When do you think this photo might have been taken?
5. Does this photo speak to group behavior?  Why or why not?
6. How is it that these boys have come to this place where they are giving the Nazi salute? 

 

ENGAGING ACTIVITY:  As accompanying text, the teacher can choose excerpts from The History Place’s excellent entry on the Hitler Youth, found at             

 

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/hitleryouth/index.html

The text found on the website is broken down into five chapters and a timeline: Beginnings to 1923 (3 pages in length), Road to Power 1923 – 1933 (7 pages), Prelude to War 1933 – 1939 (8 pages), Hitler's Boy Soldiers 1939 – 1945 (6 pages), Aftermath - Nuremberg and Beyond (3 pages), Timeline and Organizational Info (5 pages).

Teachers should separate their class into six groups of students, one group for each division on The History Place’s Hitler Youth exhibit.  Groups should read through the literature assigned to them and answer the following questions:

1. What tasks was the Hitler Youth expected to perform?
2. In your reading, how did the organization of the Hitler Youth change?
3. What specific actions did Hitler dictate or perform in regard to the Hitler Youth?
4. What specific direct actions did the Hitler Youth take against Jews or other target groups?
5. From the beginning to the end of your reading, is it your opinion that the Hitler Youth became a stronger and more effective (toward Nazi goals) organization, or weaker?  Why do you feel this way?

Upon completion of the group work, each group should select a spokesperson to report their findings on the information they studied to the class.  Perhaps the group of students that worked on the Beginnings article could serve as note-takers on the chalkboard, using a flowchart model for visualization.  See example below:

Beginnings:

 

 

                                                 

                                                                                                    

                                                                                      

                                                                  

                                   

 

I have also found that a series of films put out by the History Channel are very effective.  “Hitler Youth” takes a look at children in the Shoah from a perspective not often considered in light of the intense study of victims and survivors:  the corruption of the German youth into prejudiced, angry, vengeful citizens.  Students today will see ways in which the Nazis used a format very similar to the Boy Scouts of America to corrupt the morality of everyday young men and women.  Physical improvement is shown to have been as important to the regime as the ideological indoctrination of the Aryan youth.  Upon completion of the Motivational Activity, as well as the reading exercise, have students look upon the following photograph (again, either as a handout or as an overhead film.  For these purposes, the teacher should delete the caption):

 

 

Hitler Youth perform in the Hour of Commemoration in front of the town hall in Tomaszow, Poland in 1941. Their flags bear the ancient Germanic Sig-Rune 'S' symbolic of victory. (http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/hitleryouth/index.html -- Accessed July 27, 2005)

 

Ask students the following questions:

 

1. What is the general scene here?
2. Who is pictured?
3. Is it important that the boys are dressed in military “mascot” uniforms?
4. When do you think this photo might have been taken?
5. Does this photo speak to group behavior?  Why or why not?
6. How is it that these boys have come to this place where they are glorifying Nazi symbols?

 

TAKE HOME – Family Activity:  Give students a handout with the following photographs on it (the two Hitler Youth photos should appear together on one side, the Jewish children on the other).  Students should take the photos home and interview an adult, asking the following questions and recording the adult’s answers and/or impressions. 

 

 

"Youth Serves the Führer" is the title of this Hitler Youth recruiting poster. This organization mobilized boys into the National Socialist community through sport and hiking, and later prepared them for combat in war. Bundesarchiv Koblenz (http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/olympics/zcb018.htm) –

Photograph 14942 – Accessed July 30 2005

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps the most famous Nazi Youth poster of them all this one depicts a joyful BDM girl scout.  Whereas boys joined the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth), girls belonged to the Bunde Deutscher Maedel (League of German Girls). http//www.joric.com/Conspiracy/BDM.htm (Accessed August 1 2005).

Questions:

1.      What do these photos remind you of?

2.      What do the children have in common?

3.      How do you feel about children being recruited by Hitler?  Do you think these posters were effective tools of recruitment?

4.      Why do you think girls were also recruited?

Next, show the photos of Jewish children on the following page.  Then ask these questions:

1.      How does the caricature/cartoon make you feel?

2.      Accepting that this caricature was commonplace in Germany in the 1930’s-‘40’s, what role would it play for the Hitler Youth?

3.      What role do you think the Hitler Youth played in the Jewish children arriving at the state of being pictured in the second image?

4.      Are there organizations in American society today that are exclusionary, or even somewhat harmful to certain groups in our country?  Name some…

 

 

ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION:  As part of your unit exam, whether it be on Perpetrators or on Victims, or specifically on children in the Shoah, ask the following essay question:

 

Compare and contrast the lives of the average Jewish youth and the average Aryan youth living in Germany in the 1930’s.  What changes were afoot for them and their friends?  Of these changes, what was state-sponsored/mandated, and what was voluntary?  How do you think these changes affected these groups/individuals in the short-term after the war?  …in the long-term?

 

*Note:  This same essay question appears in Lesson Plan #2, on the changing everyday lives of German Jewish Youth.  If the instructor has chosen not to cover one of the groups in the question, the essay should of course be edited.

 

ADDITIONAL READING:

 

Rosner, Bernat, and Frederic C. Tubach, with Sally Patterson Tubach.  An Uncommon Friendship.  Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2002.  271 pages.  ISBN# 0520236890.

 

This is the story of two men who met each other as senior adults due to a chance encounter of their wives, who had been high school classmates in California.  As the men got to know one another, they soon discovered that one of them had been a member of the Hitler Youth while the other was a persecuted Hungarian Jew.  Rosner and Tubach speak to public audiences; I was fortunate enough to hear them present at DePaul University in Chicago, IL in October 2004 at a seminar for Chicago Public Schools teachers.

Page from the anti-Semitic German children's book, "Trau Keinem Fuchs..." (Trust No Fox in the Green Meadow and No Jew on his Oath) Date: 1936.  Locale: Germany.  Credit: USHMM, Copyright: USHMM. Photograph #40038, http://www.ushmm.org/uia-cgi/uia_doc/photos/6411?hr=null (Accessed August 1 2005).

 

 

 

An emaciated child eats in the streets of the Warsaw ghetto. Warsaw, Poland, between 1940 and 1943.
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.  http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/viewer/wlc/photo.php?RefId=89469 (Accessed August 1 2005).