The Youth of the Reich

In a few years, the Nazi regime has set about enrolling the entire German youth. The Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) for the boys and the Bund Deutscher Mädel for the girls frame leisure, sport and ideological training. A law of 1936, supplemented in March 1939, makes membership in practice compulsory: to evade the movement becomes a suspect anomaly.

For families, in particular those who harbour reservations — through religious faith, attachment to liberties or simple distrust — the enrolment of children poses a daily crisis of conscience. The state intrudes into upbringing, diverts loyalties towards the Führer, and turns the child into a possible relay of surveillance within the home.

You are a German family, unenthusiastic but cautious. Should you allow your child to join the Hitlerjugend fully, so as not to expose them to marginalisation and to spare them trouble? To compromise by limiting their participation to the strict minimum, without standing out? Or to resist openly, at the risk of sanctions, of being put on file, even of reprisals? The choice involves the child's future and the safety of all.