Conformity And Hitler Youth

Conformity: The Compliance of Standards During Conflict Conflict is caused by many things, and conflict affected many lives. There are many ways to deal with such conflict, one of them being conformity. Conformity is convenient and effective tool that is used in a time of conflict. Susan Bartoletti, the author of Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow, told the story of Sophie Scholl’s conformity and Joanne Oppenheim, the author of Dear Miss Breed, shared the experiences of young Japanese Americans in internment. Both these authors, along with a few other authors, showed how conformity can help in a time of conflict, reasons not to resist the ways of the other party, and how one can comply while resisting the ideas of the other party.
People in Europe during World War Two had very few options as to choices. For instance, “The principal warned Sophie that she might not graduate if she didn’t participate and show more enthusiasm for National Socialism. The threat worked: Worried now, Sophie buckled and studied hard to pass the Abitur, a difficult graduation test, in order to receive her diploma. Her diploma was her ticket to the anniversary” (Bartoletti 399). People were pressured to conform with Hitler, otherwise their future could be ruined. Over in the United States, things weren’t looking too good either. The National Japanese American Historical Society stated, for example, “ Just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 4,000 Japanese immigrants were detained by the FBI and sent to Department of Justice camps, run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and guarded by the Border Patrol. Over half of the Japanese population in America were first generation long-term US residents who were denied citizenship and declared enemy aliens.” Rights as citizens were taken from the Japanese Americans. Many people had to leave their homes because they were a possible threat to their own country. One of these people, Louise Ogawa, experienced being put into an internment camp, yet her positive attitude still remained. To show, “ Built on Indian land, Poston was the largest
Many people remain silent in a time of conflict to avoid more conflict, but they could just have a different opinion on the conflict. Sophie Scholl is a great example of this. To show, “Sophie Scholl grew up around the Hitler Youth and their twisted ideas. All throughout high school she didn’t believe in the National Socialist perspective. Sophie had to act as though she agreed with Hitler’s views in order to receive her diploma. Sophie was later beheaded for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets” (Bartoletti 398). Jeanne dealt with conformity by accepting herself. For instance, “As I came to understand what Manzanar had meant, it gradually filled me with shame for being a person guilty of something enormous enough to deserve that kind of treatment. In order to please my accusers, I tried, for the first few years after our release, to become someone acceptable. I both succeeded and failed. By the age of seventeen I knew that making it, in the terms I had tried to adopt, was not only unlikely, but false and empty, no more authentic for me than trying to emulate my Great-aunt Toyo. I needed some grounding of my own, such as Woody had found when he went to commune with her and with our ancestors in Ka-ke. It took me another twenty years to accumulate the confidence to deal with what the equivalent experience would have to be for me” (Houston 133). Some people believe that it is not possible to conform