How Did Hitler Influence The Status Of German Youth

Nazi ideology was a combination of passionate nationalism and bitter racism. Adolf Hitler, the driving force of Nazism and the chancellor of Germany, along with propaganda figureheads such as Joseph Goebbels employed several tactics in order to make the rise of a Nazi Germany unavoidable. Hitler’s increase in support from the German people between 1926-1945 resulted directly from a propaganda campaign that would control the minds of German youth, persuade the people of the country to support his cause by using censorship and use anti-Semitism as a tool to influence the German people.

The propaganda campaign launched by the Nazi party controlled the minds of the German youth. Hitler’s attitude towards controlling German youth was calculated and in his speech at Reichsparteitag in 1935 when Hitler stated, ”He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future!” (Kurtis,1983). As a result of this philosophy, great emphasis was placed on youth
Membership to the Hitler Youth eventually became an inevitable process by 1936, provided recruits complied with the racial requirements (Kurtis, 1983) and punishments were given to those who refused to join (HBU, 2012). Jennifer Keeley, American author of “Life in Hitler Youth” written in 1995, corroborates the idea of the inculcation of youth when she suggests that manipulation eventually became much easier as the boys and girls had never known anything but a Germany with the National Socialists in power (Keeley, 1995). The Hitler Youth was a program that the Nazis could completely control. The younger generation came to Hitler as a clean slate and were more vulnerable to ideological manipulation. This is substantiated by Chris Turner, English historian in 1972 when he stated, “They [Hitler Youth] were programmed into believing that the Aryan race was “racially pure” and superior (Turner, 1972). This is further supported by Behrendt, a former Hitler Youth sympathiser,