Hitler Youth

Hitler Youth, German Nazi youth organization, one of the key elements in Adolf Hitler's National Socialist

master plan to extend absolute control over all aspects of life within the new Germany. Under the ruthless direction of Baldur von Schirach, a member of the Führer's inner circle, the Hitler Youth became a force to be reckoned with in the early 1930s. Von Schirach, who was appointed Youth Leader of the Reich in June 1933, made sure that the Hitler Youth absorbed the other established German youth movements, confiscating their property wholesale. In 1936 all rival organizations were banned, and at the outbreak of World War II in 1939 children began to be conscripted into the Hitler Youth. The system was arranged in such a way that children were placed in different cadres and different special schools for political education according to their ages; the organization took in youngsters from 15 to 18, who had their own departments of culture, press, propaganda, and sports. The intention behind all this was to indoctrinate a future generation of Aryan Nazi leaders. In the last days of the war, when the German army was broken and Hitler was cornered in his bunker, it was to the adolescents of the Hitler Youth that he turned for the defence of Berlin.