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April 20, 2005
Ninety-Eight-Point-One Percent of German Boys Age Ten and Over Were in the Hitler Youth (or the Deutsches Jungvolk) in Early 1939, when the New Pope Was Twelve Years Old.
"Of the three statutory provisions concerning the H[itler]J[ugend] before September 1939, only the last one called for compulsory membership of boys and girls aged ten to eighteen. The first of these provisions was [HJ leader] Shirach's formal appointment by Hitler as Reich Youth Leader of Germany on June 17, 1933, which gave his office of youth supervision high priority without elevating it to the status of a Reich ministry. . . . The second provision, the Hitler Youth Law of December 1, 1936, stated that "the entire German youth within the territory of the Reich is coordinated in the Hitler Youth." This was wishful thinking in the guise of a decree, but it had not actually been accomplished, even though it created a strong illusion in Germany that Shirach was reight, thus adding more power to peer pressure. The third provision, on March 25, 1939, specified that "all adolescents from age 10 to 18 are obligated to put in service in the Hitler Youth." With war in the offing, Hitler now thought it prudent to fashion the HJ more strictly as a training cadre for the Wehrmacht, and this could not be accomplished without coercion. These three consecutive administrative measures are reflected in the Hitler Youth's growing statistics. According to the HJ's own figures, at the end of 1933 there were 2.3 million young people, or 30.5 percent of the total age cohort, in its ranks. This figure had climbed to 64 percent at the end of 1937, and by early 1939, undoubtedly because of the March decree, membership briefly reached a respectable 98.1 percent. To all intents and purposes, Shirach with his carrot-and-stick policy--a typical governing ploy in the formative years of the Third Reich--had been resoundingly successful."
Posted by Eric at April 20, 2005 2:50 PM
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Comments
That's more like it.
Posted by: Matt at April 20, 2005 3:36 PM
So, by these figures, almost one in fifty eligible German youth were not members of the Hitler Youth. Interesting. I wonder if there is any research on the nature of exemptions and avoidance that would allow us some insight into that 1.9%?
Posted by: Jonathan Dresner at April 21, 2005 3:34 PM
Why does it say it was mandatory for children ages ten to eighteen when madatory means that everybody had to do it and there's close to two percent of the youth that didn't?
Oh wait, I know, because Hitler didn't allow youth that were physically impaired to join. They were "worthless".
Posted by: manda at February 22, 2006 8:38 PM