Hitler's Children (Quote page)

This page is intended to be used in conjunction with my main Hitler's Children Documentary post. You may use it as a quick reference to conversations with former Hitler Youth members who were interviewed in the documentary Hitler's Children.

Episode 1: Seduction
Part 1
0:27 - I was ten years old, and then the German people, or so it said in the newspaper, were giving all 10-year-olds to the Fuhrer. We were given to the Fuhrer(for Hitler’s birthday). On the big sports ground the entire section was assembled. All the platoons stood in serried ranks and publicly swore and oath of allegiance. I remember the words. “I promise always to do my duty in the Hitler Youth out of love and loyalty to the Fuhrer and our Flag.”
2:00 - From the local Party heads to the junior boys’ leaders we were one big community.
2:24 - “We don’t want to be the last on the world stage. We want to be among the first. That is what we pledge. To fulfil this wish is your duty to me because you are the future of the German Reich(Hitler).”
3:23 - We felt more at home in the group with the uniform and the singalongs than we did with our parents.
4:29 - We had been sworn into a community. The uniform(brownshirts) was the outer sign and at the same time it offered us some protection. “Uniformity of thought finds expression in uniformity of appearance. If you ask one, you know what all will say. The directing of life towards one goal subordinates the individual to the point of self-denial.”
5:08 - They were so clever the way they operated. They didn’t say “We want to turn you into good Nazis.” They just said “Were doing lots for youngsters.”
5:50 - Parents surrendered their rights as educators when their sons joined the Hitler Youth or Jungvolk. That was the Nazis real goal. Then they could get boys to do what the adults did ... march through the streets.
Part 2
3:20 - We thought we would now determine what happened in society. The other youth associations were disbanded and incorporated into the Hitler Youth(the Hitler youth ruled the streets)
5:40 - I saw the progress in Germany. The people getting work, the flags, processions, torchlight parades. We felt such enthusiasm. It was like a mass hypnosis that put me under its spell.
10:02 - All those things ... the outings, the fire and so on were adopted. The appeal of the Jungvolk was based on the vitality of the Youth League.
Part 3
3:50 - We used to spend Sundays with our parents. We’d go out on a boat, or for a walk, or play a game. But all that stopped because we were told “You can’t go everywhere with your parents.” “You’re a mummy’s boy .. So we cut the apron strings.
5:13 - Rebelliousness was exploited by the Hitler Youth and used for the purposes of the Third Reich. We rebelled against the rest of the world. The entire Third Reich was a rebellion against a humane world, against humanity.
8:37 - The concept of youth was idealized. (“You will be Germany’s future because you will be Germany. You will be our nation. You will be our hope ... You must be the fulfilment of all we hope for.”(Hitler)
Part 4
1:00 - The Gleichschaltung, the dispossession of the German boy, the destruction of his individuality was Schirach’s program and he enforced it.
3:40 - My age group was pressured into joining. Although it was allegedly voluntary. But later it was compulsory. No one can say no. The Hitler Youth was in charge of everything to do with young people.
4:15 - The idea alone that every Hitler Youth and Jungvolk member could do whatever interested him was the great attraction.
6:30 - The attraction was that everyone in Germany could rise into a position of command over someone else. Nearly everyone had a position, and young people had them too.
Part 5
3:01 - They were very good, very good indeed, at always telling us things in small doses ... one small dose at a time and then a bit more. So we didn’t notice what they were doing to us.
5:10 - In the torchlight there was an appeal not to reason but to readiness and self-sacrifice.
5:40 - Faith, unconditional faith that the Fuhrer would do things right.
Part 6
1:00 - The flag is greater than death(song). You're nothing. Your life is worthless. You must be ready to sacrifice your lives to the flag. It was an appeal to the young that sentenced them to death. Can there be any greater crime than that? It was an appeal made to 12 or 13 year-old boys.

Episode 2: Dedication
Part 7 - BDM (the female branch of the Nazi party youth movement. The League of German Girls)
1:50 - Girls would be used to breed a new generation of Nazis.
Part 8
0:40 - Marching was an important part of BDM life. The idea was to break down individuality and build a collective spirit.
1:13 - The BDM girls held their own flag days and memorial parades on Nazi holidays. These were deliberately scheduled to compete with the church calendar and marginalize religion in Nazi Germany. New recruits were sworn in at powerful, torchlit ceremonies. (Oath)“I swear this sacred oath by God. I will be loyal to my Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, and obedient to him at all times.”
6:00 - What the Fuhrer does is right. That’s how it was. The Fuhrer can’t be wrong.
6:40 - After the war they told us we’d been living without freedom. This is new to me. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t free because I didn’t understand the concept of freedom as we know it today.
Part 9 (15:50 - 23:10) Google Video - Episode 2: Dedication
17:10 - The BDM girls were expected to take part in huge public gymnastic displays. These were meant to teach an important lesson. Girls should not think of themselves as individuals, but as part of the German nation.
Part 10
2:05 - The enemy was outside us. That bonded us as a nation. They were the “baddies.”
8:35 - In 1933 it became compulsory for women between 17 and 45 to work for the war effort.
Part 11 no quotes
Part 12 no quotes

Episode 3: Education - NAPOLA Schools
Part 13
4:25 - “You’re the best” they said. The word “elite” came up a lot. They wanted to motivate us. “You’re the elite, the hope for the future.”
Part 14
1:30 - The discipline was designed to break down individuality. Your nothing. Your nation is everything. The individual no longer counted. The only thing that counted was the community which marched to prescribed rules. The philosophy was simple. Everyone should learn both to give and to obey orders.
5:20 - We were to be loyal followers of Hitler and faithful Nazis. Independent thinkers with our own will who could assert ourselves and make decisions. That wasn’t possible of course. You can’t be a loyal Nazi and also think critically.
6:41 - The Adolf Hitler schoolboys were showered with special privileges. They wanted for nothing. We had a lot of opportunities. Trips, maneuvers as we called them. We could go skiing and we went to the Alps and the lakes. That was unusual for a boy in those days. If you want to seduce, you must offer seductive things. That happened to us. We were seduced very cleverly.
Part 15 (14:00 - 23:40) Google Video - Episode 3: Education
15:40 - In all Hitler schools, lessons were taught within the context of Nazi philosophy. So math was reborn as the science of war. In history, the main topic was the Treaty of Versailles, the peace settlement that humiliated Germany at the end of the first world war.
17:45 - Although the elite Nazi schools boasted of excellence, educational standards were poor. At selection camps people were picked for their commitment to national socialism rather than their intellectual ability.
19:50 - National Socialism is the Fuhrer’s will, full stop.
Part 16
6:10 - We were never taught, it wasn’t in the curriculum, that one of the reasons we are put on earth is to help those weaker than ourselves(They took field trips to Jewish ghettos).
Part 17
0:00 - We dealt with it by saying “They are enemies of our people. While we are at war we have to isolate them here.(concentration camps)” Actually, the greatest crime that we were subjected to was that they eliminated any capacity for pity. We were to be capable of thinking but not able to feel pity.
0:54 - There was no place for religion in Nazi Germany. It was swiftly removed from the curriculum. By 1942, only 1 in 4 of Hitler’s school boys believed in God. Instead there was a new faith, the cult of Hitler. There was no God, but providence gave us the Fuhrer.
7:15 - The schools promoted an idealized version of war. Old boys returning from the front gave talks which they’d embellish with tales of personal heroism.
Part 18
3:55 - Up till the end of the war I was learning to die for my fatherland, but I didn’t learn to live for it. Our thinking was “Your nothing. Your people are everything.”
5:35 - All those things they’d done to us had a specific aim. And that aim becomes clearer to me every year was a hero’s death.

Episode 4: War
Part 19
0:25 - When Germany went to war in 1939, 4 out of 5 of the country’s children were members of the Hitler Youth. From the age of ten, they had learned Nazi ideology and military tactics in Hitler Youth clubhouses and bootcamps.
8:20 - A German boy had to be a loyal German. Loyalty is the mark of honor. That was the motto of the SS, but also of the Hitler Youth.
Part 20
5:05 - In 1942, my father came home on leave. He’d been called up. I was already in bed and I heard him say to my mother. If someone doesn’t shoot Hitler dead soon, he’ll lead us to ruin...I remember even wondering whether I should report it.
Part 21 (17:25 - 26:47) Google Video - Episode 4: War
25:40 - The Nazis used big budget feature films to sell their cause to the nation’s youth. These epics taught children about the honor of dying for one’s country.
Part 22 no quotes
Part 23
1:55 - The SS organize elaborate advertising campaigns to attract Hitler Youth boys. They used the idea of exclusivity as a seductive tool.
Part 24
1:35 - They were to be loyal to the fatherland, but the fatherland was just another name for Adolf Hitler. Germans were told “The holy fatherland is in danger.” Gather your sons around. The Nazis obliterated God and virtues like charity and truthfulness and any human feeling for the enemy. They got rid of them and put absolute loyalty to the fatherland and the Fuhrer at the center of their ethic.

Episode 5: Sacrifice
Part 25
3:00 - They’d stuffed us full of propaganda. We’d heard it from the officers and on the radio. They kept on telling us we had to win no matter how.
Part 26 no quotes
Part 27 (14:45 - 23:40) Google Video - Episode 5: Sacrifice
(no quotes)
Part 28
2:15 - Perhaps the most important thing was the sense of belonging to a community and sharing the responsibility to it. Meaning that the moment I bail out, I leave others in the lurch.
Part 29
1:23 - We’d been taught not to feel fear. We weren’t allowed to show emotion. But always had to exercise discipline, self-discipline. And we always had to see things through to the end.
Part 30 no quotes