The Hitler Youth

Jungsturm Adolf Hitler 

In 1920, Adolf Hitler, authorized the formation of a Youth League of the National Socialist Workers' Party (NSDAP) based upon the principles of an earlier German youth group known as as the Wandervögel.  The Wandervögel (translated as "Migratory Bird") were the German equivalent of the Boy Scouts of America and the World Organization of the Scout Movement.

Wandervögel members had an idealistic, romantic notion of the past, yearning for simpler days when people lived off the land. Wandervögel members distinguished themselves by wearing shorts and hiking boots rather than the starched shirts and creased trousers of the middle class. They believed in the importance of rediscovering nature without any modern conveniences. They sang old German folk songs around the campfire and greeting each other by saying "Heil."

This new Nazi Youth League attracted very few members at first, competing against numerous other well-established youth groups, and following the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch and Hitler's arrest, the  Youth League of the NSDAP had been outlawed.

However with Hitler's release from prison and the resurgence of the NSDAP, a new Nazi Youth Party was established and headed by Gustav Lenk. In May 1922 Lenk held a beer hall meeting in Munich, to officially proclaim the foundation of League. The Nazi Youth League was formally established small units were created in Nuremberg and other cities.

The growth of the League was slow at first, and in 1922 assistance came from the party newspaper the Völkischer Beobachter  which now called for new members, declaring:

 "We demand that the National Socialist Youth, and all other young Germans, irrespective of class or occupation, between fourteen and eighteen years of age, whose hearts are affected by the suffering and hardships afflicting the Fatherland, and who later desire to join the ranks of the fighters against the Jewish enemy, the sole originator of our present shame and suffering, enter the Youth League of the NSDAP..."

In May 1923, Lenk published the first Nazi youth magazine, Nationale Jungsturm, which proved to be a money loser and was subsequently diminished to being merely a supplement of the Völkischer Beobachter.

Read the full article here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/hitleryouth.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org