Young people in the Nazi state – and the film ‘Napola’

You are 14, it is 1936, and your afternoons are not your own. Twice a week, there is ‘service’: an evening group meeting with instruction, sport on the field, and outdoor games or a camp at the weekend. You wear a uniform, like almost everyone in your class. Anyone who does not attend stands out – and their parents get into trouble. But honestly, you also enjoy the campfires, the trips and the feeling of belonging to something big. And at 16, you might get to lead a group yourself. Not everyone is allowed to join: the Jewish girl who sat next to you at primary school is excluded – and perhaps you no longer even notice.

This mixture is exactly what this module explores: the Nazi state wanted not only to control young people, but to win them over – and shape them. In “Who's who? The party, SA, SS, Gestapo and youth organisations”, you learnt about the youth organisations HJ, DJ, BDM and JM, and in “Worldview and persuasion: ideology and propaganda”, you saw how propaganda works. Now you will look more closely: how did voluntary participation become compulsory? What were boys and girls supposed to become? What did the elite schools you know from the film ‘Napola’ do? Who refused to join in – and what happened to them?

One point before we begin: we look at this period through the eyes of young people who observe, join in, doubt or refuse – not through the eyes of the perpetrators.

Before 1933, Germany had hundreds of youth associations: scouts, Wandervögel, church youth groups, workers' youth groups and sports clubs. Within a few months of the Nazi takeover, they were banned or ‘incorporated’ into the Hitlerjugend; the HJ took over their clubhouses, campsites and funds. Only Catholic youth groups, protected by a treaty between the regime and the Vatican, managed to survive for a few more years, under growing pressure.

A law and a decree did the rest:

‘In addition to their upbringing in the family and at school, all German young people must be educated physically, mentally and morally in the Hitler Youth, in the spirit of National Socialism, to serve the people and the national community.’

— Gesetz über die Hitler-Jugend, 1. Dezember 1936, § 2

This made the HJ the state youth organisation. Alongside the family and school, there was now a third force shaping young people's upbringing – the Hitlerjugend itself, the party's youth organisation with a state mandate. Until 1940, it was headed by Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach. You know from “Worldview and persuasion: ideology and propaganda” what ‘national community’ meant in Nazi terminology: a community from which many remained excluded – Jewish young people were not allowed to join.

By early 1939, membership of the HJ, DJ, BDM and JM had risen to around 8.7 million – almost all young people. In March 1939, compulsory youth service followed (a decree under the law of 1936): membership was compulsory from the age of ten, and parents who kept their children away could be punished. The diagram shows the path the regime planned for every boy and girl from then on: from Jungvolk through the HJ and labour service into the Wehrmacht, and from Jungmädelbund through the BDM into the role of ‘German woman and mother’.

Remember: ‘Bringing young people into line’ meant banning independent youth associations or incorporating them into the HJ. Meeting, hiking and singing were now supposed to take place only under the regime's supervision. Anyone who still sought their own path risked persecution – you will read more about this later in the module.

Why did so many young people join in enthusiastically? The Hitlerjugend offered things that young people sought then, just as they do today – but demanded a high price in return:

What attracted them	What lay behind it
Camps, trips, nights in tents – escaping the confines of family life, adventure	Getting used to orders and obedience, marching and toughness
Sport, competitions, outdoor games	‘Military fitness training’ (‘Wehrertüchtigung’, the Nazi term for military training for young people): preparation for war, with shooting practice from 16
Community, uniforms, flags – belonging, being equal	Control: absentees are reported; every service session is recorded in a booklet
Responsibility – ‘youth leads youth’: 16-year-olds lead 12-year-olds	Passing pressure down the chain; punishment by peers
Being taken seriously – you are the future, they were told	Indoctrination (influence that allows no disagreement): group evenings with ‘racial theory’, the cult of the leader and enemy images
Time with peers – weekends and group evenings without parents	Reaching into family life: the party educates children alongside their parents; anyone keeping a child away is viewed with suspicion, with penalties from 1939

‘Youth leads youth’ was a clever trick: the group leaders were themselves young people. It felt like self-determination, but was the opposite, because orders came from above and were passed down. And the enthusiasm was real: many later remembered the trips as the happiest time of their youth – and only much later recognised what they had been trained for.

Remember: The HJ was both an offer that truly attracted young people and an instrument that shaped them for war and obedience. If you see only one side, you cannot understand why it worked.

What were young people supposed to become? Hitler himself told the HJ boys to their faces at the Nazi Party rally in 1935:

‘… slim and straight, swift as greyhounds, tough as leather and as hard as Krupp steel.’

— Adolf Hitler, Rede vor der Hitlerjugend, Reichsparteitag Nürnberg, September 1935

For context: Hitler was speaking as party leader and Reich Chancellor to assembled HJ units. ‘Krupp steel’ means steel made by the Krupp company in Essen, which was also used to make cannons. Your task: read the quotation carefully. Which qualities does Hitler name – and which are entirely absent (intellect, compassion, independent judgement)? Make a note of your answer; you will need it in the further study section at the end of the module (task 2).

Boys

Tough, obedient, ready for sacrifice – soldiers. The HJ prepared boys for the Wehrmacht: marching, outdoor games, small-bore shooting and tests of courage. Anyone who cried was considered soft; anyone who asked questions was considered cheeky. The Jungvolk boys (10 to 14) were called ‘Pimpfe’; even admission required a ‘Pimpfenprobe’, a test involving sport, a march and reciting party knowledge.

Girls

Healthy, obedient, housewives and mothers of many children. The BDM offered sport and camps, but its goal was the ‘German woman and mother’: housekeeping, infant care, folk dancing and needlework. From 1938, there was the ‘Mutterkreuz’ (Mother's Cross) (officially: Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter) – a decoration for women with many children: bronze for four or more, silver for six or more, gold for eight or more children. HJ boys were expected to salute women who held the Mother's Cross. Behind this lay ‘racial theory’: more ‘Aryan’ children were supposed to make the people ‘strong’ – and supply future soldiers. Women's careers were seen only as a temporary stage before marriage.

School

Schools were also brought into line. From 1933, ‘heredity and racial studies’ were on the curriculum: pseudoscientific ‘racial theory’ was taught as established knowledge (more on this in “Worldview and persuasion: ideology and propaganda”). Maths problems used soldiers and ‘hereditarily diseased’ people in their calculations, while history lessons presented the ‘Führer’ as the culmination of history. Almost all teachers belonged to the NS-Lehrerbund (National Socialist Teachers' League). Jewish teachers were dismissed as early as 1933, and Jewish pupils were gradually forced out of schools. The day began with the Hitler salute and an assembly at the flag.

Remember: Boys → soldiers, girls → mothers. Both served the same goal: war.

Singing was part of HJ life – while marching, around the campfire and at group evenings. The best-known song was the HJ-Fahnenlied (HJ Flag Song) of 1933. Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach wrote the lyrics himself; the melody comes from a propaganda film of the same year in which a Hitler Youth boy dies for the ‘movement’ (the Nazis' name for their party). We do not reproduce the lyrics here – they are still protected by copyright, and they glorify death. We describe them instead:

• The song has the rhythm of a march; it is sung while marching in step, and the lines are short and easy to shout.
• At its centre is the flag, carried at the front. Young people are supposed to follow it unconditionally.
• The young people are addressed as future soldiers, ready to fight for the Führer and Germany.
• The chorus's central message is that the flag is worth more than your own life – dying for it is presented as an honour.

Imagine 200 fourteen-year-olds singing this in step, with drums, at camp in the evening. That was exactly the point: once you have sung a song a hundred times, you no longer think about it – you feel it. In this way, readiness to die was turned into a feeling of community, long before anyone actually had to go to the front. You will find the task analysing this at the end of the module (further study, task 2).

The regime had special schools for the ‘best’:

• Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten (NPEA), known to everyone simply as ‘Napola’: state boarding schools, the first three opened in April 1933 in former Prussian cadet schools (military boarding schools that had previously trained future officers), with increasing SS influence from 1936. By 1945, there were around 40 in the German Reich and occupied territories, including a few for girls. Their aim was to train the future leadership elite of the state, party and military.
• Adolf-Hitler-Schulen (AHS), established from 1937 and run by the party and the HJ: boarding schools for boys aged 12 and over, with admission through the HJ and no school fees.

Admission depended on passing the selection process: ‘racial’ criteria (proof of ancestry, appearance), physical performance (sport, tests of courage), obedience and ‘character’. Family background and money mattered less than at traditional elite secondary schools. Napola fees were based on parents' income, and workers' sons could also be admitted. This was part of the promise of the ‘national community’.

Daily life involved military drill, assemblies at the flag, sport of every kind – including boxing, because it was supposed to prove ‘toughness’ – field exercises, gliding and riding, alongside lessons in uniform following a fixed curriculum with plenty of ‘racial studies’. Pupils lived in ‘platoons’ and ‘companies’ like soldiers, with older pupils commanding younger ones. During the war, the Napolas increasingly became schools supplying recruits for the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS: older pupils were called up at ever younger ages, many volunteered as officer candidates – and many were killed in action.

Remember: The elite schools were the model of what the HJ was trying to do on a smaller scale everywhere – only with more time, more drill and no family home.

You have watched the film ‘Napola – Elite für den Führer’ (Deutschland 2004, Regie: Dennis Gansel). It tells the story of Friedrich, a working-class boy from Berlin whose boxing talent takes him to a Napola in 1942, and Albrecht, the son of a senior party official, whom he befriends.

Before you use the film as a historical source, you need to know what it is: a feature film, meaning a portrayal, not a source from the period. Friedrich and Albrecht are fictional characters; their story is invented and concentrated into a few weeks so that it fits into two hours and moves us. The film is not a source for the question ‘What was it really like in 1942?’ It is, however, an excellent source for the question ‘How does Germany in 2004 tell stories about National Socialism?’

What in the film matches the historical facts:

• selection based on physical and ‘racial’ criteria,
• boxing, drill, tests of courage and obedience as educational methods,
• the hierarchy among pupils: older pupils commanded younger ones,
• the fact that workers' sons could also be admitted, alongside the sons of senior officials,
• the use of pupils to search for escaped prisoners – the scene is invented, but based on real crimes: towards the end of the war, Hitler Youth boys and pupils were indeed used in searches and as guards.

What is invented or dramatised: the two main characters and their personal story, individual teachers and dialogues, the concentration of many events into a few weeks – and the interpretation of how isolated the boys became under pressure. This is not a flaw in the film – it is how cinema works. What matters is that you keep the two apart.

Remember: A feature film shows you how people imagine a period, not how it actually was. Check every claim a film makes against sources and specialist texts before accepting it as fact.

Despite the law and the pressure, some young people did not comply – from small acts of refusal to open resistance. The regime took action against them, ranging from pressure on parents and punishments to arrest, youth concentration camps and death sentences.

Edelweisspiraten

In the Rhineland and Ruhr region, especially Cologne, groups of apprentices and young workers who stayed away from the HJ began meeting in the late 1930s. They wore an edelweiss flower on their jackets, organised their own hikes and camping trips, sang their own songs with mocking lyrics and got into fights with the HJ-Streifendienst, an HJ unit that kept watch on young people. During the war, some groups helped deserters (soldiers who had fled the Wehrmacht) and forced labourers (people from occupied countries who were forced to work in Germany). The Gestapo regarded them as ‘gangs’. In November 1944, 13 people were publicly hanged in Cologne-Ehrenfeld, without a trial, including young people from these circles – one was the 16-year-old apprentice Bartholomäus Schink.

Swing-Jugend

In Hamburg and other large cities, young people, mostly from middle-class families, met to listen and dance to jazz and swing – music the regime rejected as ‘un-German’ and ‘degenerate’ and increasingly banned. Both were Nazi terms: ‘un-German’ meant ‘not fitting in with the German people’, while ‘degenerate’ supposedly meant ‘corrupted’ – the regime used them to disparage anything that did not fit its worldview. The Swing-Jugend wore their hair long, dressed in English fashions, carried umbrellas in sunshine and called one another by English names. This was not politics, but it was a refusal to conform – and that was enough: from 1941, hundreds were arrested in Hamburg, and some were sent to the Moringen youth concentration camp (for boys) and Uckermark (for girls).

Helmuth Hübener

Helmuth Hübener from Hamburg was 16 when, in 1941, he began secretly listening at night to the BBC – the banned British broadcaster. With two friends, he typed the news onto leaflets and distributed them in letterboxes and telephone boxes: reports on the true course of the war that German propaganda concealed. In February 1942, he was betrayed and arrested. The Volksgerichtshof – the regime's special court for political trials, which allowed no fair defence – sentenced him to death; he was executed on 27 October 1942, at 17 years old, making him one of the youngest people this court sentenced to death.

(Extension) The Weisse Rose: In Munich, students including Hans and Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf, together with Professor Kurt Huber, distributed leaflets against the regime and the war in 1942/43. In February 1943, the Scholl siblings were discovered leaving leaflets at the university; four days later, they and Christoph Probst were executed, and the others were executed later. Their leaflets are now among the best-known texts of the German resistance.

Remember: There were many ways of saying no – from staying away and listening to your own music to distributing leaflets. The regime's response varied in severity according to the level of refusal: penalties for parents, arrest and youth concentration camps, and even execution for open resistance.

In many books and online, you will find a famous quotation in which Hitler supposedly describes the ‘violent, domineering, fearless, cruel youth’ he wanted. It fits perfectly with everything you have learnt in this module – and that is exactly why you should be suspicious.

The quotation comes from Hermann Rauschning's book ‘Gespräche mit Hitler’, published in exile in 1939/40. Rauschning was a former Nazi from Danzig who had turned against the regime and claimed to have had many confidential conversations with Hitler. His book aimed to warn the world about Hitler – an understandable intention, but no proof that the conversations took place as described. The book was a worldwide success – it told readers what they expected to hear about Hitler.

Since the 1980s, researchers have examined the book closely, and their conclusion is clear: Rauschning had met Hitler only briefly on a few occasions. The long ‘conversations’ were constructed afterwards – pieced together from newspaper reports, ‘Mein Kampf’, Hitler's speeches and Rauschning's own ideas, with some parts entirely invented. Historians therefore no longer use the book as a source for Hitler's words. The fact that the quotation about education still appears everywhere shows how persistently a good story survives – even without evidence.

For you, this means asking these questions about every quotation:

1. Who is reporting it – and were they really there?
2. When was it written down – immediately or years later?
3. Why was it published – what was the author's intention?
4. What does current research say about it?

The quotation from ‘Mein Kampf’ in the extension section of “Worldview and persuasion: ideology and propaganda” passes the tests in questions 1, 2 and 4: Hitler wrote it himself and published it in 1925, and researchers have verified the wording – so it is authentic evidence of the views Hitler expressed publicly. Question 3 still applies to him: ‘Mein Kampf’ was a manifesto and a work of self-promotion, so we must also ask what Hitler intended his words to achieve. The Rauschning quotation, by contrast, fails the very first test. Only one is authentic – and even authentic sources need to be read critically.