THE STATE YOUTH
A T THE CENTER OF THREE concentric circles stands the German child, with no escape, surrounded by the Men in Power. The closest circle is the family; but it has weakened and disintegrated to slight importance. The child can break this circle early in his life, and, as it breaks, take his stance as a soldier.
But he is enclosed by the second circle: school. All trace of privacy — there was some privacy at home, no matter how little — disappears here, giving way to serious matters of official importance. The authority of the state stands in the classroom; in the corner is the Führer’s bust; his words are spoken by teachers every day; and the child receives his praise and punishment alike in the Führer’s name.
The only loophole conceivable in school is an hour spent with some old-fashioned geography teacher, a traveler who has seen China and Africa, who speaks strange languages and tells stories of foreign people as though they were good friends. With him, time passes well, nobody thinks of the Führer, and if, at the close of the hour, before they leave for their chemistry class, the old man murmurs his “Heil Hitler,” and lifts his arm in a casual salute, it cannot cancel the hour they have spent as individuals, learning and being enchanted. This leaves its mark, even when the warlike young chemistry instructor brings them back to reality, to totalitarianism, blood and the race, submission and fanatical obedience.
The school is certainly a Nazi circle, and nothing within its boundary is at cross-purposes with the Nazi spirit. However, in spite of the violence done to scientists as well as science, there are still men at work within the structure who knew Germany before Hitler changed it. And some truths cannot be warped before the instincts of children, even though the Führer should be pleased to declare tomorrow that two and two equal five.
But the Hitler Youth organization, that third circle around the child, is the most expansive, most important, and by far the most comprehensive of his influences. Nothing is left of privacy, as at home; nothing “pre-” or “extra-Hitler,” as at school. There is nothing differing in the slightest degree from what Hitler has decreed. He permits family and school to continue as necessary evils, but his heart is with the youth unions, it is they that he visits and honors. They are called on to take part in the Nuremberg party days, he addresses them in his speeches, and their leader, the Reichsjugendführer (Leader of the Reich Youth), Baldur von Schirach, is responsible directly and solely to the Reich Chancellor himself.
This is the farthest circle; outside of the State Youth, there is no life possible for the German child in the Third Reich.
Who rules here, according to what laws? What goes on in the third circle?
Adolf Hitler, to whom the German child belongs, is himself neither adept nor courageous. Uneducated, given to unpredictable vacillation, with a body untrained in sport and naturally weak, he has required of the country’s youth education of body first, and education of character and mind as subordinate second and third. As for himself, his shoulders are narrow and his hips broad; he will never be able to distinguish himself physically. As a boy he was nervous. His mother described him as “moonstruck,” and in Mein Kampf, he admits that he was difficult to handle. He had pneumonia at the age of thirteen, and during the War he suffered from temporary blindness, probably of hysterical origin. He was only slightly wounded; a more important injury was suffered in 1923, during his Putsch, when he dashed his shoulder against the pavement near the Feldherrnhalle. He threw himself to the ground the minute he heard bullets; and later, although he had sworn to kill himself if the Putsch failed, he escaped quietly. Mussolini drives, pilots his own plane, and is an exceptionally fine rider; Hitler is not even able to sit his horse long enough to review a parade. It is eminently logical that he should desire “his” youth to be adroit and courageous, even though he himself is neither. He is giving them the “advantages” he missed, and they are to conquer the world.
Two kinds of training, then, must be given by the leaders of the State Youth. Their younger subordinates must learn the physical background of war, for which they prepare by marching, shootings riding, flying; and psychic readiness for it, in the apotheosis of the Führer, glorification of the holy ground of Germany, and worship of the one, the only, Nordic race.