The story was written to prejudice everyone in favor of the organization and its “great journeys.” By contrast, any statistics would pale; and this is the most attractive side, emphasized in fiction! Was it an exaggerated emotion — the fear that too much strain was being put on these children? “Gag on the food,” and “a poke, or even a sock on the jaw!”—how the leaders are feared, how they represent power, even though they are only two years older than the rest! Hans, the Juschafu, simply takes the heavy knapsack from the little boy, and gives it to the one who had already complained of his own load. In the end, the boy takes both loads anyway, for the Juschafu has grown “acrid.”
After all of this, it seems extraordinary even to the writer that a good mood should prevail. And the conversation at home in the evening, the idyllic note that closes the sketch, is a sharp reminder of the scenes of soldiers assembled to talk and remember in the post-war years. “It was a fine time,” they say, in their amnesia, “… the old days… facing the enemy, together!” The “State Youth” has evenings of patriotic music, tall stories, warrior poetry, and crude harsh jokes. What else are the evenings of these grim and fatal children than time spent resting in the hinterland?
WHERE IS THE ENEMY?
The Literature of War
Hitler has been able to spread, as an important factor toward his internal policy, the feeling that war is near. The German people find war present. It is possible to force a nation to endure hunger, lack of freedom, arbitrary power, sacrifices of all sorts; to rouse them to superhuman performance by making them believe that they are living in exceptional circumstances; to confiscate their property, and enforce martial law — but only if and when the people are convinced that a state of war exists and that life depends on their will to fight, to conquer, and to die. The Men in Power have been artists, creating this atmosphere in Germany, and convincing the half-grown young, especially, that the battle exists in deadly seriousness.
But where is the enemy? These are people who have come over a rise of ground, in fog, fighting fog.
Where is the enemy?
Never mind. The Führer commands, and they follow.
He is well endowed to be the lord of such an army, in a fantastic war, without a palpable enemy. Hitler, to whom Germany and Austria surrendered without a show of struggle, is an uneducated Wagnerian, a lover of blood-red flags, and of the secret midnight oath. On a certain thirtieth of June — the day he had his best friends murdered — he spent the evening listening to music, which so moved him that he became quite tender at the thought of so much bloodshed. He is the ideal captain for such a non-existent “wish-war.” Two sides meet and act together in him: the romantic, obsessed by a mystic blood fantasy; and the calculating, plotting, wary, possessed of an animal tenacity which locks its teeth in its object. But if ever the dream-war becomes a reality, and Hitler needs to defend himself against the visible enemy, the decisive issue may he which side of him survives, the recluse or the sly, hardheaded man. In the meantime, he bolsters himself for that defense.
Periodicals have been valuable to Hitler. They have helped to harden his State Youth against hunger, forced marches, and the hardships and fiction of the Führer’s war. One of the most important of the youth magazines is H.J. — Battling Organ of the Hitler Youth. “Hitler Youth! You are standing in the midst of battle! Arm yourself by reading the H.J. ” is the canvassing slogan of the magazine, almost all of whose contents — essays, poems, short stories, memoirs — accent the thought of “battle.”