Raised by the Reich: The lasting scars of a totalitarian childhood

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“In Hitler's Germany, my Germany, childhood ended at the age of 10, with admission to the Jungvolk, the junior branch of the Hitler Youth,” recalled Alfons Heck, who grew up in a small town in western Germany. By 1933, the Nazis had already taken over what had been a fairly autonomous system of universal education.

German school: from Weimar to the Nazis and the purges

In 1920, with the adoption of the Elementary School Act, education in Germany became compulsory and accessible. The previous privileged preparatory schools attached to gymnasiums were abolished, and all children began their schooling under relatively equal conditions.

At the same time, the Weimar Constitution allowed the federal states to decide whether schools would be denominational (Catholic or Protestant) or interdenominational. After fierce debate, a compromise was reached: elementary schools would be secular, but parents had the right to demand a religious school for their children provided that there were enough students in the district to support such institutions.

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, however, Germany’s school system underwent new reforms. The Reich leadership openly stated that the goal of school was not intellectual development, but character formation. Education Minister Bernhard Rust declared that Germany needed not “clever boys” — it needed “young men with will and courage.” In his speeches, Hitler emphasized that he wanted German youth to be “as hard as steel, as fast as greyhounds, and as tough as leather.”

On Apr. 7, 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was adopted, allowing the dismissal of Jewish teachers from schools, along with those deemed “politically unreliable” — the first step toward “purging” the teaching profession. Almost simultaneously, on Apr. 25, 1933, the Law Against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities appeared. It limited student numbers and imposed racial quotas, effectively excluding Jews from higher education.

The Reich Ministry of Science, Education and National Instruction, created in 1934, centralized control over schooling and stripped the federal states of their former autonomy. From that point on, all curricula, textbooks, and staffing decisions were approved through the Reich ministry. In 1933–1934, the school system underwent the so-called Gleichschaltung — the “bringing into line” of all educational structures with National Socialist ideology. Teachers were required to join the National Socialist Teachers’ League, which was subordinate to the party. School boards and inspectorates were replaced by centralized bodies run from Berlin.

Children’s political organizations

“It said in the papers at the time that the German people had made a gift to the Führer of a year’s crop of children. We were a present for the Führer,” recalled writer Erich Loest, who was admitted to the Nazi youth organization at the age of ten.

The regime saw children and teenagers as the “builders of the future Reich” and created an entire system of upbringing for them. School, extracurricular activities, and even leisure were subordinated to a single goal — raising loyal followers of Hitler. According to Kurt Heindorf, who studied during that era, Hitler “was like a god. He was the idealized figure who was in charge of everything, and to whom everyone turned.”

The centerpiece of this system was the Hitler Youth, which was founded in 1926 but became an official state structure only in 1933. Once all other youth groups — Catholic, Protestant, and scouting — were dissolved, the Hitler Youth became the only legal organization for German teenagers to join. The “Hitler Youth Law” of Dec. 1, 1936 stated that “all German youth outside the family and school is united in the Hitler Youth.” A party official, the Reich Youth Leader, was appointed head of all German youth and answered directly to Hitler.

In 1939, a new decree, the “Youth Service Regulation,” made membership in the Hitler Youth and in the girls’ organization League of German Girls mandatory for all “racially suitable” children and teenagers. The organization was divided by age and gender. Boys aged 10-14 belonged to the Jungvolk, and from 14 to 18 they participated in the Hitler Youth proper. As Alfons Heck recalled, “our prewar activities resembled those of the Boy Scouts, with much more emphasis on discipline and political indoctrination.” Another student, Jorst Hernand, said children were taught not only all kinds of military games and endurance exercises, but also how to kill animals — chopping off chickens’ heads, butchering hares, and wringing pigeons’ necks. In this way, children were “toughened” for potential future trials.

Girls aged 10–14 belonged to the League of Girls, and those between 14 and 18 belonged to the League of German Girls. For older girls there was an additional organization — Faith and Beauty, which accepted members up to age twenty-one.

Every child was effectively required to be part of one of these structures. Boys were prepared for military service and leadership. Their program included camps, hikes, shooting practice, drill training, and physical hardening. “That principle of solidarity or loving one's neighbor just didn't exist at all. Toughness was the order of the day. Anyone who showed weakness was despised. Sympathy was taboo,” noted former Hitler Youth member Gerhard Wilke. Girls, meanwhile, were taught housekeeping, needlework, childcare, and “racial responsibility,” meaning the duty to bear “healthy German children.” The ideal for a boy was the soldier, and for a girl, it was the mother and homemaker sustaining the nation.

Alongside ordinary schools and mass youth organizations, the Nazis created a network of elite educational institutions. The best known were the National Political Education Institutes (Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten, or Napola) — boarding schools directly subordinate to the state. They trained future leaders of the army and the party. Only boys of “Aryan descent” with impeccable health and discipline could be admitted.

“The transition from an ordinary Berlin school to a Napola was hard for me. Physically I was below average, and for several years this poisoned my life every day,” said Günter Vogel, a former student of the Napola in Potsdam. Schooling combined regular academic subjects with military and ideological instruction: mandatory drill, athletic tests, and political lectures. As Hans Müncheberg, another former student of the Potsdam Napola, recalled: “If anyone showed weakness, he was considered a wet, a weakling, a coward, a disgrace to the whole platoon or the whole company.”

Adolf Hitler Schools served a similar function. They were controlled by the Hitler Youth itself and also trained future officers and party officials.

Another link in this system was the Order Castles — institutions for older youth and adult candidates for party cadres. Participation in these organizations, with their many ceremonies and rituals, was intended to instill in children a sense of pride in themselves and their country. Lothar Scholz, a Hitler Youth member, recalled the compulsory group singing of hymns: “On ceremonial occasions, when we sang solemn hymns, we felt we were bound together. At that moment one could have died for the Fatherland.” Renate Finck, a member of the League of German Girls, remembered how important the joint activities were to her: “I was needed! The feeling of being a necessary part of a whole…this feeling was new to me and it was like a drug.”

Special uniforms also played a major role. According to another student, Klaus Mauelschagen, boys were proud of how they looked, and they tried to impress the girls. Membership and uniforms gave many children the sense that people had begun to “take them seriously.”

By the late 1930s, Germany had developed a fully structured and legally codified system of upbringing: a state school system permeated with ideology from top to bottom. There was compulsory membership in the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls, along with special elite schools for future leaders. From the age of ten to adulthood, children lived under constant oversight by the state and the party, allowing the Reich to turn education into a powerful tool of propaganda and preparation for service to the Nazi regime.

Conversations about important German things

Starting in 1933, the state reworked school curricula so that schools would produce loyal citizens of the Reich who were devoted to Hitler and ready for war. Joachim Ellert, who attended school during that time, recalled: “Courage and how to be heroes, those were the things that were drummed into us… Only those who had done something military — there was no other kind of hero.”

Germany’s school system changed both in content and in the structure of classroom time. Physical education, or Leibeserziehung, became one of the core subjects. Before 1933, PE took up only two hours a week, but by 1937 most schools had increased it to five hours. Classes included drill, paramilitary games, grenade throwing, and cross-country runs.

In the gymnasiums, where older teenagers studied, the share of PE time was smaller, but in primary and middle schools sports became a central part of education. In elite institutions, such as the Napola and the SS Order Schools, nearly half of instructional time was devoted to physical training and drill.

Harald Scholz, a former student of an Adolf Hitler School, recalled: “Through the exaggerated importance placed on physical education, the Adolf Hitler Schools fulfilled the expectation which the regime placed in them: to produce combat-ready, performance-minded managers of power, but ones who would still follow instructions in times of conflict.”

For girls, the Nazi leadership believed that physical education should not prepare them for war but for motherhood. Girls’ schools focused on gymnastics, dance, rhythmic exercise, and a “healthy lifestyle.” They were trained to be hardy yet “feminine” — strong and healthy enough to bear “robust German children.”

The rise in the role of sports came at the expense of other subjects. Latin and Greek gradually disappeared from curricula, and time for literature, music, and art was sharply reduced. Meanwhile, classes in history, geography, biology, and German expanded and were used for ideological indoctrination. For example, the biology curriculum introduced mandatory sections on “racial studies” (Rassenkunde) and “racial hygiene” (Rassenhygiene), in which children were taught that humanity is divided into races and that the “Aryan” race stands above the others. Students were shown diagrams of “racial types,” had their skulls measured, and discussed the “danger of mixed marriages.” These topics were presented as “scientific knowledge” and were used to justify sterilization policies and the persecution of those the Nazis considered “inferior.” Student Irmgard Rogge recalled: “We were the better members of the human race, we were the more competent, we were the more beautiful. And the Jews were the opposite — that was how it was presented to us.”

History and geography were used to promote ideas of national superiority, with lessons emphasizing the “heroic” role of the Germanic peoples and the Prussian state, while the defeat of 1918 was attributed to “betrayal by internal enemies.” Geography taught that Germany was “too small” and needed “living space” (Lebensraum) in the east. Students were shown maps depicting neighboring territories as natural zones for German expansion.

These subjects were meant to instill in children the notion that war and conquest were a natural and justified continuation of national history. Hans Buchholz, a former student of the Napola school in Naumburg, recalled: “Our thinking was totally shaped in one direction — you are nothing, your Volk is everything. Germany must live, even if we have to die.”

German language and literature were turned into tools for shaping the “true German.” Jewish and “unreliable” authors were removed from school curricula and replaced with texts glorifying soldiers, the land, the peasantry, and sacrifice for the nation — the so-called “blood and soil” (Blut und Boden) literature. Students wrote essays about the valor of German soldiers and the achievements of the Führer. Even grammatical examples and dictation texts carried a propagandistic message. Uwe Lamprecht, a former student of the Napola school in Plön, recalled: “The first thing we had to learn was obedience. The thought behind this was that only someone who has learned to obey orders knows how to give them.” To achieve this, educators often resorted to bullying and punishment.

Even mathematics, physics, and chemistry were used for propaganda purposes. Problems and examples introduced themes linked to war, race, or the economy, such as comparing “state expenses for the care of the unfit” with spending on “healthy families.” Physics and chemistry placed more emphasis on subjects connected with military affairs — aviation, radio technology, and explosives.

Religious instruction was gradually phased out. Formally, the subject of “Religion” remained on school schedules, especially in Catholic and Protestant regions, but the number of hours was reduced and the content became increasingly subordinate to state ideology. As Sal Perel, a Jewish boy who attended school under a false name, recalled: “Hitler was God. I would say that if Christians have the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, then Germany’s Holy Trinity was Führer, Volk, und Vaterland — and the greatest of these, of course, was the Führer.” Confessional schools were merged into “state community schools” (Gemeinschaftsschulen), where religious elements were reduced to a minimum.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, this ideological pressure only intensified. Curricula were tied to wartime needs: history and geography lessons discussed battlefield successes, physical education involved drill training, and part of the school schedule was replaced by service in the Hitler Youth and agricultural labor.

Repression against dissent

Any resistance to Nazi school policy after the regime came to power quickly became dangerous. Teachers were forced to join the National Socialist Teachers League, where they underwent mandatory courses in ideological “retraining.” Even minor deviations from the party line could lead to dismissal, arrest, or imprisonment.

From 1934 onward, the “Law Against Malicious Attacks” was in force. It allowed punishment for any critical remark about the state. Parents who did not support the ideological upbringing of their children were fined or summoned by the Gestapo. After the war started, expressing doubts about Germany’s ultimate victory could result in charges of “undermining military strength,” which carried the death penalty. In this atmosphere, most chose to remain silent.

The most noted case was that of Paul Langen (1893–1945), head of a Catholic elementary school in Holzlar near Bonn. He openly voiced his disagreement with Nazi propaganda and secretly listened to foreign radio broadcasts with his pupils. Despite being forced to join the NSDAP, Langen remained a committed opponent of the regime.

In December 1943, during a visit to his daughter at a labor camp, he said that Germany could no longer win the war. After a denunciation, he was arrested by the Gestapo. Langen was interrogated and beaten, then charged with “undermining morale” and sent to the Siegburg prison. He died there of typhus on Mar. 16, 1945, less than two months before the fall of Berlin.

Parents who resisted their children’s involvement in Nazi organizations were also persecuted. The Hitler Youth Act of 1939 stated explicitly that if a parent or guardian failed to enroll a child in the Hitler Youth, they could be fined up to 150 Reichsmarks (roughly a worker’s monthly wage) or arrested. If a parent deliberately prevented a child from taking part in the organization’s activities, the penalty could be imprisonment or a fine, depending on the authorities’ assessment of the situation. Such cases were reviewed at the request of the Reich Youth Leader. There were instances in which teenagers who were not members of the Hitler Youth were barred from final exams or were denied admission to vocational schools.

Religious families suffered the most, as their beliefs were incompatible with participation in Nazi organizations. The state ideology demanded absolute loyalty, and believers — above all Jehovah’s Witnesses — became targets of constant persecution. They refused to say “Heil Hitler,” to sing hymns, or to take part in military marches. Their children received lower marks for “conduct,” faced bullying, and could be expelled from school. Parents were arrested, and children were often taken from their families and sent to special “re-education homes,” where authorities tried to turn them into “good German citizens.”

Simone Arnold-Liebster, a schoolgirl from Alsace and a Jehovah’s Witness, recalled: “When the teacher entered the classroom, all 58 students had to stand up and say ‘Heil Hitler!’ with outstretched arms. I refused to say the German salute. There was a warning that I would have to leave the school if there was no change within a week.”

One of the most widely known cases was that of the Austrian girl Hermine Liszka. She grew up in a Jehovah’s Witness family that refused to comply with the regime’s demands. At school, Hermine did not say “Heil Hitler,” did not wear the League of German Girls uniform, and did not take part in Nazi events. Authorities ordered her father, Johann Obweger, to “raise his daughter in the spirit of the National Socialist state.” When he refused, the court stripped him of parental rights, and the eleven-year-old was sent to a re-education home in Waiern. There she continued to refuse to perform the Nazi salute and to sing the regime’s songs. As punishment, she was denied food, forced to do heavy labor, and barred from attending lessons. Later she was moved to another institution. She was able to return home only after the war.

Indoctrination touched everyone, from ordinary pupils to the children of the elite. Manfred Rommel, son of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, recalled that the Nazis “surgically removed from education not only God, but virtues such as love of neighbor or love of truth, placing loyalty to the Fatherland at the center of ethics.”

Cases of children being taken from religious families were common. The Austrian Richard Heide, also a Jehovah’s Witness, had his son removed by the state. Court papers stated that the boy had to be re-educated away from his father because the latter forbade him to say “Heil Hitler” and to sing Nazi songs. Heide himself was dismissed from public service and sentenced to 18 months in prison for refusing military service.

Consequences of Nazi education

Scientific studies of what happened to the generations who went through Nazi schools and the Hitler Youth show that mass experiments on children’s minds last far longer than the regimes themselves. Researchers Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth analyzed nationwide surveys from 1996 and 2006, and their analysis showed that even half a century after the collapse of the Reich, Germans born in the 1920s–1930s and raised under the Nazis remained, on average, significantly more antisemitic than those who were educated after the 1950s.

Moreover, the proportion of people with extreme antisemitic views among those born in the 1930s was roughly three times higher than among those born after 1950. The effect was particularly strong where Nazi schooling overlapped with prejudices already common before 1933. There, propaganda did not merely sow hatred but reinforced and normalized it for generations to come.

The work of Mevlüde Akbulut-Yüksel, Dozie Okoye, and Mutlu Yüksel reveals that students of the 1930s, whose childhood coincided with the expulsion of Jewish teachers and the disruption of familiar school environments, turned out to be significantly less politically active as adults. According to their estimates, these people were about 13% less likely to take an interest in politics and 26% less likely to participate in political life as compared to peers from regions largely unaffected by these changes.

Notably, this effect was absent among those who were already adults in the 1930s or among children who grew up during the war. The authors attribute the phenomenon to the fact that the disruption of school environments and the expulsion of qualified teachers reduced civic skills, trust, community engagement, and the overall socio-economic status of these children. As adults, this manifested in lower willingness to participate in collective action, reduced trust in institutions, and lower levels of volunteering and church involvement.

Studies of the “Hitler Youth generation” conducted after 1945 show how this experience played out in postwar life. Many former members of Nazi youth organizations in the Soviet occupation zone easily joined the new authoritarian structure — the Free German Youth — effectively exchanging one ideological collectivism for another.

In East Germany, an informal “pact of silence” about one’s Nazi past took shape: in the name of official anti-fascism, honest discussions about personal responsibility and participation in the crimes of the Hitler regime were not encouraged. This reinforced conformity and the habit of living within a top-down “correct line” rather than developing an independent position.

In West Germany, on the other hand, a democratic society developed that successfully re-established the rule of law, reformed the school system, and, crucially, encouraged citizens to take responsibility for confronting the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes.

Nevertheless, even in the western Federal Republic, the generations who went through Nazi schools and youth organizations entered postwar life carrying a heavy burden: distorted views of “others,” reduced trust in institutions, and habits of conformity and silence. In short, the effects of a totalitarian upbringing linger on long after the regime is cast onto the ash heap of history.