Through the HJ, Hitler proved an effective Pied Piper. Boys were led to believe they were strong and held the key to a better future. 37 Metelmann, like his friends, idolising Hitler as the
greatest man on earth, described how he lost respect for his own father’s views. HJ members swore a special oath of allegiance, to devote their lives to and be ready to die for Hitler – not realizing how literally they would be expected to live up to this promise.38 Bernd Trautmann
enthusiastically joined the JV as soon as he was eligible. Tall, blond, athletic, he shone in the HJ, but his father became disenchanted, feeling that insisting boys’ only loyalty was to Hitler ‘undermined parental authority, encouraging an unpleasant arrogance towards their elders.’39
HJ influence risked disrupting the development of a rounded gender identification with
fathers, replacing it with an idealized masculine stereotype. Trautmann recalled rapidly feeling
34 Crocker, pp. 43, 52-56. 35 Behrens, reel 1.
36 Metelmann, A Hitler, p. 86.
37 At a speech on Reichsparteitag, 1935, addressing over 50,000 HJ members, Hitler is reported to have
said “You are the future of the nation, the future of the German state!” (“Ihr seid die Zukunft der Nation,
die Zukunft des Deutschen Reiches!”, Freiburger Zeitung, 16-9-1935).
38 Metelmann, Through, pp. 15, 17; A Hitler, pp. 80, 84, 86; Crocker, pp. 36-37; Fleming, p. 16. 39 Clay, p. 82.
103 nothing but disdain for his father, regarding him as weak and ineffectual. Metelmann’s father’s influence waned, although they maintained a loving relationship. When a local trade- union official was arrested and taken away, Metelmann’s father, having always referred to Nazism as the ‘brown pest’40, became alarmed, and begged his son not to repeat his views
outside their flat.41 Zimmermann’s father was reported and arrested for arguing about politics
at work. He was only released through an influential contact; others who criticised the
government noticeably disappeared.42 After overhearing the butcher joking to his father about
Hitler, Terhorst wondered whether he should tell his teacher, so the butcher could be
instructed in the error of his ways.43 Parents became more circumspect in expressing political
views in their children’s hearing, Terhorst’s father simply warning his son to beware of anyone in authority. Adults noticeably began talking in whispers, no longer openly voicing
complaints.44
Considerable local pressure was put on young boys to join the HJ. As Gerlach’s father was not a Party member, his business had to be overseen by a local Party ‘manager’, who warned that Willi should attend more HJ meetings. Those who resisted found it difficult to find work. In a small rural community, Fritz Zimmermann had managed to avoid joining the HJ. However, at fifteen in 1935, unable, without HJ membership, to find an apprenticeship to train as a baker, he had to take farmwork. (The first question on Metelmann’s application form for a railway locksmith apprenticeship asked when he had joined the HJ.)45 Grubba was warned he would
not get a university place or a job without HJ membership; this didn’t worry him because he accepted his father’s opinion that the NS wouldn’t last very long.46
40 Metelmann’s translation; Pest literally translates as ‘plague’. 41 Metelmann, A Hitler, pp. 65, 81-83; Through, p. 15.
42 Zimmermann, p. 22. 43 Crocker, p. 58. 44 Crocker, pp. 59-60, 63.
45 Zimmermann, p. 21; Metelmann, Through, p. 15. 46 Grubba, reel 2.
104 HJ Membership became compulsory from age ten. (Those who managed to avoid joining appear to have come from rural or Roman Catholic or cosmopolitan areas, where NS political influence was weaker.)47 In 1938, emphasis on paramilitary training increased. On weekly
trips to the countryside, Metelmann’s HJ group were taught military commands and engaged in noisy mock battles, resulting in bloody noses and shrieks of pain. Hating this fighting initially, he got used to it, and believed it fostered latent aggression.48 Drawing on studies
arguing that testosterone is more likely to be a consequence of social relations than an inherent source of male aggression, Connell claims that masculinities are actively created, ‘sustained and enacted by groups, institutions and cultural forms’. Also hierarchical, they exploit ‘fear of being at the bottom’ as a means ‘of training boys and men to participate in combat and violent sports.’49
Metelmann’s father knew all along; Trautmann’s father realized too late that HJ emphasis on marching, parades, outdoor sporting activities and orienteering aimed to groom boys for military service.50 Each HJ troop met weekly to learn drill and shout ‘Sieg Heil’.51 At
Metelmann’s troop’s Heim (clubhouse), decorated with battle scenes and old weapons, they learnt HJ songs, many featuring references to ‘Fatherland, blood and honour and dying’. They were often reminded – echoed in later military training – that the aim was to rebuild them in the Nazi image. WW1 heroes came to give speeches, extolling the honour of dying for one’s country. Told they were ‘young soldiers of the Führer and Fatherland,’ they learned boxing, wrestling, athletics and were forced, if necessary, to swim. Günther Schran (born 1921 in a Rhineland mining town) described gruelling HJ summer camps, aged fourteen to fifteen, marching 25-30 km a day. Metelmann recalled how such marches, offering no sympathy for
47 Zimmermann, Grubba, Steffen, Behrens, Ranft. 48 Metelmann, A Hitler, p. 91.
49 Connell, The Men, p. 217. See also Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the
War System and Vice Versa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 153-54.
50 Metelmann, A Hitler, p. 86; Clay, p. 82.
105 any who collapsed, strengthened their endurance. They learned to throw grenades, make foxholes and earth bunkers, and use cover to move around unseen. Metelmann could not see that war or killing people was wrong. He realized later, as an adult, how HJ training
significantly reduced army training time.52
NS youth service legislation punctured insular upbringing, although German youth broadened their horizons and encountered otherness rather differently from the evacuation and refugee experiences of British youth. A 1939 government decree reinforced compulsory HJ
membership and announced annual public service for all aged 16-18: boys to help in agriculture, girls to help families with children. Called Jugend-Dienst-Gesetz (Youth Service Law), this made youth service as compulsory as labour and army service.53 Terhorst, who had
never been further than twenty miles from home, was called up for labour service in Saarbrucken.54 Others served Arbeitsdienst in Austria, Poland, and occupied France.55
The vast majority of young German men who volunteered or were conscripted into the German forces had been Hitler-Jugend members.56 On reaching eighteen, HJ members were
expected to join the Nazi Party and move on to the SA57 or SS. After war began, they were
called up for military service. Schran, who, aged eleven, had witnessed political street fighting, wanted to join the SS and was horrified that his father wouldn’t consent. From about 1934, the SA had begun committing random acts of vandalism and violence, intimidating ordinary people. When Metelmann reached eighteen in 1940, he described having automatically transferred to the SA, marching through working class districts singing about Jewish blood dripping off their knives. After an hour’s march, they returned to their Lokal (meeting place)
52 Metelmann, Through, p. 19; A Hitler, pp. 84-86, 91-96, 171; Schran, reel 1. 53 Koch, p. 80.
54 Crocker, p. 112.
55 Behrens, reel 2; Ranft, reel 1; Schran, reel 2.
56 By September 1939, the HJ numbered about 4.5 million boys aged 10-18, Koch, Hitler Youth, pp. 114,
233.
106 for lectures, and beer-drinking late into the night. No one dared complain about the rowdy drunkenness and violence at the Lokal opposite Metelmann’s home. In 1940, he was called up to join the Panzers (tank regiment).58
Timm and Sanborn have stressed the masculine appeal of a ‘martial, neo-traditional gender order’. They define fascism as: a movement combining ‘the aggressive and misogynistic aspects of wartime masculinity with the biological justifications for sexual and/or racial dominance’ creating a system promoting unity on the basis of ‘radical masculinity and the practices of violent male bonding.’59
With the postwar humiliation and injustice of Germany’s treatment by the Allies drummed into them, Hitler’s remilitarisation of the Rhineland in 1936 felt only right to eleven-year-old
Liebschner and his peers.60 In 1939, when the radio announced German troops had attacked
Poland, Terhorst’s whoops of delight were shushed by his horrified parents. At fourteen, Terhorst had left school impatient to become a man, earn a wage, do what men did.61