The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 3, Spring 2020 | Page 140

The Hitler Youth & Communism
Generation in Post-War Po
Hitler Youth members marching at a Reich
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, court
cellor of Germany in 1933. 13 Hitler had
been Chancellor for less than a year in
December 1933 when the Hitler Youth
membership reached 2.3 million. 14 This
growth is attributed to the impact of
the Schulerbund, which provided a
framework for “a sizeable contingent
of respectable and well-educated high
school students, and established a solidly
bourgeois influence over the entire
organization.” 15
The Hitler Youth’s second main
period of growth and innovation occurred
from 1933 to 1939, when membership
was mandatory and children
began to be sent to work in support
of their “fatherland.” The period from
1933 to 1939 was when most of the indoctrination
and brainwashing took
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