https://padlet.com/cgarske/sjd8acc5pzba22oe 

The Nazi youth movement was not only about preparing for the future. The Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were also used to weaken traditional social and religious authorities. Nazi youth activities intentionally replaced activities previously sponsored by religious institutions in an effort to challenge the churches’ claims to moral authority. The Hitler Youth monopolized members’ daily lives so children did not have time for activities outside Nazi control.

The Hitler Youth and League of German Girls also encouraged members to report to their leaders about what was happening in their schools, churches, and families. 

The League of German Girls was intended to prepare girls for futures as wives and mothers. Girls also participated in physical activities, such as gymnastics. Girls’ sports tended to be collective and synchronized, demonstrating the value of working together, rather than competitive and individual like boys’ sports. The League trained girls in how to care for the home and family, and taught skills like sewing, nursing, cooking, and household chores. Young women also ran charity drives, served as nurses’ aides, and organized care packets for troops at the front.

As the war accelerated, the Hitler Youth were deployed in military activities, such as operating anti-aircraft rifles during air raids. In 1943, the SS formed a special division of the Hitler Youth. Officially, boys were to be seventeen, but many were younger. In the final months of the war, boys in their early teens were inducted into the Volkssturm. Poorly equipped and inadequately trained, thousands of these youths joined German forces, fighting and dying on the streets and battlefronts of Germany.

Most members of the Hitler Youth and League of German Girls resumed ordinary lives in postwar Germany, exempt from many of the denazification and reeducation programs after the war. Yet the former members had spent their entire childhoods and young adulthoods under Nazi control and ideological indoctrination, leaving uncertain traces on the next generation of Germans.