The Law on the Hitler Youth from December 1, 1936 remains one of the Nazi regime's most misunderstood laws. Contemporary observers detected within the law's first article, which read “the entire youth of Germany within the confines of the Reich is united in the Hitler Youth,” an effort to make membership in the Hitler Youth and its female branch—the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls, or BDM)—mandatory. A December 3, 1936 New York Times article, for example, characterized the new decree as an “enforced membership law.”Footnote 1 In her 1938 book School for Barbarians, German émigré Erika Mann similarly theorized that the law gave “German youth and [their] parents… the impression that it is damaging and actually against the law to remain outside the State Youth.”Footnote 2 And generations of historians have erroneously maintained that Nazi leaders adopted this law to make membership mandatory and to transform the Hitler Youth into a state youth organization.Footnote 3
In fact, the Hitler Youth law neither made membership compulsory nor transformed the Hitler Youth into a state youth organization. Membership remained voluntary until March 1939 when Hitler's cabinet issued the Jugenddienstverordnung (Youth Service Regulation). And the Hitler Youth remained a branch of the Nazi Party long after the law's passage.Footnote 4 Yet one thing the law did do—something subtle yet consequential—was grant the Hitler Youth access to local tax revenues. The key provision was Article 2, which read: “The entire German youth, besides [being reared] in the family home and schools, will be physically, intellectually, and morally educated by the Hitler Youth to serve, in the spirit of National Socialism, the nation (Volk) and the people's community (Volksgemeinschaft).”Footnote 5 In characterizing the Hitler Youth as an educational organization equal in importance not only to families but also to schools—a public good that communities had long acknowledged as their financial responsibility—the article authorized the Hitler Youth to pressure municipalities to finance its allegedly educational work.
What if Nazi leaders adopted this law not only to coerce boys and girls to join the Hitler Youth and the BDM but also to compel municipalities to finance a national building campaign that would provide Nazi youth with thousands of new meeting spaces, or Heime (homes)? The building scheme at the center of this historical hypothesis is the Hitler Youth's Heimbeschaffung (home procurement) campaign.
On January 1, 1937, Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach announced a major policy initiative for the upcoming year: the construction of thousands of “modest, purpose-built, and beautiful youth homes.” Both the Hitler Youth and the BDM had so successfully grown their membership over the prior year, he explained in a New Year's Day address, that they now had a pressing need for rooms and buildings where squads and platoons could hold their weekly Heimabend (membership meeting).Footnote 6 Schirach's ambitions for the program were massive. One of his deputies predicted in February 1937 that the plan would produce 4,000 homes in the first year alone and 52,000 new homes in total.Footnote 7
This article has two goals. The first is to demonstrate the plausibility of this theory—that Nazi leaders deliberately inserted language into Article 2 of the Hitler Youth law to pressure municipal and district authorities to finance the Hitler Youth's home building campaign in order to secure a network of newly built facilities that would serve the Party, particularly should they decide to make membership in the Hitler Youth mandatory. The article's second goal is to document Nazi leaders’ repeated efforts first to pressure and later to compel municipalities to subsidize the Hitler Youth by financing new construction, assuming the costs of ongoing maintenance, and after Germany's return to war in 1939, paying the costs of renting and maintaining vorläufige Unterkünfte (temporary accommodations).
This reconsideration of the Hitler Youth law provides further evidence that Nazi leaders sometimes prioritized concerns about money (and armaments) over questions of ideology as they deliberated and formulated policy. Although Hitler was undoubtedly more rigid when it came to issues comprising his core beliefs—such as race, antisemitism, or Germany's territorial needs—he and his deputies could be flexible on topics that lay beyond this core.Footnote 8 Furthermore, this study underscores the regime's concerns about public perception. Instead of simply seizing municipal funds to subsidize the Hitler Youth's building needs, Nazi leaders instead crafted a law that camouflaged this money grab as an ideologically driven effort to transform youth into stalwart Nazis and dutiful members of the Volksgemeinschaft (national people's community).
The Hitler Youth Law and the Hitler Youth's Construction Plans
The Hitler Youth law of December 1, 1936 marked the official erasure of nearly every other preexisting youth group, recognized the Hitler Youth as the sole organization responsible for organizing youth, and invested it with responsibility for educating adolescent boys and girls. Schirach and his allies portrayed the 1937 building campaign as a response to this new law. Yet the timing of key events suggests that Schirach conceived of this building scheme during ongoing negotiations about a forthcoming youth law. These events also imply that Schirach collaborated with Hans Lammers, Chief of the Reich Chancellery, to shape the law with this building campaign in mind and insert key language into the final draft of the Hitler Youth law that would grant the Hitler Youth access to municipal resources.
Although Schirach and his organization ultimately benefited from the December 1936 law, the inspiration for a youth law actually originated with Bernard Rust, Reich Minister of Science, Education, and National Culture. In late March 1935, Rust's ministry proposed the Gesetz über den deutschen Jugenddienst (law for German youth service). This law would have obliged youth aged ten to eighteen to participate in a compulsory Reich Sports Service that the education ministry would oversee. It is notable that Rust suggested this law as Nazi leaders contemplated various strategies for introducing premilitary training for teenage boys. Historian Michael Buddrus describes the draft as Rust's “poorly camouflaged” effort to establish himself as the leader of premilitary education and thereby protect his domain against the Hitler Youth's growing influence. He was also eager, Buddrus explains, to reassert his supremacy over Schirach.Footnote 9
Baldur von Schirach was certainly a formidable rival. Born in Berlin in 1907 to a German father and an American mother, Schirach joined the Nazi Party in 1924 and became a member of the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (National Socialist German Student League) while enrolled at the University of Munich. According to a 1934–1935 lexicon of Nazi leaders, Schirach was in “constant contact” with Hitler starting in 1925 and soon became a member of the Führer's “trusted inner circle.”Footnote 10 This close relationship paid dividends. In 1928, Hitler named Schirach leader of the university student group. Schirach successfully grew the organization and used it to garner more attention for the party.Footnote 11 In late October 1931, Hitler appointed Schirach the Reichsjugendführer der NSDAP (Reich Youth Leader of the Nazi Party). Various Nazi youth organizations now came under his control, including the Hitler Youth, which, at this point, was still a branch of the Sturmabteilung (SA).Footnote 12 Hitler terminated the Hitler Youth's relationship with the SA in April 1932, and this separation benefited Schirach, whom Hitler elevated to the level of Amtsleiter (office leader) on May 13, 1932. Schirach now answered directly to Hitler.Footnote 13 On June 17, 1933, Hitler again promoted Schirach, now twenty-six years old, by naming him the Jugendführer des Deutschen Reiches (Youth Leader of the German Reich).Footnote 14
Although Hitler's announcement promised the creation of a Reich agency that this Hitler Youth leader (hereafter Youth Leader) would command, it never materialized. Instead, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick issued a directive in early July 1933 that placed the Youth Leader of the German Reich under the jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry, the federal ministry responsible for questions related to youth education prior to the regime's creation of the Reich Ministry of Science, Education, and National Culture in May 1934. In a decree dated May 11, 1934, Hitler gave the new education minister control over Jugendverbände (youth groups). This decision meant that the education ministry now also exercised authority over the Hitler Youth.Footnote 15 Hitler loosened this control in March 1935 when he signed a decree that recognized the Hitler Youth as an independent organization within the Nazi Party.Footnote 16 The Hitler Youth gained its full independence in December 1936 when Hitler's cabinet adopted the Hitler Youth law.Footnote 17
Schirach responded to Rust's youth service proposal in October 1935 by submitting the first draft of what would eventually become the Hitler Youth law to Hans Lammers, State Secretary and Chief of the Reich Chancellery. Titled Gesetz zur Führung der Deutschen Jugend (law for the leadership of the German Youth), the draft called for the creation of a state youth organization that would educate young people “in the spirit of National Socialism.”Footnote 18 The draft would have reshaped the Hitler Youth into a state youth organization and empowered it to oversee the political and physical education of all young people.Footnote 19 Lammers modified the draft by replacing the words “state youth” with that of “Reich youth” (Reichsjugend). This modification, he explained to Schirach, paralleled language in the recently adopted Reich Citizenship Law. Lammers' draft also suggested that the Reichsjugendführung (Reich Youth Leadership), the Hitler Youth's administrative branch, be refashioned into a high-ranking state authority and the Youth Leader made a civil servant.Footnote 20 This transformation might have entitled the Hitler Youth to federal funding.Footnote 21
Given the Hitler Youth's persistent financial woes, Schirach likely welcomed Lammers' proposal. Since its establishment in 1926, the Hitler Youth had lacked adequate funding. Part of the organization's financial problems stemmed from its organizational standing. Party leaders first established the Hitler Youth as a Verein (association), a status it retained until March 1935.Footnote 22 Because it was not technically a party organization, the Hitler Youth did not qualify for inclusion in the party's budget. This exclusion meant that much of the organization's operating budget came from monthly membership dues.Footnote 23 Moreover, the Hitler Youth had acquired significant debt during the Kampfzeit—the years preceding the Nazi Party's political takeover. The organization's rapid growth in 1933 exacerbated its financial problems. To find another source of revenue, in April 1933 Schirach launched a lottery to raise money (net proceeds equaled 249,000 RM). In 1934, the organization's fortunes improved slightly as membership dues increased, the party provided funding for the first time (3.2 million RM), and the Reich Interior Minister instructed communities to share resources earmarked for youth welfare with the Hitler Youth.Footnote 24 Many communities subsequently gave the organization access to municipal buildings and sports facilities and even provided small cash subsidies. Between 1934 and 1939, the organization's budget consisted mainly of party subsidies, membership dues, and municipal contributions. The organization's financial situation improved once again in 1940 when the Nazi Party's treasurer, Franz Xaver Schwarz, assumed full responsibility for funding the organization.Footnote 25
As Hitler's cabinet reviewed Schirach's “Reichsjugend” proposal in November 1935, Reich War Minister Werner von Blomberg detected an opportunity to introduce premilitary training for adolescent male youth. He successfully lobbied Hitler to reshape this planned Reichsjugend into a vehicle for premilitary training. He also convinced Hitler to authorize one of Schirach's deputies, Helmut Stellrecht, to develop a detailed plan for actualizing these ambitions. In early December 1935, Hitler directed Stellrecht to draft a plan by March 31, 1936, that would ensure the physical fitness of Germany's youth under the guidance of the Youth Leader. He also ordered Lammers to produce a companion law that would introduce a mandatory Jugenddienst (youth service). The law would be the lever that forced male and female youth into the Reichsjugend.Footnote 26 Stellrecht's charge was to create an organization that would operate under the leadership of the Youth Leader but also involve the military in decisions about premilitary training.Footnote 27 Schirach responded to this potential diminishment of his authority by suggesting that the Hitler Youth provide leadership for the new organization.Footnote 28
Building on this suggestion, both literally and physically, in late January 1936 Schirach laid the ground stone for the first Reichsakademie für deutsche Jugendführung (national academy for German youth leadership), located in Braunschweig. Perhaps Schirach initiated this building project to legitimate promises that the Hitler Youth could produce enough trained leaders for the proposed Reichsjugend. In his dedication speech, he vowed that this new institution would ensure a constant supply of capable leaders.Footnote 29 Or maybe he discerned an opportunity to boost his reputation, especially as newspapers across Germany reported on the groundbreaking ceremony.Footnote 30 The Youth Leader may have also detected a chance to portray himself as a builder of both buildings and movements—a theme he returned to in later years as he stressed the similarities between Hitler and himself.Footnote 31
Stellrecht submitted his plan for a Reichsjugend to the Reich Chancellery on March 21, 1936, ten days shy of Hitler's deadline. His plan called for the creation of a mandatory youth service that would henceforth be known as the Reichsjugend. This organization would “capture” youth who had not yet joined Nazi youth groups and oversee their ideological education, ensure their physical fitness, and thereby prepare them to be both “Reichsbürger” (citizens) and soldiers. Stellrecht's proposal envisioned several layers of service, including weekly meetings and fitness training, monthly excursions and premilitary training, and two-week stints in training camps during the last three years of membership. The anticipated price tag for this organization was sizeable. Stellrecht projected a one-time investment of nearly 38 million RM and ongoing annual expenditures totaling 60.4 million RM.Footnote 32
Schirach shrewdly chose this moment to launch an initiative to expand the Hitler Youth's inventory of newly built Heime. These were the spaces that local squads and platoons would use to carry out various service functions, the most important being the weekly two-hour Heimabend. On March 6, 1936, Schirach sent a letter to Nazi Party treasurer Schwarz explaining his intention to establish a working committee that would oversee new construction. On March 26, 1936, Schwarz issued a directive to regional party treasurers, instructing them to support this initiative. He explained that Hitler had personally asked the Youth Leader to create a “unified” Reichjugend that would enlist children and adolescents in service to the German Volk. This new organization required “healthy and worthy” spaces to carry out this work. In support of this project, Hitler had made clear his intentions to give the organization a large cash subsidy. Schwarz's directive also explained that the Youth Leader had created an oversight committee whose membership would include a representative from the party treasury (Willy Damson). This body would guarantee the “fair distribution” of funds and review and approve all proposals for new construction.Footnote 33
Schirach's enthusiasm for new construction signaled a clear shift in thinking. Previously, Nazi youth groups had used a variety of spaces to meet and organize, including cellars, barns, train cars, empty factories, barracks, classrooms, attics, garages, party offices, and horse stables.Footnote 34 After the party's ascension to power in 1933, local units also gained access to confiscated buildings, including properties that had once belonged to Catholic youth groups and “Aryanized” Jewish properties.Footnote 35 Nazi publications romanticized the ability of Nazi youth to make these simple spaces into usable homes. A 1934 BDM manual, for example, promised that with the right amount of inspiration and hard work, Nazi youth could transform even the “bleakest” of spaces into a “home.”Footnote 36 And as recently as 1935, Schirach had suggested that an old railway car or “an empty villa” would suffice for a platoon's needs.Footnote 37 But by 1936, he had become a proponent of purpose-built homes designed specifically for the needs of Nazi youth.
Schirach had several potential motives for launching this larger building program. Perhaps he hoped that new construction would bolster voluntary enlistment. This was a realistic expectation. Gestapo officers in Aachen noted in March 1934 that children who had once belonged to the Deutsches Jungvolk (the Hitler Youth's section for younger boys aged ten to fourteen) had returned to confessional youth groups during the winter months because the latter had better and warmer facilities.Footnote 38 This was a significant concern for an organization that, by 1935, was experiencing a substantial decline in voluntary enlistments. According to official statistics, between year's end 1932 and year's end 1934, the Hitler Youth increased membership from 107,956 to 3,577,565.Footnote 39 Schirach's forced dissolution and coordination of competing youth organizations, together with the introduction of compulsory measures (such as State Youth Day) that placed “children under enormous internal pressure to conform,” contributed to this remarkable growth.Footnote 40 Yet by 1935, these compulsory measures had apparently run their course. By year's end, the organization had cumulatively added only about 366,000 new members in all of its four branches (the Deutsches Jungvolk, the Jungmädelbund, the Hitler Youth, and the BDM).Footnote 41
Or maybe Schirach wanted to enlarge his political capital by overseeing a national building project. New construction offered an opportunity to solicit party support, raise funds, work with architects, planners, and municipal authorities, and potentially build thousands of new facilities across Germany that would display the emblem of the Hitler Youth on their front facade.Footnote 42
Schirach could use this political capital, in turn, to deflect Rust's repeated efforts to weaken his authority as Youth Leader. In November 1935, Rust's education ministry shared the draft of yet another potential law, the Gesetz über den deutschen Jugenddienst, or Reichsjugendtaggesetz (law for the German youth service, or the Reich youth day law), that would have compelled all youth—even those already employed or enlisted in the Hitler Youth—to participate in fitness training on special Reichsjugendtagen (Reich youth days) that Rust's ministry would oversee. Business leaders rejected the proposal because it threatened employers who failed to give employed youth paid time off to participate with either a fine or a prison sentence. Military leaders objected to the plan because it neither anticipated their participation or addressed their concerns about premilitary training.Footnote 43
This failure did not prevent Rust from challenging Schirach yet again. In April 1936, the education minister registered his objections to the proposed Reichsjugend law on the grounds that it would limit his authority and splinter the regime's educational efforts. He also contended that the draft ignored the educational role of families. He offered an alternative law, the Gesetz über die Erziehung der deutschen Jugend (law for the education of German youth), that would have invested schools and the Reichsjugend with responsibility for educating youth “beyond” (außerhalb) the family home, placed the Reichsjugend under the auspices of the education ministry, and subordinated the Youth Leader to the education minister's authority.Footnote 44 Schirach vehemently rejected Rust's draft. In a letter to Lammers, he asserted that Rust's draft ignored Hitler's intentions to place Nazi youth under the authority of a Youth Leader who reported directly to the Führer. Schirach also belittled Rust's draft as unoriginal and insufficient in its vision of premilitary training.Footnote 45
Schirach must have felt some relief by early May 1936 as it became increasingly clear that Hitler would adopt neither Rust's nor Stellrecht's plans. In late April 1936, Lammers confidentially assured Schirach that Hitler would not entertain Rust's objections to the circulating draft of the Reichsjugend law.Footnote 46 Two days later, Martin Bormann, Hitler's personal secretary, informed Lammers that the Führer had serious concerns about current plans to create a state youth.Footnote 47 Hitler's reservations likely stemmed from Reich Finance Minister Johann Ludwig Schwerin von Krosigk's estimates that Stellrecht's Reichsjugend plan could cost the regime as much as 100 million RM every year. Von Krosigk predicted that the federal government would have to reduce expenditures on armaments to afford these expenses. In a document he shared with various Nazi leaders, von Krosigk suggested the government instead find a way to educate youth without creating a new and expensive infrastructure.Footnote 48
As Hitler's interest in a mandatory and expensive Reichsjugend faltered, Schirach's interest in new construction seemingly flourished. In spring and summer 1936, Schirach supported several building projects, including a sports school for BDM girls in Berchtesgaden and several local Hitler Youth homes.Footnote 49
Nearly immediately, Schirach's financial missteps in managing these schemes placed him in conflict with Schwarz, the Nazi Party's treasurer. Schwartz explained to Schirach that the party was willing to allocate 850,000 RM for the construction of new Hitler Youth homes, but warned him that his mismanagement was imperiling this allocation. In letters he sent to Schirach in July and August 1936, the party treasurer identified four major problems with Schirach's leadership. First, regional Hitler Youth leaders across Germany had used donated land and money to launch home building projects that, because of insufficient funds, could not be completed. And now these local leaders were asking Schwarz's office for subsidies to finish construction. Second, instead of using the party's generous grant to complete these local projects, Schirach was spending most of this money on the BDM sports school in Berchtesgaden and another project in Upper Silesia. Third, Schirach had not yet created or convened the working committee he had proposed in March 1936, a body that would have provided crucial oversight and likely prevented this misallocation of resources. Fourth and finally, Schirach had ignored, repeatedly, Schwartz's requests for a face-to-face meeting about these funding issues. Schwarz informed Schirach that, given these accumulating problems, his office would withhold 500,000 RM of the promised subsidy.Footnote 50 In late August, Schwarz contacted Bormann, Hitler's secretary, and explained that the Hitler Youth was in bad financial straits and Schirach's office was initiating building projects without first acquiring the party treasurer's requisite permission.Footnote 51
Schirach swiftly addressed Schwarz's concerns about the proposed committee. On September 1, 1936, Schirach formally established the Arbeitsausschuss für Hitler-Jugend- Heimbeschaffung (working committee for Hitler Youth home procurement) and invested it with national responsibility for overseeing the construction of Hitler Youth homes, Hitler Youth leadership schools, and similar structures. He tapped Helmut Möckel, a high-ranking Hitler Youth leader, to oversee day-to-day operations. Möckel worked with a committee that included representatives from the education ministry (Georg Usadel) and the Nazi Party treasury (Willy Damson). Hartmann Lauterbach participated as Schirach's representative and the official chair.Footnote 52 Schirach officially announced the committee's creation on October 2, 1936.Footnote 53 In establishing this organization, Schirach shrewdly dismantled one of the party treasurer's biggest criticisms just weeks before a decisive meeting with Hitler.
On October 19, 1936, Schirach was in Berchtesgaden for the celebration of the newly completed Adolf-Hitler Youth Hostel.Footnote 54 Later that same day, Schirach met with Hitler. Schirach must have shared details of this meeting with Stellrecht, who, in turn, relayed them to Lammers. Stellrecht reported that, during this meeting, Hitler told Schirach he wanted to organize all youth in the Hitler Youth and abandon plans to create a separate Reichsjugend.Footnote 55 Schirach provided Lammers with more details almost three weeks later. He explained that, during his visit to Berchtesgaden, he had spent two days as Hitler's guest (likely at Hitler's Berghof residence). At some point, the two men had discussed the question of a future youth law and, to Schirach's “own surprise,” Hitler announced his preference for Schirach's original October 1935 draft.Footnote 56
Part of the basis for this decision, Schirach explained, was the Hitler Youth's success in enlisting new members through its Jungvolkwerbeaktion (recruitment campaign). In early 1936, Schirach had launched an initiative to increase voluntary enrollments among younger children—especially the cohort born in 1926.Footnote 57 According to official statistics, the organization ultimately recruited 87 percent of ten-year-old boys and girls.Footnote 58 It did so using a mix of propaganda and pressure, including contacting parents of eligible boys and girls and urging them to facilitate their child's enlistment.Footnote 59 Yet Schirach allowed Hitler to believe that the organization had captured 95 percent of this “youngest” cohort and successfully enlisted 90 percent of all other eligible youth between the ages of ten and eighteen.Footnote 60 The Hitler Youth's alleged success rendered the Reichsjugend unnecessary. In truth, the organization had enlisted nearly 76 percent of children aged ten to fourteen and only 49 percent of youth aged fourteen to eighteen.Footnote 61
Perhaps Schirach and Hitler also talked during this October 1936 visit about the Youth Leader's developing plans to build a network of new Hitler Youth homes across the country. And maybe they discussed the possibility of using municipal funds to build these facilities. A comment Schirach made to Lammers in a November 1936 letter suggests that a conversation of this nature did take place. Immediately after recounting Hitler's preference for the October 1935 draft, Schirach wrote, “I think the time has come to realize this former plan and thus create conditions for a generous expansion of the Hitler Youth's educational facilities, especially with regard to its leadership.” With these considerations in mind, Schirach continued, he had asked Hitler to support the law's expedited passage.Footnote 62
Lammers began drafting the law, using the October 1935 version as a blueprint. He made revisions to the preamble, abandoning the phrase “the youth is the future of the nation” in favor of the words “the future of the nation depends on the youth.” He modified Article 1 so that, instead of reading “all German youth in the Reich is the Hitler Youth,” it now decreed “all German youth inside the Reich is organized in the Hitler Youth.” And he made key changes to Article 2. In nearly every draft, this article had recognized the Hitler Youth as playing a significant role in the youth's moral, physical, and intellectual development. Perhaps anticipating objections from Rust, who had suggested that the Reichsjugend law recognize the role of schools and families, Article 2 of a November 1936 draft read: “In the Hitler Youth, the entire German youth will be physically, intellectually, and morally educated in the spirit of National Socialism to serve the Volk and Volksgemeinschaft. The educational tasks of schools and the family home remain unaffected by this.” Lammers subsequently revised this article so that the final draft read: “The entire German youth, besides (außer) [being reared] in the family home and schools, will be physically, intellectually, and morally educated by the Hitler Youth to serve, in the spirit of National Socialism, the nation (Volk) and the national people's community (Volksgemeinschaft).” Lammers' decision to use the preposition “außer” (besides) is significant, for it equated the Hitler Youth's educational work with that of schools and parents. Article 3 entrusted the Youth Leader with responsibility for overseeing this education while Article 4 empowered Hitler to draft implementation guidelines at a later date. Hitler's cabinet adopted the Hitler Youth law in the late afternoon hours of December 1, 1936.Footnote 63
The new law did not make membership mandatory or transform the Hitler Youth into a state youth organization. Yet the law was consequential. It invested the Hitler Youth, and not the education ministry or the military, with responsibility for overseeing the intellectual, moral, and physical development of young people outside of school. And, perhaps most importantly, Lammers' strategic insertion of “besides” into Article 2 equated the Hitler Youth's educational work with that of schools and parents. The Hitler Youth quickly capitalized on this provision to pressure municipalities to fund its so-called educational work, most especially a national home building campaign Schirach was preparing to launch in early 1937.
Financing the Hitler Youth “Home Procurement” Campaign
When Schirach announced the Hitler Youth's home building campaign on January 1, 1937, he portrayed this enterprise as a response to the newly passed Hitler Youth Law. He asserted that the organization needed these homes both to absorb the “hundreds of thousands” of children and teenagers who would now join Nazi youth groups and carry out its newly assigned educational work.Footnote 64
And yet, two developments imply that Hitler's cabinet adopted the law not only to expand membership but also to facilitate a building campaign that might allow the regime, in the near future, to make membership mandatory. The first was Schirach's readiness to deploy this scheme so soon after the December 1, 1936 cabinet meeting. The second was the extent to which the Hitler Youth and regime leaders leaned on Article 2 first to pressure and then compel municipalities to fund construction and ongoing maintenance costs. After September 1939, when the regime suspended nonessential construction because of the war, the Hitler Youth again used this article to force municipalities to pay rent for temporary spaces.
Schirach deployed this new building campaign with a speed that indicates extensive preplanning and an expectation that the new Hitler Youth Law would give him access to a reliable revenue stream. In late December 1936, the Hitler Youth announced that, in mid-January 1937, it would launch a ten-day publicity campaign that would detail the organization's need for new construction.Footnote 65 On January 1, 1937, Schirach issued his New Year's Day announcement and proclaimed that this was to be the Jahr der Heimbeschaffung (Year of Home Procurement).Footnote 66 On January 7, 1937, his office released substantial guidelines that another publication described as the result of “lengthy preparatory work.”Footnote 67 The fifteen-page document included a reprint of Schwarz's March 1936 directive to regional treasurers, a detailed description of the Working Committee for Hitler Youth Home Procurement's membership and duties, and a listing of the high-ranking Nazis who would serve on an additional honorary committee. This document also included guidelines for regional leaders eager to launch their own construction projects and instructions regarding design and architecture.Footnote 68 The Hitler Youth next launched a national advertising campaign that lasted from January 15, 1937 to January 25, 1937 and used, according to one article, every “propaganda” means at its disposal.Footnote 69 This multipronged publicity campaign included radio announcements, newspaper articles, and even local parades and informational meetings for parents.Footnote 70
A series of high-ranking endorsements soon followed. Of greatest consequence was Hitler's January 14, 1937 statement, which read: “The education of youth is one of the most important tasks of the National Socialist state. I therefore anticipate that all concerned party and state agencies will support the Hitler Youth in its efforts to procure suitable homes for our youth.”Footnote 71 That same day, Schirach, Reich Interior Minister Frick, and Reich Finance Minister von Krosigk jointly urged municipal officials to collaborate with local Hitler Youth leaders to secure new homes.Footnote 72 Less than two weeks later, Frick, Rust, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, and Chairman of the German Council of Municipalities and Munich mayor Karl Fiehler issued a joint statement encouraging party and state officials at all levels to support this national campaign.Footnote 73
The Hitler Youth's rapid publication of workbooks likewise suggests significant preplanning. Heinrich Hartmann's Werkhefte für den Heimbau der Hitler-Jugend I was one of the first books the regime published. The 140-page book, printed on glossy paper, is a mix of text, blueprints, sketches, and photographs. Collectively, it contains approximately a hundred images. A brief sentence, tucked into the book's frontmatter, explains: “The NSDAP has no objections to the publication of this work. The chairman of the official party examining board for protecting [National Socialist] literature. Berlin, 26. February 1937.”Footnote 74 This early approval date implies that Hartmann began compiling the book months earlier.
The Hitler Youth was also prepared by early 1937 to exhibit small-scale and life-size architectural models in prominent trade shows and exhibitions. The first of these was an enormous spectacle showcasing the regime's major accomplishments during its first four years in power. Titled “Gebt mir vier Jahre Zeit” (Give Me Four Years’ Time), the exhibit took place in Berlin from April 30 through June 20, 1937 and featured several small-scale models and a life-size replica of a Hitler Youth home subsequently disassembled and rebuilt in the Volkspark Rehberge in northern Berlin.Footnote 75 In April 1937, the Hitler Youth sent models and plans that were part of this exhibit to the Reich Chancellery, where a photographer snapped a picture of Hitler reviewing them.Footnote 76
The Hitler Youth's home procurement campaign promised to be an expensive undertaking that the regime wanted municipalities to finance. Nazi leaders swiftly invoked Article 2 of the recently passed Hitler Youth law both to justify new construction and shift the financial burden onto municipal authorities. On January 14, Interior Minister Frick directed municipalities and municipal associations to help the Hitler Youth fulfill its expanded educational responsibilities by supporting its home building campaign.Footnote 77 Just days later, Frick, Goebbels, Fiehler, and Rust, all members of the honorary committee, directed public and party officials at the federal, state, and local levels to help fund the construction, furnishment, and maintenance of these homes. Their directive referenced Hitler's January 14 message, which had highlighted the Hitler Youth's new educational responsibilities.Footnote 78 In early February, Möckel, the director of the Working Committee in Berlin, underscored communities’ financial responsibility for constructing these educational buildings. While speaking to architects in Tübingen, he pointedly said, “Just as the school building and its maintenance is the task of communities, so now too is the Hitler Youth home and its upkeep.”Footnote 79 In early July, Frick once again cited the Hitler Youth's educational duties as he directed municipal leaders to provide administrative and financial assistance to the organization.Footnote 80 In March 1938, the Hitler Youth launched yet another national publicity campaign in support of this building program. Hitler simultaneously released a statement which read: “The homes of the Hitler Youth are educational sites for a generation destined to secure the future of the Reich. The state and party are therefore obliged to energetically help our youth in constructing their homes.”Footnote 81 These directives to help and support were really orders to finance and fund.
But the Hitler Youth's vision for this project kept expanding. Schirach's initial 1937 decree had asserted only that youth needed new homes.Footnote 82 Within a week of his announcement, his office issued the aforementioned building guidelines that listed the architectural features moderately sized homes should possess. These included rooms where individual platoons could meet (Scharräume), a community room, a shower, a room to store bikes, a cloakroom, a toilet, and offices for leaders.Footnote 83 Within months, Schirach's office published a pamphlet that contained a revised listing of requisite spaces that now included—if resources and space allowed—a large hall that could accommodate a roll call, craft rooms, a dark room for photography, and an air raid shelter. It also directed planners to incorporate gymnasiums, sports fields, obstacle courses, facilities for special training, and shooting ranges into their plans with the caveat that if cost was prohibitive, these additional facilities could be built in stages.Footnote 84 By September 1937, Nazi planners had decided that these homes should also include access to swimming pools.Footnote 85 The list of required features soon included garden plots.Footnote 86
This expanding wish list of amenities sheds light on the activities that Hitler Youth and BDM leaders believed would convert youth into steadfast Nazis and ready soldiers. Platoon rooms would accommodate the all-important two-hour weekly membership meeting in which Hitler Youth and BDM leaders delivered carefully curated lessons designed to instill, as Schirach once explained, a Nazi “outlook on life.”Footnote 87 Race, the Versailles Diktat, Germany's territorial needs, and German folk culture were frequent topics.Footnote 88 Youth could also use platoon rooms and, in larger homes, craft rooms to develop practical skills such as metal working, wood working, weaving, and sewing.Footnote 89 Squads and platoons could also use these spaces for community-oriented projects likely to nurture feelings of membership in a larger Volksgemeinschaft, such as fashioning Christmas toys for needy children and assembling care packages for soldiers.Footnote 90 Swimming pools and sports fields would help strengthen bodies, instill discipline, and nurture camaraderie while nearby fields could be used for premilitary training. Gardens, meanwhile, would impart practical cultivation skills as well as lessons about “race,” “genetics,” and the “struggle for life.”Footnote 91
These growing ambitions translated into expanding building costs. New construction frequently entailed purchasing land, commissioning architectural blueprints, acquiring building materials, securing laborers and craftsmen, buying furniture, and paying the costs of long-term maintenance. In some cases, land needed to be drained and leveled; in other cases, communities had to extend water, electricity, and sewage lines. And the larger the home, the bigger the price tag. Small two-platoon-room homes (one room each for the Hitler Youth and the BDM), the type likely to be found in smaller communities, could cost 20,000 RM or more to build. In November 1937, for example, officials in the small Badish town of Baiertal asked a local architect to produce an itemized budget for a smaller home. He estimated total costs of 28,000 RM. Larger homes might cost 125,000 RM or more.Footnote 92
Nazi leaders suggested various financing strategies to municipal leaders. In March 1937, von Krosigk proposed that communities repurpose funds initially set aside for youth welfare to bankroll these structures.Footnote 93 In July 1937, Frick similarly advised municipal leaders to redirect all local funds initially earmarked for “youth care” to the Hitler Youth and encouraged them to increase the sum they allocated annually to this category.Footnote 94 The author of a 1938 architectural workbook suggested municipalities redirect unspent “youth welfare” funds, create special reserve funds, and seize the funds of moribund or irrelevant charities to finance construction of a Hitler Youth home in their community.Footnote 95 Another official proposed that communities build new homes in phases to make construction costs more manageable.Footnote 96
Local newspapers carried stories that suggested that communities across Germany were embracing this new responsibility by organizing fundraisers and donating land, resources, and labor.Footnote 97 Yet in truth, municipal and district leaders resisted pressure to finance Schirach's scheme, partly by leaning on two federal decrees. The first, issued by the Reich Justice Ministry on May 22, 1934, regulated the transfer of resources from municipalities to party organizations. It clarified that municipalities were not obliged to subsidize party organizations.Footnote 98 The mayor of Remscheid, for example, challenged a 1941 request from the Hitler Youth that civic officials assume rental costs for their administrative offices by referencing this 1934 decree (to be discussed in greater detail in the following).Footnote 99
Municipal leaders also pointed to Frick's January 14, 1937 decree in which he advised communities to provide financial support to the Hitler Youth's building campaign without taking on any new debts. In September 1937, authorities in the administrative district of Lüneburg, near Hamburg, challenged the Hitler Youth's expectation that the communities of Lehrte, Isernhagen, and Arpke take on loans to fund construction of three new homes. As one official explained to the Reich Interior Minister, this was an untenable plan, in part because Frick had prohibited communities from taking out loans to support this program. Moreover, Hitler Youth officials were asking Lehrte, a community already in debt, to finance a home building project that, according to estimates, would cost at least 100,000 RM to build. A month later, this same official reported that plans to build in Lehrte would have to be postponed until the city generated sufficient reserves. He also explained that construction in Arpke could move forward without the city taking on new loans and that municipal authorities in Isernhagen now planned to renovate a preexisting structure.Footnote 100
Realizing that cities were reluctant to finance new construction, Nazi leaders shifted to a policy of coercion.Footnote 101 On January 30, 1939, the regime issued the Gesetz zur Förderung der Hitler Jugend Heimbeschaffung (law for the promotion of Hitler Youth home procurement). Article 1 read: “The construction and maintenance of Hitler Youth homes is the responsibility of the municipalities. The party and state will share building costs in accordance with their available resources.” Article 2 directed communities unable to finance these homes through their regular operating budgets to establish special reserve funds. Article 3 instructed authorities at the district level to likewise create reserve funds by levying a tax on local communities and investing the revenue in interest-bearing assets. Article 4 directed district authorities to use these reserve funds to provide grants or interest-bearing loans to municipalities. Article 5 explained that the Nazi Party's treasury would, in select cases, provide financial assistance.Footnote 102 The following month, the Justice Ministry announced that the government would soon issue implementation guidelines for this new law.Footnote 103 In August 1940, officials clarified that the government would not publish these parameters until after the war.Footnote 104
In February 1939, a top-ranking official in the Interior Ministry, Friedrich-Karl Surén, explained the law's purpose to reporters in Berlin. He began, as was customary by this point, by referencing the Hitler Youth's expanded educational mandate as a consequence of the Hitler Youth law. By clarifying and codifying communities’ financial obligation to finance these projects, he explained, this new law would ensure compliance and uniformity across the Reich and in newly annexed territories. Moreover, its directive to district authorities that they provide financial assistance to struggling communities, and its promise that the party would also provide subsidies when local resources were insufficient, would permit rural communities, many of them “kinderreich” (child-rich) but resource-poor, to build a home.Footnote 105 Despite promises of assistance, the message to communities remained clear: they were on the hook when it came to paying for these facilities.
Hitler Youth leaders later credited the 1939 law for boosting construction rates. During a February 1944 meeting of the Working Committee for Hitler Youth Home Procurement, Möckel reported that by September 1939, just eight months after the law's passage, the total number of finished homes had reached 1,000, construction was underway on 648 facilities, and plans for another 1,000 sites had been completed. He added that grants from the federal government, states, and municipalities totaling approximately 85 million RM, together with approximately 6 million RM in subsidies from the Nazi Party, had helped to fund these projects. Möckel attributed this “success” to the 1939 law's compulsory mechanisms.Footnote 106
Germany's return to war in September 1939 saved many municipalities from having to finance new construction. Already in August 1939, Fitz Todt, the General Plenipotentiary for the Regulation of the Construction Industry, limited nonessential construction. In November 1939 and February 1940, Todt issued orders that restricted new building to war-essential projects.Footnote 107 This building freeze suspended construction on 648 Hitler Youth homes.Footnote 108 And yet, communities could apply for permission to complete projects that were nearly done.Footnote 109 Because of this exemption, the Hitler Youth was ultimately able to complete 200 of the 648 homes stalled in late 1939.Footnote 110 By 1943, the organization had completed 1,071 new homes in the so-called Altreich.Footnote 111 Although the organization was also able to build some new homes in the Sudetenland and Austria, new construction here slowed as well starting in late 1939.Footnote 112
While the building freeze released municipalities from having to finance new construction, the regime still expected them to pay maintenance costs on completed homes. To get an accurate sense of these expenses, in early 1941 the German Council of Municipalities asked twenty-eight mayors and ten district administrators to report how much money their communities spent annually on maintaining Hitler Youth homes. These upkeep costs typically included electricity, heat, water, building repairs, and even cleaning.Footnote 113 The survey revealed that some larger cities responsible for multiple homes were paying hefty sums. Authorities in Leipzig, for example, reported annual costs totaling more than 38,000 RM while officials in Munich estimated annual costs to be 34,000 RM.Footnote 114 Municipalities that had not built new homes reported (maybe even gleefully) no ongoing costs.Footnote 115
Given the limited number of new houses completed by 1939, thousands of squads and platoons continued to meet in makeshift spaces. And Nazi leaders wanted municipalities to subsidize their rental and utility costs. On March 27, 1941, the Reich Interior Minister issued a directive that clarified this intention. The document also promised the forthcoming publication of implementation guidelines for the January 1939 Hitler Youth home building law that would standardize building practices.Footnote 116
Communities frustrated by the Hitler Youth's tendency to draft expensive building plans likely welcomed this news. In July 1941, for example, the mayor of Bunzlau, a city in Lower Silesia (now Bolesławiec in western Poland), objected to the Hitler Youth's postwar plans to build two “elaborate” and expensive Hitler Youth homes that threatened to cost approximately 1 million RM.Footnote 117 The German Council of Municipalities sided with the community, with one official noting that Bunzlau's experience with the Hitler Youth was “typical.” He suggested that the Interior Ministry's promised implementation guidelines might help “avoid similar difficulties in the future.”Footnote 118
But the primary objective of the Reich Interior Minister's March 27, 1941 decree was to shift the costs of renting “vorläufige Unterkünfte” (temporary accommodations) onto municipalities. The minister conceded that, given the slowdown in new construction, Nazi youth would have to meet in makeshift spaces to carry out their important “educational work.” He therefore directed municipalities, especially those that had not yet built a Hitler Youth home, to “devote special attention” to helping Nazi youth acquire temporary meeting spaces, either by granting them free access to classrooms and community halls, absorbing the rental costs associated with leasing space within municipally owned buildings, or taking over rental contracts with third-party landlords. The decree also directed municipalities to cover the costs of electricity, heat, water, and cleaning and urged civic officials to continue funneling resources—if they could—into reserve funds so that, after the war, construction could resume. Perhaps the minister worried that this decision would be unpopular. He directed the ministry to not publish the decree. Instead, officials could inform municipalities on a need-to-know basis.Footnote 119
Although these temporary accommodations were cheaper than new construction, they saddled municipalities with administrative and financial responsibilities. According to the Hitler Youth's statistics, somewhere between 36,000 and 40,000 of these makeshift spaces were in use by 1943.Footnote 120 In early 1942, the German Council of Municipalities suggested that these typically smaller and improvised spaces (such as empty workshops, stores, or apartments) were imposing a unique burden on municipalities. It was no small feat, one document explained, to heat and clean rented spaces scattered across a city. To understand this burden, the organization surveyed local authorities about their experiences. Officials in Munich reported the existence of 200 temporary accommodations, many of them one-story buildings that had once housed workshops, offices, and shops. They explained that Nazi youth rarely used apartments given the ongoing housing shortage. Officials in Leipzig, meanwhile, reported the existence of seventy-one improvised meeting spaces, most of them one- or two-room facilities.Footnote 121
Nazi youth in annexed territories likewise relied on makeshift spaces. According to official sources, Nazi youth in Alsace, for example, used spaces confiscated from private clubs, Jewish groups, and “enemies” of the Reich.Footnote 122 In Austria, local newspapers described some of the spaces that Nazi youth in and around Vienna were using to host their various activities. They included gymnasiums, schools, and municipal buildings.Footnote 123
The regime's decision not to publish this decree permitted municipalities to deflect the Hitler Youth's requests for financial assistance in paying rental costs. In a previously noted example, in July 1941 the mayor of Remscheid bristled at a request from the Hitler Youth that the city pay the organization's costs of renting administrative office space. The mayor turned to the German Council of Municipalities for advice. Seemingly unaware of the March 1941 “temporary accommodations” decree, the mayor cited the Interior Minister's 1934 decree (which held that municipalities were not obliged to provide cash subsidies to Nazi organizations) as he asked whether his community must fund this request.Footnote 124 The council's president referenced this same 1934 decree as he explained that Remscheid was, in fact, not obligated to shoulder these costs. Furthermore, the council's president noted that the January 1939 Hitler Youth home procurement law required communities “only to build and maintain Hitler Youth homes and, when appropriate, generate reserves” for future construction.Footnote 125
A year later, Hitler Youth leaders pushed the Interior Ministry to issue more explicit instructions regarding rental costs. By this point, Artur Axmann had replaced Schirach as the Reich Youth Leader. (In 1940, Hitler had named Schirach to be the Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of the Reichsgau Vienna.) In June 1942, Möckel, the man Schirach had selected in 1937 to oversee daily operations for the Working Committee in Berlin, asked the ministry to revise and reissue these regulations so that they were “clearer and more uniform.” One area that could be improved, Möckel explained, was language regarding rental contracts involving third-party landlords. If and when the Hitler Youth had to rent rooms from private individuals, it should be the responsibility of municipalities to forge these contracts. Furthermore, municipalities should assume contracts the Hitler Youth had already concluded with private property owners. Möckel also suggested that all future agreements include language that guaranteed Nazi youth's “unrestricted use” of these spaces and allowed joint use only with the express agreement of the local Hitler Youth Bannführer (battalion leader).Footnote 126 He also asked that the ministry publish this revision.Footnote 127
In making this request about exclusive access, Möckel was likely reacting to the Hitler Youth's loss of homes in the first months of the war as municipal and military officials repurposed their meetings spaces. Nazi youth in Wilhelmshaven, for example, never had a chance to use the new Hitler Youth home completed on their behalf. When the war started, local authorities confiscated the structure for the purposes of Luftschutz (air raid protection).Footnote 128 In November 1939, Hitler Youth officials in Berlin informed national and regional leaders that the military had already confiscated “many” Hitler Youth homes. They added that local squads and platoons forced out of their homes by the military sometimes endured “hateful comments” or were given less than an hour to vacate.Footnote 129 Yet publicly, the Hitler Youth expressed its readiness to make these homes available to the military and for the purposes of home defense.Footnote 130
The Justice Ministry subsequently took steps to regulate this “joint use” of Hitler Youth homes. In August 1940, the ministry issued a decree that stipulated these homes could only be repurposed for educational use (the example provided was hosting a kindergarten during harvest season) and with the permission of local Hitler Youth leaders. This same decree also obliged organizations that used these spaces to pay cities a lump sum to cover the costs of heating, electricity, water, and cleaning.Footnote 131 This shifting of costs, which surely benefited communities, may have incentivized civic leaders to allow other organizations to lease these structures.
In November 1942, the Reich Interior Ministry circulated a draft for a revised decree that incorporated Möckel's suggestions. Using more explicit language, this new version once again directed communities to provide Nazi youth with free access to municipally owned spaces and assume primary responsibility for rental contracts involving private property owners. Unlike the March 1941 decree, however, this new draft prohibited the “joint use” of a “Hitler Youth accommodation.” The space could be used for other purposes only with a battalion leader's express permission or if a sudden catastrophe required shared use. And while the first decree had obliged municipalities to pay for utilities, and even directed Nazi youth to be judicious in their use of water, heat, and electricity, this new version obliged communities, especially in this time of war, to ensure that Nazi youth had adequate access to electricity, water, heating fuel, and cleaning supplies.Footnote 132
Allied air raids unraveled the Hitler Youth's plans to safeguard its access to usable spaces. As British and American bombers inflicted devastating attacks on city after city, destroying entire swaths of buildings as they did so, usable space became an increasingly precious commodity. Civic and municipal officials offset these losses by commandeering Hitler Youth and BDM homes and meeting rooms. For example, a BDM leader in the Bavarian city of Kitzingen noted in a 1943 operational report that the “home question remains bad.” Two years later, she explained that the mayor had commandeered 50 percent of the organization's facilities.Footnote 133 Similar scenarios took place across Germany. In Stuttgart, for example, municipal authorities allowed a local hospital to store extra mattresses in a local BDM home. Meanwhile in Hamburg, municipal authorities used a Hitler Youth home to house Land Service youth.Footnote 134
After the regime's collapse, municipalities repurposed undamaged Hitler Youth homes. Towns and cities converted these structures into apartments, school dormitories, office buildings, and housing for expellees and orphans, or made them available to youth organizations.Footnote 135 Some of these structures still exist today. For example, the life-size model showcased during the 1937 exhibition “Give Me Four Years’ Time” and rebuilt in Berlin's Volkspark Rehberge is now a youth recreation center.Footnote 136 In recent years, some communities have restored these homes back to their original design.Footnote 137
Conclusion
The building program Schirach launched with his January 1, 1937 announcement fell far short of expectations. Instead of building tens of thousands of new homes, the organization he led oversaw the completion of only around 1,100 new homes by 1943.Footnote 138 In the end, Hitler Youth and BDM members continued to meet, as they had prior to Schirach's 1937 announcement, in tens of thousands of makeshift spaces. Hitler and his allies consistently expected municipalities to subsidize the Hitler Youth's building requirements, whether that meant financing new construction, paying for ongoing maintenance, or renting rooms from private landlords.
Nazi leaders used the Hitler Youth law to access these municipal funds. Specifically, they relied on Article 2, which asserted that the Hitler Youth, in addition to families and schools, was responsible for overseeing the intellectual, emotional, and physical education of youth. Hans Lammers' decision—likely made in consultation with Schirach—to use the preposition “außer” (besides) instead of “außerhalb” (beyond) proved consequential. This word choice permitted Nazi leaders to claim that, because Hitler Youth homes were educational sites, municipalities had a responsibility to pay for their construction and upkeep, much as they were responsible for building and maintaining public schools. This word choice also allowed the Hitler Youth to sidestep the Interior Minister's 1934 decree freeing cities from having to provide cash subsidies to Nazi organizations.
In giving the Hitler Youth access to municipal money, Lammers and Schirach found a way to grow the Hitler Youth without impacting the federal budget. They had followed the finance minister's advice to find a way to “educate” youth that would not require federal investments in infrastructure.Footnote 139 Instead, thanks to Article 2, municipalities would bear the brunt of these costs, providing cash and in-kind subsidies that would not detract from the regime's rearmament plans. Perhaps Schirach and Hitler hoped that, after two years of municipally financed construction, the Hitler Youth would command thousands of new homes that would support the introduction of mandatory membership.
The December 1936 law—with its characterization of the Hitler Youth as an educational organization—paved the way for subsequent legislation and decrees that had the same objective: to coerce and compel municipalities to subsidize the Hitler Youth's facility costs. Particularly important was the January 1939 home procurement law, which asserted, in no uncertain terms, that it was the responsibility of municipalities to build these homes. Also consequential was the Interior Minister's March 1941 unpublished decree that municipalities were obliged to give Hitler Youth and BDM squads and platoons free access to municipal space and assume the costs of rental contracts.
The regime's use of the Hitler Youth law to fund a home building campaign that might one day support compulsory and expanded membership is an important reminder that, even in this authoritarian and deeply ideological regime, concerns about money (and rearmaments) also shaped policy. Moreover, the regime's determination to legitimate this reallocation of municipal monies by claiming that the Hitler Youth's educational work was equal in importance to that of schools and families underscores Nazi leaders’ concerns about image and public approval.
The Hitler Youth Law has long been misunderstood as a membership law when, in fact, it was a law about membership and money. Hitler and his deputies undoubtedly wanted to recruit and indoctrinate all youth and, if possible, implement premilitary training for teenage boys. But the hard reality was that they lacked the funds they needed to make membership compulsory. The Hitler Youth law offered a subtle yet effective vehicle for accessing municipal funds, one that allowed the regime to present itself as ideologically driven rather than admit it lacked the resources to fund a national youth program.
Kara L. Ritzheimer is an associate professor of history at Oregon State University. She is the author of “Trash,” Censorship, and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2016). She is currently completing a book titled Nazi Girl: Girls and Girlhood in Hitler's Germany.
