Youth in Nazi Germany (UK)

Students are beginning to understand how the Nazis used laws and propaganda to compel and persuade the German public to accept, if not support, their idea of a ‘national community’ shaped according to their racial ideals. In this lesson, students will continue this unit’s historical case study by looking at how the Nazis trained young people, through schools and youth groups, in an effort to build a foundation for the future of that ‘national community’. Students will learn about the experiences of people who grew up in Nazi Germany through a variety of first-hand accounts that show the appeal the Nazi programme held for many youth and the limits of that appeal for others. This lesson also reveals some of the dilemmas and isolation experienced by those young people who were deliberately excluded from the Nazi national community.

The lesson both begins and concludes by providing students with the opportunity to discuss the role of young people in any society and the proper goals and methods for their education.

Before you teach this lesson, please review the following guidance to tailor this lesson to your students’ contexts and needs.

Activity 1 Reflect on the Role of Young People in Society

• Tell students that in this lesson, they will be looking at the experiences of young people in Nazi Germany, and especially how the Nazis attempted to enlist many of them in the process of building a ‘national community’ that excluded non-Aryans. Firstly, students will engage in an activity to help them think about and discuss the role of young people in society more broadly.
• Pass out the handout Youth in Society Anticipation Guide and give students a few minutes to respond to each statement.
• Then lead a Four Corners activity in which students position themselves in corners of the room near signs reading ‘Strongly Agree’, ‘Agree’, ‘Disagree’, and ‘Strongly Disagree’ to indicate their opinion about each statement.
• Discussing every statement on the anticipation guide could easily take the entire class period, so choose two or three of the statements that you think are of especially high interest to your students for the activity. Read one of the statements and instruct students to move to the corner of the room that represents their opinion.
• Then let students from each corner explain their opinions. Make sure at least one person from each corner has the opportunity to speak, and tell students that if they are persuaded by the argument of a classmate in another corner, they may change their mind and move.
• Repeat this process with as many statements as you can discuss in about ten minutes.

Activity 2 Analyse Accounts of Youth Experiences in Nazi Germany

• Tell students that they will now examine a variety of first-hand accounts from people who were teenagers in Nazi Germany. Many of the ideas they responded to on the anticipation guide in the opening activity will come up in these readings.
• Begin by projecting and previewing the following questions for students, which they will respond to in their journals after watching a short video. You may also want to print out the questions for the students to refer to.

  • What messages were being sent to young Germans about the proper way to think and act in Germany in the 1930s? What messages were sent about how young people should think about who is deserving of respect and protection by the government and society? 
  • Why might these messages have appealed to some German youth? Why might they have frightened, angered, or confused others?
  • What options did young Germans have about how they could respond to the pressures they faced? What factors may have expanded or shrunk the number of options available to them?
  • How were young people from groups targeted by the Nazis affected by the changes in German society in the 1930s?

• Next, show students the following video testimony, Changes at School under the Nazis (4:13): testimony by Kurt Klein. You may also choose to show Friendship and Betrayal (2:55): testimony by Ellen Kerry Davis, or watch it instead. 
• After watching the video(s), briefly discuss how the Klein or Davis testimonies help to answer the questions above.
• Tell students that they will now use the same series of questions to respond to a variety of documents about youth in Nazi Germany in a ‘Little Paper’ activity (a variation of Big Paper).
• Divide the class into table groups, then give each group either Youth in Nazi Germany Reading Set 1 or Youth in Nazi Germany Reading Set 2. Each student should start with one reading from their group’s assigned reading set. As students read, they should annotate the text by highlighting or underlining portions that help to answer the questions above. They can also write comments and observations in the margins about young people’s experiences.  
• After a few minutes, students will then pass their handouts to the person on their right, and they will repeat the process with the new handout. This time, however, they can respond to the comments and annotations the previous student made. Repeat this process at least once more, or (time permitting) until students have had a chance to work with each handout in their group.
• When the process is complete, have students return each handout to the student who read it first so that the student can see the written discussions that followed his or her initial comments.
• Finally, bring the class together as a whole group and debrief the activity with the following questions:

  • How did the Nazis attempt to educate young people to accept, if not support, the dictatorship? How would education be different if the goal were to teach young people how to be citizens in a democracy?
  • What did you notice about the variety of ways young people responded to education and youth groups in Nazi Germany? Did any of the responses surprise you?
  • What options did German teenagers have in terms of how they could respond to the pressures they faced? What were the consequences of some of those choices?

Activity 3 Revisit the Role of Young People in Society

• Ask students to review their responses to the anticipation guide they completed at the beginning of the lesson. 
• After they review the anticipation guide, ask students to select two of the statements from the list and copy them into their journals. After each statement, they should write a short reflection explaining how the first-hand accounts they studied in this lesson connected to, extended, or challenged their initial opinions about them from the beginning of the lesson.

Extension Activity Analyse Nazi Propaganda Images

This extension introduces students to the methods and impact of Nazi propaganda. By analysing propaganda images that appeared in Germany during the Nazi era, students can reflect on the impact of media and political messaging in their lives today as well.

Before you do this extension, you may want to ensure that your students understand what propaganda is. Tell students that when governments or politicians use media to persuade people, we often call that propaganda. Explain that Hitler established the Bureau of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment in 1933 and appointed Joseph Goebbels as its leader (see the reading Shaping Public Opinion for further information). Consider providing students with the following definition:

Propaganda: Information that is intended to persuade an audience to accept a particular idea or cause, often by using biased material or by stirring up emotions.

Use the following steps to analyse examples of propaganda with the class:

• Tell students that they will analyse propaganda images used by the Nazis (please see Notes to Teacher to ensure this task is approached sensitively). 
• By analysing such images, students can see that the Nazis created some propaganda that denigrated Jews and other so-called inferior races, while they created other propaganda that glorified ‘Aryans’. The goal of both approaches was to influence the beliefs, feelings, and actions of individuals in Germany about who should be included and excluded from the ‘national community’ (Volksgemeinschaft). 
• The Nazis used this idea of a Volksgemeinschaft to advance the idea of a racially pure and harmonious national community united in its devotion to the German people, their nation, and their leader. In their effort to reshape the ‘national community’ according to their racial ideals, the Nazis enacted hundreds of laws, policies, and decrees, and created propaganda, some of which the students will be looking at now.
• Give students images from the Visual Essay: The Impact of Propaganda. The images Hitler Youth Propaganda and Antisemitic Children’s Book are particularly relevant, though there are other images too.
• Have students analyse the image using a strategy such as Crop It or See, Think, Wonder. After students have analysed images, lead a class discussion. Consider drawing from the following questions:

  • Do you notice any themes or patterns in this group of propaganda images?
  • Why do you think the Nazis created propaganda that targeted children? 
  • Based on the images you have analysed in this lesson, how do you think the Nazis used propaganda to define the identities of individuals and groups? What does the propaganda suggest about the ‘national community’ they sought to create?
  • How did the Nazis use propaganda to further their goal of creating this ideal ‘national community’?