Youth and the National Community

About This Lesson

In the previous two lessons, students learned about 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 firsthand accounts that show the appeal the Nazi program 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 universe of obligation. 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.

Essential Question

How can learning about the choices people made during past episodes of injustice, mass violence, or genocide help guide our choices today?

Guiding Questions

• How did the Nazis attempt to enlist young people in their efforts to create “in” groups and “out” groups in German society in the 1930s? How did young people respond to these attempts?
• What were the consequences for young people who were excluded from the Nazi vision for a “national community”?
• What is the role of education in preparing young people for their role as citizens? What might be the difference between preparing students to live in a dictatorship versus a democracy?

Learning Objectives

• Through close reading and discussion, students will identify the range of choices that young people faced in Nazi Germany and how the Nazis used schools and youth organizations to mold young people to embrace their nationalist and racist ideologies.
• Students will also develop their ideas about the role young people should play in any society and how they should best be educated for the future.

Activities

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.” But first, 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: Analyze Accounts of Youth Experiences in Nazi Germany

Tell students that they will now examine a variety of firsthand 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 (or writing on the board) and previewing the following questions for students, which they will respond to in their journals after watching a short video.

• 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 their universe of obligation?
• 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 one or both of the following video testimonies:

• Changes at School under the Nazis (04:13): testimony by Kurt Klein
• Friendship and Betrayal (02:55): testimony by Ellen Kerry Davis

After watching the videos, briefly discuss how Klein’s and Davis’s 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 groups of four or five, and have each group sit in a circle. 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 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 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

To close the lesson, or for homework, ask students to review their responses to the anticipation guide they completed at the beginning of the lesson.

After they review the anticipation guide, assign 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 firsthand accounts they studied in this lesson connected to, extended, or challenged their initial opinions about them from the beginning of the lesson.