T HE LIFE OF EVERY HUMAN being in Germany has been fundamentally changed since Adolf Hitler became Chancellor. When German democracy gave way to Nazi dictatorship, the upheaval was as drastic to the private life of the individual as it was to the State. Before February, 1933, the German citizen thought of himself as a father, or a Protestant, or a florist, or a citizen of the world, or a pacifist, or a Berliner. Now he is forced to recognize that above all he is a National Socialist.
The Führer’s National Socialist Weltanschauung has to be gospel for every German citizen; his plans, and even the means to those ends, are to be unquestioningly revered.
No German group was more stringently affected by the changes of the dictatorship than the children. An adult German must be first a National Socialist, but he can — by now — be, in the second place, a shopkeeper or a manufacturer, without his shop or factory belonging to the State; but the German child is a Nazi child, and nothing else.
He attends a Nazi school; he belongs to a Nazi youth organization; the movies he is allowed to see are Nazi films. His whole life, without any reservation, belongs to the Nazi State.
Adults in Germany still retain some private interests, some knowledge of the world outside, where everything is so different from the picture inside Adolf Hitler’s head. But the young have no individual interests; they know nothing of another world, with another rule.
The Führer’s best bet lay, from the very beginning, in the inexperience and easy credulity of youth. It was his ambition, as it must be any dictator’s, to take possession of that most fertile field for dictators: the country’s youth. Not because of any ignorance of the young, but because whoever has them has the adults of tomorrow, and can flatter himself he is lord of the future.
If everything goes according to Mr. Hitler, Germans are to rule the world. “Whoever really desires the victory of the pacifist idea,” he writes in Mein Kampf, “should use all his energy in helping the Germans to conquer the world.” This future in which the Führer’s obsession is to come to pass, can be made only by the apprentices of the Nazi State: the German youth.
All the power of the regime — all its cunning, its entire machine of propaganda and discipline — is directed to emphasize the program for German children. It is not surprising that the Nazi State considers It of primary importance that the young grow up according to Hitler’s wishes, and the plans set in Mein Kampf: “Beginning with the primer, every theater, every movie, every advertisement must be subjected to the service of one great mission, until the prayer of fear that our patriots pray today: ‘Lord, make us free,’ shall be changed in the mind of the smallest child into the cry: ‘Lord, do Thou in future bless our arms.’”
And, on another page: “All education must have the sole object of stamping the conviction into the child that his own people and his own race are superior to all others.”
The Führer realizes that the education of German youth will have a tremendous influence on Germany’s future — and on Europe’s and the world’s. He gives the problem the attention it deserves.
“If anyone asks me whether I have had trouble in the past, I must answer: Yes, I have never been without troubles. But I have mastered them. If they ask if I have troubles now, I must answer: I have many troubles. And when I am asked if I think I shall have trouble in the future, then I answer in the same manner: Yes, I believe that I shall never be free of trouble. But that is not the decisive thing. I shall master the troubles of the present and those of the future just as I mastered those of the past. But I have one great worry which really causes me trouble. And that is the worry that it may not he possible to educate successors for the leadership and political guidance of the National Socialist Party.”
This matter of educating successors is a real fear. Hitler has maneuvered to make himself the absolute ruler of the lives of all Germans, and has taken over the lives of all of the German children, who not only are taken care of so that they live according to the will of the Führer, but also are made to have no guide but the Führer. And this is in the general air, that one breathes with such difficulty.