The entire existence of the State Youth stands under the sign of battle. A defensive battle; and we must discover, in an honest search, whether there is, somewhere, in some corner, an opponent to meet this challenger.
The life of German youth is filled with hatred. Against whom?
Against the future enemies of the nation — we read that in its songs and plays—against a world of enemies; and, further, against all the weak in Germany, against the conquered. Looking for real enemies, Germany would drag the dead — Rathenau, Eisner, Erzberger — from their graves, again to be murdered, this time more decisively, “legally” at the command of the State!
The institutions which the State Youth does battle against are, as a matter of fact, half-dead, ghostly, with a shadow-life that has just enough reality to constitute a shadow-enemy without which the Nazi, and especially the youth, movement could not exist.
The Jews have a part to play, but there is not much for the State Youth to do there. They are too finished, as a group; there is hardly a twitch of life.
The State Youth knows, as sadistic children know about a caught frog, that you can pull off the frog’s legs, and watch the body try to hop; then stick a pin into the belly, and watch the shocked wrench; and hit its head until it does not move. But pretty soon after that, the frog bores the child, and he turns away to more amusing things. The Jewish enemy is locked out of schools and youth organizations. Forbidden to sleep in inns or swim in lakes, or even play in the playgrounds, he is becoming a little boring.
The Freemason, who was offered to the children as an enemy, was a failure all the way through. They may be as disgusting as “Dr. Freemason” in the play, and of course they’re enemies, but what are they like? “Have you ever seen one?” asks the German child.
The need is for vivid enemies. Above all, it is necessary to keep up the pretense of struggle, an eternal Kampf, with an antagonist who can be identified, recognized face to face, and who can offer the further stimulus of power, or at least the power of resistance. The men controlling the third circle of the German child, from which there is no escape, turn to the other two influences, which, according to them, exist only through their benevolence — the influences which surround the child, and are now to be labeled as enemies — the school and the family.
The school represents an acceptable enemy, a mild, weaponless opponent, without a place to escape to (and by connotation, the church is included here) — an enemy who is still alive and not as dull as the dead.
“Our teacher has a thin, pale nose. The end is flat because at the end of every sentence he strokes it with his right hand. He talks too much. Yesterday he talked about the summer solstice. Like this: ‘On the 21st of June, the sun has reached its apex. Apex means the highest point. Apex means culmination. Culmination is derived from the Latin culminare…. ’ At this moment, Fred who sits beside me, drew his Hitler Boy Quex[a Nazi Youth book] out of his school-bag and started looking for the place he was reading yesterday, while the fellow up in front kept talking about the ‘vocative.’… Fred must have swallowed a fly, for he suddenly began to cough terribly. But it’s just as well, or else I’d have continued thinking for at least another half hour — and it’s never any good to think for more than five minutes on end. Especially not for a boy….”
That is Jungvolk (No. 6, 1934) mocking at school, teachers, the vocative, and all thought, no matter how slight. If this were a private, boy’s magazine, brought out by boys, there would be nothing very objectionable in its tone. But this is official and absolute, edited by the leaders of the State Youth or their subordinates — and its mockery is only a skirmish in Schirach’s war against the school.
In each issue of these periodicals — and they are all official — there are at least two or three contributions with the same derisive aim. One essay is “A Fine Educator!” In the same issue of Jungvolk, the “defensive battle” is, this time, against an obviously well-meaning teacher who submitted a song to the editors.
“There is but one point at which we are sensitive,” the essay irritably begins, “and that is when people mix into our affairs; when they try to palm off their old-fashioned poems on us as though they were timely and up to the minute.”
The little song which is reprinted is hardly to be distinguished from others found in Jungvolk. The entire attitude of resentment can be explained only by this hatred of “people,” and especially teachers, who “mix into” Nazi affairs. The literary level of the publications and of the poetry is hardly one which permits the editors to criticize other authors on literary grounds.
The song is intended as a happy Wanderlied (marching song) and begins in traditional mildness.
Wenn der Kuckkuck lacht in grüner Ferne —
Kuckkuck — Ho-la-h, —
Ach, dann höre ichs lenzfroh gerne—
Kuckkuck, Ho-la-la….
When the cuckoo in the greenwood sings —
Cuckoo — Ho, lala —
I hear the voice of a thousand Springs —
Cuckoo — Ho, lala —
Probably it is the last two stanzas that are referred to as “timely.” They still refer to the cuckoo:
Auch wie Du will ich die Sorgen tragen,
Mahnt die Pflicht, dem Unmut stark entsagen.
Dein “Kuckkuck,” hell und inhaltsschwer,
Beleb mich allemal recht sehr.
Klaren Blickes will ich voll Vertrauen
Aufwärts, vor mich, wie auch um mich schauen,
Als Siegfried steigen mit empor,
Zu öffnen Deutschlands goldnes Tor.
Like you will I the burden bear,
When duty calls, my courage will be there.
Your cry of Cuckoo, beautiful and bright,
Will fortify and set me right.
Clear-eyed and full of trust I see
Ahead, around, and over me —
Like Siegfried, I will rise up straight
To open Germany’s golden gate. [2]
The verses are feeble, terribly feeble, and not even blood-thirsty. But look at the response! “The author calls himself a scholar,” continues Jungvolk. “He really should know that the National Socialist youth takes its duties damned seriously and has no need to be reminded of the same by a cuckoo. Our only advice to this sort of ‘educator of youth’ is this: ‘Hands off the leadership of youth!’ ”
That’s how to pick a quarrel! And hope the victim will twitch!
But it will not. School is not a good enemy: it is incapable of resistance, nor is there the chance of instigating a countermovement.
And the Church, the priests, teachers of religion, former leaders of religious unions? What about them?
That’s better, now. There’s resistance, and protest, here.
The struggle has been long, full of secret arrests, persecutions, public calumny, opinions repressed, suppression of organizations and instruments of the Church, and the wholesale incitement of youth away from it. The Apex was the trial of Pastor Niemoeller; and the protest of the army chaplains, because they were part of the army, was of special significance.
“The protest handed to the ‘Führer’ by Protestant military chaplains in November, 1937 [wrote one correspondent], which showed them in the light of true ‘Protestants,’ was an expression of rebellious contradiction. It was imposing in its keen directness and showed more vivid signs of life than the Nazis ever expected from this ‘enemy.’ The chaplains objected to the naming of three enemies of National Socialism and consequently of Germany in Nazi camps. The three main enemies were designated repeatedly as Judaism, Freemasonry and Christianity. Since 1934, some thirteen hundred of the entire eighteen thousand pastors of the Reich had been brought into prison or into concentration camps. One high functionary of the Party, on the occasion of a recent Party meeting in Halle, referred to Jesus Christ as ‘this swine.’ School teachers had repeatedly called Jesus a ‘Jewish tramp’ in the classroom. Young teachers had asked their pastors for help because they had not been permitted to speak of Jesus in the sense of the Holy Scriptures, even when they were supposed to be instructing in religion. The military priests went so far as to express doubt as to the Nazi holy of holies — namely, success in the coming war — in case, of course, that they persisted in their anti-Christian campaign. It was impossible for true Christians to be in that accord, necessary to success, for anyone systematically drilled into referring to Christ as a swine and a tramp. And the whole war propaganda would surely fall on deaf ears, since an essential part of the German people would not believe a word of what was said to them, after this battle with the Church.”
Here is an enemy whose life is left!
One little girl of the village of Niederdondeleben was to be confirmed. Her teacher, the village pastor, wrote the following words into the child’s album:
To the Fatherland, not the Party! Service to the Fatherland makes one great and free; Service to the Party, narrow and small, untruthful and unjust. The Fatherland needs strong characters; the Party fears and hinders them. By so much as the Fatherland means more to you than does the Party, so much more does your compatriot mean to you than a co-member of the Party. In remembrance of Dr. Müller, Pastor, Niederdondeleben.
The Black Corps (organ of the S.S.) in its issue of September 23, 1937, which has “by chance” glanced at the poetry album in question, quotes from it, and remarks: “At the moment, Dr. Müller is under arrest and in training to become a martyr.” It goes on to suggest that fathers look into the albums of their impressionable daughters to see if they cannot find some “snotty pastor’s verses therein!”
This is, again, the first circle, the smallest, and least attacked limit of the family. But parents who, for their part, are under the Hitler Youth, have to obey. Their wishes and justified interests are ignored; and the parents play possum, too, and cannot be called a real enemy.
The New York Times of November 30, 1937 relates a story of Draconic punishment typical of the force with which penalties are given in the Reich. The parents here were members of a society of Bible students in Waldenberg, in Silesia, and were both accused of having infected their children with pacifist ideals and of influencing them against the Nazi regime. The father declared in court that he exercised no influence whatsoever upon his children, and the answer given him was that whether or not his statement was true, the atmosphere in the home of Bible students could not be anything but poisonous for children; no one could live in it without becoming an enemy of the State. The father admitted a previous conviction for having failed to send his children to some National Socialist school festival. He assured the court that the children had not wanted to go. But the court’s opinion was that this in itself showed the harmful effect of the parents’ influence, and handed down the following verdict:
“Law, in the service of racial and national interests, confides the care of the children, only under certain circumstances to the parents-Namely: if the children are brought up as the nation and the State decree. It is above all important to enlighten the children, so that they be aware that they, too, are part of a mighty nation, whose citizens are inseparably bound together by unanimity of opinion in all decisive questions. Anyone who raises children in such views as are likely to place them in opposition to the racial and national popular unity has failed to fulfill the conditions under which the education of his children has been entrusted to him. For reasons of general weal, such people will be forbidden to continue the upbringing of their children. The only chance of rectifying this lies in the complete separation of the children from the parents.”
And so the children were taken from their parents, not for a crime proved or committed or even contemplated, nor for expressed opinions, but solely because the atmosphere of such a home could not bring these children of Bible students up to revere the State. And the one offence, an old and trival one, was raked up to stand against the family.
One thing is clear, from the angle of the men in power: an example had to be made. All parents had to be warned; surely, from now on, everyone who had children would avoid Bible groups and pacifist ideas.
The extremity of these measures indicates the extent of the real fear of the Nazis, who are striking these blind blows, in the dark, against a “hidden” opponent — afraid even of the ruins of institutions they have crushed.
* * *
The Nazis have destroyed or undermined:
1. The family, and the private life of the Germans.
2. The quality that gave the Germans the name of “the nation of poets and philosophers”: their love of truth, science, and all objective thought.
3. The power of the Church in Germany.
They have destroyed everything which for centuries was holy to German citizens.
Adolf Hitler’s regime knows that certain people cannot be other than enemies — family members, professing Catholics and Protestants, men of science, and all other groups alienated by the destruction of their rights and sacred possessions.
The regime knows that its only hope lies in the young, those unaware of denial and destruction, who cannot know the news unless somebody — one of the enemies — informs them.
The regime knows that, attached to their parents, attending school, the children are still open to those suspicious influences. They have religious training. And there is a generation of enemies who still live in the country and who, later, will provide the jobs for these children to step into, and there, perhaps, learn.
The regime, fearful in spite of pomp and celebration, is making preparations.
The Frankfurter Zeitung of June 26, 1937:
“We have recently been informed that an order has been proclaimed by the Reich Minister of Education to the effect that all reports of school graduations or diplomas are to omit any mention of the activity of the pupil in the National Socialist Party and its sub-organizations.”
This proclamation was not to be made public (according to some official correspondence), for it needed a preliminary notice to explain it. Repeatedly, the activities of pupils in organizations had been described as harmful to their academic development, and mention of these were likely to injure their future chances. Rudolf Hess, Representative of the Führer, has compelled the Minister of Education to command that no mention be made of the Party or its organizations — and that, for children of school age, means expressly the Jungvolk and the Hitler Jugend, the Jungmädels and the B.D.M. The secret order, published by mistake, overreaches itself. Wouldn’t it have been enough to issue an edict forbidding unfavorable notices (suicidal to the teachers who wrote them, considering the status of the schools)? But no notice at all! There is a good reason for it. Usually, the school rating of children stands in inverse proportion to their activity in the State Youth, because of the time the organization work requires and the emphasis it puts. And if a business man finds a boy with a good organization record and good marks, he will not believe the good marks; or he will prefer not to have an obvious government agent, perhaps even a government spy, working for him. And the boy himself, turned down at every job, will consider his report with its seductively high marks, and blame his failure on the notice that he was Gefolgschaftsführer. How many of these cases must have added up before the edict was issued, behind Herr von Schirach’s back! And how it must have confused the children, to have their proudest title, this rank that ornaments their position in the State, commanded secretly to be kept a secret!
These are policies dictated by a bad conscience, directed now, not against a world of enemies, but against the most promising members of the new State in a commonwealth of people whose boast is of complete unity.
That’s how things are. Hitler’s regime says: We have enemies in Germany, many of them, and we can only pray to Wotan that, as in the past, they will fear us more than we fear them. But we have youth on our side. That makes us strong. Also, we have the guns.
They have the guns and that makes them strong. But the youth? There are proofs to the contrary. In this force of millions, who are supposed to be truly and irrevocably Nazi, the young men, the university men, are the first to show disappointment and disgust. They protest by leaving empty benches before Storm Leaders disguised as professors and by crowding the halls for those few who have a little knowledge of the extra-Nazi world. And these men were, yesterday, the State Youth.
There are other signs. Voices find the outside world. They are voices of young workers, students, men of deep religious convictions, and their expressions are of wrath and hope. Here is the spectacle of a country — uneducated politically, seduced by romantic nationalism and a charlatan who said he was a savior — whose moral and spiritual resources as a country are now forced underground. The forces still live. In the past, they nourished all the greatness of Germany. They survive; they cannot be withheld from the soul of a people; in the end, they are the highest concepts of human life, and they triumph, they emerge in the end.