Excerpt
- Hitler Youth -
Male children of six to ten years were encouraged to join and observe older boys of the ‘Jungvolk’ (Young People), made up of ten to fourteen year olds at their meetings and invited these youngsters to take part informally in Jungvolk activates.
At the age of fourteen boys became full-fledged members of the ‘Hitler Jugend’ (Hitler Youth). From this point until they were eighteen years old, each boy was provided with a booklet of performance which served to record his progress of development in all facets of his training which included athletics, basic military training and strict Nazi doctrine.
Count Karl von Stauffer personally considered the starting age of these new Nazi youth programmes to be somewhat early in a boy’s life; however, as a Wehrmacht Officer, he did manage to assuage his concern with an admittedly somewhat self-righteous personal opinion that “a dose of discipline never hurt any boy”.
It was a New Germany and both his sons had understandably responded to the early propaganda blitz put on by the Nazis and as a result they had eagerly entered into the Hitler Youth programme in nineteen thirty-three freely and with fervent expectations.
The Count’s wife, Erika, had decided at that time that it was also a good idea to start their daughters in the corresponding ‘Bund Deutscher Madel Inder Hitler Jugend’ (League of German Girls in the Hitler Youth) and he had supported her in the reaching of that conclusion.
The decision reached, both of Count von Stauffer’s daughters had joined the ‘League of German Girls in the Hitler Youth’ organization in nineteen thirty-three shortly after Hitler came to power.
He had some concern as to whether or not they had done the right thing at the time, or had his children been forced to grow up too quickly as a result? Had it hardened them in some ways more than he would have liked? Would he have preferred a somewhat softer approach to their education? Perhaps, but in general he was both proud and pleased with the end results: Polite, disciplined, respectful, and fiercely nationalistic young sons a German father’s dream. And surely it could not be harmful to his daughters to be introduced to instruction in motherhood and homemaking or assisting with the harvesting of crops and a gaining of a general appreciation and understanding of what a farmer, who is after all, the salt of the earth, did to provide for his fellow countrymen.