Youth, Women and Education

To the Nazi regime, creating a Volksgemeinschaft (people's community) meant more than controlling adult Germans. It meant shaping the next generation — raising children who were physically fit, racially "pure", ideologically committed to Hitler, and prepared for the roles the regime assigned them. Boys were destined for the army and the factory; girls for motherhood and the household. These intentions were pursued through three interlocking instruments: a compulsory youth movement, a Nazified school system, and a comprehensive set of laws and rewards designed to push women out of paid work and into child-rearing. This lesson examines each in turn and asks how far the regime's ambitions for youth, women and education were realised in practice.

---

The Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls

The Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend, HJ) had existed since 1926 as a junior wing of the Nazi Party. In power the regime systematically absorbed or dissolved all competing youth groups — Catholic, Protestant, scouting, working-class — and made the HJ the single approved youth organisation. The Law Concerning the Hitler Youth of 1 December 1936 declared the HJ a state body and stated that all German youth "shall be educated in the Hitler Youth physically, mentally and morally in the spirit of National Socialism". A second law in 1939 made membership compulsory, effectively from age 10.

The movement was organised by age and sex.

Age	Boys	Girls
6–10	(Pimpfen — informal)	—
10–14	Deutsches Jungvolk (DJ)	Jungmädelbund (JM)
14–18	Hitlerjugend (HJ)	Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM)
17–21 (girls)	—	BDM Glaube und Schönheit (Faith and Beauty) from 1938

Membership grew from around 2.3 million in 1933 to 8 million by 1939, the peak year. In most towns, being outside the movement was practically impossible for an ordinary child: non-membership excluded a young person from normal schooling life, from apprenticeships and — for boys — effectively from university entry.

Activities were designed to instil physical fitness, ideological commitment and comradeship. For boys, a typical weekend included hikes, marching drill, map-reading, shooting practice with small-bore rifles and paramilitary exercises. For girls, the Bund Deutscher Mädel emphasised fitness (gymnastics, swimming, cross-country running), domestic skills (cooking, needlework, child care) and ideological education (lectures on race, motherhood and German history). Summer camps, parades and rallies punctuated the year; the annual Nuremberg rally gathered HJ contingents from across Germany.

The cumulative pressure of compulsory, uniformed, ideologically saturated youth activity was considerable. Yet it produced mixed effects. For some young Germans, the HJ genuinely replaced family and church as their moral community. For others, it was a tiresome duty evaded where possible. As the previous lesson noted, Edelweiss Pirates and Swing Youth emerged partly as a reaction against it.

Exam Tip: For a "Explain why" question on the Nazi treatment of youth, link every fact to a purpose. The Hitler Youth is not just a "club" — it was designed to replace parental and church authority, prepare boys for the army and girls for motherhood, and provide the regime with a generation that knew no alternative to Nazi rule.

---

Schools and the Nazi Curriculum

Nazi policy for schools had two faces: it removed teachers and content the regime considered hostile, and it inserted teachers and content that served Nazi aims.

Teachers were brought under state control through the National Socialist Teachers' League (Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund, NSLB). Although it was technically voluntary, by 1937 over 97% of teachers belonged. Those who did not join — usually Jewish, socialist or Catholic teachers — lost their positions, either under the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (April 1933) or through pressure from pupils and parents. Attendance at political training camps (at places like Bad Tölz) was expected; teachers were required to run their classrooms in line with Nazi ideology.

The curriculum was reshaped throughout the school day.

Subject	Nazi reshaping
History	National restoration narrative — the "November criminals", the rise of Hitler, the superiority of Germanic peoples
Biology	"Race science" — classification of races, Aryan superiority, eugenics, the hereditary basis of "fitness"
Mathematics	Word problems framed around bomb trajectories, military budgets and the "cost" of disabled Germans to the state
German	Emphasis on Nazi-approved literature; removal of Jewish and pacifist authors
Geography	Lebensraum — the need for "living space" in the east
Physical Education	Five periods a week for boys; prominence close to that of academic subjects
Religious Education	Progressively marginalised; some schools dropped it altogether

In 1935 a separate school subject called Rassenkunde (race studies) was introduced. Textbooks classified pupils' fellow citizens into pseudo-scientific racial types, urged vigilance against mixed marriages, and presented Jews, Roma and Slavs as inferior. Biology textbooks from 1938 onwards presented the Nuremberg Laws as the logical application of natural science.

Girls' education diverged from boys' from the early secondary years. From 1937, separate curricula reduced the academic content for girls and replaced it with Home Economics, Child Care and Needlework. The aim was to prepare girls for marriage and motherhood. University admissions for women were capped at 10% of places in 1934 (the cap was later relaxed when wartime labour demands required women to be trained).

flowchart TD
  A[Nazi goals for youth] --> B[Boys: soldiers, party members]
  A --> C[Girls: mothers, homemakers]
  B --> D[HJ: drill, shooting, fitness]
  B --> E[Schools: history, biology, maths through Nazi lens]
  C --> F[BDM: fitness, domestic skills]
  C --> G[Schools: home economics, child care]
  D --> H[Prepare for Wehrmacht]
  E --> H
  F --> I[Prepare for motherhood]
  G --> I

Elite schools

For the children the regime identified as future leaders, separate elite schools were established.

• National Political Educational Institutes (Napolas) — established from 1933 under the Education Ministry, these secondary boarding schools combined academic learning with intensive physical and military training. By 1939 there were around 20 Napolas; their graduates fed into the SS and the officer corps.
• Adolf Hitler Schools — founded in 1937 and run jointly by the Nazi Party and Hitler Youth, these even more ideological schools selected pupils at 12 and trained them for Party leadership.
• Ordensburgen — four fortress-like "order castles" for young adults (18–25), offering three years of racial, political and physical training to produce the next generation of Party elite.