Hitler Youth history essay topic?

Question

i'm doing an essay on hitler youth, but i haven't chosen my topic yet, can anyone give me some suggestions? has to be pretty specific....

i'm thinking of doing it on hitler youth's impact on wwii,,,,any comments/help? i don't really know where to focus yet....what can i talk about?

and if it's "why" or "how" hitler youth was built up, that would be too broad. even though i do want to touch on it, please give me a better worded topic

i'm reading hitler's children at the moment to help me....but it's so hard to come up with a topic and where to focus on!

thxxxxxxxxxxxx

Answer 1

The Hitler youth were fanatical fighters for the n***s, countless allied verterans will testify to that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Yout...

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GER...

Answer 2

Rent and watch the movie "Swing Kids" stars Robert Sean Leonard, came out a while.  It is a sering and realistic look at the Hitler Youth movement.  The beginnings like banning certain music considered ***** music.  It a story of a bunch of friends who are teens in Germany during the rise of Hitler. It's about their personal choices, beliefs and the consequences.  Should give you something to start on.  You can go to Blockbuster.com and search for "Swing Kids" and then have it search for other movies of that genre, I'm sure there are more I just don't know any.

Answer 3

to say they had no imact on ww2 is idiotic. If you were a boy in Germany before and during the war...you had to be in the HJ...unless you were special. alot of those youths got paramilitary training as children...saving time and sweat ..when they joined the army.....they had have of the training over with. they brainwashed those kids something awful...prolonging many battles in the major cities. At Caen in normandy..the Hitler youth div. held back some of the brits best troops ...taking terrible casualties. Yes..there is plenty of essay material there. knock your self out. B

Answer 4

dont do how hitlers youth affected ww2, that wouldnt exactly give you anything as they didn't. but maybe you could say how ww2 changed hitlers youth. many of them fought in the war, maybe you could do about that. the children of hitlers youth that got involved directly in the war. that would be interesting to as it shows how people under 17 had to fight.

good luck

Answer 5

If you have a choice on a Holocaust topic, I wouldn't pick the Hitler Youth.  I don't think they had ANY impact at all on the war effort, it was just sort of a propaganda thing.  If you get a choice, pick the "Einsatzgruppen".  There's a whole lot of juicy facts on that topic

Answer 6

How did participation in Hitler Youth affect the youth themselves. One of the alumns is Pope Benedict XVI.

Answer 7

You could focus on the Hitler Youth's involvement in the battles in the closing days of the war. More specifically: the effect of having children/teens actually fighting in active combat in the last year or so of the war- maybe some specific veteran stories could help you here. You could also work in the angle of how child veterans readjusted to 'normal' life after the war.

Check this out:

"At the Pichelsdorf bridges, 5,000 boys, wearing man-sized uniforms several sizes too big and helmets that flopped around on their heads, stood by with rifles and Panzerfausts, ready to oppose the Soviet Army. Within five days of battle, 4,500 had been killed or wounded. In other parts of Berlin, HJ boys met similar fates. Many committed suicide rather than be taken alive by the Red Army.

All over the city, every able bodied male was pressed into the desperate final struggle. Anyone fleeing or refusing to go to the front lines was shot or hanged on the spot by SS executioners roaming the streets hunting for deserters.

In his last public appearance, just days before his death, Adolf Hitler ventured out of his Berlin bunker on his 56th birthday into the chancellery garden to decorate twelve-year-old Hitler Youths with Iron Crosses for their heroism in the defence of Berlin. The extraordinary event was captured on film and remains one of the most enduring images chronicling the collapse of Hitler's thousand year Reich, as the tottering, senile-looking Führer is seen congratulating little boys staring at him with worshipful admiration. They were then sent back out into the streets to continue the hopeless fight. "

Source: http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/hi...

Disturbing, to say the least.

Also, a little known fact regarding the Hitler Youth: the KLV camps for boys. Here's a link to a good essay:

http://www.wzaponline.com/HitlerYouth.pd...

Good luck!

Answer 8

You could try to compare them to modern day Boy Scouts.  

Things like, Hitler Youth pledged loyalty to Hitler and the Aryan race, Boy Scouts to God and Country....  Boy Scouts don't let athiests have leadership roles, Hitler Youth wouldn't let non-racially pures join.... Hitler Youth taught them to be more uniform and unquestioningly obedient parts of the larger society, Boy Scouts teaches leadership and self-reliance...

A lot of people like to attack the Boy Scouts claiming the two are similar.  There's sure room in the world for a scholarly side-by-side comparison, because I think they are as different as a NASCAR race and a traffic jam.

Answer 9

srveidde...'s answer backs up my topic suggestion.

HITLER YOUTH _ _ _ NO, they were NOT  BOY SCOUTS!

Time & time on  this forum this notion that the HITLER YOUTH was a group of boy scouts parading about in lederhosen singing Bavarian folk songs gets bandied about and quite frankly it is sickening (though in keepuing with the fact that calling Hitler an idiot always gets me a thumbs down).

The purpose of the HITLER YOUTH movement was to mold the children of Germany into a Hitler Cult.  An entire generation raised to believe in the Fuhrer's twisted ideaology.

Hitler and his willing servent Himmler were determined to create a nation in lock step with their racist views.  The crumbling fortunes of war wrecked their plans but by 1944 members of the Hitler Youth were entering the armed services in great numbers hence to fight to the death stance of the German Army as opposed to their actions at the end of World War One.

Members of the HITLER YOUTH as young as age Twelve, though the majority between 14 and 18, were among the defenders of Berlin in April 1945, fending off the Soviets with bazookas & Molotov Cocktails.  One of the last photos of Adolf Hitler shows him awarding medals to a troop of teenage boys, Hitler Youth Members.

In the wake of the end of the war one of the most difficult tasks was to 'deprogram' these children who had been raised to regard HITLER as a GOD - - - - gonna toss links at you.

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/hi...

""""My program for educating youth is hard. Weakness must be hammered away. In my castles of the Teutonic Order a youth will grow up before which the world will tremble. I want a brutal, domineering, fearless, cruel youth. Youth must be all that. It must bear pain. There must be nothing weak and gentle about it. The free, splendid beast of prey must once again flash from its eyes...That is how I will eradicate thousands of years of human domestication...That is how I will create the New Order." -- Adolf Hitler, 1933.

The Hitler Youth

Complete History in 5 Chapters""""""""""

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/hi...

"""On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the HJ Division was one of three Panzer divisions held in reserve by Hitler as the Allies stormed the beaches at Normandy beginning at dawn. At 2:30 in the afternoon, the HJ Division was released and sent to Caen, located not far inland from Sword and Juno beaches on which British and Canadian troops had landed. The division soon came under heavy strafing attacks from Allied fighter bombers, which delayed arrival there until 10 p.m.

The HJ were off to face an enemy that now had overwhelming air superiority and would soon have nearly unlimited artillery support. The Allies, for their part, were about to have their first encounter with Hitler's fanatical boy-soldiers.

The shocking fanaticism and reckless bravery of the Hitler Youth in battle astounded the British and Canadians who fought them. They sprang like wolves against tanks. If they were encircled or outnumbered, they fought-on until there were no survivors. Young boys, years away from their first shave, had to be shot dead by Allied soldiers, old enough, in some cases, to be their fathers. The "fearless, cruel, domineering" youth Hitler had wanted had now come of age and arrived on the battlefield with utter contempt for danger. This soon resulted in the near destruction of the entire division.

By the end of its first month in battle, 60 percent of the HJ Division was knocked out of action, with 20 percent killed and the rest wounded and missing. Divisional Commander Witt was killed by a direct hit on his headquarters from a British warship. Command then passed to Kurt Meyer, nicknamed 'Panzermeyer,' who at age 33, became the youngest divisional commander in the entire German armed forces."""

YES they had an impact on the WAR!!!

Peace////////////////////////////\\\\\...