HITLER YOUTH

The indoctrination that the Nazis gave German youth during the 1930s and 1940s led some of these children to commit atrocities during WWII. The effects were felt by many even after the war ended. Using letters, diaries and the recollections of former members of Hitler Youth—a paramilitary and ideological group in which membership, for both boys and girls, was eventually mandatory—Kater, a noted historian of the Nazis, concludes in this readable volume that "the authoritarian nature of the Nazi regime" and its "merciless" racial ideology, as well as its sense of community, underlay its appeal to "adolescents who were searching for certitudes in a swiftly changing and newly structured world." The author is particularly effective at providing context: the Nazis took the youth movement concept, popular throughout Europe in the early 20th century, and adapted it to fit a racist ideology. He also shows that the values of militarism and self-reliance clashed with German family values of nurturing—and that, for the most part, the Hitler Youth won out. Nor does Kater ignore the few who resisted these imposed values. This is a scholarly book that deserves a wider audience, especially those interested in the Nazi period and adolescent psychology. (Nov.)