Behind the Bedroom Wall

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, otherwise known as the Nazi Party, held power in Germany from 1933 to 1945. Led by the fascist dictator Adolf Hitler, the party instituted a policy of racial cleansing based on discriminatory and illegitimate racial science that promoted the Aryan race as superior. The Nazi Party’s genocidal policies, which systematically exterminated Jewish people, along with other races and groups it saw as undesirable, aimed to restore the Fatherland of Germany to its alleged former glory. As part of this restoration, Hitler invaded surrounding countries, first Austria and then Poland, prompting an Allied Forces response that signaled the beginning of World War II.

Within Nazi Germany, an aggressive propaganda campaign directed German citizens to support the party by presenting news on the wondrous achievements of the Fuhrer and by depicting allegedly racially inferior groups, most notably Jewish people, as subhuman and evil. The propaganda represented pity for these races as un-German, traitorous, and shameful; those who aided or harbored Jewish people were condemned as enemies of the Fatherland and often shot or imprisoned in cruel and dehumanizing labor camps.

Hitler Youth groups, or the jungmädel, gave children heavily biased education in the tenets of Nazism and the superiority of the Aryan race. Children learned songs, distributed Nazi material, and marched in parades, among other activities. Families whose children didn’t attend were viewed with suspicion. The regime urged children to spy on behalf of the Fatherland and taught them that loyalty to Germany was more important than loyalty to one’s friends or even family. Children were to report any suspicious and allegedly traitorous behavior to Youth Group leaders, which often led to arrests by the Gestapo. Propaganda brainwashed children into hero-worship of the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, and his policies. This brainwashing—with the intent of building a young, impressionable generation of loyal followers—helped the Nazis carry out their heinous programs of racial genocide; they silenced dissidents through the threat of retribution, and exposed and severely punished those who didn’t comply.