The Youth Associations
Chapter 4 Section 3
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This below is Chapter 4 Section 3:
IV. 3. The youth associations
As an illegal group, the Russian Social Democratic Party understandably did not have its own youth organization until the February Revolution of 1917. But right at the beginning of the few months, which can be compared to the fourteen-year “struggle period” of the NSDAP during the Weimar Republic, the first Bolshevik youth group, “Socialist League of Workers’ Youth,” was formed in the Putilov Works in Petrograd under the young communist V. Alexeyev. One year after the seizure of power, the founding congress of the “Komsomol” took place. According to its statute, it was an “independent organization under party leadership” which extended across all of Russia and later the whole of the Soviet Union and was also a section of the “Youth International.” The term “youth” was interpreted broadly and soon extended to the age of 28, so that the association tended to be a mass organization alongside the elite organization of the party, which sought to include as many members of the younger generation as possible and place them under the leadership of the party. Party members in the Komsomol were therefore in the minority, but since there was no age limit for leadership positions, the party’s leadership role was soon undisputed.
The organizational structure was parallel to that of the party: in the provinces, districts, counties and cities inter-congress committees formed the authoritative body, and at the state level they corresponded to the “Central Committee of the Komsomol.” All committees elected an office and secretariat for their area, headed by a first secretary. In its early days, the Komsomol invoked this democratic structure in its violent polemics against the bourgeois youth organizations, especially the Boy Scouts, whose discipline was militaristic because the members did not have the right to vote. Since the Boy Scouts were also accused of leaning towards the Whites, the ban on the competing youth organizations was not long in coming, but the “members’ right to vote” was very soon also considerably restricted in the Komsomol, following the party model, because all elections had to be confirmed by the higher authorities and even the nomination of the candidates fell completely into the hands of the respective communist factions, which formed the skeleton of the formally always independent association.
During the first few years, however, there were noticeable tendencies to ascribe to the youth and thus to the Komsomol both the role of vanguardism and their own class interests. At the first congresses, the goals and hopes of the communists were expressed with particular urgency: the future society of mankind living together in friendship without bosses and rulers, without landowners and capitalists, without loafers and parasites, but also Moscow as the center of the communist world republic , and it caused great enthusiasm when Preobrazhensky apostrophized the Komsomol members as the members of a “great class” which must and will triumph as a whole, even if it must to demand the sacrifice of life from countless individuals.
Admittedly, vanguardism was quickly muted by the party, and the main tone of the demands was soon no longer the protection of youth but the increase of production, but even after the civil war, Komsomol members were not only characterized by a particularly strong commitment, but also by a tendency for criticism, which could go so far as to negatively compare the expenditures of the Soviet government on education with the corresponding expenditures of the tsarist government. It is not surprising that the factional quarrels of the party found a strong echo in the Komsomol and that Trotsky had many supporters. But the fundamentals remained undisputed: that the Komsomol had to undertake a work of enlightenment, especially in the villages, and fight the sluggish generation of parents as well as the influence of the priests, for example through “Red Christmas” and “Red Easter,” it had to promote literacy and fight against the prejudice that girls did not need to learn. In the first few years, the Komsomol had indeed fought in the front row for a new sexual morality, and from the “glass of water” theory one had often progressed to the so-called “African Nights”, but Lenin had already taken a stand against these tendencies, and in the second half of the 1920’s “sexual licentiousness” was fought alongside alcohol abuse.
“Physical hardening” as a goal, despite all the hostility, had been adopted from the scouting organizations, , and pre-military education quickly became a central task. In December 1929 the Central Committee of the Komsomol made the following resolution: “The Komsomol takes part in the training of young people who are about to be drafted. Its task is to train the future cadres of the Red Army through physical education and pre-military instruction even before service, to promote and organize pre-military training for young people, to carry out political-enlightening work among future recruits, and to be an example for them of discipline and fulfillment of obligations.”
The Komsomol had already had a particularly close relationship with certain sections of the Red Army since the time of the Civil War through the assumption of “patronage” and by 1930 it could boast that members of the Party and Komsomol made up no less than 70% of Air Force personnel. But even greater enthusiasm than pre-military training and service in the army were the massive projects of the first five-year plan, which did more than anything else to lure former Trotskyists into Stalin’s camp. Komsomol members were mobilized in their thousands to help build the Stalingrad tractor factory or the gigantic Dnepropetrovsk “electrostation.” They worked as “shock workers” (“udarniki”) and leaders of “socialist competition”; a newly built industrial center on the Amur River was named “Komsomolsk” in their honor. The 29-year-old civil engineer Avraaniy Savenyagin moved to the Urals in 1930 and, together with thousands of enthusiastic Komsomol members, many of whom froze to death in minus 60-degree cold and inadequate clothing, built the Magnitogorsk Iron Combine on the basis of the enormous magnite deposits.
But the Komsomol also took a great part in the collectivization campaign, and when Bukharin had declared at one of the congresses that passionate hatred of the class enemy was the main maxim of the new morality, he was now being violently attacked in the Komsomol for wanting to tone down this hatred and live “in peace with everyone.” Enthusiasm and hatred also radiated from the youth within the youth, the association of “Young Pioneers,” as well as the even younger “Octyabrists,” and 14-year-old Pavel Morozov became a national hero for bringing counter-revolutionary actions of his father to the attention of the authorities and then becoming the victim of a family revenge. Thus the great class triumphed over all non-class allegiances, and the old ideal of communist educators to “nationalize” and “forge and harden” all youth seemed to be realized.
By the early 1930s, however, the “class” could hardly be distinguished from the “socialist fatherland,” and so children as early as kindergarten were instilled with love for the Soviet fatherland and its leader, the great Stalin; an impressive induction ceremony was deeply imprinted, in which the Young Pioneers received their uniforms—the white shirt and red tie. In the “pioneer camps” they continued to be instilled with patriotism and communist consciousness by the Komsomol members who acted as brigade leaders, and finally the best among them joined the party as candidates. Thus the circle was closed, and the new man perpetuated himself through the generations, leading the increasingly homogeneous Soviet people to ever greater victories. At the same time, of course, it became increasingly difficult to imagine that he would make himself, his Russian language and his state superfluous in future world society. Wasn’t it more of a traditional claim to world domination when Lazar Kaganovich shouted at a Komsomol congress: “You will be the masters of the whole world”?
The Hitler Youth, of course, sang the lines “And today Germany belongs to us and tomorrow the whole world” loudly and confidently on all the streets of Germany, and in 1937 as “state youth” they not only included, like the Komsomol (which had about 10 million members in 1940), a significant percentage of youth, but virtually all youth aged 10 to 18 with the sole exception of Jews. If the Komsomol demanded a “completely clean social composition” for its leadership, the clean racial composition of the Hitler Youth was much less exclusive and, precisely because of this, probably symptomatic of a society in which the exclusion of the petty bourgeoisie and big peasants would simply have been unimaginable. A similar paradox was evident in the overall character. The Hitler Youth leaned far more strongly than the Komsomol on the tradition of the “youth movement,” and just as certainly as there had been “boy scouts” in Russia, the youth movement as such had certainly been something specifically German.
On the one hand, it was a typical emancipation movement, founded by students at a Berlin high school: the revolt of youth against Wilhelmine hypocrisy, against outdated conventions, against the rigidity of German class society, and in this respect it was undoubtedly a very modern phenomenon. On the other hand, however, they sought their ideal of life in medieval chivalry and in a healthy country life, and in this respect they could be called reactionary. But presumably a society is all the more developed, more complex, the more syntheses are made between an imaginable pure progress and an imaginable pure reaction, because a culture without contradiction is poor, however sympathetic and virtuous it may be.
The distinguishing mark of the Hitler Youth, however, was precisely not what it had in common with the youth movement, but the resolute integration into the political mass struggle: their slogan was not the journey of the Wandervogel, but the parade in front of the Führer; not the friendship of the select few around a circle of allied campfires, but the “camaraderie” of a large organization. But especially against the background of the Komsomol, that the similarities with the youth movement are more striking: for example, their principle “youth must be led by youth,” their songs, the still quite playful character of their exercises in the field, which in the years of peace could hardly be seriously considered “pre-military training.” Despite all the contempt for social differences, it never questioned their existence for a moment, and overall it was no less distant from the German “workers’ youth movement” than from the Komsomol in its appearance.
The first NSDAP youth groups existed before 1923, and in 1926 the “Greater German Youth Movement” was formed in Plauen, Vogtland. At the Weimar Party Congress, it was officially recognized as the youth organization of the NSDAP and, at Julius Streicher’s suggestion, renamed “Hitler Youth. German Worker Youth League.” At first it was apparently regarded mainly as a junior organization of the SA and was therefore subordinate to the supreme SA leadership. In 1929 the “National Socialist Students’ League” was formed under the leadership of Adrian Renteln, and in 1930 the “League of German Girls.” However, the “National Socialist German Student League” gained much greater political importance. Through actions and demonstrations, it made its presence felt in many universities and, as early as 1931, it seized power as a result of free elections in the Association of German Students. Its leader Baldur von Schirach, son of a theater director, was appointed “Reich Youth Leader of the NSDAP” in October 1931 and in March 1932, in connection with the Brüning-Gröner SA ban, was removed from the subordinate relationship to the SA. At the “Reich Youth Day of Hitler Youyj” in Potsdam on October 1st and 2nd, 1932, Hitler watched the march of about 100,000 boys for more than seven hours with his arm raised.
Through its agitation and mass work, the Hitler Youth placed itself in striking contrast to the bourgeois youth leagues, and the high proportion of young workers and apprentices in the membership was indeed remarkable: it amounted to 70%. Nevertheless, the Hitler Youth was on the whole only a small minority within the German youth organizations, because the “Reich Committee of German Youth Associations” had 5-6 million members. After January 30, 1933, however, there was a similar surprise as in the case of the unions: on April 5, the office was occupied and the leadership usurped, without serious resistance having to be broken. The political youth organizations were dissolved and banned together with the corresponding parties, the right-wing groups, such as the Bismarck and Hindenburg youth, were partially transferred to the Hitler Youth. The “Youth Alliance” caused greater difficulties. They first joined together to form the “Greater German Youth League” under Admiral von Trotha. However, there could be no question of a fundamental dispute, since the right wing of the youth movement had been racially minded since 1919. Schirach later described the difference as follows: “I was particularly repelled by the ideology of their association. They described themselves as the elite and us as the masses. We were the ‘People’s Youth’ they the ‘Select Youth.’ The National Socialist state could not tolerate such a view ."
This time state power was used. Schirach was appointed “Youth Leader of the German Reich” by Hitler on June 17, 1933, and his first official act was to dissolve the “Greater German Confederation.” Of all the other federations, only the “Artamanen League” was incorporated into the Hitler Youth and transformed into the “Hitler Youth Land Service.” The Evangelical Youth was transferred to the Hitler Youth at the end of 1933 by an agreement with Reichsbishop Müller without completely losing its identity, but as such it was restricted to the purely pastoral sphere. The Catholic youth organizations such as the student federation “New Germany” were protected to a certain degree by the concordat, but they were paralyzed over the course of a few years by a variety of pressure and censorship measures.
For a while, Saturday was reserved for the Hitler Youth as the “State Youth Day.” On December 1, 1936, the “Law on the Hitler Youth” was enacted, which made the Hitler Youth responsible for the entire physical, mental and moral upbringing of young people outside of school and home. From now on, the Hitler Youth served primarily as a tightly organized registration system for the purpose of pre-military training in a more than just technical sense. Characteristic were the “Marine-Hitler Youth,” the “Motor-Hitler Youth” and the flying units. In 1938 the Hitler Youth even got its own “patrol service,” a kind of security police; it comprised a retinue (150 men) in each regiment. A special relationship with the SS was created by an agreement between Schirach and Himmler: the junior staff of the SS units should primarily be taken from the Hitler Youth patrol service, while the Hitler Youth land service should represent the most important reservoir for military farmers [wehrbauer: settlers on the frontier against the enemy].
The organizational structure corresponded to that of the other National Socialist organizations and was based entirely on the principles of hierarchy and command, with the rejection of decision-making and debating bodies: the chain of command extended from the chief regional leader to the leaders of the territories, regiments, tribes, allegiances and hosts to the “comdradeship leaders,” who were a kind of non-commissioned officers. The positions up to Bannführer (regiment commander) were full-time; but the danger of bureaucracy was largely avoided. However, there was no analogue to the Komsomol’s “light cavalry,” which was supposed to fight the bureaucratization in the state, and certainly not to the committees, offices and secretariats. Neither was the Hitler Youth called upon to engage in “production battles” or to build new industrial plants. But during the war they were called upon to help for harvesting and air-raid protection, and and they performed auxiliary services for the post office, police and railways and, above all, for the “Children’s Country Dispatch.” Hitler Youth only became active as “flak helpers” from 1941; in the same year Artur Axmann took the place of Reich Youth Leader in Schirach’s place, who was appointed Gauleiter of Vienna.
Overall, the work of the Hitler Youth varied greatly in character, depending on the subdivisions.
Most of the memories of the “youth movement” were found in the “German Young People” [Jungvolk]: trips, tents, outdoor games. But here, too, “hordes” no longer wandered, which were characterized by individual spontaneity, but columns marched, which were ordered to “line up” and were subjected to “roll-calls.” The motto “Blood and Honor” was engraved on the sheath knives worn by each of the boys [Pimpfe]. For an American, however, a group of the Jungvolk and a group of “Young Pioneers” would have been almost indistinguishable at first glance if he could have seen them side by side. But the involvement of children in the class struggle, as undertaken by the “revolutionary children’s movement” in Germany during the Weimar period, would have been completely inconceivable within the Jungvolk.
The actual Hitler Youth consisted of 14 to 18-year-olds and was therefore far more of a group of adolescents than the Komsomol. The focus here was on “military training camps” and “Reich shooting competitions,” but of course there could be as few Hitler Youth departments in the Wehrmacht itself as there were party cells in the Hitler Youth; very many Hitler Youth became party comrades and soldiers at the same time, while a member of the Komsomol might have been a seasoned party member and a veteran soldier. The ideological training took up less space than in the Komsomol; important topics were the Nordic heroic sagas, the causes of the German collapse, the measures taken to keep German blood pure, Adolf Hitler and his fellow fighters, the nation and its habitat. But socialist features were also unmistakable, such as the burning of schoolboy caps, the propaganda for vacations for young workers, the “Reich career competitions.” The continuation of the tradition of the youth movement was visible in the music platoons and troops of players, but also in the beginnings of more demanding cultural work such as the “Reich Theatre Dat of the Hitler Youth.”
The equivalents on the female youth side were the “Young Girls” and the “German Girls League” (up to the age of 21). The “German Girls League-Work, Faith and Beauty” was attached to this. In some respects a continuation of the youth movement’s “wanderings girls” was recognizable in these associations, but on the other hand they were extremely dependent on the model of the “German mother.”
Was the Hitler Youth also a totalitarian upbringing? On the other hand, the fact that the Hitler Youth seemed to qualitatively restrict its quantitatively comprehensive claim seems to speak against it: school and family home were expressly recognized as equal educational powers. It was assumed that school and home were not anti-national socialist, but a positive agreement was not required: countless homes in Germany had considerable reservations about the regime, and in many German schools at most the gymnastics and biology teachers were National Socialists, while the vast majority of teachers tried best to preserve the spirit of national uplift. In this respect, social pluralism was preserved here, too, and until the end of the Third Reich it was inconceivable in Germany that a twelve-year-old boy, as in the Soviet Union, could demand the death penalty for his own father as part of a purge. But even if no Pavlik Morozov was raised to the status of a national hero, numerous parents were still afraid of saying something hostile to the regime in the presence of their fanatical children, and there were also some break-ins of an organizational nature. For example, the “Adolf Hitler Schools” were run by the Hitler Youth, and they were not subordinate to the Reich Minister for Science, Education and National Education, but to the Reich Youth Leadership. The relocation of children to the counryside [during the war] was not only an emergency measure, but it was also directed against the influence of the parental home. Moreover, even the notion of education has apparently been superseded by the principle of the leadership of youth by youth itself. But the goal was not a youth world, but preparation for military service, and was more in an internal than in an external technical sense.
Adolf Hitler had described his educational ideal in “Mein Kampf” in clear words: “The entire educational work of the volkish state must find its culmination in the fact that it instinctively and intellectually builds a sense of race and a feeling of race into the heart and brain of the youth entrusted to it… Realizing this, the volkish state must not focus its entire educational work on merely pumping in knowledge, but on cultivating healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities then comes only secondarily…” In truth, it did not take place “only secondarily,” but actually not at all, since on the one hand it was left to a school that was essentially unchanged and on the other hand it was understood in the Hitler Youth at best in the sense of preparation for the Reich professional competitions.
In tendency, therefore, it was a radical counterattack against the “intellectualism” of education, which Hitler evidently regarded as a product of “Jewish disintegration” and which, in truth, is both a consequence and a prerequisite of modern development. In this respect, Lenin was incomparably more modern, trying to hammer the phrase “learn, learn, learn” into the Komsomol. But it was precisely in this way that he proved once again that he was operating in far less modern conditions, where progress and modernity had not yet developed sufficiently to become recognizable in their potential danger. And the subtlest consequence of totalitarian education had already become apparent clearly enough in Lenin’s contempt for the “old intelligentsia”: not only in National Socialist Germany, but even more so in Bolshevik Russia, the possibility of critical comparison and autonomous reflection was cut off at the root and replaced by the unreserved praising the party and its leader. But how, on the other hand, could there have been a greater contrast than that between the Komsomol’s demand to spread the materialistic conception of natural phenomena and the establishment of village reading rooms on the one hand and Hitler’s statement on the other hand that he wanted his youth to be “swift as greyhounds, tough as leather and hard as Krupp steel”?
Thus the Komsomol and the Hitler Youth, like the GPU and the Gestapo, were as dissimilar as they were similar. One might say that the dissimilarity is a consequence of the difference between a younger and less developed society and an older and more complex one. However, the consensus in the orientation towards service in the army could not be overlooked. And if there was undoubtedly a great deal of cynicism and blunt harshness in the GPU and Gestapo, there can be no doubt that the youth in Germany and in the Soviet Union—unlike the bulk of youth in the liberal-democratic states—largely represented a believing youth willing to make sacrifices. In neither case can this be adequately explained by the tedious indoctrination during training sessions and home evenings. There had to be something stronger and more intellectual at play, which was not peculiar to the young people, but which they grasped with particular force because it grew directly out of the basic experiences and basic emotions that shaped the world views of their parties.
