Hitler Youth
Understand the ethical dimension of historical interpretations
Key Learning Activity:
In this activity, students will examine the role of the Hitler Youth. This is material that students readily engage with, owing to the comparative ages of the historical actors being studied. Whilst the female movement, the BDM, will also be touched upon, the Hitler Youth is more significant owing to its increased social presence and militant purposes.
Studying the Hitler Youth means analysing social policies and their impact. The ethical dimension aspect of this study comes from trying to understand why young boys who participated in the program (at first voluntarily, and later forcefully) could so readily and enthusiastically support the ideologies of the Nazi regime. This also requires examining whether all boys did actively participate, which links to week 6. Drawing on Levesque’s (2008) discourse surrounding historical empathy and imagining, contextualising and judging the past, the teacher needs to heavily scaffold this activity, lest historical empathy develop into sympathy or “anachronistic impositions of present-day standards” (Levesque, 2008, p. 167).
Instructions:
Students will examine guidebooks of the Hitler Youth, along with other primary sources, and articulate what aims and purposes the Nazi regime was achieving through the organisation. Part of this will involve exploring the demands made upon boys in the Hitler Youth, namely, spying on their parents, reporting any subversion and intimidating or bullying minority groups. What impact did this have on families and society as a whole? How did it feed into the totalitarian aims of the regime? Using the Six Thinking Hats model for collaborative discussion - which engages students in deeper thinking and empathy - students will discuss the historical inquiry questions, using evidence from sources analysed in class.
In this activity, students will examine the role of the Hitler Youth. This is material that students readily engage with, owing to the comparative ages of the historical actors being studied. Whilst the female movement, the BDM, will also be touched upon, the Hitler Youth is more significant owing to its increased social presence and militant purposes.
Studying the Hitler Youth means analysing social policies and their impact. The ethical dimension aspect of this study comes from trying to understand why young boys who participated in the program (at first voluntarily, and later forcefully) could so readily and enthusiastically support the ideologies of the Nazi regime. This also requires examining whether all boys did actively participate, which links to week 6. Drawing on Levesque’s (2008) discourse surrounding historical empathy and imagining, contextualising and judging the past, the teacher needs to heavily scaffold this activity, lest historical empathy develop into sympathy or “anachronistic impositions of present-day standards” (Levesque, 2008, p. 167).
Instructions:
Students will examine guidebooks of the Hitler Youth, along with other primary sources, and articulate what aims and purposes the Nazi regime was achieving through the organisation. Part of this will involve exploring the demands made upon boys in the Hitler Youth, namely, spying on their parents, reporting any subversion and intimidating or bullying minority groups. What impact did this have on families and society as a whole? How did it feed into the totalitarian aims of the regime? Using the Six Thinking Hats model for collaborative discussion - which engages students in deeper thinking and empathy - students will discuss the historical inquiry questions, using evidence from sources analysed in class.