Search - The Hitler Youth on DVD

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PJR | Minneapolis, Minnesota United States | 10/31/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you want information on the Hitler Youth, this DVD is terrific. There is lots of footage that I have never seen before, and I have followed the matter of Nazi propaganda and indoctrination for a very long time. Mostly there is footage of mass rallies and marches, and to some that might seem familiar and boring, but there is enough variation in the footage that it does vividly recreate a remarkable era and add useful detail and depth to the general picture. There is enough footage of the manipulation of young people's desires for fellowship and fun to round it out.

The narration goes into considerable detail about the organization/manipulation of the Hitler Youth. Again, some may find this boring but if you want information then it is valuable. I think it is important to understand that the Germans were not indoctrinated simply because Hitler was a hypnotic speaker, but the Nazi's were very well organized and played on previously existing cultural values.

This DVD gives a good impression of how German youth were manipulated by a shrewd and effective understanding of the "herd mentality." I doubt that one who has followed this issue will have to work very hard to see this.

Yes the DVD is correct that the organizational structure and enthusiasm sort of died with the defeat of Germany. But in a way I agree with another reviewer who was critical of this claim that the Hitler Youth was not disbanded in any formal way but merely faded away. There was a resistance movement in Germany that the Allies tried to keep quiet for psychological reasons. [Some of this is only coming out now to explain to people who are worried about the resistance in Iraq that the victory in Germany was not so clean as we had been taught.] And it was more difficult to remove Nazi thinking from the German system of education than the Allies expected. We still have a lot of details to understand about such things. Probably former Hitler Youth were involved in various forms of resistance to occupation. But how much HY organizational structures were kept intact underground is not clear to me at least. I am not sure the story is well enough understood to be ready for for a documentary. So I do not fault the DVD for not going into this.

To complement this documentary DVD about the indoctrination of German society see Nazi Medicine, Cross and Star, and Architecture of Doom.

For fictional dramas involving HY a couple of my favorites are Swing Kids and Europa Europa. Some scenes in Cabaret are to the point. Some that can be googled, I have not seen."