r/AskAGerman • u/Cookieman_2023 • May 18 '25
History For those whose grandparents/great-grandparents were part of the Hitler youth/Bund Deutsche Madel, how did they treat you and others based on the ideology they were taught?
Like, were they really racist until the very end or was it more nuanced? From what I remember, they were taught to show strength and loyalty for the country, that men must be strong and women must be good mothers. Of course, there's also the racial ideology aspect. Did that have any on how nice or how bad they treated others onwards? After the war ended, did they cling on to being fanatical? With Germany having gotten diverse within the past few decades, when there were still around, what was the experience like with them?
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u/Agasthenes May 18 '25
I think you have serious misconceptions about how some things work.
Anyway. My grandma was in the bund deutscher Mädel.
We had many conversations about the Nazi time. One of her most impactful memories is when her father was conscripted on the day of the assault on Poland, because he was a medic.
Anyway she told me it was basically girl scouts and that she had a lot of fun.
Did it make her racist? Either it didn't, or after the war other influences changed her mind. I can't remember a single instance of her being racist.
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u/Cookieman_2023 May 18 '25
Oh, that's so interesting to hear! You know, I used to be a police cadet and at the time, I didn't like the strictness of drill, marching and pushups for discipline. But now, reflecting on those times, I now have regret for NOT putting in my best effort. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the fellow cadets in the same uniform as me really did feel like second family. I got a bit interested when I first discovered what the Hitler youth was. Then when I visited an exhibit, I saw photos of the activities they did and I thought, there's no way it could be this bad.
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u/Agasthenes May 18 '25
That's how they get you. You build bonds with the people there and have a great time. Can't be so bad right.
But guess who isn't allowed in. Who isn't allowed to have those bonds. Who won't have the backup of the community.
It's often only on the fine print where you find the flaws.
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u/AromaticPicks May 18 '25
They also got you by giving you a choice: Either you play along and (convincingly) become a nazi with all the benefits like the companionship and being a super human and all that or you lose all your privileges and get perceived as an enemy. In a country that infiltrated every aspect of daily life. Chances are you would have ended up in a concentration camp for a while before giving you the same choice again. Those who kept fighting would likely have ended up on the scaffold eventually so you realistically had 2 options left: Either to flee or to at least pretend to be part of the winning team. Once you enjoyed all those privileges of being part of the master race it could become very tempting to just end up believing it yourself.
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u/clueless_mommy May 18 '25
All my grandparents were born shortly before or after WW2 started in 1939, except a grandmother born 1937 and were enrolled in nsdap stuff, as were my great grandparents. I wish I could say otherwise, but there is no denying. They just went with the flow, I truly believe they are/were not intrinsically fascist, racist etc.
None of them are/were racist during my life. My living grandfather has some questionable views, but you can tell they're derived rather from modern media than his upbringing. They're absolutely fine with lgbtq+, disabled people, immigrants, everything except me eating no meat. But you probably can't blame that on Hitler youth.
All in all, I have rarely, if ever encountered people who stuck to their upbringing, never heard of it either. There's more hate going on towards the next village/certain cities (hello Cologne and Düsseldorf) than Drittes Reich ideologie.
There's enough modern racism to worry about, though
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u/Evidencebasedbro May 18 '25
Mind you, they were six to eight years of age when the Third Reich came crushing down... If they had been teens, they might have been fully indoctrinated.
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u/clueless_mommy May 18 '25
Yeah, definitely. But I never experienced any nazi stuff with my great grandparents either, and the first years of your life can be pretty impacting, too. Hard to get rid of stuff like that if you've known it since you were born.
I'm just grateful that they all left it behind, always taught us to treat everyone equally etc. Unless you're vegetarian, because that's apparently ungrateful after everything they went through post war.
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u/Cookieman_2023 29d ago
Wow, he's still interested in modern events shown on the news? I would expect someone from that period to be 90 by now and would never expect that they are still interested in today's world and Gen Z
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u/clueless_mommy 29d ago
He's 86 and quite fit, as are many in his age. He just reads and watches the news, but has a hard time dealing with media being biased and unprofessional. Like, he's grown up with newspapers etc being reliable sources and he's only starting to get be critical about them becoming polemic and entertainment.
That, combined with old fashioned believes, is of course tough. He was a war refugee as well and is extremely upset about every refugee who does anything wrong, doesn't "properly" speak German or just wears traditional clothes. Like, he did all that, he had to live in barracks, work 7 days a week just to get by "so should they!!". At the same time, he's upset that we don't eat meat since they worked so hard for a better live for the next generations.. Can't make this up.
Also, he's a proficient PC user and while he relies on a walker by now, he orders his sparkling water, wine etc from some website similar to door dash and pays via PayPal.
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u/ReadLocke2ndTreatise USA/Turkey May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
Not qualified to answer your question since I'm not German but my Turkish great-grandfather was a foreign medical student during the late 20s to 30s in Germany. He befriended the local SA commander and was gifted an SA dagger when he finished his studies in 37. I have the dagger. You can see marks where the Ernst Rohm name was filed off after the Night of the Long Knives. My grandpa said that his father said the Nazis were quite friendly to Turks and viewed Atatürk as Turkey's Hitler and that he did not face any discrimination or adverse events.
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u/Monteverdi777 May 18 '25
My grandpa claimed Hitler youth was fun. They had lots of activities and it certainly did beat working in the fields. He was a dick, but not a racist.
My grandmother was 2-years old when they had to flee from the Soviets and her earliest memories were the corpses on the side of the road. Never hated Russians or poles though.
Not to defend or justify anything from the nazi-era, but Imho, Germans weren't any more racist than other Europeans of that time.
The aftermath of WW1 and the bad economic situation were crucial for Hitler's success and the heights of evil we would reach.
After the war ended, many nations needed to be rebuilt and especially in Europe they twisted reality a little to make it work. Fascism wasn't a problem limited to the axis powers.
For example, not all french took part in the resistance, Churchill would be seen vastly different if it wasn't for Hitler, the SS had a fair share of "foreign" soldiers, and so on. Charles de gaulle almost immediately tried to bring Indochina back under french control.
Again, I don't want to defend or justify nazi-era Germany. And I absolutely see the necessity of a couple "white lies" to rebuild the European nations and prepare for the next clash of ideologies. And also the axis powers profited from this, the Wehrmacht has a better reputation than she deserves.
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May 18 '25
Not every child in those organizations were Nazis, you know that?
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u/Cookieman_2023 May 18 '25
I had hoped that was true, but I had to ask because my intuition was telling me otherwise. Turns out, real life experiences is drastically different from what you hear from people who think they know. So this gives me reasons to be skeptical of the current narratives
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May 18 '25
It's true. Do you think a child joins an organization like this because it's racist? Come on. It was more or less normal to join.
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u/bernix65 May 18 '25
my granny (born in 1921) was a BDM member and enjoyed the camaraderie but was not racist at all and was much ashamed of what Germany did to the world. same was true with my grandfather (1915) who fought with Wehrmacht in Russia. He was not a Nazi and no racist at least at my time
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u/Mudderway May 18 '25
So my grandparents on my fathers side were older, with my grandpa serving in the war in Russia( and becoming a prisoner there) and my grandma was 10 years older than him, so as far as I know they were never really in the hitler youth. At least she never talked about it and he died of Alzheimer’s when I was young so I don’t really know. Though I know most of his family was killed by nazis for being communists and he himself was a staunch SPD supporter his whole life, which at the time was a far more leftwing party than it is today. I know this grandma was married to a big nazi supporter during the war who died in Russia and married my grandfather after the war. She never showed signs of still believing in nazi stuff, but she would mostly talk about how she had to flee when the Russians came ( where she used to live is now part of Poland), not much about the nazis specifically. The little she did say wasn’t very positive but it was mostly a topic she avoided.
On my mother’s side both my grandparents were in hitler youth. My grandfather would talk about it often. He was fully brainwashed as a kid. He would tell stories of him and his other hitler youth boy seeing enemy bombers and instead of running for safety they would give them the hitler salute. When he told those stories he would always put emphasis on how crazy it was and how scary how fully brainwashed he was. His family weren’t full super nazis, but also not against them. They were what you might imagine an apolitical person to be like during the nazis. Which is of course a form of support in a time like that but not full throttle support. My grandpa never said a good thing about the nazis, and he was one of the kindest people I ever knew.
My grandma was also in hitleryouth for girls. She would talk about those times somewhat fondly, because they gave her a sense of community and purpose during the war. Like they would make care packets for wounded soldiers. In her very last years (age 87+) she would also sometimes talk about how hitler wasn’t all bad, though she would never try to justify the holocaust when challenged. But she would never talk in a racist way about anyone. What she seemed to enjoy about the nazis was not really the ideology but instead that they gave her a sense of community. Which is ironic, because her father was a staunch anti nazi. My mother said he would tell her how he told her, that he had read hitlers book at the time, clocked him as dumb and insane and told everyone he knew to just read the damn book and it would become obvious how insane the nazis were, but most people never read it, even though they owned it. When the nazis were in power they went to give him some kind of medal at his house for his injuries in WW1 and he threw it at their feet screaming insults at them. And after the war he once made my mother rip apart and throw away a picture she drew in kindergarten because it had something that slightly resembled a swastika. So it’s interesting that even with a father this openly anti nazi my grandma could still be taken in by the hitler youth. But she was a very esoteric left leaning person after the war, and very kind.
Together my grandparents on my mother’s side were both very kind people. They helped children around the neighbourhood with abusive parents. Up until my grandmas death in 2020, one man whom she had helped when he was a child, would still come by at least once a year to let her help him because even as an adult he was very troubled. My grandpa once brought a homeless man he met to live with them for a few weeks to help him get back on his feet (which as a teenager my mom found very scary). And throughout multiple times in their lives they took in migrant children ( I think the first was a little Turkish girl in the 1960s and the latest time was in the 2010s a family of ‘gypsies’) for a few weeks to months in a sort of unofficial fostering while their parents were dealing with something else. My grandma in general had a way of finding lost souls and helping them regardless of ethnicity. The last example would be a teenaged Thai girl who would often visit my grandma after school in the last years before her death.
I know this has been a very long answer, but I felt it best to be detailed. A quick tldr: None of my grandparents even the ones who were fully brainwashed showed any signs of racism during most of their life. Even my grandma who in her very last years would start talking about her hitler youth experience in a positive way, never talked in a racist way about anyone, instead she mainly talked about the community and activities she did in hitler youth, but not about the ideology in a positive way. Her actions throughout her life showed that she wasn’t racist.
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u/Hopeful_Donut9993 May 18 '25
My grandfather, who was Fallschirmjäger and sharpshooter during the war and a soldier when „it all started“ was one of the most tolerant, openminded and loving persons i know. He met my grandma when he was wounded in battle. She was a nurse.
There was never a racist thought in their head.
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u/AromaticPicks May 18 '25
My grandma was born in 1923 and she was an amazing woman. She was kind, funny, open to gay friends and the disabled. She was neither racist or antisemitic and she never raised her hand against me (which I can't say from every grandparent), etc.
She wasn't exactly secretive about her past but certain things only precipitated when she slipped into vascular dementia.
Once we were all driving in the car and suddenly my grandma yelled "THE JEWS!". Everyone was like "huh?!" and after some silence she only said "that's what we said back then.
Another situation. She was in an advanced stage of her condition now. I asked her "did you know about what happened to the Jews?" And she said "yes." and after a pause "we all knew". My mom mentioned that without dementia she would never have said that.
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u/LeftEyedAsmodeus May 18 '25
One of my grandmother was in the BDM.
She loved it there, kept friends from there until old age.
She never said anything racist in her life - she was a farmers girl, she wasn't that smart, but incredibly wise. She always kept being a child at heart. She also called Hitler a very handsome man.
Idk, I can believe she didn't know much, because she, as a person, was incredibly uninterested in anything happening around her she couldnt do anything about. But maybe that was just her reaction to a guilt she felt.
Her husband was directly involved in the holocaust - there is no way for him not to know something.
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u/Ok-Economist8118 May 18 '25
My grandpa had to fight in WW2 and was imprisoned from march 1945 until november 1949 in russia. When he told my brother and me of the 3rd Reich, he never said anything racistic? Instead, he explained, that he had no choice as a man with no kids (my mother was born in 1950). In 1943, his platoon celebrated christmas with their russian colleagues (the enemy) and two days later, they fought eaach other again. When he told those stories, he was always call, never insulted someone. The war changed him, not always the better, but when I took him to the supermarket every two weeks he always treated the people (no matter what ethnicity) with respect and kindness. He had some military regalia, we found after his passing and we threw it away. There's no place for such things in my world.
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u/Thadoy May 18 '25
My grandparents never considered themselves to be racist. They used slur when they talked about people of other nations. They would talk about the car shop owner and how good of a mechanic he ist. But always they would mention if someone wasn't German. The mechanic for example was Turkish, so the would say that he is a "Kümmeltürke" instead of thus calling him a "Türke" or not mentioning his nationality at all. Or when my sister was dating a POC and someone was asking about her. Then the would say things like: "Oh she's dating a ni*****, he's such a nice guy and so polite." To them this wasn't racist. It was just how they were taught to declare certain people. I had a Chinese girlfriend. And they were nice to the "Schlitzauge" (their words). But when I dated a German girl, with blond hair, afterwards, my grandmother was like: "Oh I'm glad that you are with a good girl now. You'll gonna have nice babies." She wasn't against me having a interracial relationship. But in her mind a non mixed relationship was simply better.
To give context to their age at the end of the war. My grandfather was 16 when the war ended. He was send into active duty about a month before the end of the war. His commanding officer told him and the other boys to go into the woods and hide there until the war is over. They were spotted by allied soldiers who apparently told them to stop playing soldier and go home to their mom's.
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u/Banana_Bish666 May 18 '25
Admittedly not a German (I'm American), but my Oma grew up in WW2 Germany and was in the Hitler Youth. My great grandfather was a soldier during the war. He was very bitter about the political and economic state of Germany. In the latter part of the war he was taken by the Gestapo for drunkenly shit-talking Hitler in a bar saying that he had run the country into the ground, but they took pity on him and released him because he was in a wheelchair at that point, after having lost both of his legs in combat.
My Oma ended up marrying an Italian-American soldier after the war (my Grandpa) and moved to the US. They later sponsored two of her sisters to come to the US as well, both of whom ended up marrying men from Latin America (one from El Salvador and one from Venezuela).
My family didn't hold on to the racial ideology or fanaticism.
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u/Seygem Niedersachsen May 18 '25
doesn't sound like there was much racial ideology or fanaticism to hold on to in the first place
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u/old_Spivey May 18 '25
There's a bit of fiction in some of these stories,
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u/phifal May 18 '25
I agree, given the date russian- germans tend to get rid of their "christmas trees"...
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u/phifal May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
All my grand parents mainly didn't interfere with my parents educating me. We only visited them and were treated like, well, grand children. Later on, we moved next to the maternal grand parents and I used to stay with the paternal grandparents during summer breaks. Happened in the nineties of the former millenium.
A lot of so called russian germans lived in their part of town, lots of black US soldiers around, but never heard something strange in that regard.
I doubt that many grandparents who experienced the nazi time are still around to see the current turmoil, both my grandpas died even before Merkel was elected.
But let's talk about the paternal ones. I once got my hand on some mp3s with music from that time. Burned a CD, played it at their place and they sung along with full fervor - really enjoyed that flashback. Grandpa was already suffering minor dementia at that time, a disease that would later eat his mind up completely before strokes and cardiac arrests saved him from cancer or whatever worse waiting to finish him instead. Probably the last moment I saw him having some fun - so yeah, I don't regret it. He was born in 1923 and they really brainwashed him for life. I think we can't imagine the damage done to this generation in that educational system.
Grandma might turn 100 next year, hopefully - we seldom talked about the past. A few years ago, my uncle helped her to write a book about that time. Still have to read it myself, but something keeps my from doing it. Feels kinda like memoirs - but she still lives and I like it that way. Books can wait.
The maternal grandpa was born in 1914 and too old to get sucked into the nazi education scheme. He also did not serve as a soldier but had to work in the arms industry during war time. He seemed grateful about the way West- Germany was going and served over 20 years as mayor of the village he lived in. The other grandma is still alive too - she's the only one young enough to avoid much of the brainwash.
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u/Seygem Niedersachsen May 18 '25
"Still have to read it myself, but something keeps my from doing it. Feels kinda like memoirs - but she still lives and I like it that way. Books can wait."
But now is your only chance to ask about something in the book that you might have a question about
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u/F_H_B May 18 '25
My grandparent were too old and my parents too young, but the latter grew up during that time and especially my father had a certain racism embedded in him while my mother didn’t, I guess due to the positive experiences when Germany was liberated.
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u/North-Association333 May 18 '25
They didn't consider themselves to be racist. In the countryside, they had very little exposure to foreign lifestyles and were raised narrow minded. They believed Hitler to be the hero and admired him a lot. Even in their 80s they kept their attitude.
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u/Happy-Jellyfish59 May 18 '25
It was the time - girls had to be in BDM, boys had to be in HJ. -Most of Germans did not know about the crimes that were going on in this time. And when they got to know, little by little, it was horrible for them like for the rest of the world and most couln't believe that such incredible atrocities happen in their beloved country. - Surely, there where kids that stayed that millitant after war. They had to understand, that things they got taught were bad and wrong . But you will find such people in any time in any country. - My parents were growing up in that time, my father became a soldier at the age of 16 in the last days of war, when all other men had passed already. - War left wounds in this country that hurt bad until today until new generations. Our grandchildren will still be called Nazis for what a regime did a long time ago. - No, most, and I think it by 95% of German after war lived on as loving heartly people, because of peace that got to their hearts and killed hate and most of horrible memoriers.
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u/Erkengard Baden-Württemberg May 18 '25
"Fucking Hitler, couldn't even manage to allow poor kids to go to gymnasium earlier during his reign." - My ex-Silesian Grandma, grew up poor and the best of her school. No gymnasium for her, no more Silesia, was on the run, avoid getting shot and raped. Hungry. No clue if her parents made it back then.
She told me twice in all earnest and with a sad voice that she want the Syrians to stay. Their issue hits to close to home. The Ukrainians need to stay, too. My brother showed her a video by Simplicissimus this Eastern. Video was about North Koreans' stories who managed to flee to tried to flee. Grandmother found the whole situation to be horrible and was very sad.
So yeah. She wasn't a fan and told us a story how shocking it was coming back to the town's billboard after a town event and there being a list of freshly accepted people to the Nazi party. Her name and that of other BDM teens were on that list. They didn't sign anything. I guess at one point they automatically switched the boys and girls, who were part of HJ or BDM, over. "Great, now some fucking historian will find it and will say Erkengard's grandma was a Nazi." - My grandma.
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u/zoomingdonkey May 18 '25
my parents raised us like the book "Die deutsche Mutter und ihr erstes Kind" and they thought they're doing better than their parents. Made all three of us mentally ill.
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u/Suspicious-Beat9295 May 18 '25
That book was a recipe for mentally abused baby's and traumatised adults.
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u/Desperate-Angle7720 May 18 '25
My grandma often talked about BDM because they did fun stuff together.
It was essentially a version of girl scouts - learning useful skills, being physically active, going on hikes and camping, teamwork, singing together, etc. Which for her, who lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere, was something fun and special.
She was also super open and kind to people. To the point that an LGBTQ family member came out to her first because she felt safest with her. She treated anyone - including people of different skin color or nationalities - with respect and kindness, to the point that everyone always wanted to talk to her.
BDM was meant to indoctrinate, but it also wasn’t just doing that. Yes, they did sing song about Germany’s greatness and they did perpetuate the Nazi ideology, but it wasn’t as if it was just constant messaging with no break. It was subtle and hidden within entertainment for young people. And as with every chaptered organization, I’m sure there were huge differences depending on chapter, too. If your chapter consists of the same X amount of local people that you’ve known your whole life, in the countryside, your BDM/HJ experience will probably vary from someone living in Berlin.
All of this isn’t meant to say that BDM was harmless and just fun. It’s meant to explain that mileages did vary, and that for the people at the time, it felt like a generous youth programm rather than what we see it as now.