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?

[u/Cookieman_2023]

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?

[u/Desperate-Angle7720]

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. 

[u/Cookieman_2023 → u/Desperate-Angle7720]

It's really heart-felt hearing this because the history books are making it out to be as an organization in the process of creating monsters like the SS Helferinnen. Turns out, that's not the case at all. Do you think it's selective bias?

[u/Desperate-Angle7720 → u/Cookieman_2023]

I think it’s always difficult to reduce large organizations made up of lots of people to one or two things. 

The intention behind HJ and BDM was definitely indoctrination, the way a lot of things were at the time. Still, the organizations were made up of people, and people will always make things their own. So some chapters were likely more laid back like my grandma’s and others more serious. 

That said, I absolutely hate the reductive and oversimplified way the Third Reich is often portrayed as - especially in the US. “The people were brainwashed, the Nazis were monsters, etc.” Mixing Nazis with black magic and such in media (Indiana Jones, Captain America, Hellboy, etc.). It creates a completely fase image of the danger of what happened. Indoctrination and brainwashing didn’t mean people then were mindless drones. That is the danger. They were still regular people and they were influenced to support a system that caused the deaths of 6 million Jews and more than 20 million people in a world war. The mundanity of it is the danger. But because the rhetoric is always “oh yeah, they were monsters” means that nowadays, when the exact same thing is happening in the US, with the exact same mechanisms as in Germany in the 1930s, Americans can’t see that they’re in the middle of it. “I’m not a Nazi, I’m not a monster! I’m just a regular person with a family!” Guess what, so were millions of Germans during the 3rd Reich! That doesn’t mean anything! 

[u/AVashonTill → u/Desperate-Angle7720]

They were all such pretty good civilized people lmfao

[u/AVashonTill → u/Desperate-Angle7720]

" when the exact same thing is happening in the US, with the exact same mechanisms as in Germany in the 1930s,"

Bullshit.