High on the list of the Third Reich's atrocities was its use of state power to undermine the most basic of human rights and the subordination of all other social institutions to the prerogatives of the Party.
In "Life In The Hitler Youth" by Jennifer Keeley, the reader learns of the Nazi subversion ofthe family and realizes the disturbing parallels that can be drawn with developments unfolding in our own nation and the Republican family values agenda that includes ideological indoctrination by evangelical churches.
According to Keeley, all of German life (including the minutest detail of one's personal life) was brought under Nazi control through the policy of Gleichschaltung or coordination so that all of society and culture reflected National Socialism .
As such, the 1936 Law
Concerning The Hitler Youth decreed that all of German youth were to be incorporated under the banner of this organization. The Hitler Youth or Hitler Jugend became the source of manpower for the Nazi SS.
When reading "Life In The Hitler Youth", one comes away with an uneasiness in the pit of the stomach when one realizes the similarities of the philosophies justifying a number of the programs in Nazi Germany and the United States of America.
Although the United States is nothing like Nazi Germany in terms of destroying innocent
human lives, if Americans do not now get a grip on certain ideological trends festering below the surface of public policy, the nation could very easily find it self sliding in this kind
of downward direction.
As Norm Chomsky has pointed out, the US took over the international role of the Germans after World War 2. The US also had a robust fascist movement in it prior to World War 2 called the Bund. Many American corporations were also openly sympathetic to the Nazis prior the the war.
In the Nazi and other fascist systems, it is not so much the individual created in the image of God protected by a set of unchanging eternal laws that matters but rather the larger group that counts.
For example, the 1936 Law Concerning The Hitler Youth read in part, "The whole of German youth is to be educated,outside the parental home and school, in the Hitler Youth physically, intellectually, and morally in the spirit of National Socialism for service to the nation and community."
As evidenced in one of Hitler’s speeches: "learn...that life for you must mean sacrifice,
sacrifice of your personal freedom, sacrifice of your free time, sacrifice of many of the small pleasures of life; sacrifices when you take on yourself charges, not for the individual, not for yourself alone...but for your small, and yet so great community."
"To teach Hitler Youth the importance of their Volk community, the National Socialists suggested members participate in a form of land service. Although not obligated to do so by any mandate or decree, every year young people ... were expected to help the Volk community...This was designed to teach young people about putting the
needs of the community before their own ."
The US had similar programs with Herbert Hoover's Civilain Conservation Corps that put many jobless Americans back to work.
The objective of such programs --- be they either in a dictatorship or even in a representative democracy --- is ultimately to undermine the loyalty of its participants in regards to other authorities such as family or religion and to replace it with an absolute fealty to the organs of the state.
This is similar to GOP 'family values" rhetoric in which conservatives claim to represent the true American way of life.
The first phase of this program was innocent enough as it consisted of scheduling so many activities and meetings that the good Nazi family had to take part in that they were basically kept running around, away from one another,and unable to reflect more critically about what they were being lured into.
This wasn't really all that much different than what is going on in many of these Emergent and Purpose Driven megachurches these days where activities and meetings are scheduled multiple nights per week and parents are told you are less than an ideal Christian if you only show up for the traditional scheduled Sunday and perhaps Wednesday services.
These same techniques are used by both the Mormon church an the Church of Scientology.
Those running afoul of National Socialist authorities underwent a process of scrutiny by the social service agencies of that day in a manner those under suspicions other than quantifiable physical abuse.
Parents refusing to go along with the Hitler Youth agenda could have their children taken away on the grounds of being "politically unreliable." One might say such parents failed to have their children "properly socialized."
Common to all forms of collectivism --- be they the communist, fascistic, or even more democratic and less blatantly homicidal varieties --- is the aspiration to so totally order the existences of those living under these systems.
Of course, the Germans believed God was on their side and Hitler may have even wanted to create a new uniquely German religion. The communists were blatantly atheistic early on, bout the Nazis wanted to manipulate religion to benefit the Nazi moment.
Keeley writes, "Finally, the Nazis attempted to replace Christianity with National Socialist ideology in the lives of youth. Some National Socialists expressed discontent with the so-called Jewish roots of Christianity...The Nazis began to remove symbols, such as the cross,
from schools, but they also painted the Tuetonic crosses on their aircraft and tanks.
A prayer children were required to recite in order to receive a free school lunch:
Fuehrer, my Fuehrer, bequeathed to me by the Lord, protect and preserve me as long as I
live. Thou hast rescued Germany from deepest distress. I thank thee for my daily bread. Abideth thou long with me, forsaketh me not, Fuehrer my Fuehrer, my faith and my light. Heil mein Fuehrer .
Religion was clearly enmeshed in the Nazi movement and Hitler was clearly obsessed with the occult and religious icons.
source: EtherZone.com by Frederick Meekins
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