NAZIS AND YOUTH

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 142, 18 May 1936, Page 5

NAZIS AND YOUTH

NEW RECRUITING CAMPAIGN. POLITICAL EDUCATION. The organisation of German youth on totalitarian lines has made somewhat uncertain progress, as the voting people, including university students, Have been showing rather more independence of mind than their elders, towards the demand of the Tim'd Reich. A campaign is now in progress, however, to get all hoys and girls to enrol in the junior organisation ol tho Hitler youth. National-Socialist schoolchildren have been instructed to do their persuasive best, and the boys are being tempted by promises of air gun shooting and of spears (well padeil at tbc points) lor n- I “At the beginning of the year, writes the Benin correspondent of the London limes, "tue ....... »-o compel all children not members ot the nominally voluntary Hitler youth to join a new State youth organisation. This plan seems, however, to have broken down, owing to the demand of Herr Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler youth leader, that his party organisation should be entrusted with tho leadership and instruction of the new State youth. The Hitler youth teaching on religious questions is particularly obnoxious to many parents, and a lrejquent object of denunciation from Ro- ! man Catholic pulpits, and some inciii- | hers of the Government foresaw trouble [if Herr von Schirach’s demand was j acceded to. 'Thus, the youth organisa- ! Rons remain theoretically voluntary, I but in practice there is a great deal ;of economic and other pressure on parents to let their children become . members.” The curriculum of the organisation i now being recruited includes political education, sports of all kinds, and pre- ] military training. Air-gun shooting, j field games or exercises, and elementary drill begin for the boys at the j age of 10. The boys are to be equipped J with bamboo spears to give some realI ity to their miniature battles, and to I accustom them to the handling of wea- | pons in the open, ft is hoped that the i training will give every boy such physical self-confidence as will inspire him with “faith in the invincibility of his nation.”