Book Review (OT): Hitler Youth (true stories of the youth movement)

Hitler* Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow, by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (Scholastic Press, 2005, 369 pages, $9.99PB) Ages 12 and up, grades 7-9.

The Question

Why did the youth of Germany revere Hitler so, even join the Hitler Youth – some without their parents’ permission?

It was the 1930s in Europe. Germany had lost the Great War (World War 1) and was forced to sign a treaty limiting them unfairly (in their minds). The leader of Germany was elderly and a young whippersnapper from Austria was a magnetic speaker and leader – perhaps even brilliant in his planning, as he and his party won elections and gradually took over.

Hitler believed in the young people of the day and created not only a new military but also a youth-oriented movement, led by the elite (blond, blue-eyed Aryan) youth themselves and full of camping and bonfires and songs and athletics and uniforms – and later, marching and weapons practice.

The Book

Author Susan Bartoletti spent two years and many days in Europe researching this book – a collection of true stories leading from the very beginnings of the Nazi youth movement to the war’s end in 1945. The reader meets the famous Sophie Scholl and her siblings, a young Jewish boy who was not allowed to join his classmates in the fun of the Hitler Youth, a German teen who joined despite his parents’ protestations. From Hitler’s rise to power to preparations for war and book burnings to the Holocaust and even the Resistance, the reader follows history through the eyes of real boys and girls who lived it and through the photographs.

The author includes a timeline and epilogue following the leading characters up to present day. I only wish her writing style were more enthralling: nevertheless, the facts pull the reader in and the ten chapters can be read in any order, if you like to skip around.

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Caveat: This book was purchased for review.

* Newbery Honor Book
A YALSA Best Book for Young Adults
A Booklist Editors' Choice
A Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
Winner 2005 Parents' Choice Gold Seal Award