In the year of 1920, Adolf Hitler had authorized the establishment of a Youth League of the National Socialist Workers’ Party, better known as NSDAP. It was based upon the integrity of an earlier German youth group that was known as Wandervogel.   Hitler Youth was a well known paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. Hitler Youth was founded in 1920’s by Adolf Hitler. The group was also known as Hitler-Jugend or HJ. Hitler Youth is said to be the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group. Once Hitler had gained control of the German State, he then used the government to make the Hitler Youth the country’s all encompassing youth movement.

                The organization of the Nazi youth started in 1922. The Hitler Youth were officially formed at the second National Party Day, July 4, 1926. The Hitler Youth Movement had highlighted physical training, NAZI ideology, activism, and also nationalism and racial concepts. The Nazi Party had only one goal in mind, and they were determined to reach the goal no matter what. The goal was to program all children in National Socialist.  The Hitler Youth was slit up into two different branches. Once branch was made for girls, and another branch was made for boys.  The boys ranged from the age fourteen to eighteen. By the year of 1936, it was mandatory for all young German men to join the movement.  The Hitler Youth maintained training schools that were comparable to preparatory schools. The schools were designed to nurture the future Nazi Party leaders. Only the most radical and devoted HJ members were expected to attend school. The members of Hitler Youth were for the most part proud to be presented with the victory symbol, which is also known as Sig Rune. They received the symbol from the SS. The SS had utilized two Sig Runes as their mark. The whole point behind this was to symbolically link the two groups together.

            The Hitler Youth had originally been Munich-based. By the year of 1923, the organization had over one thousand members. When the Nazi Party had been founded again in 1925, the membership had grown to be over five thousand members. Within the span of five years, the national HJ membership had stood at over twenty-five thousand. The numbers were constantly increasing as the years passed. By the year of 1936, there were over five million members in the Hitler Youth organization. In the same year, it had become mandatory for Hitler Youth membership. By 1939, the membership requirement was mandatory, even when the member’s parents were against it. Most of Germany’s teens didn’t belong to their parents anymore; they belonged to the Hitler Youth. The following year, the total of members came out to be a little over eight million.  Because of the massive recruitment and general call-up of boys that eventually came, all the young males in Germany that were as young as ten years old were connected to the Hitler Youth organization.

                In the year of 1940, Artur Axmann took over leadership of the Hitler Youth. Artur had started to reform the Hitler Youth group into a secondary force that was able to perform war duties. The members of the HJ had become active in German fire brigades. They also assisted with recovery efforts to German cities that were affected by the Allied bombing. By the year of 1943, the Nazi leaders started to turn Hitler Youth into a military reserve in order to draw the manpower that had been washed-out due to the massive number of soldiers that were dying in the war. The ‘12. SS –Panzer-Division Hitlerjugend’ was formed in that same year. The Division had been a completely prepared Waffen-SS panzer division. The majority of the members had been drawn from Hitler Youth boys between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. They had been set out during the Battle of Normandy against the British and Canadian forces to the north of Caen.  In the months that had followed, the division had succeeded in earning itself a reputation for ferocity and fanaticism. By the year of 1945, organizations were drafting boys as young as twelve years old from the Hitler Youth. When the Battle of Berlin came around, Hitler Youth had processed a major part of the last line of German defense. They were reportedly mixed among the fiercest fighters. Artur Axmann had been ordered to disband the Hitler Youth from combat formations, but war had been causing a lot of chaos and so the order had never been carried out.

                The disbanding of the Hitler Youth Organization was done by Allied authorities as part of the process of de-nazification process. Some of the Hitler Youth members had been suspected of war crimes. But the efforts to prosecute the claims weren’t serious. This is because they had only been children, and they let it be. The Hitler Youth isn’t considered a criminal organization; but the Nazi Party, the adult leadership was considered tainted for mortifying the minds of young Germans. The German children that had been born in the 1920’s and also the 1930’s became adults during the years of the Cold War. The fact that the membership of Hitler Youth had been mandatory after the year of 1936, many of the senior leaders of both East and West Germany had been part of the Hitler Youth. There was little effort made to blacklist the political figures that had been youth members of Hitler Youth.  People believed that they didn’t deserve to be punished like that since they didn’t have a choice in the matter of becoming a member of Hitler Youth.