LS 5603 Hilter Youth

Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow. New York: Scholastic Nonfiction, 2005.

ISBN: 0-439-35379-3

Hitler Youth is about a period of history from the early 1930s to the end of World War II. The history of the Hitler Youth is explored and first person narratives, both from the perspective of the Third Reich and those persecuted, are peppered throughout the book. It explores how Hitler was able to have such a strong hold over the people he had power over and the consequences this hold had over the nation of Germany and it’s neighbor’s through the eyes of the youngest involved in the conflict.

I have never read a book that made so angry that I actually wanted to yell at the people portrayed in it! This book’s subject matter is hard enough to read about, but also to read about how Hitler “inspired” the youth of Germany to make a better Germany made my skin crawl. Bartoletti quotes Hitler: “I begin with the young, we older ones are used up.” The book has period pictures of the youth mentioned in the text or as illustration of the activities/duties of the Hilter Youth throughout. Those that were a part of the Hitler Youth seemed so “normal” and it was amazing to see that these normal-looking kids were all lead astray and party to such atrocities to the human race. The pictures of those that were lost because they were caught being involved in to the resistance or did not fit the ideal of the Third Reich made me sad to see the potential that was lost: what great leaders or artists or writers or . . . (I could go on) they could have become. The book begins with pictures and descriptions of the youth that are mentioned in the text and ends with an epilogue that tells what happened to those that survived and an Author's Note on how the book was researched.

“The power of the account is matched by the many period candid and propaganda photographs, well-married to the text by strong captions and placement and an unobtrusive but period-evocative Art Deco page design,” The May/June 2005 issue of The Horn Book states. Hitler Youth is also the holder of two honors: it is a Newbery Honor Book and a Robert F. Seibert Honor Book. Young people may also be interested in Children of the Slaughter: Young People of the Holocaust by Ted Gottfried or Remember World War II: Kids Who Survived Tell Their Stories edited by Dorinda Nicholson. Two fiction stories that may be of interest are Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen.