Friday, July 22, 2016

Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti -- 176 pages

"I begin with the young. We older ones are used up . . . But my magnificent youngsters! Look at these men and boys! What material! With them, I can create a new world." --Adolf Hitler, Nuremberg 1933

How fascinating that so little of what Hitler did was actually illegal and how readily people followed him! In the breakdown of families and morality, and the inflation of young people, Hitler's rise to power in Germany happened swiftly, leading up to World War II. 

This book details the lives of several young people, some who resisted Hitler, and some who passionately betrayed their own parents to him. It isn't long or tedious, and it's pretty good. 

While reading relating book reviews, I was rather glad that I, among few, did know of the atrocities that this book recalls, but perhaps I didn't know quite the extent of them. I hadn't realized that so much of the violence was done by the Hitler Youth. Neither had I realized that the euthanasia program (briefly talked about in this book) was kept so undercover so that parents had no clue that their children were being murdered. 

I listened to the audio book. 

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