Hitler's Next Step example essay topic

Early 20th Century Nazi Germany Hitler 13th of August, 1937, Entry #13. Dear Diary, According to Hitler; "The young must be chiselled away. I want young men and women that can suffer pain. A young German must be as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp's steel".

We, the Youth of the Thousand year Reich, are the building blocks of future society. All of Germany must revolve around the Nazis, and we must all be devoted to the Fuhrer. Everything has changed since Hitler came to power; school, exercise, and life in general. As I am 13 years of age, I now belong to The Jung volk, or in English, the Young Folk. I have already been through The Pimp fen, or in English, The Little Fellows, and I still have ahead of me The Hitlerjugend, or in English, the Hitler Youth - HJ. My sister, who is now 15 years of age, is in the League of German Girls.

She passed through the Jungmadel, or the Young Girls of Germany, amid the ages 10 and 14, but she had to toil hard for it. If you want to pass to the next stage, you had to be nearly faultless. You had to be very athletic and physically adept, you had to be good looking and you also had to completely, totally and utterly dedicate yourself to the Fuhrer and his ideals. So we young people have a very hard time of it. I talked to my father the other night, to try to get him to help me understand what is happening to our country.

My father doesn't have a very high opinion of the Fuhrer, but he likes to keep it quiet or otherwise he says we might get a visit from the Gestapo, the German secret police. Anyway, back to our little talk. As I said, me and my father had a chat. He told me all he knew about Hitler and how he came to power. My father says that Hitler did it legitimately, although it was nevertheless a little sneaky. Hitler silently and shrewdly climbed his way to the top of the ladder, to the great bounty of power waiting for him at the top.

My father told me this. Hitler had to be subtle in his removal of his opponents and the transfer ral to a totalitarian state. His first step (in 1933) was to close all other political parties and remove anything that could possibly oppose him. He even closed down and destroyed the printing presses of the right wing parties that had supported him.

Finally, on the 14th of July in 1933, a single party state was declared. Hitler's next step was us, the children. Daddy says that he is trying indoctrinate us (this means getting us to believe in a set of ideas) by setting up youth organizations to encourage us to respect Nazi values. According to him, Hitler is being portrayed as some sort of a war hero, which he really isn't.

The boys and girls of Germany have been split up, meaning I don't see my sister nearly as much as I used to. Us boys have to focus on military oriented activities, while my sister says they concentrate on more family oriented values. Our education has to be strictly controlled by the Nazis, and my dad (who is actually a teacher) said that they were given a special training course to help them realise that certain people have lower ranks in society. Disabled people, Jews and gypsies are valued below all others.

These people are forced to sit in the corners of the classrooms and do not receive an education. We judge this to be very unreasonable, as both of my sisters and also my were Jews, and they were killed by the Gestapo a couple of years ago. The Nazis are forcing people to believe what the Fuhrer thinks is right. My father carried on conversation. He says that the police are a key contributing factor to the power that Hitler has gained and continues to hold.

Slowly, he tells me, Nazi groups shuffled themselves in amid the police and eventually took over. Laws were then altered to respect Nazi values and to restrict and at times protect individual freedoms. The Nazis took all control of law and order. Finally, on the 26th of June, 1935, the Gestapo and the Police were legitimately amalgamated. And the new laws just kept on coming. Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and jazz musicians were considered inferior and all 'decadent art" was banned.

Some other authors and composers were also banned. The Press and journalists faced newer, tougher rules, regulations and restrictions, and no separate printing presses were allowed unless they were under strict Nazi supervision. There was nothing (and there still is nothing) left to choose except the Nazis. So in the end there is no choice for us. Either we respect the Nazis, or we die trying not to. In this day and age some things are taken for granted, but the idea of a fair society can no longer be certified.

Some countries are on the move to different systems as I now speak, and we were just 'lucky' enough to be the first to go. But there is still hope for some other countries. We do not deserve anything like what we are being put through.