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In Reply to: Re: Tribute to lost youth posted by Farmer on February 25, 2008 at 13:18:03:
You make some good distinctions on the difference between Hitler Youth and Family TTCs. Really, the FGAs are more similar to Hitler Youth in that they willingly joined. Forcing the SGAs into training camps was truly counterproductive. Fanatical devotion probably requires a certain level of choice in the matter.
The personality cult that Hitler inspired wasn't all that different than the one inspired in the followers of Berg, though. Berg didn't obtain as much power, but it was the same kind of unthinking, fanatical devotion to a charismatic leader.
Hitler wasn't in power long enough to see how the first generation of his followers would pass their fanatical legacy on to their children. One of the most chilling stories from Hitler's last days involves that of Madame Goebbels, who killed her six children on the eve of Berlin's fall to the Russioans because she did not want to "doom" them to life in the aftermath of the Third Reich.
I have a feeling if Hitler had triumphed in the war and remained in power for the second generation to come of age, we might have seen rebellion against the Third Reich. But who knows? The dynamics of state power is so much more complicated than running an obscure cult on the fringes of society.
