Phönix-Kalender für die deutsche Jugend Führer durch das Jahr 1934 – Phoenix Calendar for German Youth, Fuhrer through the year 1934, for Boys and Girls. W ith Calendar Pages from January 1, 1934 to March 21, 1935. Edited by Karl Hellwig. The first calendar issued in Nazi Germany for “Hitler Youth” after Hitler’s rise to power. Accompanied by many photographs of “Hitler Youth” activities. Rare. The calendar before us belonged to the boy Herbert Nocon with his passport photo next to the title page.
The first calendar issued with the spirit of the new era in Germany after the Nazis rose to power and Hitler became Chancellor. Up front is a photo of Adolf Hitler “Our Leader” taken by his personal photographer Heinrich Hoffman, and photos of Nazi party leaders Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach and others. Accompanying the calendar are many photos of Hitler Youth in parades, nature activities and sports. It also features overviews of various social competitions held in Hitler Youth, articles on training, hiking, camping, field games, on “Our Youth in Forest and Fields”, Germany’s sporting achievements, and more. It includes a timeline of major events since WWI ending in 1933 with “Hitler becomes Reich Chancellor”, it also quotes clauses from the Treaty of Versailles limiting German arms for defense only, extensive political and social development information since WWI aimed at presenting to the youth an image of Germany’s peak development under the Nazis.
The Hitler Youth or “Hitlerjugend” was a youth movement that operated in Germany with the rise of the Nazi Party until the conquest of Germany by the Allies, founded by Adolf Hitler himself, in order to instill Nazi ideology in the younger generation, including racial doctrine and the superiority of the Aryan race. During that period, activity by any other youth movement was banned in Germany and parents were obliged to send their children to the movement. It was the largest youth organization in history, with over 8 million members at its peak. The movement was involved, among other things, in Hitler’s cult of personality and had great influence on the mood in Germany on the eve of World War II. Children were recruited to the movement’s ranks from age eight to eighteen. Girls were recruited to the parallel “League of German Girls”. Emphasis was placed in the “Hitler Youth” on education passed down from trainees to trainees, on division into ranks and on protocols of honor and humiliation. A boy of higher rank was allowed to humiliate his lower-ranking comrade, and that lower-ranking comrade had to behave with respect and keep his distance from his higher-ranking comrade. The boys maintained these codes of conduct even outside the movement’s activities, and this perception caused them severe psychological and moral damage. The Hitler Youth published a famous newspaper distributed all over Germany called “The German Youth Newspaper” (Die deutsche Jugendzeitung) which contained racist and anti-Semitic content. There are also known to have been acts of harassment by the Hitler Youth against Jews. The German youth participated in pogroms and violent attacks against Jews, looted and destroyed Jewish property of deportees, and even informed on Jews to the Nazi authorities out of a sense of mission and obedience to the Führer’s spirit.
After the German surrender, the Allies outlawed the Hitler Youth. Suspicions against its members of war crimes were never thoroughly investigated because of the young age of the members. The adult staff of the Hitler Youth, chief among them Baldur von Schirach, were tried for crimes against peace.
VII, 319 [1], XIV pages. Impressive original color cover covered with fabric, with a color illustration of a boy in the “Hitler Youth”.
