CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Mezger, Caroline Eva |
|---|---|
| Title | Hitler's Messengers: The Hitler Youth and the Propagation of Nazi Ideology Amongst Ethnic Germans of the Batschka |
| Summary | This thesis investigates the creation of National Socialist youth groups within ethnic German communities of the Batschka. Located in a former Habsburg territory that fluctuated in borders, politics, and ethnic composition during the early twentieth century, the Batschka’s populations became embroiled within a multitude of contestations by greater state, national, and ideological projects during the 1930s and 1940s. The Batschka’s “Donauschwaben” especially were targeted by the Third Reich, which— through the mass “education” of ethnic Germans in the region— hoped to forge an “Aryan master race” that would be willing to fight and die “for Reich and Führer.” Youths became crucial within this scheme. Ideologized within the framework of “Hitler Youth” formations, youths were not merely to “educate” themselves about National Socialist definitions of “Germanness,” but also to act as agents of “education” and “conversion” within their communities. This study explores Nazi tactics of youth mobilization and their effects on the social interactions, political affiliations, and national identities of the Batschka’s ethnic German communities. Split into macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of analysis and employing a range of sources— including 1930s and 1940s German ethnographic studies and Volksgeschichten, contemporaneous German-speaking press from Hungary and Yugoslavia, Nazi youth propaganda, oral histories, and Heimatgemeinde-based memoires— this thesis investigates the various actors and perspectives involved with the Nazi mobilization of “volksdeutsche” youths. As this study illustrates, the “effects” of Nazi youth programs were manifold and far removed from a traditional interpretation of the “totalitarian masses.” Rather, their impact was divisive, as the Batschka’s ethnic Germans became confronted with, and defended, conflicting interpretations of their own national identities. |
| Supervisor | Trencsényi, Balázs; Siefert, Marsha |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/mezger_caroline.pdf |
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