JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 300
This installment on blank and
empty things is a continuation of the empty diary thread. The Jahrbuch der Jungmaedel
1937 is unsued and empty of unpublished thoughts; it was intended as a receptacle
for the girls who were accepted into the Jungmaedlbund (translatable as “Young
Girl’s League”), an extension of the Hitler Youth organization to female children
aged 10-14. Girls between the ages 14 and 18 were encouraged to be members of the Bund Deutsche Maedel (BDM), and finally, for the last stage of girlhood, there was the Glaube und Schoenheit section ("Belief and Beauty") for girls 18 to 21, for grooming into the married and domestic (Nazi) life. The Jungsturm Adolf Hitler, the umbrella organization for all of this, began in 1922, soon after the creation of the NSDAP, and sought to develop the next generation of Aryan supermen, thoroughly indoctrinated in Nazism, and come their 18th birthday (or sooner) would become reliable and trusted soldiers. There were various subgroups in a web-y complication of organizations, all of which kept the minds of dozens of thousands of children under close control; and, by 1936, all German boys were compelled to become Hitler Youth.
The forward to this booklet was by
the leader of the Jungmaedel, Baldor von Schirach, who was later the head of the
Hitler-Jugend
(HJ, Hitler Youth) and Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter ("Reich Governor")
of Vienna. He lived until 1974, ably surviving his
prosecution and conviction as a war criminal for his role in the deportation
of Viennese Jews. His work in shaping
the propaganda and the minds of children in Nazi Germany was so far as I can
see not an issue at his trial. He and
Albert Speer did denounce Hitler during their trials at
Schirach's wife, Henriette, divorced him a few years into his retirerment. She lived until 1992. I wonder what Baldor and Henriette talked about at dinner? What was there pillow talk like? I
wonder what she was thinking in the years that she spent alone, or in
her final 37 days on earth? Did she wait for death's embrace to take
her to some higher Aryan plane? Did she regret her own acquiesence of
what her husband was doing, or did she fool herself into believing
that nothing horrible was happening? Her husband gave some evidence
during his trial that he sent protesting notes to Martin Bormann about
the "bad" treatment of the Jews, and that he had no idea about the
exterminations. (He also claimed that the idea for the antisemitism
in Germany came from Henry Ford's The International Jew. That Ford bears some responsibility for this and other pro-Fascist actions is correct and not debatable.) I'd like to see Henriette's diary if she dared keep one. If there wasn't a diary, it would be interesting to write it for her. 
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