ABSTRACT
NATIONAL Socialism came to power as the party of youth. Its cult of youth may have been less pronounced than that of Italian Facism, whose very hymn was called ‘Giovinezza’; but Hitler lost few opportunities of declaring that his movement was inter alia a revolt of the coming generation against all that was senile and rotten with decay. Yet for all their claims to represent youth, the National Socialists never succeeded in establishing a strong youth movement of their own before 1933. All through the twenties the Hitler Youth remained a negligible force, and in 1933, when it became part of the State apparatus, it lost whatever spontaneity or independence it may ever have had.
