862.42/87
The Ambassador in Germany (Dodd) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 24.]
Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith a translation of an article from Deutsches Nachrichten Büro of July 27, 1934,81 from which it will be seen that it is planned to secure uniform training in Nazi ideas for all Nazi organizations by establishing joint schooling for all the branches of the party.
The Reich Youth Leader has arranged to have the German youth devote Sundays to the home, Saturdays to physical training, marching, etc., and Wednesday evenings to educational work. (See section 2 of fortnightly despatch going forward in this pouch.81) On Wednesday evenings the members of the Hitler Youth, the BDM (Bund Deutsche Mädel—association of German girls) and Deutscher Jungvolk—those too young to join the Hitler Youth—will be assembled at their various headquarters. The work will commence with a radio broadcast over a nation-wide hook-up every Wednesday at 8:35, in which the young will be familiarized with German history in a manner calculated to strengthen their national faith and to point the way from the past to the future. Folders, containing appropriate pictures and reading matter, have been distributed—a different one [Page 288] for each Wednesday—to all headquarters. Similar training of German youth abroad has also been provided for. In order to permit sufficient time for the folders to reach their foreign destinations, the broadcasts will be repeated two months later from gramophone records from special sending stations with directional aerials to Asia, Africa, North and South America.
The knowledge thus disseminated is necessarily superficial—the entire history of Germany from the earliest times to the present is to be covered in 16 weekly periods of 25 minutes each. However, the main object is to instill the proper spirit in the German youth. What this proper spirit will be like when instilled may be judged from the following excerpt from the description, in the Völkischer Beobachter of August 1, of one of these broadcasts:
“Now there commences a short radioplay ‘Henry I and His Son Otto.’ The thirteen year old son is indignant that his father has concluded a truce of nine years with the Huns and that he will even pay tribute to them. This shame no Saxon could bear. The father explains to him what he needs the nine years of peace for. He wants to create a cavalry army with which he can beat the Huns definitely and not only temporarily. The short play closes with an address by Henry to his army leaders.”
On this occasion the number of German youth and children included in the above organizations was given as 61/2 million in round numbers.
Respectfully yours,