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Teens against the total state: in 1941 Nazi Germany, the brave actions of three teens proved that even Hitler's Third Reich could not deter some youth from discovering and disseminating the truth.

Article Excerpt
"Peer pressure" has become a psychological buzzword. Especially when applied to teenagers, it suggests that the members of a peer group have neither the independence of thought nor the common sense to oppose the collective mindset of the herd. However, history abounds with inspiring stories of young people who have courageously gone against the tide created not only by their peers but by forces even more threatening.

To appreciate such demonstrable courage, let us take ourselves back to Hamburg, Germany, in 1941. Hamburg was then Germany's most important industrial center and the largest seaport on the European Continent. Like all Germans, the residents of Hamburg were suffering the effects of World War II and, even worse, the loss of most of the freedoms they once enjoyed. Germany had been transformed into an oppressive police state in 1936, when Hitler had signed an order appointing SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler as the "Head of German Police in the Reich Home Office." As a result of that order, the SS gained control over all police departments in Germany. Government spies kept a close watch on all citizens.

The Nazis had also passed a law in 1939 making it punishable by death to listen to unauthorized foreign radio broadcasts. To enforce this law, short-wave radios were banned and confiscated, and legal radios were pre-set to receive only the three government-controlled stations. But the National Socialist regime was not content merely to control the content of the media. Its most important target was the minds of German youth. "When an opponent says, 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already,'" Hitler declared in a 1934 speech. "What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community."

Targeting Young People

Even before coming to power in 1933, the Nazis had organized the Hitletjugend (Hitler Youth) as a party auxiliary, in 1932, the last year of the Weimar Republic, the Hitler Youth numbered a mere 107,956; by way of contrast, more than 10 million German youth were active in nonpolitical as sociations, such as the Boy Scouts. As the Nazis consolidated their power, they spared no effort to persuade, beguile--and ultimately, to compel--parents to enroll their children in the party's youth affiliates.

By 1938--five years...

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