A HITLER YOUTH

Growing up in Germany in the 1930s. Henry Metelmann was born into a strong socialist working class community in Hamburg. In 1935 he was twelve when the Hitler Youth swallowed up his Scout troop and all other youth groups, with the intention of becoming a national "kindergarten" designed to breed a generation of "victorious, active, daring youth, immune to pain". This book is Metelmann's account of his own enthusiastic service as a "Hitlerjugend", which put him painfully at odds with his Trade Unionist father. In his recounting of the early years of Nazism in Hamburg, he portrays a family and city torn apart by the new movement - and then, with Hitler's rise to power, new regime.