Photo of Children in Balilla Uniform – Italian Fascist Children’s Organization, retrieved from https://portale.unime.it/hedu/evento/le-attivita-dellopera-nazionale-balilla-in-valle-daosta/
by David DeFilippis
The emergence of totalitarian regimes in Europe can be attributed to political instability, social unrest, and the Great Depression that occurred during the early twentieth century. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Communist USSR were notable examples of these regimes, characterized by their centralized control of society and use of propaganda to shape public interests. One key aspect of these totalitarian regimes was their emphasis on youth indoctrination. In Nazi Germany, the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) was created in 1922 to instill Nazi ideology and prepare young Germans for military service. In Fascist Italy, the Balilla was established in 1926 as a youth organization to likewise promote loyalty to the state and establish Mussolini as the Duce. On the opposite side of the political spectrum in the Communist USSR, the Komsomol was created in 1918 to promote Marxist-Leninist ideology. Despite the inherent political differences between these respective regimes, both Fascist and Communist child organizations aimed to indoctrinate young people with their respective ideologies with similar objectives and approaches. Fascist and Communist organizations emphasized nationalism and political education, and in large part succeeded in creating highly nationalistic and politically active states.
The Hitler Jugend was pivotal in the establishment of Germany’s totalitarian state. This youth organization was founded in 1922 and indoctrinated youth with German nationalism and politics. The Hitler Jugend promoted nationalism through antisemitic and Anti-communist propaganda during formal education. The central educational regimen was focused on history, racial biology, eugenics, and volk sociology.[1] As contemporary German sociologist Frieda Wunderlich stated, “Raciology must be made the basis of all other subjects in order to produce a racial style of life.”[2] For example, as children learned how to read, the books they read sought to teach them racial life lessons. The popular book, Trust No Fox on his Green Heath and No Jew on his Oath! A Picture Book for Old and Young, written by Elvira Bauer, illustrates Nazi techniques that were used to teach race. Interestingly, Bauer was both an 18-year-old art student and a kindergarten teacher, and most importantly, a Nazi supporter, when she published this book, an age where some are still deemed a child. Through illustration and small captions, the book portrays four main arguments: first, Jews derive from the devil; second, Jews are cursed by God to be nomadic pest-like people because they assisted in crucifixion of Jesus Christ; third, Jews can never be Aryan because they cannot adhere to Christian customs; fourth, Jews are to be understood as opportunistic people and are always trying to take advantage of others when making deals.[3] Another children’s book, The Poisonous Mushroom, authored in 1938 by Ernst Hiemer, features a boy going into the woods with his mother to pick mushrooms for a stew. Unbeknownst to the boy, he picked up a poisonous mushroom and brought it to his mother. The mother used this opportunity to teach the boy a Nazi social lesson. The mother stated, “Just as it is often difficult to tell the poisonous from the edible mushrooms, it is often very difficult to recognize Jews as thieves and criminals.”[4] As seen through these two books, children were indoctrinated at the same time they learned how to read.
The propaganda was not confined to children’s books. While practicing mathematics, math problems were focused on militarism. For example, in 1938, University of Minnesota professor James W. Miller noted a probable math question German students would have to complete. Miller recounted, “A squadron of 46 bombers drops incendiary bombs on an enemy city. Each aeroplane carries 500 bombs weighing 1.5 kilograms each. Calculate the total weight of their bomb loads. How many fires will be caused if 30 percent of the bombs are hits and only 20 percent of the hits cause fires.”[5] Children were further politicized as they grew up and continued their secondary education. Miller noted, “The years between ten and eighteen constitute a formative period in the lives of all. The mind [of a child] is then plastic, and it is important to see that the wax gets the right impression.”[6] The formal education of the Hitler Jugend shows that children learned basic skills like reading and math as they learned Nazi political and social lessons.
The Hitler Jugend also used informal education to shape the next generation of Nazi youth, such as physical activity. Alongside formal education, children participated in marching, camping, singing and sports. Jungvolklieder (Young People Songs) were a collection of marching songs sung by the Hitler Jugend during their frequent marches. One of the songs included the lines “Youth, youth, we are the soldiers of the future, Bearers of coming deeds. With our fists we shall fell our opponents, Leader, we belong to you.”[7] Through these activities children learned to become tougher, regimented, Anti-communist, and above all else, devoted to the Nazi Party. In a speech, Hitler Jugend leader Baldur von Schirach made a remark about children and their progression through informal education. Schirach joked, “Children do not need toys, they want tents, javelins, compasses and maps.”[8] Shirach’s comment shows not only the priority shown to youth education by Nazi officials, but also highlights the effectiveness of the Hitler Jugend’s indoctrination efforts.
The Opera Nazionale Balilla of Italy helped create a totalitarian state. It was established by law under the control of the Ministry of National Education in 1926.[9] The need for the Balilla rose just after 1922, when Benito Mussolini became prime minister of Italy. Mussolini’s Minister of Education, Giovanni Gentile, was dissatisfied with the way schoolmasters were teaching physical education. As a result, Gentile relieved the schoolmasters of the responsibility to teach physical education and gave it to a self-governing organization, Ente Autonomo. As NYU professor P. W. L. Cox noted firsthand while in Italy, “To him [Gentile], a vigorous physical-activity program was important not only for the promotion of physical wholeness and hygienic living, but quite as much for the moral and civic training and spiritual expression implicit in group activities.”[10] Due to this shift towards state controlled education core subjects, such as reading, math, and history were altered to favor Italian patriotism. Textbooks predating Mussolini’s rise to power were reviewed by the Ministry of National Education and deemed to not fit these new standards, and so new Party-authored textbooks were introduced. Notable historian of Fascism C. H. Abad explained, “When the existing textbooks were examined and it was found that none filled these conditions, uniform State textbooks were proposed.”[11] These new uniform textbooks brought about the concept of the New Italian. The New Italian was to be brought about by educating adolescent Italians in the ways and duties of a Fascist citizen, as well as the telling of Italian history through a fiercely patriotic lens. Abad uses an example of a geography lesson to show how education shifted under Mussolini’s leadership. He explained, “The thought of aggression—and scorn for it—is introduced while the child still reads by syllables: ‘The mountaineer of the Alps loves his mountains and fears no one.’ We are children and we love you; when we are grown up, we shall defend you and make you respected by everybody. Long live Italy!’”[12] The education young Italian children received is easily understood as a critical mechanism in the indoctrination of Italy’s youth in the Fascist ideals of the Italian government.
The regimented structure of the Italian Balilla made it incredibly effective in the indoctrination of Fascist youth. Cox argued, “One of the most effective educational instruments that the world has ever known is the Opera Nazionale Balilla… created and operated to ensure the permanence and success of the Fascist revolution in Italy…”[13] At the age of six an Italian boy was automatically enrolled in the Figlio della Lupa (Son of a she-wolf) as a prerequisite to joining the Balilla. At twelve the boy entered the Balilla Riflemen until the age of fourteen when he became an Avanguardisti (male avant-gardes). The Avanguardisti section of the Balilla was divided into two parts, one for riflemen (aged 14-16), the other machine gunners (aged 16-18). It was only until the boys completed their service in the Avanguardisti that they could become a Young Fascist. After three years of being a Young Fascist, boys became eligible for full party membership. As part of their involvement in the Avanguardisti, boys became accustomed to military-like exercises. For example, boys were separated into battalions and marched through major cities in view of high-ranking officials to illustrate the youth’s interest in fascism. As seen in a video produced by Luce Cinecittà, Mussolini’s propaganda film industry, both young boys and girls are seen marching through Genoa in front of the Undersecretary of Physical Education and the Chief of Staff of the Military. Boys in the video marched with flags, while others carried rowing oars and skis, rode bicycles, and carried airplanes.[14] These images exhibit Mussolini’s philosophy; early and constant involvement in sports translated to physical preparedness in the military, and therefore the Fascist state.
Youth organizations also indoctrinated girls. Girls from the ages of six to fourteen were considered Piccole Italiane (small Italian girls), and girls from fourteen to eighteen were considered Giovani Italiane (young Italian girls). However, the involvement of girls in the organization was focused on child-rearing. Girls were taught not to have children out of wedlock, how to run a household, and how to rear children in Fascist spirit.[15] Consequently, Fascism had a different meaning for young girls. Their role was focused on passing down Fascist values to future Italian generations. Some historians, like Victoria DeGrazia, argue that Fascism alienated women from their own bodies. For example, as Italy faced low fertility rates and a rise in premarital sex in the 1920s, Mussolini banned abortions and contraceptive information. As a result, as DeGrazia states, “Women recalled knowing nothing about menstruation until it came, hardly anything about male sexuality until the first night of their marriage, and little about birth itself.”[16] Though girls were involved in youth organizations, their indoctrination was focused on different topics, and girl’s involvement in Fascist youth organizations were overshadowed by the immense popularity the organizations had with young boys.
The USSR had its own youth indoctrination organization in the form of the Komsomol and its Young Pioneers. The Komsomol initially began as a small independent organization in 1918 that sought to eradicate illiteracy during the Bolshevik Revolution. As the new Communist state was formed, leaders like Vladimir Lenin emphasized the importance of literature and the need for a new generation of young revolutionary activists to create the Communist state. Lenin is quoted as saying, “Literature is a powerful weapon of propaganda, and its control in the present period should be in the hands of government.”[17] Unsurprisingly, as Lenin consolidated his power, the Komsomol became an instrument of mass indoctrination. Its new task, as historian Peter Kenz explained, “[w]as to carry the message of the [Communist] Party —whether concerning long-term goals or some immediate and temporary problem — to the young.”[18] It began expanding its role beyond the eradication of illiteracy to include indoctrinating youth in Communist ideals, Marxist economics, and leadership skills.
The Soviets believed it was necessary to indoctrinate the youth by supporting new education programs. Soon after the shift towards indoctrination occurred, the Komsomol established the first school for agitators in March 1919, Ia. M. Sverdlov Communist University. The university became the first attempt by the Komosomol to halt the militant activism of the Bolshevik Revolutionary period, and instead bring up children and adolescents with revolutionary consciousness.[19] In a two-and-a-half-month course, students studied the Communist Party’s history, political economics, and the history of youth movements in Western countries.[20] The popularity of youth education in the USSR was seen in the early 1920s, when Kenz noted, “In October 1921 there were 255 schools in the country educating 50,000 students… In 1922 78 percent of grade one and 68 percent of grade two were under 21.”[21] These statistics clearly indicate the targeting of youth by Soviet political school programs.
The Komsomol shifted away from memorization and recitation common in contemporary schools, featuring an emphasis on critical thinking and analysis of Communist political issues. In 1926, the Komsomol refined its curriculum to feature five major points: the study of the Soviet economy, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the history of the Communist Party, the Comintern, and the Komsomol.[22] The transformation youth experienced due to Komsomol education was tremendous. As historian Julius Gould pointed out, “The children enter school knowing ‘almost nothing as yet.’ By the time they leave ‘they have already formed an understanding of public duty; their views on life…character, habits, and tastes have been formed.’”[23] This rapid change is further highlighted by the immense difficulty early learners faced. Initial education was very difficult as many youths came from poor illiterate peasant households, and many students had serious health conditions from poor diets or had to tend to their farms for a majority of the day. Kazan Kenz noted, “75 percent of the students suffered from anemia and 10 percent had tuberculosis… Obviously tremendous dedication, or ambition, was necessary to complete the course.”[24] Furthermore, peasant youth faced financial difficulties since many of them could not afford to pay for school. As American political scientist Merle Fainsod underscored, “The introduction of tuition fees meant that those students who could not qualify for scholarships or were unable to draw on family resources to support them had to abandon their hopes of higher education.”[25] Consequently, since there were almost two million members in the Komsomol that primarily consisted of poor youth in 1927, it must be understood that the youth’s dedication to create a communist state lay solely in their self-determination to achieve revolutionary consciousness.
Although the Komsomol was mainly a political organization, it often attempted to instill militarism into its youth. Komsomol members were trained to shoot weapons that ranged from pistols to sniper rifles. As James Miller points out, “At the tenth Komsomol Congress, in 1936, M. Kosarev declared that 1,259,743 youths had passed their full tests as snipers, 1,345,364 had qualified in anti-gas work, and more than 2,000,000 had secured first-class badges as evidence of readiness for labor and defense service.”[26] However, the Komsomol’s purpose for military preparedness differed from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Since the Bolshevik Revolution was already won by the Communists and there was no need to start another war, military preparedness was taught to prepare youth in the event a politically opposing party attempted a coup d’état. The military training was taught to youth with the anticipation of a major counter-revolution waged by right-wing organizations that needed to be put down by force.
In 1922, the Komsomol created the Young Pioneers, a new organization to educate the youth in a more informal way. The indoctrination efforts of the Young Pioneers were enhanced by its target audience: young children. If children were sat down and given lectures on political subjects, their limited attention span and nonexistent political knowledge would limit the indoctrination’s effectiveness as it would tire and bore the children. Instead, as Kenz noted, “The Pioneers attracted the children with games, excursions, sports, and a highly developed system of symbols.”[27] Playing sports, walking, getting acquainted with nature, and building campfires would be far more appealing to the Pioneers than dense political lectures. The Komsomol, which oversaw the Young Pioneers, seized the opportunity to educate youth during these walks and campfires. The guidebook for Pioneer leaders provided discussion material for campfire talks, including recommending the biography of Lenin.[28]
Like the Balilla, the Young Pioneers emphasized sports and separated young boys based on age. A child was first enrolled in the Little Octobrists at the age of seven.[29] This is the age where education in civic responsibilities began. At the age of nine, he became eligible for membership in the Young Pioneers (9-15 years old). Despite the official separation between the Young Pioneers and its parent organization, the children participated in similar activities to those completed by the older Komsomol members. Kenz described this phenomenon observing , “They [The Pioneers] marched on political holidays, they listened to lectures on agriculture and world politics, [and] they participated in the antireligious campaign.”[30] These lectures, given around a campfire or while hiking, were more easily absorbed by the youth since they could associate the lecture with a memorable moment of the Young Pioneer trip. The informal education the Young Pioneers provided proved crucial as many Young Pioneers went on to become members of the Komsomol and later the adult Communist Party.
Ongoing discussions of the Hitler Jugend, Opera Nazionale Balilla, and the Komsomol provide identifiable similarities between these organizations. While Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were on fundamentally different sides of the political spectrum compared to the USSR’s Komsomol, their organizations employed similar techniques. As Kenz illustrated, “The Uniforms, the slogans, and the symbols remind one of fascist organizations… similar needs in similar circumstances led to similar results.”[31] The hardship experienced in each country following the First World War transcended political identification, as each country sought to alleviate social, political, and economic problems through totalitarian regimes that were established in large part due to the indoctrination of their respective youth.
The totalitarian regimes of the interwar period all utilized child organizations to create their respective totalitarian states. The emergence of these states was a result of tumultuous times that left each government desperate for solutions. Leaders like Hitler, Mussolini, and Lenin sought to alleviate these problems through the establishment of regimes that had control over every aspect of society, including education. This control over education of the youth through the Hitler Jugend, Opera Nazionale Balilla, and the Komsomol was both formal and informal. Formal Education was marked by vigorous attention to history, nationalism, and in some cases racism. Informal education was characterized by sports, outdoor activities, and military preparedness. The Hitler Jugend and Balilla nurtured the youth who would later participate in World War II, contributing to the creation of global empires. Similarly, the Komsomol played a role in shaping the generations of youth involved in the Cold War, the world’s largest proxy conflict. The success of these efforts to use education to instill totalitarian values in children in their formative years is vital to understanding how these states managed to enforce the ideological conformity of their people so effectively.
Endnotes
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[1] Racial biology is the pseudo-scientific belief that there is empirical biological evidence that exists that supports racial inferiority. Volk sociology perpetuated feelings of German cultural superiority and a means to which Germans could identify. It is also closely related to German nationalism.
[2] Frieda Wunderlich, “Education in Nazi Germany,” (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1937), Social Research 4, 350.
[3] Elvira Bauer, Trust No Fox on his Green Heath and No Jew on his Oath! A Picture Book for Old and Young (Nuremberg: Stürmer Verlag, 1936).
[4] Ernst Hiemer, The Poisonous Mushroom (Nuremberg: Stürmer Verlag, 1938).
[5] James Miller, “Youth in the Dictatorships,” The American Political Science Review 32, no. 5 (Oct. 1938): 966.
[6] Miller, “Youth in the Dictatorships,” 965.
[7] Jungvolklieder (Plauen i. V.) song no. 1.
[8] Baldur von Schirach, The Hitler Youth, Idea and Form (Leipzig: Koehler und Amelang, 1934), 84.
[9] The name Opera Nazionale Balilla is derived from the name of a small boy Giovanni Battista Perasso who, in 1746, after a whole village had fled, threw a stone at the invading Austrians. Therefore, Opera Nazionale Balilla is understood as a movement to turn Italian children into courageous people who had the characteristics of Perasso.
[10] P. W. L. Cox, “Opera Nazionale Balilla— An Aspect of Italian Education,” Junior-Senior High School Clearing House 9, no. 5 (Jan. 1935): 267.
[11] C. H. Abad, “Fascist Education in Italy,” Current History 36, no. 4 (July 1932): 433.
[12] Abad, “Fascist Education in Italy,” 433.
[13]Cox, “Opera Nazionale Balilla— An Aspect of Italian Education,” 267.
[14] A Great Parade of the Organizations of the Opera Nazionale Balilla (Luce Cinecittà, 1936), 1 min. 17 sec. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWDO-hEeoPg.
[15] Victoria DeGrazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 71.
[16] Victoria DeGrazia, How Fascism Ruled Women, 57.
[17] E. Dinershtein, Publishing in the Early Years of Soviet Power (Moscow: Kniga, 1972), 7.
[18] Peter Kenz, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917-1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 93.
[19] Matthias Neumann, “Revolutionizing Mind and Soul? Soviet Youth and Cultural Campaigns during the New Economic Policy (1921-8),” Social History 33, no. 3 (2008): 243.
[20] Political economics is the study of how a country—the public’s household— is managed or governed, considering both political and economic factors.
[21] Kenz, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 130.
[22] Also known as the Communist International, the Comintern was a Soviet-controlled organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism.
[23] Julius Gould, “The Komsomol and the Hitler Jugend,” The British Journal of Sociology 2, no.4 (Dec.,1951): 307.
[24] Kenz, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 130.
[25]Merle Fainsod, “The Komsomols — A Study of Youth Under Dictatorship,” The American Political Science Review 45, no.1 (March, 1951): 26.
[26] Miller,“Youth in the Dictatorships,” 969.
[27] Kenz, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 193.
[28] Kenz, Propaganda State, 193.
[29] Little Octobrists is a term that refers to children born in 1917, the year of the October Revolution.
[30] Kenz, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 193.
[31] Kenz, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 193.