Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis

On Monday, April 20, 1936, special torchlight ceremonies took place all over Germany to celebrate Hitler's birthday. The narrative focuses on one twelve-year-old boy in Hamburg, Karl Schnibbe, who was elated and who was happy to join the pre-Hitlerjugend youth organization for children ten to fourteen. The boys' section was known as the Jungvolk. Girls, meanwhile, joined the Jungmadel.

Schnibbe was excited by promises of camping trips and athletic events, and was awed when he attended a ceremony centered on the "Blood Banner", a Nazi swastika banner allegedly dipped in the blood of martyrs like Herbert Norkus.

Invitation to the Hitlerjugend involved proving that one was racially pure; specifically, that one was a member of the Aryan race, and that one had no drop of Jewish blood in one's heritage. Jews were expressly forbidden to join Hitlerjugend, causing divisions between boyhood friends. Hitlerjugend...