War youth generation
War youth generation is a term for the Germans of the generation who were born between 1900 and 1912. The name can be traced back to the fact that most of those born during this period experienced the First World War as young people, but no longer actively participated in it themselves.
The term was coined by Ulrich Herbert in his biography of Reinhard Heydrich's temporary deputy Werner Best . This expression is mostly used in connection with depictions of members of the later ruling class of the National Socialist state .
According to historians and sociologists, the "missed chance to prove the front line " as well as the experience of the difficult early years of the Weimar Republic led many to ideological radicalization . The “Generation of the Unconditional” (as the historian Michael Wildt says in his book of the same name) broke with the past and turned their gaze to the future. At the same time, there was often an academic training, professional ambition and the will to advance (often an affinity to the elite and religious ideas of the SS ). After the political victory of the National Socialists in 1933, many young men of the war youth generation took advantage of the opportunities for a career in the state or society.
literature
- Michael Wildt: Generation of the Unconditional , Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-930908-87-5
- Andrew Donson: Youth in the Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism, and Authority in Germany 1918-1914 , Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2010, ISBN 0-674049-83-7
Individual proof
- ↑ For the war youth generation see Ulrich Herbert: Best. Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft 1903–1989. Dietz, Bonn, 1996. ISBN 3-8012-5019-9 , pp. 42-45.