BYSTANDERS, PERPETRATORS, AND RESCUERS
TEACHING LESSON 9
HANDOUT 9B
A 150-PERCENT NAZI

In the 1930s Peter Becker was growing up in Germany, his native country. The oldest of four boys, he was born in Munich, Germany, in 1929. When he was age five, his father died. His widowed mother had no way to support her young children. She decided to place Peter in one of Hitler’s special schools for Hitler Youth, the future leaders of the Nazi party.

Enrolled in School by Mother
At the age of six I was not aware of the existence of the Hitler Youth or of Hitler for that matter. It was a shock to me to be going on a trip with my mother. I was taken to Potsdam and introduced to various people. All of a sudden my mother said good-bye and left. I was then in a school, but I was not aware of the purpose of the school.

The school in which I was enrolled and where my brothers also came later was set up for the training of the future leaders of the Nazi Party. I was in the National Political Education Institution at Potsdam. It was the only school in which children were enrolled as young as age six.

Nazi party membership was not a requirement for my school. To get into this school, you had to be reasonably intelligent and in good physical condition—healthy, no blemishes, no impairments. You also had to be Aryan, no “Jewish blood.” It was a boarding school. We only went home during vacations—Easter, Christmas, and the six-week summer vacation.

The Curriculum
As Hitler Youth, our activities weren’t much different from other German schoolchildren. Our curriculum included English, mathematics, biology, chem-istry, physics, Latin, geography, and music. We were in a boarding school under constant supervision. We were raised in a military lifestyle. Our lives were regulated from morning until night. We all got up at a certain time—very early. We then performed exercises out in the yard regardless of the weather—winter and summer. We ate breakfast, made our beds, washed, dressed and went to school. At lunchtime we marched to lunch. After lunch we did our homework.   Then we ate the evening meal and had more activities.

Extracurricular Activities
It was in the after-school activities that my life differed from that of a normal boy in public school. We were not aware of being indoctrinated. It was a very subtle process. We had a great number of activities. We played games where we chased each other, but the objective was to learn how to move in underbrush, forests, and fields. Even play was designed to prepare us for a military life. Once a week we drilled, learning how to march, salute, and make turns.

A Nazi without Knowing It
In the evenings we watched movies. The movies had generally some kind of patriotic or political message, although we were not aware of that. When we were older, speakers came to lecture on various topics: What Germany was going to do. How Germany was successful in doing this or that. We were indoctrinated in a very subtle fashion, so that by the time the war ended when I was fifteen, I had become a Nazi without even being aware that I was one.

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USHMM: courtesy Mira Wallerstein Cover of Nazi publication Der Stuermer, depicting a group of Hitler Youth marching to drive the forces of evil from the land, May 1936. The caption under the illustration reads We youth step happily forward facing the sun . . . With our faith we drive the devil from the land.

To me Hitler was the great man in Germany’s life, the savior of Germany. I believed all this because our knowledge of what had gone on in the past was very limited. We were carefully kept from having a broad picture of history. We were not aware of what Germany had done before. Our history lessons started with the First World War and the depressing period after Germany had been beaten down as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, disarmed, and saddled with repara-tions. We learned that Hitler came along to bring Germany back to greatness. We felt that we were part of that, and we were very proud.  

The Jews were not mentioned very often. Our enemies were the French, the Russians, or Bolsheviks, and the English. We were taught that the war was an attempt by other European countries to encircle Germany and keep it down. Hitler had succeeded in exploding this ring of encirclement to make Germany free again.   He had rearmed Germany, making it a great power again.

Learning Anti-Semitism
We were aware that the Jews existed, but here was very little attention paid to them. We received publications which, however, were very effective. They dealt with such distortions and lies as, for example, how the Jews were the big imperialists in England and France. We never saw any Jews. We didn’t know any Jews, at least not in the school. In the school we saw publications in which Jews were depicted in an unflattering way. Those pictures stayed with me longer than any verbal impression that could have been given to me. I didn’t know any Jews except the one Jewish family across the street from my grandmother’s house in Oranienburg. I played with the daughter when I was younger and I was not aware that they were Jewish.  

We did not have access to radio on a regular basis or to newspapers. Our knowledge of what was going on in the world came totally from what we were told. Once the war started, we listened to radio broadcasts, but this news was very controlled. We were winning and that was great, so we all felt very happy.

Hitler’s picture was in every classroom and every dormitory room. Hitler and other Nazi leaders were our heroes. Because we were a school close to Berlin, we were used for exhibit purposes whenever the regime had an important visitor.  

We were shown off as part of the New Germany. We saw Goebbels, Himmler, Goering, and Mussolini. All the important people who happened to be in Berlin and who had dealings with the Third Reich came to our school. We were all very impressed with that and thought “how great and good we are.”

When I was thirteen, I left the school and came home. I had an illness that kept me from staying and I was very happy about this. What I hated about the school was not the indoctrination. It was being away from home. There were fifty other boys. I did not get as much attention as I wanted.

History Rewritten by the Nazis
I went to a normal public school in Potsdam. It had a normal curriculum except that biology, history, and geography were clearly affected by Nazi ideology. Jews were depicted in the biology books as an inferior race. In biology we also learned about racial purity. In geography we were told how Germany had suffered and how Germany had lost its colonies while England, for example, was amassing its empire. Germany was the only pure Aryan country. All the others were contami-nated. We were told that we were the top people. The Germans had made all the important innovations in modern civilization. German order and discipline and German industry were foremost.

Joins the Regular Hitler Youth
When I left the Nazi school, I joined the regular Hitler Youth. By that time mem-bership was compulsory. I never questioned the fact that we had to join. It was something that I wanted to do. It was fun. I joined the Hitler Youth Cavalry. We learned how to ride horses and drive a coach with four horses. It was all very exciting. These activities were interspersed with indoctrination evenings, when all Hitler Youth groups came together to listen to speakers praising the Nazi party and to talk about the victories Germany was winning, even although by that time we were retreating.  

No Awareness of Germany Losing War
Towards the end of the war, all news in Germany was carefully controlled. We didn’t see any pictures in the paper about the results of air raids. Potsdam, where I lived, was not bombed. It was not until 1943, when I took my first trip to Berlin, that I saw ruins. I was shocked, but I still believed we were going to win the war. The bombing of Berlin was a temporary setback. The city would be rebuilt in much greater splendor than before. Until the very last I thought we were winning because I was a full believer in the propaganda, which said that the Germans were working on wonder weapons. Until the day the Russians showed up on the outskirts of Potsdam and began to shell it, I was convinced that Germany would win the war. It shows how easily people can be misled.   

150-Percent Nazi
When the war ended in 1945, I was almost sixteen. The Russians moved in and occupied Potsdam. The janitor in our building was a member of the Communist party. He went to the police and denounced me as having been a very strong Nazi. Indeed I was a Nazi. What kind of Nazi was I? I think I was 150-percent Nazi. That’s how strongly I believed in the system and what Hitler was doing. I was picked up by the Russians and interrogated. When they realized I was harmless, I was released.

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Peter Becker at age 15, in Bremen, Germany, shortly after the war

Shortly after the Russians occupied Berlin, I remember seeing a headline that said Germans killed four million Jews. I was outraged. I was convinced that this headline was just propaganda by the British and Americans. I was convinced that Germany was being set up as the guilty party to pay reparations again. Then after a while the figures changed. Ultimately it was six million. I still did not believe it. I looked in an almanac which said Germany only had 600,000 Jewish people. I wondered how could we possibly have killed six million. Then I looked at the areas which Germany had occupied from 1939 until 1945 and at the Jewish population in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria, Poland, and Russia. I realized that the numbers fit. We Germans could have done this, but I still did not believe it. To me it was inconceivable.

Begins to Question
My mind changed slowly. It was a painful process that took place over a period of two years between 1945 and 1947. The first thing that made me change my mind or accept what had happened was a traveling exhibit that came to Bremen. It consisted of things from various concentration camps. The ones that I remember were lampshades made out of human skins.

Reluctantly, I became convinced that what the Germans were accused of was actually true. By that time I was sixteen or seventeen and the Nuremberg Trials had begun. I listened to them on the radio and read the reports about them. Then we saw newsreels of the concentration camps, showing what the Germans had done not only in Germany but also in the death camps in Poland.  

An Unanswered Question
Then I met an American high school teacher working in Germany. We had long talks about Hitler, politics, and democracy. At first I was a defender of Hitler and of Germany. I felt that Germany had been unjustly maligned. But through our discussions I began to see a different picture. It took me two years to fully accept what the Germans had done. I think I became an historian because I wanted to understand what had happened to Germany and to me. Had I become a member of the SS and been assigned as a guard to a concentration camp, what would I have done? I don’t know. I would hope that I would have realized that what I was being asked to do was a great crime. But I don’t know whether I would have had that internal strength or whether I would have been swept up in events to become a mindless follower, like all the others who did not speak out or even blink an eye at what was happening.

A Warning
There is a saying in the columns of the National Archives in Washington, D.C. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” People like Hitler exist in every age under different guises. There are always people who follow such leaders without questioning because whatever convinces them is so strong they don’t see anything else. What prevents a society from falling into that trap is eternal vigilance, making sure that everyone knows everything. That there are no secrets. A strong press is one of the absolute safeguards of a democracy. So are openness and civic participation. People have to become politically active, not necessarily by joining a political party but contributing their share to society and not letting other people do it for them.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty .

Published in cooperation with the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust
Copyright © 2002 by the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. Updated 2005.
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/holocaust_council/