Girls in Uniform
Lisa Pine explores the impact of the BDM Nazi girls’ movement and discusses both the opportunities and constraints it presented to young German women.
German youth was extremely important to the Nazis in the creation of a new Volksgemeinshchaft or 'national community'. Their Staatsjugend or National Youth Movement, comprising the Hitlerjugend (HJ), Hitler Youth, for boys and the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), League of German Maidens, for girls, was part of the regime's attempt to reorder German society in line with its own ideological imperatives. The HJ was set up in 1926 and the BDM in 1930. Both were for those aged fourteen to eighteen. By the end of 1934 total membership of these organisations had reached 1.5 million.
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