Hitlerjugendführer

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Hitlerjugendführer was a paramilitary title of the Hitler Youth which existed within the Nazi Party from approximately 1928 to the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945.

[edit] Description

A Hitlerjugendführer was any adult who served in the leadership corps of the Hitler Youth and thus oversaw a cell (or groups of cells) comprising several Hitlerjunge which was the phrase for juvenile members of the Hitler Youth. After 1930, the title of Hitlerjugendführer was replaced by several Hitler Youth senior leadership ranks however the term survived to refer to any member of the Hitler Youth adult leadership corps.

[edit] Other usage of term

Hitlerjugendführer has also been used in the German language as an insult, implying someone who attempts to twist the minds of others to their views or someone who is a fanatic. The term was even used in this manner during World War II, by some factions of the German Wehrmacht, to describe (in a derogatory manner) a member of the military who was also a fanatical Nazi Party member.

[edit] In popular culture

In the 1981 German film Das Boot, Director Wolfgang Petersen uses the term Hitlerjugendführer to describe the second in command of the featured German U-Boot, indicating the stern and "by-the-book" manner of the second officer in contrast to the more realistic views of the boat's captain played by Jürgen Prochnow. Petersen would later claim that he found the term Hitlerjugendführer rather comical when applying it to the character in Das Boot.