The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

The huge success of the first national rally of the Hitler Youth held in Potsdam, on October 2 and 3, 1932, was not only a personal triumph for Baldur von Schirach but also a clarion call to arms for the movement and the party. Whereas the paid membership of the Hitlergugend1 had only been 20,000 in the beginning of the year, at Potsdam 100,000 youngsters swarmed over the heath outside this ancient Prussian city, transforming it into beehive of juvenile enthusiasm. Scores of workers from the SS and the SA had worked for hours preparing the grounds, erecting tents, and constructing a speaker’s platform and setting up a post office.2 Schirach and Karl Nabersberg, his assistant, worked hard to make this conclave an historic event in the National Socialist drive for power. A year later the Reichsjugendführer said: The press may write what it will concerning this day, it is nevertheless certain that National Socialism proved on October 2-3, 1932 that the Weimar government may have had the bayonets, but we had the youth.3

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