(You may want to read the appended comments while you wait for the page to load.)

Only a few of the graphics contained in Der Struwwelpeter are shown in this page. Some of those graphics were obtained from the e-book version available through Project Gutenberg.  It is interesting to note that the translation into English in the e-book version is a modern one (accredited but not dated, although possibly dating back to the late 19th century).  Perhaps Project Gutenberg and other producers of modern translations thought that the original translation by Mark Twain shown on this page (in which he used some poetic licence) is no longer politically correct and therefore not fit for human consumption.  However, the translation in the e-book version applied not so much poetic licence as it rewrote the original text by Heinrich Hoffmann, apparently to make it politically correct.

For instance,

Still, to make Marxist-feminist propaganda effective, the politically-correct redaction of reading material must extend far beyond mere children's books. 

In Canada, the rewriting of the text books used in the education curriculum was done in about 1987.  J. L. Granatstein, a Canadian historian, recounts in his book "Who killed Canadian History?" how the Canadian curriculum had been changed by "warmed-over Marxism" in the sheltered environment of our universities, to give little attention to any logical sense of history now.  The revised "history" is currently being presented to our students in disjointed sound bites that show an undue focus on social engineering issues, with extremely little attention on national issues, thereby deliberately obliterating any concept of a national identity, in an effort to promote only what is deemed politically correct: "women's" and racial issues, and the "oppression by men" of racial minorities and women.

J. L. Granatstein stated on page 61 of his book:

"...women's historians pored through textbooks to determine sex equity content.  One 1987 study reported on the results: "Researchers read each [66] books from cover to cover, noting, by page, references to women and/or girls and to 'women's issues' such as the fight for suffrage, child and infant mortality or prohibition . . . passing references . . . were also noted by page.  We then calculated the extent of sex equitable content using each reference, even those of a single word."  None of the surveyed books met the sex equity policy of the Ontario Ministry of Education, and the researchers concluded that women had been marginalized by historians.  Other provinces conducted similar surveys that produced equivalent results.  No one seemed to care that most of Canada's history had been made by men, however unfair that might have been, and that any overt attempt to write more women into history might distort the past."

There is absolutely no doubt that now men are being marginalized to a far greater extent than women ever allegedly were.  That is the motivation for the creation of this website.  To show how big a role fathers once played in families, here is Mark Twain's translation of Der Struwwelpeter.

By Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann

Der Struwwelpeter (Slovenly Peter)

Translation by MARK TWAIN

See this frowsy "cratur" —
Pah! It's Struwwelpeter!
On his fingers rusty,
On his tow-head musty,
Scissors seldom come;
Let his talons grow a year, —
Hardly ever combs his hair, —
Do any loathe him? Some!
They hail him "Modern Satyre —
Disgusting Struwwelpeter."
            [On the front cover — Dad]

FOREWORD

When the children gentle be,
Then the Christchild they shall see;
If they eat their soup and yet
Still their bread they don't forget,
Handle silently their toys,
Taking pains to make no noise,
And when a pleasure-walk is planned,
Let Mother lead them by the hand,
For every blessing they may look,
And get, besides, a Picture Book.
            [On the back cover.  —Dad]
 

The Story of Ugly Frederick

O waly me! O waly me!
Just such a boy I ne'er did see.
He caught the flies, poor helpless things,
Made hoppers of them, minus wings.
He killed the birds, where'er he could,
And catless made the neighborhood;
And worst of all that he did do,
He banged the housemaid black and blue.

A dog stood drinking at a pump —
The way he made that doglet jump!
He sneaked upon him unaware,
He whacked him there, he whacked him there,
He whacked with all his might and main,
He made him howl and dance with pain,

Until, o'ercome by woe and grief,
The dog, desiring some relief,
Did bite that brutal boy full sore,
Which made the latter prance and roar.
And then the dog did grab the whip,
And with it homeward he did skip.

To bed the boy [then] had to go
And nurse his bite and wail his woe,
The while the Doctor healing brings
And loads him up with drugs and things.

And all this time the dog below
Sings praises soft and sweet and low
O'er Fred'rick's dinner waiting there
For Fred'rick (or for Fred'rick's heir).
The dog's his heir, and this estate
That dog inherits, and will ate. *

He hangs the whip upon the chair,
And mounts aloft and seats him there;
He sips the wine, so rich and red,
And feels it swimming in his head.
He munches grateful at the cake,
and wishes he might never wake
From his debauch; while think by think
His thoughts dream on, and link by link
The liver-sausage disappears,
And his hurt soul relents in tears.

* My child, never use an expression like that. It is utterly unprincipled and outrageous to say ate when you mean eat, and you must never do it except when crowded for a rhyme. As you grow up you will find that poetry is a sandy road to travel, and the only way to pull through at all is to lay your grammar down and take hold with both hands.

—MARK TWAIN

The Sad Tale of the Match-Box

Paulinchen was alone at home,
The parents they down-town did roam.
as she now through the room did spring,
All light of heart and soul a-wing,
she saw wherewith one strikes a light.
"Oho," says she. "My hopes awake;
Ah what a plaything these will make!
I'll rake them on the wall, h'oo!
As oft I've seen my Mother do."

And Mintz and Mountz, the catties,
Lift up their little patties,
They threaten with their pawses:
"It's against the lawses!
Me-yow! Me-yo! Me-yow! Me-yo!
You'll burn yourself to ashes, O!"

Paulinchen heard the catties not,
The match did burn both bright and hot,
It crackled gaily, sputtered free,
as you it in the picture see.
Paulinchen waltzed and whirled and spun,
Near mad with joy for what she'd done.

Still Mintz and Mountz, the catties,
Lift up their little patties,
They threaten with their pawses:
"It is against the lawses!
Me-yow! Me-yo! Me-yow! Me-yo!
Drop it or you are ashes, O!"

But ah, the flame it caught her clothes,
Her apron, too; and higher rose;
Her hand is burnt, her hair's afire,
Consumed is that child entire.

And Mintz and Mountz wild crying,
The while the child was frying,
"Come quick!" they said.  "O Sire.
Your darling child's afire!
Me-yow! Me-yo! Me-yow! Me-yo!
She's cinders, soot, and ashes, O!"

Consumed is all, so sweet and fair,
The total child, both flesh and hair,
a pile of ashes, two small shoes,
Is all that's left, and they're no use.

And Mintz and Mountz sit sighing,
With breaking hearts and crying,
"Me-yow! Me-yo! Me-yow! Me-yo!
How could we let the parents know!"
While round that ash-pile glowing
In brooks their tears keep flowing.
 

The Tale of the Young Black Cap

There came a-walking past the door
A coal-pitch-raven-black young Moor.
The sun it smote him on his smeller,
And so he hoisted his umbrella.

While in his wake skips William free,
with hair neat-combed and hoop, you see.

The three they laugh and scoff and wink,
And mock at that poor Missing Link,
Because his skin is black as ink.

Forth stepped the mighty Nicholas, —
Who hates rude ways and slang and sass, —
And brought his ink-stand too, alas!
Says he, "You children list' to me —
Pray let the little stranger be;
He cannot help his sooty hue;
Bleach out at will, be white like you."
But still these urchins, lacking grace,
Did scoff and laugh right in the face,
And laughed yet heartier than before
At that poor pitch-black piteous Moor.

Then Nich'las he did rave and rage —
as per the picture on that page —
And grabbed those urchins trembling there,
By arm and crop and coat and heir!
Grabb'd William first and Ludwig next,
And Kaspar third (as per the text),
And quicker than the three could wink
He soused them in the turbid ink!
Soused them down with holy spite,
Soused them down with grim delight,
Soused them down clean out of sight!

You see them here, all black as sin —
Much blacker than that Niggerkin —
The Moor a-marchin in the light,
The Ink-Blot following dark as night.
Now if they had but hid their glee,
They'd still be white and fair to see.
 

The Tale of the Terrible Hunter

Behold the dreadful hunterman
In all his fateful glory stand!
He took his game-bag, powder, gun,
And fiercely to the fields he spun. *

Brer Rabbit spied him, smug and trim,
And made the grossest fun of him.

* Baby, you must take notice of this awkward form of speech and never use it, except in translating. —MARK TWAIN

Full soon the sweat begun to run,
And mortal heavy grew his gun;
He sought the sod, that green old boy,
(Which filled the spy with evil joy);
And as he dreamed and snored and slept,
The furry rascal to him crept,
And stole his gun and smooched his specs,
And hied him with these effects.

The specs he set across his nose,
And as his joke upon him grows
He thinks it would be darling fun
To see that hunter skip and run
In front of his own stolen gun.
He drew a bead, the hunter fled,
And fled! and fled! and fled! and FLED!

And howled for help as on he sped,
Howled as if to raise the dead;
O'er marsh and moor, through glade and dell,
The awful clamor rose and fell,
And in its course where passed this flight
All life lay smitten dead with fright.

At last the hunter struck a well,
And in he plump'd with final yell,
The very moment that there rang
O'er all the place the loud "cheBANG!"

The hunter's wife, with window up,
Sat sipping coffee from her cup;
The bullet split the saucer clean
And scared her to a pallid green.
Now by the well in hiding lay
The rabbit's child, and saw the fray,
And glanced aloft with aspect gay
(Unwatchful of the coffee spray);
And would have laughed, but changed his mind
When that hot coffee struck him blind.
He snatched the spoon and capered out
With many a baleful murd'rous shout,
To club to death the clumsy lout
Who'd brought this accident about;
But when he saw it was his pa,
He changed his mind again, aha!
 

Story of the Thumb-Sucker

"Konrad!" cried his mamma dear,
"I'll go out, but you stay here,
Try how pretty you can be
Till I come again," said she.
"Docile be, and good and mild,
Pray don't suck your thumb, my child,
For if you do, the tailor'll come
And bring his shears and snip your thumb
From off your hand as clear and clean
As if paper it had been."
 

Before she'd turned the south,
He'd got his thumbkin in his mouth!

Bang! here goes the door ker-slam!
Whoop! the tailor lands ker-blam!
Waves his shears, the heartless grub,
and calls for Dawmen-lutscher-bub.
Claps his weapon to the thumb,
Snips it square as head of grum,
While that lad his tongue unfurled
And fired a yell heard 'round the world.
 

Who can tell mother's sorrow
When she saw her boy the morrow!
There he stood all steeped in shame,
And not a thumbkin to his name.
 

The Tale of Soupy-Kaspar

Young Kaspar he was kernel-sound,
A fleshy cub and barrel-round;
Had cheeks all rosy-red and fresh,
Was fond of soup — it added flesh.
But finally, with scowling brow,
He said he'd strike, and make a row:
"No swill for me; I'm not a cow;
I will not eat — loathe it now;
I can't! I won't! I shan't, I vow!"

A day rolled slowly o'er his head —
Behold, his flesh began to shed!
Yet still his strike he did maintain,
And screamed as erst with might and main:
"No swill for me; I'm not a cow,
I will not eat it — loathe it now;
I can't! I won't! I shan't, I vow!"

The third day came — lo, once so sleek,
Observe him now, how thin and weak!
Yet still his flag he feebly flew
And hailed that humble dish anew:
"No swill for me; I'm not a cow,
I will not eat it — loathe it now;
I can't! I won't! I shan't, I vow!"
 

The fourth day came, and here you see
How doth this little busy bee;
He weighed perhaps a half a pound —
Death came and tucked him in the ground.

[It seems to me that anyone who as a child became familiar with the story of Soupy Kaspar won't be required to receive therapy for anorexia nervosa as an adult.  Right?  —Dad]

The Tale of Fussy-Philip

"Philip, if 'twon't make you ill,
Try to sit a minute still."
So, in earnest tone and rough,
Spake the father to his tough,
While the mother's troubled glance
Prophesied a present dance
When these two should get a start.
And so it made her sick at heart
To see the boy hadn't heard
His restive father's warning word.
He jiggered,
And sniggered,
And joggled,
And boggled,
On his chair and squirmed galore:
"Philip this doth irk me sore!"

See, ye darling little chaps,
Number Two of Phil's mishaps:
Observe, the picture shows the fact;
See! he tilts his chair aback —
See! he's going — going — gone!
Grabs the cloth and what's thereon,
Sprawls heels upward on the floor.
Dishes follow, crash and roar,
Down they clash and plash and slash,
Down come soup and cheese and hash,
And under them the boy they mash!
Father stares in consternation,
Can't size up the situation,
While the mother's troubled glance
Notes fulfilled the promised place.

Philip's buried, hide and hair,
Naked stands the table there!
All the fam'ly had for dinner
Decks the grave of that young sinner —
Soup and sausage, wholesome bread,
Gone to hide that foolish head.
Soup-tureen is split in two —
What shall they do, what shall they do!
Frantic view they this defeat —
They've not a single bite to eat.
 

The History of Hans Stare-in-the-Air

Now when this lad to school did go,
He never saw what's here below;
His eyes were always in the sky,
'mong roofs and clouds and things that fly;
He never saw, along the street,
The common things about his feet,
So people used to cry, "Ah, there!
That is Hans Stare-in-the-Air!"

There came a dog a-tearing by,
Hans was gawking at the sky
Just as ca'm
As a ham —
No one warned him with a yell.
What befell?
What! Ker-blim! and down they go —
Boy and doglet in a row!

Once he snooped along the strand
With his atlas in the hand,
And his pug-nose tilted back
So he could watch the swallow's track;
and never got it through his gourd
That he was walking overboard,
although the fishes, frightened, shout,
"We are orphans, please look out!"

Another step — another yet —
And finds himself amazing wet!
The fishy orphans, scared full sore
Turned tail and travel for the shore.

Now by luck two men arrive,
And with their hooks and sticks contrive
The struggling dunderhead to hive,
and soon they fish him out alive.

Stands he now, the dripping bloke,
And sees no humour in the joke;
Water streams from hair and clothes,
And flows in rivers down his nose;
He's water-soaked from head to heels,
But can't express half what he feels.

Those little fish go swimming by
And up at him they cock their eye,
And stick their heads out full aspan,
And laughs as only fishes can;
Laugh and giggle, jeer and snort —
How strange to see them thus cavort!
Meantime the atlas, gone astray,
Has drifted many yards away.

The Story of Flying Robert

When the rain comes down a-dash,
When the storms the meadows lash,
Boys and girls stay snug at home
Preferring to let others roam;
But Roberts thinks, "Ah, me,
It's just the time outside to be!"
and so, umbrella'd safe and sound,
Takes to the fields and slops around.

My! how shrieks the windy storm,
and how the big tree bows its form!
Hoho! the 'brella's caught the breeze,
And Robert sails above the trees!
Above the houses, church and steeple,
and out of sight of all [the] people!
Above the clouds he spins at last,
His hat is gone, and he's aghast!

And so he sails and sails and sails,
Through banks of murky clouds, and wails,
And weeps and mourns, poor draggled rat,
Because he can't o'ertake his hat.
Oh, where on high can that hat be?
When you find out, pray come tell me.

Comments:

Since the time it was first published in 1844, "Der Struwwelpeter" got translated not only into English but into many other languages, amongst them Dutch, French, Danish and Mandarin.  Most of the illustrations and the German, French and English versions of all of the verses contained in "Der Struwwelpeter" are accessible at http://www.struwwelpeter.com/ (the translation into French of one single verse is missing).  The translation of "Der Struwwelpeter" into English shown on this page was done by Mark Twain.  (Note: By the year 2005 the website http://www.struwwelpeter.com/ ceased to exist, but the text extracted from that website can still be accessed in an archived text version of the web page.  Clicking on the preceding link will take you to the archived version. The graphics shown in this page come mostly from an e-book version by Project Gutenberg.)

According to David Shackleton, the editor and publisher of Everyman magazine, who wrote and published an essay about the evil of feminism (Everyman, Jan/Feb 1999) and who equated the definition of the evil of feminism to that of Nazism, Nazism in Germany was an inevitable outcome of a culture that found itself compelled to produce a children's book depicting "cruelties and brutalities" such as those in "Der Struwwelpeter."  David Shackleton was particularly troubled by the story of the thumb-sucker.

The book contains other examples of "child abuse" equally gross and perhaps even more insidious that David Shackleton didn't notice or mention: the fact that children were left at home without baby-sitters, that they were given wine with their meals, and many other infractions that would illustrate to the politically-correct that parents in the mid-nineteenth century were extremely abusive or neglectful.  Today's social workers would have a heyday with the numerous violations of good and responsible parenting practices, by which they would then decide that the parents of the mid-nineteenth century shouldn't have been allowed to be parents or even to raise children, and that, by extension, anyone providing to children the original German text or Mark Twain's translation of the book must be called to task.

Of course, we mustn't forget that in those days children were not thought of as budding victims but rather as being responsible for their actions, something that the children of those times often had a hard time measuring up to, but they were allowed in those days to learn from their mistakes, instead of being denied the opportunity to make any and to learn as little as today's children do.

Moreover, the situation is even worse than that today.  Children now routinely don't listen if their parents dare to tell any rules that children should go by.  Instead, children call 911 or a children's aid society, to rat on their parents, thereby to initiate the wholesale destruction of heir family.  Furthermore, if today's children disobey their parents, the parents will often be threatened or punished on account of their children's infractions.  And if today's children get into trouble of any kind because of the upbringing that our social engineers insist our children are best equipped to provide to themselves — for the sake of their "self-esteem" — then the parents are being held responsible for not properly having done their job. 

There are even plans afoot (already put into law in a good number of locations) that now hold the parents, whose hands are tied in the upbringing of their children, legally responsible for all of the damages that their children cause.  The trend that is becoming established is to not only sentence parents to pay for the damages that their disobedient children cause, but to levy fines against parents in such instances for having been negligent in raising their children. 

It appears that the premise is that it is far better for children to teach themselves and their peers, because people with the necessary power and influence are in control who insist that children are inherently good, and that if anything goes wrong with them or if they do anything wrong, it is always the parents' fault.  It appears that in such cases parents not only need to be punished, but that the children are then to be taken into the care of the State, who is said to be a much better parent than parents could ever hope to be.  It must be true.  After all, how many parents can afford to hire teachers and child psychologists, but look how many of those the government can afford to employ — with our taxes, of course.   Well, considering how much damage the government causes to our children, whether that is through the frequent neglect by children's aids societies or through child welfare services, the claim that all that the government does is to act in the best interest of our children is most likely no more true than one of the most-often told claims: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you."

In a debate pertaining to his hypothesis that a nation capable of being sufficiently brutal to produce Der Struwwelpeter would of necessity be brutal enough to produce the Hitler regime and its brutalities, David Shackleton held that the brutality of the Nazi-regime was a case which deserves a special place in history.  Why should cruelties comparable to and exceeding those committed by the Nazis not deserve a comparable place in history?  It seems that such a place in history arises mainly out of the circumstances that place the deprecated nationality into the camp of the losers.

David Shackleton's hypothesis appears at best to be an illogical conclusion.  It is at least as tenuous as to argue that all men are violent (which they are no more than all Germans, Russians, Japanese or Americans are likely to be evil) because of their upbringing.  What David Shackleton's hypothesis fails to explain is why other nations managed to become at least as cruel as Nazi-Germany did.  Stalin murdered at least 30 million people in labour camps and by various other methods.  For example, in a program of deliberate starvation directed against one particular ethnic group, he starved to death more than two million Ukrainians.  Yet, in spite of the fear and terror that Stalin struck in the hearts of Russians, at the viewing of his corpse during his funeral ceremonies 1,500 people were trampled to death in the throng of grieving mourners – out of love for Stalin!

The number of people murdered by Mao Tse-tung's regime is of an order comparable to the horrors committed by other nations.  Mao, too, murdered more than 30 million people: enemies of the state.  Perhaps that was so because Der Struwwelpeter, one of the most popular children's books in history, had also been translated into Mandarin.  Is it possible that Mao, too, read Der Struwwelpeter during his formative years?

According to figures quoted in Michael MacLear's "The 10,000 Day War," 10 million Vietnamese, mostly civilians, were killed by American forces in a program of ethnic cleansing that hasn't received much more attention than Bill Clinton's participation in, and profiting from, the poisoning of the blood supply in North America and elsewhere, as a result of which untold numbers of innocent people world-wide became infected with HIV, Hepatitis C and other deadly diseases.

It is pointless to argue over which nation or which part of the world is the most cruel, the most deadly.  The fault is with the powers that control us, not so much with the people that are being led around by the nose.  The evidence is more than sufficient to prove that for more than a hundred years it was more or less the same interest groups that determined which ideology had to rise to power, or which had to be fought in attempts to create a better balance of power.  They determined, for example, that the Bolshevik Revolution needed to be funded and gave the necessary money to Lenin and Trotsky.  They then became frightened by their success (or they became motivated by greed) and decided that Hitler needed to be brought to power to counter Bolshevism and made sure he had the money, the technology and the arms to do it with.  Just the same, after Hitler was defeated, they made sure that the U.S.S.R. had the technology to be reasonably successful in waging the cold war, all to establish a better balance of power.

These power groups or cartels have no allegiance to any nation or religion.  Their only allegiance is to themselves, and their power far exceeds that of any government in existence.  They determine who'll be the government at any given point in time and in the most powerful nations on Earth.  Just one little glimpse into their methods of operation will do more than convince even the most hardened opponent of conspiracy theories. 

It is debatable whether a conspiracy exists.  There is most certainly an agenda for world domination, although some may debate even that.  Some will boil it all down to greed and the lust for power.  However, the most powerful interest groups have no need to conspire, they just do.  Only the weak need to conspire.  Given that these powerful interest groups are implementing the deliberate deconstruction of humanity and are succeeding at it virtually unopposed, while hundreds of millions of people die in the process, there should be no doubt that these people are absolutely not weak.  "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." (Lord Acton)

Take World War II.  What was it really that made it possible for Hitler to get into power in a country whose finances were totally devastated on account of the crushing debts resulting from the treaty of Versailles?  Can anyone pull himself up out of the mud by his boot straps?  No more so than that an obscure corporal can rise to power and defeat the democratic government of his nation without a massive influx of money and weapons from outside of his country that was supposedly disarmed. 

Where did Hitler's political and financial support come from?  It wasn't on account of a children's book that scared little boys into not sucking their thumbs anymore.   More than faith, money moves mountains.  Where did the money come from to do it with in a country whose own currency was worthless and whose economy was in chaos?  How was it applied? How was Nazism brought into play so as to ultimately bring about a war that caused the death of 60 million people and enormous devastation of property that involved the whole world?  It was done through

The Hitler Project —  The man who had sent that reference to me is someone who's been writing well-respected and widely-quoted articles about and against feminism.   He wrote:

The book if true, and it seems plausible, will make you see history in a different light. I had always dismissed conspiracy theories but no more.

There is no doubt that people can be manipulated to love and adore their leaders — even to love and support them fanatically to the extent that they follow orders to commit, and actively participate in, evil deeds.  It doesn't matter so much whether the leaders are evil or not, but it does matter that people can be manipulated and indoctrinated — regardless of national origin, location or time in history — to become hysterical, cruel, and heartless, and to become intolerant of others, even to the extent that they'll destroy their own society.  But there is also no doubt that the affliction of long-lasting national mass hysteria and evil extremism takes considerably more indoctrination than reading a children's book that attempts to teach children the difference between right and wrong and about the relationship between actions and consequences.

The powers that control the destiny of the world and world governments control also virtually all of the media, to such a large extent that today it is more likely that one finds the truth in the Russian newspaper Pravda ("Truth" – formerly the party organ of the USSR) and on the Internet than in the daily newspapers of the "free" world.  

To forestall any attempts by the masses to feel their oats, we resort to the simple expedient of taxing the hell out of them and keeping them supplied with TV, peanuts and beer.  That's all it takes.

Of course, anyone not playing along with the politically-correct official version of our current world view and history will instantly be brought down.  We are civilized.  We no longer declare objectors and opponents to taxpayer-funded and business-driven indoctrination to be enemies of the State and execute them.  We merely ridicule them as being revisionists and drag them through courts and human rights tribunals to devastate them financially, which is in a consumption-oriented society just as effective in making them powerless – and far more economical – as it was in the USSR to send them to Siberia or in Nazi Germany to send them to the concentration camps or to send them to the Russian front to clear mine fields.  By turning whole countries and the whole nation into an economic Gulag we don't need as many guards.  We merely have to find ways for people to willingly and subconsciously surrender their civil liberties, their human rights and freedoms.  TV, peanuts, beer and consumerism, with a good dose of sexual freedom thrown in for good measure, do it every time, and bring far better financial returns to the powers in control of and driving it all, while all of that inexorably increases the power of the powers behind the scenes to tyrannical dimensions.  The masses, without the protection of the families they once had  – the only thing that safe-guarded them from the ravages of rapacious governments – are through that easily turned into a mindless, aimless and amorphous conglomerate of powerless and compliant individuals: sheep, or lemmings, if you will; some call them sheeple.

Many historians who contemplated the rise of Nazism see the take-over of the very popular youth movement by the Nazis between 1920 to 1933 as the primary reason for the growing popularity of the Nazis in Germany.  The German youth movement of the time, which came into existence in the last decade of the 19th century, was a manifestation of modern liberalism that expressed itself as a rebellion against the established, stuffy traditions of the rule by parents, the education system, government and the establishment.

The German youth movement in the beginning of the 20th century was in a fashion a predecessor of the radical students' movement of the 1960s and coincided with the beginnings of the women's liberation movement, as well as with the beginnings of socialism in Germany.  Government-operated pension schemes and old-age security had their origins in Germany at about exactly the same time. 

The funding provided through the Hitler Project enabled the Nazis to offer what the more than 30 individual independent German youth organizations in the 1920s couldn't.  The Nazis could offer uniforms, drums, fanfares and pipes, flags, summer camps with free accommodations and food (in a nation in which most people starved and millions were unemployed), free transportation to the camps, and, of course, free and incessant indoctrination in Nazi ideology.  Still, all of that wasn't quite enough.  There was considerable opposition.

However, in a series of coldly and shrewdly calculated moves, radical extremists usurped the youth movement that was very much splintered along political and religious ideological lines and consolidated it into a unified and rigorously controlled sector of the German population.  The slogan that motivated the Nazi leaders was an adaptation of a slogan attributed to Napoleon "Who controls the youths controls the future!"  (Wer die Jugend hat, hat die Zukunft), although its origins go back to Socrates (whom Plato, in Republic, has offer this advice to philosopher kings: "Take all the children from their parents and rid the city of adults."), and, as the history of Ancient Greece shows with respect to Sparta, even farther back in antiquity.
  Hitler made it quite clear that he had a very good appreciation of the import of that slogan and made sure that it was central to his evil agenda.  He wrote in Mein Kampf that the State, 

...must set race in the center of all life.  It must take care to keep it pure. It must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. It must see to it that only the healthy beget children....[my emphasis —WHS]

A different adaptation of the slogan was used by Lenin.  He said "Give me your 4-year-olds, and within a generation I'll build you a Socialist State."  The Russian women's liberation movement became Communism (Russia was the first country in the world to give women the vote — in 1917), and the Russian youths were put into an organization, the Pioneers, that grew into the model after which the Hitler Youth became fashioned.  It was a successful recipe for indoctrination and total domination that was repeated in the People's Republic of China (the corresponding youth organization there is The Red Guards) and in every other totalitarian country in the world ever since.

"President Obama is committed to helping states develop seamless, comprehensive, and coordinated 'Zero to Five' systems to improve developmental outcomes and early learning for all children....it will be the goal of this Administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education -- from the day they are born to the day they begin a career."

— (Fact Sheet: Expanding the Promise of Education in America, Mar 10, 2009
see also:
Remarks of President Barack Obama –
As Prepared for Delivery Address to Joint Session of Congress, Tuesday, February 24th, 2009)

In the "free" western world, modern feminism replaced women's liberation and, along with the radical students' movement of the 1960s, evolved into the social evolution towards increasing liberalism along increasingly more radical, extremist forms during the last two decades of the 20th century.

The feminists didn't bother to declare their designs on youth as openly as some other political movements did.  They did things differently.  They steadily promoted a policy of implementing the goal first expressed by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, when they called for the destruction of the family in the Communist Manifesto.  They did that by devising a very effective means to bring about the materialization of that goal.  They attacked the weakest link in the family, first by vilifying it and then thereby justifying its removal: fathers as the heads of families.  Thereby thousands of years of evolutionary progress of civilization is being brought to an end.  When the family is brought to an end, civilization as we once knew it surely ends as well.

From the website of the The Soviet Story:

The film tells the story of the Soviet regime and how the Soviet Union helped Nazi Germany instigate the Holocaust.

“The Soviet Story” is a story of an Allied power which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. Assisted by the West, this power triumphed on May 9th, 1945. Its crimes were made taboo, and the complete story of Europe’s most murderous regime has never been told. Until now…

DVDs of the documentary can be purchased through Amazon.com, but the documentary is also accessible free-of-charge on-line.

See a review of the documentary on the soviet holocaust or democide, the definition of democide being the extermination of a people by its government. It is estimated that during the height of the Stalinist purges, men comprised 98 percent of the 8-million people that were being exterminated in just two years, 1937 and 1938.

The feminists are a little more covert about declaring their intentions than either Lenin or Hitler were.  They rationalize that everything they do is being done in the name of equal rights for women and in the best interest of children.  Note that equal rights for women means that those rights must be taken away from men, which is applicable even to men's right to an equally long life. 

The gap in the respective life expectancies of the sexes has widened to around six years, from about one year in the beginning of the 20th century.  In all Western developed nations men now live on average six to seven years less than women do.  In Russia and other former member nations of the U.S.S.R. the gap in the life expectancies of the sexes widened to as much as 14 years.  Thereby women aren't really blessed with equal rights but are rather deprived of the main breadwinners for their families, have to raise children largely by themselves and are likely to live out their days lonely and deprived of a full pension income that a man could have earned for his family if he would have been permitted to live out a full life. Twice as many productive man-years than productive women-years of life are being lost due to people dying prior to retirement age.  The losses to the GDPs of nations are substantial on account of that.

Of course, it is not an easy task to eliminate what comes as a given in the evolution of the history of mankind.  A radical extremist minority of adults can't simply declare that society must be made over according to a new design and hope that such a grave change-over will happen all on its own.  Such a radical change of the fabric of society needs time and much indoctrination, beginning with the indoctrination of children.  Unlike fascists and communists, who went at that task through organizing the existing youth organizations into coherent, unified and rigidly controlled movements, the feminists began to infiltrate the education system and to change it from within.

Christina Hoff Sommers, in Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women, points out that when the American Association of University Women discussed the gains made by feminism, nothing really concrete could be identified, other than that they changed the curriculum.  They did that — not by accident — and in doing so they changed society.  It was done by design, for the same reasons that motivated any other totalitarian interest group anywhere to use the education system for the purpose of indoctrinating children and students.  It is not something that was done in secret.  It was done in full sight and with the willing participation of all of society.  No-one ever objected to it effectively.  Moreover,  while the feminists were promoting their ideology through the women's studies programs that are being taught the world over, and while they propagated that ideology into the education curriculum of the universities of the world and from there into all sectors of the education systems, they made no bones about being Marxist or socialist feminists.

F.L. Morton and Rainer Knopff, in the Charter Revolution & The Court Party, a book in which they examine the re-writing of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom, with the aim to cater to and accommodate primarily the feminist agenda, explain:

Contemporary (or second wave) feminism has aptly been described as "Marxism without economics," since feminists replace class with gender as the key social construct.  Of course, what society constructs can be deconstructed.  This is the feminist project: to abolish gender difference by transforming its institutional source — the patriarchal family.  Certain streams of the Gay Rights movement have taken this analysis one step farther.  The problem is not just sexism but heterosexism, and the solution is to dismantle not just the patriarchal family but the heterosexual family as such. ...[p. 75]

Of course, with the Marxist feminists having prepared the ground by gaining social and political acceptance, that premise, too, is gaining more and more ground.  There is no clash between the Gay ideology and Marxist feminism.  The two complement one another and have one common enemy "ultra conservative, extremist, right wing, fundamental Christians," which is one of the labels they attach to anyone who opposes their liberal agenda.  Frequently they pop in the modifier bitter for good measure or call such objections the right-wing backlash.  Lack of logical deduction never stopped any self-respecting feminist from promoting her or his ideology.  No ideology requires logic to become respectable.  A large proportion of the Marxist-feminists are gay rights activists who also have the undisguised goal of dismantling the heterosexual family in any of its traditional and modern forms.

The evidence for the solid communist roots (see Matriarchy in USSR — off-site) of the feminist ideology and of the gender agenda surprises many people.  Some write it off as a conspiracy theory and an attempt at reviving McCarthyism.  There most certainly were many Jews, too, who scoffed at the idea that the Nazis wanted to turn them to ashes, even though the Nazis had for decades declared it to be their ultimate and primary goal to rid the world of Jews.  Anyone dismissing the feminist agenda should keep that in mind when he contemplates the future of his children, of his present and future son-in-law, or of his sons.  He should keep in mind that the feminists, too, have a final solution in mind, the reduction of all human males in the world.  They want to reduce the number of human males by eighty percent down to a level that is sufficient to maintain genetic diversity (and of course to have enough men around to do all of the dirty and dangerous work that needs to be done).

Feminism is communism in drag, that much is clear (see Matriarchy in USSR — off-site).  Working from within the education system to bring about feminism's Marxist goal of abolishing the patriarchal family comes as no surprise.  Not only that, but since the basic psychological matrix of people is finished by the time they reach age four, the feminists adopted the time-proven strategy of the communist regimes for removing children as early as possible after birth from the imprinting that they receive from their parents that is so important in shaping children's psychological matrix.   Hence the big push for government-sponsored daycare, ostensibly to help mothers, in reality to begin the indoctrination process that will turn children into Nebbish who have not the least inclination of being what nature designed them to be, boys and girls who grow up into men and women who beget and raise more boys and girls within the confines of warm, loving, trusting, protective and caring families.

In all of this the feminists and gender advocates are claiming that they are not changing human nature, but that they are just changing its definition, right in line with the declaration provided by Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto:

The communists are not inventing the influence of society on education, they are only changing its character, they tear education away from the influence of the ruling class.

In other words, the feminists gained control of the education system and thereby became the ruling class.

If there are similarities between the evolution of the German youth movement into the Hitler Youth and the evolution of the women's liberation movement into gender feminism, it is that both movements were taken over by radical extremists and were deliberately subverted to serve extremist ends wherever they came to play a role in the world.  It appears that the radical gender activists are far more effective in the indoctrination of their adherents and in the promulgation of their agenda than Lenin, Mao Tse-tung or Hitler ever hoped to be.

We are horrified today at the atrocities that were so brutally committed by communists and Nazis alike, but we hardly flinch at the atrocities that are being committed today, ostensibly in the name of women.  Stalin murdered 1 million people/year during his regime.  Hitler murdered an average of 1.5 million/year during his reign.  The efforts of the international eugenicists that did so much to bring about Hitler's holocaust (Illustrated by Judith Reisman in Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences) have now escalated to the killing of 55 million unborn children per year.  Their next target is the implementation of policies for the extermination of the elderly and infirm that would have made Hitler proud and are little other then an extension of his euthanasia program.

Update 2006 05 14

Chilling perspectives on "Ethics"

In case of a deadly flu pandemic, whom should we save?

Once-upon-a-time a question like that never came up, except in totalitarian nations such as the USSR, Red China and Nazi Germany.  The presence of universal moral standards in the cultural heritage of the West ensured that the answer to such a question was, women and children first, then the elderly, the weak and the sick.  We fought wars to preserve that as a right of humanity, to ensure the abolition of slavery and the right of everyone to life and liberty.  That had made our society reach the heights it attained before its fall.  However, those standards no longer exist.  Now the legalization of euthanasia, assisted suicide and rigorous culling to establish the survival of the fittest is the norm in our brave-new world. 
    In the name of science it is now rationalized that rigorous selective culling is needed on the basis of economics, not survival of the weak on moral grounds.  The outcomes of such practices are similar to those that the Nazis hoped to achieve, for similar reasons; only the methods differ.  The Nazis actively killed those that were — and in our brave-new world we actively withhold the means to keep alive those that are — deemed not worthy to let live, although in the rationalizing for the eradication of the right to life of the weakest of all, those not yet born, we have already shown ourselves to be far more ruthless than the Nazis ever were.
    Still, vestiges of our largely vanished great cultural aims still exist, or else it would not be that the proposal by Ezekiel Emanuel and Alan Wertheimer (in the journal Science, May 12, 2006) sparked as much public discussion as it did.  (The discussion is still growing.  A May 13, 2006 search per the preceding link provided 539 entries in the search return list. Sixteen hours later, May 14, the entries in the return list for the search had grown to 572.)

Although the radical extremist gender activists by far outdo both Stalin and Hitler in the magnitude of the atrocities inflicted upon humanity, very few people consider it worth wasting any thoughts on.  Mass extermination in decentralized abortion clinics is so much more expedient and much more acceptable — by becoming part of everyday life — than having it done in specially constructed and centralized extermination camps that burden the transportation system to the extent that it interferes with the economy.  Those people who do object to either are deemed politically incorrect and are often sent to jail when they express their displeasure with the radical, extremist gender-activists' agenda.

However, today's totalitarian political systems in the "free" world haven't quite yet progressed to the point where their opponents are routinely sentenced to death, although without any doubt a considerable number are being stripped of their property.  Many become incarcerated in addition to that, frequently for life.  Other than that, the wrath and fury of the people affected by radical extremists is almost exclusively directed at the defenceless, primarily the unborn, but also the young, the sleeping, the intoxicated, and the sick.  The indoctrination through ideologists in the youth movement has long ago been replaced by the far more thorough indoctrination through the liberal ideologies promoted via the ever-present television.  Absolute and totalitarian control of the youth movement has been replaced by absolutely totalitarian marketing strategies aimed at our captive youthful TV audience.

Just as there were people who gladly sacrificed their lives, morality and conscience for Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the Japanese Emperor, so there are today countless people willing to accept the decline of their own morality and conscience for the sake of radical gender activism and the ostensible "rights of women" or the promotion of "rights" for minority groups with the kind of sexual orientations that played such a large role in the history of the Nazis (see: The Pink Swastika, by Scott Lively).  As a consequence of that, it isn't just the lives of unborn children and the helpless that are being destroyed and obliterated, but primarily the very family traditions that once caused our society to function well and guaranteed and protected the rights and freedoms of individual family members.

As we are destroying our families we are losing the protection and safety that they can give us and become isolated individuals who each think that they are at the centre of the Universe (see also: The Copernican Myths).  Instead of having concern for what each individual can offer to other members in his family and to society in general, each individual insists on what society owes him in the way of entitlements.  Instead of giving freely and lovingly (or even out of a sense of duty) to others and thereby receiving lovingly and generously from others in return, increasing numbers of individuals force all members of society to fund the perceived entitlements through taxation and redistribution of wealth to individuals via various means.

Such is the process of the destruction of our families.  We allow radical, extremist gender-activists to destroy civilization itself, because, as surely as civilization came into existence as a result of the creation of the concept of the family and as surely as it thrived through the nurturing and refinement of that concept, so civilization will most certainly decline into savagery again when a sufficient proportion of society doesn't live by the rules any longer that formerly protected family values.

Walter H. Schneider
Bruderheim, Alberta, Feb. 6, 1999

Additional Reading:

• A Modern Man's Guide to Day Care
  Should Mom go back to work? Should you? What kind of childhood will your kid get? It’s the decision that makes most men want to run for cover.

• When the State exercizes the education monopoly:
  An example

The protectors of women time and again praise to 'Wessi' (Westie) women the wonderfully complete world of the 'Ossi' (Eastie) women, ever since the end of the GDR, whose all-encompassing children-crèche system secured full-time earning potential and thereby the personal freedom of mothers.

What a full-day program for the children of fully-employed looks like has been thoroughly experienced by the mothers of the former GDR. Marlene, herself a crèche-child and subsequently an educator for child-educatoresses from Potsdam, told it to me. [Full Story]

— Karin Jäckel
Germany devours its children —
Families today: Exploited and burned out

• Feminism For Male College Students — A Short Guide to the Truth, by Angry Harry (Off-Site)

If you have concerns about these and other issues related to the condition of seniors, visit, contact and perhaps even join:

SUN — Seniors United Now

The up- and coming, rapidly-growing advocacy organization for seniors (55 years and over) in Alberta

There are in the order of about half a million or more people of age 55 and over in Alberta. If all of them were to join SUN, they would become the most powerful advocacy organization in Alberta; and seniors would no longer be robbed of their comforts and otherwise ignored.
   At the price of one package of cigarettes seniors will be able to gain a voice that will be heard by a government that otherwise can and will take from seniors what they worked for all their life to enjoy in their old age.

If you are concerned about how seniors are affected by the planned, systematic destruction of our families and society, a search at google.com (for elderly OR seniors OR grandparent OR grandfather OR grandmother site:https://fathersforlife.org) will provide you with the links to about 80 web pages at Fathers for Life that will be of interest to you.