Growing up Nazi

The Phoenix has published an interesting memoir of a boy growing up in 1930s Germany. It is called "A child of Hitler, Growing up in the Third Reich."

In Hitler's Germany, my Germany, childhood ended at the age of 10, with admission to the Jungvolk, the junior branch of the Hitler Youth. Thereafter, we children became the political soldiers of the Third Reich.

In reality, though, the basic training of almost every child began at six, upon entrance to elementary school. For me, that year was 1933, three months after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor. It was 50a years ago this week that Hitler came to power, and I have only a child's hazy recollection of the early years of his rule. But I vividly remember the wild enthusiasm of the people when German troops marched through my home town on March 7, 1936, in the process of taking back the Rhineland from the hated French.