Memory, Family, and the Self in Hitler Youth Generation Narratives

Abstract

This article examines how the Hitler Youth generation (born 1925–1933) narrativizes their family stories by analyzing archived memoirs, published memoirs, and school essays from the1947–1949 period. The Hitler Youth generation’s postwar recollections of the National Socialist period vary according to medium and time. Both are key to understanding this generation’s struggle to master the Nazi past on national and personal levels. Using Fivush and Merrill’s expanded concept of ecological systems to study family stories, this article illustrates how archived memoirs transfer family stories intergenerationally. Its key finding is that these narratives act as memory tools to transmit stories of Nazi Germany family life; in turn, this reveals narrative gaps and inconsistences and occasionally the narrator’s inability to cope with compromised family members.