How a Hitler Youth Girl Ended Up in America

Frieda’s last doll was bought for her by her father, August Streit, in 1938. At age 10 she was really too old for dolls, her father thought, but he would buy her this last one.

The two of them traveled to Nuremberg to a large toy store where the beautiful doll in the window immediately caught Frieda’s eye. Even though she eventually looked at almost every doll in the store, she still came back to that one and finally asked her father to buy it for her. It was 35 marks, a sizable amount of money in 1938, but he bought it for her anyway. It had been a good year so far for Frieda. She had even seen one of the great marvels of the time—the Graf Zeppelin—in flight. Germany was indeed a wonderful place to be, she thought, and she was lucky to have two parents who loved her very much. The world was just about perfect for a 10-year-old girl.

Then the war came, and everything became hard to get. In 1938-1939, the people who had money in Frieda’s town of Ebermannstadt bought soap, which sounds like an odd thing to do. There were plenty of people around who remembered World War I and knew well the things that would soon be in short supply.

Frieda was 11, and her older half sister was 17 when the war broke out. Both of them knew that something big was happening but did not quite understand what all the excitement was about. Hitler had been the German chancellor for six years and was the only leader that Frieda could remember, not that she paid much attention to such things anyway. The war, if it came, would surely be somewhere far away, she thought, and besides, she had work to do.

It was hard helping her mother cook for the family, especially with rations of only half a pound of sugar a month, and since they did not have any babies in the family all they could get was blue milk, so watered down it looked perfectly blue. Beef and pork were rare commodities, but they had their rabbits that multiplied—like rabbits. Her father could prepare rabbit that could compete with the best sauerbraten in Germany. Later in the war they would also slaughter a few of her father’s pigeons to supplement the slim meat ration. Her mother would add whatever meat they had to it and make something good. None of them ever went hungry but they also never knew for certain what had gone into the meals. They were just glad that they had those rabbits and pigeons.

The League of German Girls of the Hitler Youth

Frieda was born January 16, 1928, to August and Anna (Kirchberger) Streit. Her mother was originally from Nuremberg; her father was from Saxony, and they had cousins in Munich. At one time there was some concern that her mother might have had some Jewish ancestry, but this was ruled out through an investigation done by the government. They were very careful in those sorts of things. Freida’s mother had four brothers who would all eventually leave Germany and move to New York, the first in 1922, and they were all there by the time the war started. Her mother had one child named Annemarie from a previous marriage.

August never adopted Annemarie but nevertheless treated her as his own daughter, and she was always an older sister to Frieda. Annemarie was 11 when the National Socialists and Hitler came to power and had enrolled in the BDM (Bund Deutscher Mädel) soon after its creation in 1930. Its proper title was The League of German Girls of the Hitler Youth. Early in its history, the BDM stressed education for its girls and encouraged them to finish school and learn a skill. This was relatively rare for girls at the time, but many of the women who became regional and national BDM leaders were successful women who held university degrees, and the younger girls looked up to them as role models.

The requirement that most girls dreaded was the one year of service to the Reich. This could be accomplished in many ways. In fact, Frieda remembered one girl who was able to put in her year of service right at home because her family had a few cows. She was allowed to use her work helping with the milking and feeding as service, which no doubt it was, but it was as much a service to her family as to the Reich. This didn’t seem quite fair to Frieda, who would soon have to leave home and give a year to the government herself. BDM girls were also expected to help with charitable work, such as collecting money for the WHW (Winterhilfswerk), which helped poor families by distributing coal and warm clothing to them during the winter months.

The Rise of the Bund Deutscher Mädel

The Nazi Party was founded in 1920, and the organization of youth groups was an important part of its mission, even in the early years. In fact, the Hitler Youth was the second oldest paramilitary organization in Nazi Germany. Only the SA (Sturmabteilung) was older. The first Nazi youth group was the Greater German Youth Movement, or Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung, founded in 1923. It officially became the Hitler Youth in 1926, with Baldur von Schirach as its leader.

The young women of the Reich became loosely organized as the Hitler Youth Sister Community, or Hitlerjugend Schwesternschaften, which eventually became the BDM in 1930. The organization rose to 25,000 members even before Hitler became chancellor in January 1933.

The adult National Socialist women of the Reich had their own organization called the NSF (Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft), and its leader, Gertrud Scholz-Klink, initially wanted control of the young girls’ organization as well, but Hitler decreed that all youth would be under Schirach. The leader of the BDM was a Berlin psychiatrist, Dr. Jutta Rüdiger. Her official title was Reichsreferentin. She reported directly to Schirach, who generally left her to manage the BDM as she saw fit.

Membership in any Hitler Youth organization was voluntary until 1936, although most who qualified became members as early as they could, even before the Hitler decree that made it mandatory. There were more than seven million members of the BDM by the end of 1936. The decree, in any case, was not enforced until the beginning of the war, but it did make the Hitler Youth eligible for government funding, which the organization used to expand its programs. Frieda could sense that things were changing for girls her age, and it was an exciting time to be alive.

Frieda’s Family in the Frauenwerk

Annemarie joined the German government workforce, the RAD (Reichsarbeitsdienst), when she was 21 years old and first worked in a plant nursery, then in a butcher shop. Normally, young women joined either the RAD or the Frauenwerk after they turned 18, but they could also remain members of the BDM as long as they were not married and had no children. The Frauenwerk was not a rigidly organized Nazi institution like the NSF, and party membership was not required to join.

Annemarie’s last job had definite advantages for the family because the butcher saved any excess meat scraps for her. Unfortunately, this job did not last long, and she was soon selling tickets for a streetcar company. The BDM magazine, Das Deutsche Mädel (The German Girl), often featured ads for stenographers and nurses and had articles about girls working as ticket agents on trains or as nurses. The stories were designed to motivate young girls to do their part in the war effort, and the publicity worked well for the party. Girls Frieda’s age and older volunteered by the thousands.

Frieda’s mother joined the Frauenwerk soon after the war began because by then it was officially mandatory, and it also assured that the family would continue to receive its ration stamps for things ranging from food to shoes. Without the stamps, these things were only available on the black market, and people were told that if they were caught buying things this way, they could be shot. Frieda did not know if this was really true; she knew people who would occasionally buy things on the black market, but she never knew anyone to be shot for it. Sometimes it was the only way to get things that were really needed, like extra sugar and cooking oil for a Christmas cake. Even during the war, some things just could not be done without, especially at Christmas.

Schooling With the BDM

In school, the girls studied the usual reading, writing, and arithmetic, but there were also classes in religion, local and area history, singing, and handiwork which included knitting, sewing, and crocheting. They had about seven years of traditional schooling, then Sunday School after that. The boys had some of the same basic classes but also had additional instruction in recognizing enemy aircraft, marching, and weapons. Later in the war, the boys’ main task was ditch digging. They dug antitank ditches everywhere, and some of the ditches are still visible today.