Hitler Youth generation

It is one of several terms used in social historians and sociologists similar to the Flakhelfer generation or Forty-fivers which may differ slightly in scope.

It is conventionally argued that the immersion of this group within Nazi social and ideological structures, such as the Hitler Youth or League of German Girls, made this group the most "fanatical" adherents of Nazi ideology.

According to the historian Gabriele Rosenthal: The members of the Hitler-youth generation (born approximately between 1922 and 1930), experienced their childhood and youth in the 'Third Reich'.

[...] National Socialist pedagogues were also successful in arousing enthusiasm in these young people for the Nazi Weltanschauung and the war.

In contrast with older age groups it is also argued that the Hitler Youth generation emerged from the Second World War with little experience of combat and mortality than older age groups and were accordingly a preponderant demography during the early post-war years in West Germany and East Germany as late as the 1960s.

Flakhelfers pictured manning a searchlight in Berlin in 1943. Recruited among adolescents too young for military service, the Flakhelfers are sometimes considered emblematic of the generation who grew up under the Nazi regime.