[2] Both the book and the film, like S.A.-Mann Brand and Hans Westmar, which were released the same year, fictionalised and glorified death in the service of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler.

[6] In the subsequent trial, several people were sentenced by the Landgericht I court in Moabit[clarification needed], yet the most prominent accomplices Willi Simon, Bernhard Klingbeil and Harry Tack had been able to escape to the Soviet Union.

[7] Two weeks after the Enabling Act of 1933, a provocative Hitler Youth march to Norkus' grave took the route through Berlin's communist districts of Wedding and Moabit.

[9] With a völkisch undertone, the opening chapters describe the hardships of Norkus' youth in a working-class district of Berlin, characterised by the Great Depression, the unemployment of his father and the suicide of his mother.

[9] The contemporary communist youth (Rote Jungfront, "Red Young Front") is portrayed as a disorderly gang devoted primarily to alcohol, tobacco and sex.

[9] Schenzinger lets Heini Völker's father force his son to attend a camping weekend organised by a communist youth group, North Star Moabit.

[9] Deeply impressed and in an atmosphere of nationalistic pathos, Heini learns of the Nazi movement, Führerprinzip ("leader principle"), comradeship and Volksgemeinschaft ("the people's community").

[10] Emphasis is put on the vision of self-sacrifice, the abolition of social barriers and racial purity, and Heini learns from Fritz that "with us Hitler Youth, there are no classes.

[11] According to Baird (1992), Schenzinger's version is a "thinly veiled parallel to Resurrection":[11] When his comrades were gathered around his deathbed and wonder whether he is still alive, there "suddenly [...] is a scream.

[14] The latter also wrote the lyrics for the Hitler Youth song "Unsere Fahne flattert uns voran",[15] based on an existing melody by Hans-Otto Borgmann, who was also responsible for the music.