About this book

A Newbery and Sibert Honor Book! A riveting and often chilling story of Germany's powerful Hitler Youth. A PB edition in an accessible new novel-sized reformat for Scholastic Focus!

In this Newbery Honor and Sibert Honor award-winning book, Susan Campbell Bartoletti explores the riveting and often chilling story of Germany's powerful Hitler Youth groups. By the time Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, 3.5 million children belonged to the Hitler Youth. It would become the largest youth group in history. Susan Campbell Bartoletti explores how Hitler gained the loyalty, trust, and passion of so many of Germany's young people. Her research includes telling interviews with surviving Hitler Youth members. "I begin with the young. We older ones are used up . . . But my magnificent youngsters! Look at these men and boys! What material! With them, I can create a new world." — Adolf Hitler, Nuremberg 1933

Reviews

Awards and Distinctions for Hitler Youth:

Newbery Honor Book
A YALSA Best Book for Young Adults
A Booklist Editors' Choice
A Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
Winner 2005 Parents' Choice Gold Seal Award

* "Bartoletti offers a unique and riveting perspective on WWII by focusing on the young people who followed Hitler from 1933-1945." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review
* "Nonfiction writing at its best. Essential for WWII collections as well as teaching units on conformity, peer pressure and resistance." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review
* "Bartoletti lets many of the subjects' words, emotions, and deeds speak for themselves, bringing them together clearly to tell this story unlike anyone else has." -- School Library Journal, starred review
* "This solid offering deserves wide readership by today's young people, and it is certain to promote extensive discussion." -- The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review
* "Bartoletti draws on oral histories, diaries, letters, and her own extensive interviews with Holocaust survivors, Hitler Youth, resisters, and bystanders to tell the history from the viewpoints of people who were there." -- Booklist, starred review
* "The power of the account is matched by the many period candid and propaganda photographs, well-married to the text by strong captions and placement and an unobtrusive but period-evocative Art Deco page design." -- The Horn Book, starred review