Abuse in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Early 20th Century Nazi Germany ‡ Hitler

13th of August, 1937, Entry #13.

Dear Diary,

According to Hitler; “The young must be chiselled away. I want young men and women that can suffer pain. A young German must be as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp’s steel.” We, the Youth of the Thousand year Reich, are the building blocks of future society. All of Germany must revolve around the Nazis, and we must all be devoted to the Fuhrer. Everything has changed since Hitler came to power; school, exercise, and life in general.

As I am 13 years of age, I now belong to The Jungvolk, or in English, the Young Folk. I have already been through The Pimpfen, or in English, The Little Fellows, and I still have ahead of me The Hitlerjugend, or in English, the Hitler Youth – HJ. My sister, who is now 15 years of age, is in the League of German Girls. She passed through the Jungmadel, or the Young Girls of Germany, amid the ages 10 and 14, but she had to toil hard for it. If you want to pass to the next stage, you had to be nearly faultless. You had to be very athletic and physically adept, you had to be good looking and you also had to completely, totally and utterly dedicate yourself to the Fuhrer and his ideals. So we young people have a very hard time of it.

I talked to my father the other night, to try to get him to help me understand what is happening to our country. My father doesn’t have a very high opinion of the...