Germany’s Soldiers of Future, 6 to 16, March Like Veterans

Through the crooked little streets of this old city, 80,000 children marched today in one of the most remarkable parades in the history of the world.

Boys and girls between the ages of six and sixteen, with the average at about eleven years, for five hours executed perfect military manoeuvers that would have taxed the discipline and tactics of a veteran army. The occasion was the first great demonstration of the newly-formed Bavarian Hitler Youth Movement.

The few foreign spectators with military experience gathered in Nuremberg declared that the spectacle was “incredible.”

With the precision of a mammoth machine the troops of children marched in a long, unbroken stream, their iron-shod shoes ringing against the cobble-stone pavements like the tick of a monster clock.

LINES FLOW TOWARDS STANDS

There were no delays, no marking time while other units caught up, no running to fill in gaps. The long mustard lines flowed toward the reviewing stand at Adolf Hitler Platz quite as smoothly as streams would join a larger body of water. Nuremberg and the line of march were unfamiliar to most of the children who came from three nearby Bavarian franks or counties. A handful of adult leaders and a lone plane flying overhead directed the manoeuver.

Because of the youth of the paraders, the demonstration was considered more remarkable than the May 1 festival in Berlin, when one million marchers, without disorder, succeeded in marching through the city to a congregation point outside in about four hours.

Before sunrise this morning the central station here began disgorging thousands of brown-shirted and brown-gowned boys and girls, who had come from their play in the fields and in the streets of nearby cities, to take part in the first Bavarian Jugendfest. Buxom girls, with long, braided hair and the enticing curves of early maturity, were garbed in long, loose dresses. They, and their male comrades in shorts, boots, and brown shirts were uniform in appearance. A few from the mountainous sections of Bavaria came in their native mountaineer costume done in brown.

SOLDIER-STRAIGHT LINES

Brass bands and flute and drum corps were led by and composed of young fellows that could not be out of the third grade in school. A company of white wigged boys in costume played violins as they marched; and the voices of 80,000 young folk were raised above the quiet of the city in Hitlerite marching songs.

In sheer mechanical effect there has never been a parade within the memory of the writer that was carried out in so orderly a manner. At no time during the four hours of the parade was a single detachment seen halted. The lines were as straight as those of soldiers passing in review.

Although the population of Nuremberg was greatly enhanced by the guests at the fest, order ruled throughout the day. The city adopted the air of an exposition. From virtually every window in the city the swastika banner hung; crowds moved quickly through the streets; and everywhere were there heel-clicking and Hitler-heiling.

PRE-PARADE RAIDS

During the demonstration the line of march was flanked by large crowds who turned out to see the spectacle. Among them were few Jews.

Two days before the beginning of the festival storm troopers had rounded up 160 of the most prominent rabbis, doctors, lawyers, and merchants of the Jewish community and grilled them for five hours on matters concerning a suspected Communist plot. All were later released; but the terror that remained was everywhere in evidence.

Quite as prominent as the banners that enlivened the streets, were huge signs, “German Goods,” which were pasted on the shopwindows of every non-Jewish establishment. By having shops use these signs, and by ridiculing patrons of Jewish stores in his two newspapers in Nuremberg, Julius Streicher has succeeded in perpetuating the boycott of Jewish goods in his home town.