League of German Girls (BDM)

The BDM was the youth organization of the Nazi party for young women between the ages of 14 and 18. As part of the Hitler Youth and under the umbrella of the Reich Youth Leadership, it was expanded during the Nazi era into a state youth organization with compulsory membership (from 1939 onwards). The younger girls aged 10 to 14 were organized in the Jungmädelbund (Young Girls’ League). Regionally, the BDM was divided into upper and lower regions. Upper Region (Obergau) I/19 Munich-Upper Bavaria had its headquarters at Dachauer Straße 9, as did the HJ regional leadership, while the BDM Munich branch leadership was located at Richard-Wagner-Straße 3.

In the BDM and the Young Girls’ League, girls and young women were to be educated to become bearers of the National Socialist world view so as to prepare them for their future role as wives, housewives and mothers in the Nazi state. In addition to group leisure activities such as excursions and hikes, the BDM offered many girls a rare opportunity to escape the constraints of home and school. But the routine at weekly meetings involved ideological training, community singing of marching and folk songs, learning household chores, and preparing for marches and sporting competitions. Girls also learned a form of military drill by wearing uniforms, going on marches in the field and having to attend roll calls. The aim was to inculcate virtues that were highly valued by the Nazi leadership such as discipline, obedience, physical fitness and sacrifice, thereby forming a generation of young women who were willing and able to provide for plenty of offspring and then raise them from an early age in line with the ideological beliefs of the Nazi state.

During the Second World War the BDM’s activities were increasingly dedicated to providing support services for the war effort, with Girls and young women were deployed as helpers in hospitals, in agriculture and air raid protection.