Hitler-Jugend
Active	1922–1945
Country	Germany
Type	Paramilitary
Size	2.3 Million (1933)
Motto	Blut und Ehre ("Blood and Honor")
Commanders
Notable commanders	Baldur von Schirach

For the SS division with the nickname Hitlerjugend see; 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend

The Hitler Youth (German:  Hitler-Jugend (help·info), abbreviated HJ) was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung (the SA). It was made up of the Hitlerjugend proper, for male youth ages 14–18; the younger boys' section Deutsches Jungvolk for ages 10–14; and the girls' section Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM, the League of German Girls).

Origins[link]

The first NSDAP-related organization of German youth was the Jugendbund der NSDAP.^[1] Its establishment by the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP, the German Nazi Party, was announced on 8 March 1922 in the Völkischer Beobachter, and its inaugural meeting was held on 13 May the same year.^[2] In April 1924 the Jugendbund der NSDAP was renamed Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung (Greater German Youth Movement).

Another Youth group was established in 1922 as the  Jungsturm Adolf Hitler (help·info). Based in Munich, Bavaria, it served to train and recruit future members of the Sturmabteilung (or "Storm Regiment"), the adult paramilitary wing of the NSDAP.

Following the abortive Beer Hall Putsch (in 1923), the Nazi youth groups were ostensibly disbanded but many elements simply went underground, operating clandestinely in small units under assumed names. Finally, on 4 July 1926, the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung was officially renamed Hitler Jugend Bund der deutschen Arbeiterjugend, (Hitler Youth League of German Worker Youth). This event took place a year after the Nazi Party itself had been reorganized. The architect of the re-organisation was Kurt Gruber, a law student and admirer of Hitler from Plauen, Saxony.

After a short power struggle with a rival organization - Gerhard Roßbach's Schilljugend - Gruber prevailed and his Greater German Youth Movement became the Nazi Party's official youth organization. In July 1926, it was renamed Hitler-Jugend, Bund deutscher Arbeiterjugend (Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth) and, for the first time, officially became an integral part of the Sturmabteilung.

By 1930, the Hitler-Jugend had enlisted over 25,000 boys aged 14 and upwards. It also set up a junior branch, the Deutsches Jungvolk, for boys aged 10 to 14. Girls from 10 to 18 were given their own parallel organisation, the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), League of German Girls.

In April 1932, the Hitler Youth was banned by Chancellor Heinrich Brüning in an attempt to stop widespread political violence. But by June the ban was lifted by his successor, Franz von Papen as a way of appeasing Hitler whose political star was ascending rapidly.

A further significant expansion drive started in 1933, when Baldur von Schirach became the first Reichsjugendführer (Reich Youth Leader), pouring much time and large amounts of money into the project.

Doctrine[link]

The HJ were viewed as future "Aryan supermen" and were indoctrinated in anti-Semitism. One aim was to instill the motivation that would enable HJ members, as soldiers, to fight faithfully for the Third Reich. The HJ put more emphasis on physical and military training than on academic study.^[3] The Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen (NSRBL), the umbrella organization promoting and coordinating sport activities in Germany during the Nazi period, had the responsibility of overseeing the physical fitness development programs provided to the German youth.^[4]

After the boy scout movement was banned through German-controlled countries, the HJ appropriated many of its activities, though changed in content and intention. For example, many HJ activities closely resembled military training, with weapons training, assault course circuits and basic tactics. Some cruelty by the older boys toward the younger ones was tolerated and even encouraged, since it was believed this would weed out the unfit and harden the rest.^[5]

The HJ wore uniforms very like those of the SA, with similar ranks and insignia.

Organization[link]

Hitlerjugend members in 1933.

Hitlerjugend camp in China, 1935. Germany had lost all of its concessions in China after World War I, so the camp had been set up with permission from Government of the Republic of China, see Sino-German cooperation (1911–1941).^[6]

The HJ was organized into corps under adult leaders, and the general membership comprised boys aged fourteen to eighteen. The HJ was also seen as an important stepping stone to future membership of the elite Schutzstaffel (the SS). Members of the HJ were particularly proud to be bestowed with the single Sig Rune (victory symbol) by the SS. The SS utilized two Sig Runes as their mark, and this gesture served to symbolically link the two groups.

The HJ was organized into local cells on a community level. Such cells had weekly meetings at which various Nazi doctrines were taught by adult HJ leaders. Regional leaders typically organized rallies and field exercises in which several dozen Hitler Youth cells would participate. The largest HJ gathering usually took place annually, at Nuremberg, where members from all over Germany would converge for the annual Nazi Party rally.

The HJ maintained training academies comparable to preparatory schools. They were designed to nurture future Nazi Party leaders, and only the most radical and devoted HJ members could expect to attend.

The HJ also maintained several corps designed to develop future officers for the Wehrmacht. The corps offered specialist pre-training for each of the specific arms for which the HJ member was ultimately destined. The Marine Hitler Youth, for example, was the largest such corps and served as a water rescue auxiliary to the Kriegsmarine^{[citation needed]}.

Another branch of the HJ was the Deutsche Arbeiter Jugend - HJ (German Worker Youth - HY). This organization within the Hitler Youth was a training ground for future labor leaders and technicians. Its symbol was a rising sun with a swastika.

The Hitler Youth regularly issued the Wille und Macht (Will and Power) monthly magazine. This publication was also its official organ and its editor was Baldur von Schirach.^[7] Other publications included Die Kameradshaft (Comradeship), which had a girl's version for the BDM called Mädelschaft, and a yearbook called Jungen eure Welt (Youth your World).^[8]

Flags of the HJ and its branches[link]

The basic unit of the Hitler Youth was the Bann (unit of the whole district, consisting of 2,400 to 3,600 members, with 4 Stamm/Stämmen each of 600 members or more), the equivalent of a military regiment.^{[citation needed]} Of these Banne, there were more than 300 spread throughout Germany, each of a strength of about 6,000 youths. Each unit carried a flag of almost identical design, but the individual Bann was identified by its number, displayed in black on a yellow scroll above the eagle's head. The flags measured 200 cm long by 145 cm high. The displayed eagle in the center was adopted from the former Imperial State of Prussia. In its talons it grasped a white coloured sword and a black hammer. These symbols were used on the first official flags presented to the HJ at a national rally of the NSDAP in August 1929 in Nürnberg. The sword was said to represent nationalism, whereas the hammer was a symbol of socialism. The poles used with these flags were of bamboo topped by a white metal ball and spear point finial.

swimtrunks made from a bolt of HJ armband fabric, a war souvenir

The flags carried by the HJ Gefolgschaft (Escort), the equivalent of a company with a strength of 150 youths, displayed the emblem used on the HJ armband: a tribar of red over white over red, in the centre of which was a square of white standing on its point containing a black swastika. The Gefolgschafts flag measured 180 cm long by 120 cm high with the three horizontal bars each 40 cm deep. In order to distinguish both the individual Gefolgschaft and the branch of HJ service to which the unit belonged, each flag displayed a small coloured identification panel in the upper left corner. The patch was in a specific colour according to the HJ branch. For example, there was a light-blue patch, a white Unit number, and a white piping reserved for the Flieger-HJ, or Flying-HJ. The flagpoles were of polished black wood and had a white metal bayonet finial.

The Deutsches Jungvolk (DJ) was the junior branch of the HJ, for boys aged 10 to 14. DJ Jungbann flags generally followed the same style as those of the HJ. The differences were: the DJ flag had an all-black field; the DJ-eagle was the negative of the HJ-eagle (white with a black swastika); the scroll above the eagle's head was in white with the unit number in black; and the sword, hammer, beak, talons, and left leg of the eagle were in silver-grey colour. The flags eventually measured 165 cm long by 120 cm high. The flagpoles were of black polished wood topped with a white-metal spearhead-shaped finial. It displayed on both sides an eagle bearing on its breast the HJ diamond.

In contrast, the DJ Fähnlein flag, that of the name of the unit, equivalent to a troop or company, was of a very simple design. It displayed a single runic S in white on an all-black field. The Fähnlein number appeared on a white patch sewn to the cloth in the top left-hand corner. It was piped in silver and had black unit numbers. The size was 160 cm long by 120 cm high. The flagpoles were of polished black wood with a white metal unsheathed bayonet blade. A "Fähnlein" however, was not so much the flag, but the name of the DJ unit itself, a term which had been taken over from ancient Landsknecht denominations.^{[citation needed]}

Membership[link]

"Leistungsbuch" (Performance booklet) of a Hitler Youth / Deutsches Jungvolk member. The symbol in the upper right, based on the Sowilo rune, reads "For accomplishments in the DJ (Deutsches Jungvolk)". The symbol in the lower left, based on the Tiwaz rune, reads "For accomplishments in the HJ (Hitler Jugend)".

The HJ was originally Munich-based only. In 1923, the organization had a little over 1,000 members. In 1925, when the Nazi Party had been refounded, the membership grew to over 5,000. Five years later, national HJ membership stood at 25,000. By the end of 1932 (a few weeks before the Nazis came to power) it was at 107,956. At the end of 1933, the HJ had 2,300,000 members. Much of these increases came from the more or less forcible merger of other youth organizations with the HJ. (The sizable Evangelische Jugend, a Lutheran youth organisation of 600,000 members, was integrated on 18 February 1934).^[9]

As an example, in the class of Hans J. Massaquoi,^[10] 100% of the Aryan pupils in his class became Pimpf. However many of his classmates joined because of their parents or teachers or to be like everybody else. After several months many of the children became inactive and almost all left after one or two years.

By December 1936, HJ membership stood at just over five million. That same month, HJ membership became mandatory for Aryans, under the Gesetz über die Hitlerjugend law. This legal obligation was re-affirmed in 1939 with the Jugenddienstpflicht and HJ membership was required even when it was opposed by the member's parents. Massaquoi claims,^[10] though, that the war did not allow the law to go very far. From then on, most of Germany's teenagers belonged to the HJ. By 1940, it had eight million members. Later war figures are difficult to calculate, since massive conscription efforts and a general call-up of boys as young as 10 years old meant that virtually every young male in Germany was, in some way, connected to the HJ. Only about 10 to 20% were able to avoid joining.^[11]

There were a few members of the Hitler Youth who privately disagreed with Nazi ideologies. For instance, Hans Scholl, the brother of Sophie Scholl and one of the leading figures of the anti-Nazi resistance movement White Rose (Weiße Rose), was also a member of the Hitler Youth. This fact is emphasised in the film The White Rose which depicts how Scholl was able to resist Nazi Germany's ideology while being a member of the Nazi party's youth movement. The 1993 Thomas Carter film Swing Kids also focuses on this topic.

In World War II[link]

In 1940, Artur Axmann replaced Schirach as Reichsjugendführer and took over leadership of the Hitler Youth. Axmann began to reform the group into an auxiliary force which could perform war duties. The Hitler Youth became active in German fire brigades and assisted with recovery efforts to German cities affected from Allied bombing. The Hitler Youth also assisted in such organizations as the Reich Postal Service, Deutsche Reichsbahn, fire services, and Reich radio service, and served among anti-aircraft defense crews.

By 1943, Nazi leaders began turning the Hitler Youth into a military reserve to draw manpower which had been depleted due to tremendous military losses. In 1943, the 12th SS-Panzer-Division Hitlerjugend, under the command of SS-Brigadeführer Fritz Witt, was formed. The Division was a fully equipped Waffen-SS panzer division, with the majority of the enlisted cadre being drawn from Hitler Youth boys between the ages of 16 and 18. The division was deployed during the Battle of Normandy against the British and Canadian forces to the north of Caen. During the following months, the division earned itself a reputation for ferocity and fanaticism. When Witt was killed by allied naval gunfire, SS-Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer took over command and became the youngest divisional commander at age 33.

Members of a Hitlerjugend company of the Volkssturm at the German-Soviet front in Pommerania, February 1945.

As German casualties escalated with the combination of Operation Bagration and the Lvov-Sandomierz Operation in the east, and Operation Cobra in the west, members of the Hitlerjugend were recruited at ever younger ages. By 1945, the Volkssturm was commonly drafting 12-year-old Hitler Youth members into its ranks. During the Battle of Berlin, Axmann's Hitler Youth formed a major part of the last line of German defense, and were reportedly among the fiercest fighters. Although the city commander, General Helmuth Weidling, ordered Axmann to disband the Hitler Youth combat formations; in the confusion, this order was never carried out. The remnants of the youth brigade were "mowed down" by the advancing Russian forces; only two survivors remained.^[12]

Post World War II[link]

The Hitler Youth was disbanded by Allied authorities as part of the denazification process. Some HJ members were suspected of war crimes but, as they were children, no serious efforts were made to prosecute these claims. While the HJ was never declared a criminal organization, its adult leadership was considered tainted for corrupting the minds of young Germans. Many adult leaders of the HJ were put on trial by Allied authorities, and Baldur von Schirach was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was, however, convicted of crimes against humanity for his actions as Gauleiter of Vienna, not his leadership of the HJ.

German children born in the 1920s and 1930s became adults during the Cold War years. Since membership was compulsory after 1936, it was neither surprising nor uncommon that many senior leaders of both West and East Germany had been in the HJ. Little effort was made to blacklist political figures who had been youth members of the HJ, since many had little choice in the matter.

Despite this, several notable figures have been "exposed" by the media as former HJ Youth members. These include Stuttgart mayor Manfred Rommel (son of the famous general Erwin Rommel); former foreign minister of Germany Hans-Dietrich Genscher; philosopher Jürgen Habermas and the late Prince Consort of the Netherlands Claus von Amsberg.

Allegations against Pope Benedict XVI[link]

In his 1996 autobiography Salt of the Earth, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) revealed that he was a member of Hitler Youth when he was 14 years old. The disclosure is not unexpected since during World War II, membership was mandatory for almost every teenage male in Germany^{[citation needed]}. However, in a May 2009 trip to Israel, Benedict's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi told reporters that Ratzinger was never in the Hitler Youth, actually being in the Luftwaffe as an air force assistant.^[13] According to the Pope's brother, Monsignor Gregor Ratzinger, Josef was automatically placed on the Hitler Youth membership rolls on turning 14, as was required by law, but "did not attend meetings."^[14] In 1943 Ratzinger was conscripted into the Flakhelfer, teenage boys who assisted the crews of Luftwaffe antiaircraft guns; he eventually deserted and made his way to the American lines.^[15] The Ratzinger family, according to those who knew them, were very religious and hated the Nazi regime.^[16]

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See also[link]

References[link]

Notes

Bibliography

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hitlerjugend

• Rulers of the World: The Hitler Youth by Walter S. Zapotoczny
• The Hitler Youth: An Effective Organization for Total War by Guy Nasuti
• 1930s Hitlerjugend Propaganda Movie(German)
• Website about the League of German Girls, the female section of the Hitler Youth
• Hitler Youth - Full History and Photos

v t e Nazism Organizations Nazi Party (NSDAP) Sturmabteilung (SA) Schutzstaffel (SS) Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) Hitler Youth (HJ) National Socialist League of the Reich for Physical Exercise (NSRL) League of German Girls (BDM) National Socialist Women's League (NSF) History Early timeline Adolf Hitler's rise to power Machtergreifung Re-armament Nazi Germany Night of the Long Knives Nuremberg Rally Anti-Comintern Pact Kristallnacht World War II Tripartite Pact The Holocaust Nuremberg Trials Denazification Ideology Architecture Gleichschaltung Anti-democratic thought Hitler's political views Mein Kampf National Socialist Program New Order Propaganda Religious aspects Women in the Third Reich Race Blood and soil Eugenics Greater Germanic Reich Heim ins Reich Master race Racial policy Religion Atrocities Doctors' Trial Final Solution Human experimentation Outside Germany American Nazi Party Arrow Cross (Hungary) German American Bund Greyshirts (South Africa) Hungarian National Socialist Party Nasjonal Samling (Norway) Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging (Netherlands) National Movement of Switzerland National Socialist Bloc (Sweden) National Socialist League (UK) National Socialist Movement (United States) National Socialist Workers' Party of Denmark National Unity Party (Canada) Ossewabrandwag (South Africa) Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Independent State of Croatia) Lists Books by or about Hitler Ideologues Leaders and officials Nazi Party members Former Nazi Party members Speeches given by Hitler SS personnel People Adolf Hitler Heinrich Himmler Joseph Goebbels Alfred Rosenberg Hermann Göring Martin Bormann Josef Mengele Rudolf Hess Reinhard Heydrich Adolf Eichmann Albert Speer Rudolf Höß Hans Frank Related topics Esoteric Nazism Far-right politics Glossary of Nazi Germany Nazi salute Neo-Nazism Stormfront Völkisch movement Category Portal

Alfons Heck (3 November 1928 - 12 April 2005) was a German who was a member of Hitler Youth, eventually becoming a Hitler Youth Officer and a fanatical adherent of Nazism’s ideologies. Decades later, after emigrating to the United States via Canada, Heck wrote candidly of his youthful military experiences in news articles and two books. Thereafter, he partnered with Jewish Holocaust survivor Helen Waterford, each presenting their differing wartime circumstances before more than 200 audiences, most notably in schools and colleges.

Heck was born in the Rhineland, he was raised by his grandmother at her farm in the crossroads wine country community of Wittlich, Germany. He entered grammar school at the age of 6 where he and his classmates were first exposed to effective Nazi indoctrination by their virulently nationalistic teacher. Four years later Heck and his classmates joined the 5 Million-Member Hitler Youth.

Although Heck was a good student and found learning to be easy. Heck became leader of about 10 other boys. By then, his indoctrination and his devotion to the proud future of Hitler’s Third Reich were nearly complete. He understood that the first rule of service to a greater Germany was to follow orders without question, and he was willing to report “suspicious actions" or comments, even by friends or family, to his leader.

Flying Hitler Youth[link]

At 14, all Hitler Jungvolk were required to join the senior Hitler Youth branch, the Hitlerjugend. In part to avoid becoming an infantry officer, Heck applied to the elite Flying Hitler Youth (Flieger Hitlerjugend), although he was apprehensive about its year-long glider plane training. But, within weeks he'd become obsessed with flying and landing gliders. His life course had changed. He would not study to be a priest as his grandmother had hoped. He devoted himself to the task of eventually becoming a Luftwaffe fighter pilot. He’d been taught to believe that living under Bolshevik-Jewish slavery was too horrible to contemplate. The only alternative was German victory. Capture seemed to him worse than death. He thought that only a glorious death over the battlefield stood in the way of his sharing in Germany’s inevitable triumph. His final transformation to fanaticism had begun. He described this extended period of glider training from late 1942 until early 1944 as the happiest of his life. At 16 Heck became the youngest scholar to receive a diploma from Aeronaut’s Certificate in Sailplane Flying.

But the beginning of the Allied offensives in France caused his group of 180 Flying Hitler Youth, of which Heck had become the officer in charge, to be returned to the Wittlich area in order to organize the excavation of large antitank barriers on the nearby defensive Westwall. Battlefield losses raised Heck’s Hitler Youth rank to Bannführer, nominally in charge of 3,000 Hitler Youth workers in the town and its 50 surrounding villages. One of his antiaircraft crews shot down a damaged B-17 bomber trying to return to its base. Later, he gave orders in a combat engagement against advancing Americans in which participants on both sides were killed. During this period he was considered by friends and superiors to be ambitious and ruthless. At one point he gave orders to have an elderly Luxembourg priest shot if he dared return to the school that Heck had commandeered for his workers. The priest did not return. In another incident, he drew his pistol to shoot a Hitler Youth deserter but was prevented from doing so by a Wehrmacht sergeant. Heck admitted at the time, as well as afterwards, that he had become intoxicated by the power he wielded.

As the approaching Americans consolidated their gains, the 16 year old Bannführer was ordered back to his Luftwaffe training base. Once there, with the suspension of training, flight candidates were being ordered to the front lines to face the American infantry. However, a Luftwaffe officer, likely for the purpose of preserving Heck’s life, ordered Heck to organize the retrieval of needed radar equipment near Wittlich and then to take a four day leave in his home town. This enabled Heck to don civilian clothes before surrendering to the advancing Americans there. Unaware of his Hitler Youth rank, the U.S. soldiers used Heck as a translator until French military authorities began occupying the area. The French arrested Heck and he served 6 months hard labor before finally being released.

Post war[link]

Heck was unable to believe that the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime had actually taken place. Despite the difficulty of traveling within occupied Germany, he made his way to Nuremberg to witness what he could of the trials of former Nazi officers and officials. He later emigrated, first to Canada, working in several British Columbia saw mills, then to the U.S. where, living in San Diego, he became a Greyhound long distance bus driver.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Alfons Heck did not speak of his wartime activities or of his former involvement in Hitler Youth. Over the years, he’d read hundreds of books about the Third Reich, tracing the histories of surviving Nazi leaders and maintaining an interest in West German politics. He felt that his generation of young Germans had been callously betrayed by brutal Nazi strategists. Of the nine and a half million German war dead, two million were teenagers, both civilian and Hitler Youth. In 1971, at age 43, he became disabled by heart disease. Without a productive future and increasingly frustrated by his contemporaries’ failure to speak out, Heck began attending writing classes so that he might record what it was like to be a pawn of Nazi militarism. There is also a book about Alfons Heck and Helen Waterford called Parallel Journeys by Eleanor Ayer.

Heck also provided testimony on the parallels between Nazism and Islamism and was featured in the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West.

Bibliography[link]

• Heck, Alfons, A Child of Hitler: Germany in the Days When God Wore a Swastika, Arizona: Renaissance House, 1985.
• Heck, Alfons, The Burden of Hitler's Legacy, Frederick, Colorado: Renaissance House, 1988.
• Ayer, Eleanor H., Parallel Journeys, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.

BBC Documentary: (1989) The Fatal Attraction of Adolf Hitler

HBO Heil Hitler Confessions Of A Hitler Youth (1991)

Won an ACE for best documentary

International CINDY

In 1992, Heck was awarded the a NATIONAL EMMY for"outstanding historical programming"

External links[link]

• http://thephoenix.com/Boston/News/55446-A-child-of-Hitler/?page=1#TOPCONTENT

Barack Obama
44th President of the United States
Incumbent
Assumed office January 20, 2009
Vice President	Joe Biden
Preceded by	George W. Bush
United States Senator from Illinois
In office January 3, 2005 – November 16, 2008
Preceded by	Peter Fitzgerald
Succeeded by	Roland Burris
Member of the Illinois Senate from the 13th District
In office January 8, 1997 – November 4, 2004
Preceded by	Alice Palmer
Succeeded by	Kwame Raoul
Personal details
Born	Barack Hussein Obama II (1961-08-04) August 4, 1961 (age 50)[1] Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.[2]
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Michelle Robinson (1992–present)
Children	Malia (born 1998) Sasha (born 2001)
Residence	White House (Official) Chicago, Illinois (Private)
Alma mater	Occidental College Columbia University (B.A.) Harvard Law School (J.D.)
Profession	Community organizer Lawyer Constitutional law professor Author
Religion	Christianity[3]
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize
Signature
Website	barackobama.com

	This article is part of a series on Barack Obama
Background Illinois Senate US Senate Political positions Public image Family 2008 primaries Obama–Biden campaign Transition Inauguration Electoral history Presidency Timeline '09 '10 '11 '12 First 100 days Nobel Peace Prize Re-election campaign

Barack Hussein Obama II (ⁱ/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.

As president, Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. Other domestic policy initiatives include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, and the Budget Control Act of 2011. In May 2012, he became the first sitting U.S. president to openly support legalizing same-sex marriage. In foreign policy, he ended the war in Iraq, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, signed the New START arms control treaty with Russia, ordered U.S. involvement in the 2011 Libya military intervention, and ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.

Early life and career[link]

Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital (now Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children) in Honolulu, Hawaii,^[2][4][5] and is the first President to have been born in Hawaii.^[6] His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas, and was of mostly English ancestry,^[7] along with Scottish, Irish, German, and Swiss.^{[8][9][10][11][12]} His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya. Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian class at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where his father was a foreign student on scholarship.^[13][14] The couple married on February 2, 1961,^[15] separated when Obama Sr. went to Harvard University on scholarship, and divorced in 1964.^[13] Obama Sr. remarried and returned to Kenya, visiting Barack in Hawaii only once, in 1971. He died in an automobile accident in 1982.^[16]

After her divorce, Dunham married Indonesian Lolo Soetoro, who was attending college in Hawaii. When Suharto, a military leader in Soetoro's home country, came to power in 1967, all Indonesian students studying abroad were recalled, and the family moved to the Menteng neighborhood of Jakarta.^[4][17] From ages six to ten, Obama attended local schools in Jakarta, including Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School.^[18]

In 1971, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham, and with the aid of a scholarship attended Punahou School, a private college preparatory school, from fifth grade until his graduation from high school in 1979.^[19] Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972, remaining there until 1977 when she went back to Indonesia to work as an anthropological field worker. She finally returned to Hawaii in 1994 and lived there for one year before dying of ovarian cancer.^[15][20]

Of his early childhood, Obama recalled, "That my father looked nothing like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—barely registered in my mind."^[14] He described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage.^[21] Reflecting later on his years in Honolulu, Obama wrote: "The opportunity that Hawaii offered—to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect—became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear."^[22] Obama has also written and talked about using alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind."^[23] At the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency, Obama described his high-school drug use as a great moral failure.^[24]

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend Occidental College. In February 1981, he made his first public speech, calling for Occidental to divest from South Africa in response to its policy of apartheid.^[25] In mid-1981, Obama traveled to Indonesia to visit his mother and sister Maya, and visited the families of college friends in Pakistan and India for three weeks.^[25] Later in 1981, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialty in international relations^[26] and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1983. He worked for a year at the Business International Corporation,^[27] then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.^[28][29]

Chicago community organizer and Harvard Law School[link]

Two years after graduating, Obama was hired in Chicago as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale on Chicago's South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988.^[29][30] He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.^[31] Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.^[32] In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time in Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time.^[33] He returned to Kenya in August 2006 for a visit to his father's birthplace, a village near Kisumu in rural western Kenya.^[34]

In late 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year,^[35] and president of the journal in his second year.^[31][36] During his summers, he returned to Chicago, where he worked as an associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.^[37] After graduating with a J.D. magna cum laude^[38] from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.^[35] Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention^[31][36] and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations,^[39] which evolved into a personal memoir. The manuscript was published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.^[39]

University of Chicago Law School and civil rights attorney[link]

In 1991, Obama accepted a two-year position as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School to work on his first book.^[39][40] He then taught at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years—as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004—teaching constitutional law.^[41]

From April to October 1992, Obama directed Illinois's Project Vote, a voter registration campaign with ten staffers and seven hundred volunteer registrars; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, leading Crain's Chicago Business to name Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.^[42] In 1993, he joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 13-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004. His law license became inactive in 2002.^[43]

From 1994 to 2002, Obama served on the boards of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project; and of the Joyce Foundation.^[29] He served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 to 2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995 to 1999.^[29]

Legislative career: 1997–2008[link]

State Senator: 1997–2004[link]

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois's 13th District, which at that time spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park – Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn.^[44] Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation that reformed ethics and health care laws.^[45] He sponsored a law that increased tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare.^[46] In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures.^[47]

Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, defeating Republican Yesse Yehudah in the general election, and was reelected again in 2002.^[48] In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.^[49]

In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority.^[50] He sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained, and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations.^[46][51] During his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, police representatives credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms.^[52] Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the U.S. Senate.^[53]

U.S. Senate campaign[link]

County results of the 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois. Counties in blue were won by Obama.

In May 2002, Obama commissioned a poll to assess his prospects in a 2004 U.S. Senate race; he created a campaign committee, began raising funds, and lined up political media consultant David Axelrod by August 2002. Obama formally announced his candidacy in January 2003.^[54]

Obama was an early opponent of the George W. Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq.^[55] On October 2, 2002, the day President Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War,^[56] Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally,^[57] and spoke out against the war.^[58] He addressed another anti-war rally in March 2003 and told the crowd that "it's not too late" to stop the war.^[59]

Decisions by Republican incumbent Peter Fitzgerald and his Democratic predecessor Carol Moseley Braun to not participate in the election resulted in wide-open Democratic and Republican primary contests involving fifteen candidates.^[60] In the March 2004 primary election, Obama won in an unexpected landslide—which overnight made him a rising star within the national Democratic Party, started speculation about a presidential future, and led to the reissue of his memoir, Dreams from My Father.^[61] In July 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention,^[62] seen by 9.1 million viewers. His speech was well received and elevated his status within the Democratic Party.^[63]

Obama's expected opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race in June 2004.^[64] Six weeks later, Alan Keyes accepted the Republican nomination to replace Ryan.^[65] In the November 2004 general election, Obama won with 70 percent of the vote.^[66]

U.S. Senator: 2005–2008[link]

Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 3, 2005,^[67] becoming the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus.^[68] CQ Weekly characterized him as a "loyal Democrat" based on analysis of all Senate votes in 2005–2007. Obama announced on November 13, 2008, that he would resign his Senate seat on November 16, 2008, before the start of the lame-duck session, to focus on his transition period for the presidency.^[69]

Legislation[link]

Obama cosponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act.^[70] He introduced two initiatives that bore his name: Lugar–Obama, which expanded the Nunn–Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons;^[71] and the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine on federal spending.^[72] On June 3, 2008, Senator Obama—along with Senators Tom Carper, Tom Coburn, and John McCain—introduced follow-up legislation: Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.^[73]