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).

The first NSDAP-related organization of German youth was the Jugendbund der NSDAP. 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. 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.

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.

Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.

A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.