‘Führer Command, We Follow You ...’

The silence of a complete generation with regard to the events during the Hitler-period is an unbelievable tragic. It is related to the horrible awakening after WWII, that a gigantic fraud had not been recognised early enough, and that one was part of the population that had been put into a coma by a maniac and the executors of his will. However, 1945 was also characterized by the liberating feeling of joy to restart from the ruins of what had adorned itself with the attribute of predicate of pride entitled A Population, An Empire, A Führer. The author was 18 years old when all that haunting was over. He will never forget the experiences he made during that time. Today, more than 7 decades after the doom it has become a desire of the authors heart to deliver a testimony of that time. The Hitler-Demon still wanders like a ghost in every corner of the world nowadays, would it be through bogeyman or rape of the human existence. Paralysation of the human spirit, our divine spark, progresses continuously. The current Hitler-Demon aggressively lurks everywhere, last but not least in the virtual world extinguishing all reality. Only by recognising the Socratic The True, The Beauty, The Good that accompanies people on a daily basis is giving us hope for our future existence.

When Dictatorship Impacts Youth Dictatorships are a continuous issue at different places around the world. They gradually emerge, stay and may vanish. However, the time period of such dictatorships is rather undefined and very much depend on how this is run. A dictatorship easily splits a society among those who live in disagreement and others who agree and govern. How to grow up and survive in such a society of conflict for a human being, that feels bound to his or her home and culture? How to guide a child as a parent in such an environment, when you personally oppose to the system but you want to optimize your childs future while being held in a hostage by possibly a minority of your own ethnic origin and not wanting your child to be recognized as an opponent to the dictatorial system? This problem, or better conflict, becomes even worse when it comes to the younger generation. Youngsters are bound to their home, irrespective of how it might be. Disrupted parents, poor homes, intellectual and economic poverty, societal and political opposition, and possibly much more, does not prevent children as well as parents to keep a relationship, of which the strength may very much depend on the needs of the child and the responsibility of the parent. However, it never becomes zero, irrespective of how poor the relationship may be. Young people feel a continuous need to anchor in a society in which they grow up and it is therefore a question, which anchoring grounds are provided to them. On the other hand, all parents feel a degree of responsibility with respect to their children, with zero responsibility being unlikely. Considerate parents do try to guide their children towards a condition, that they are able to independently navigate within a society, whatever the future may provide. This task is a true challenge for parents, since they are not the only ones, impacting their childrens education and development. Societal, political, economic, religious, technical and possibly other bodies do take part in this educational development and shaping of that young generation as well. This becomes extremely serious when any of those bodies obtains a dictatorial role, where the freedom of mind becomes artificially suppressed, being a clear detrimental insult, if not even a criminal act, distorting a young persons mind and future. Hans Erik Deckert was born in Hamburg/Germany in 1927 in a well-situated family as the oldest child. The father, a German graduated chemist, active in the analytics field and having served as an officer in WW I, and the mother, a Danish intellectual, who took over the role of housewife after giving birth to further children, tried to run a liberal life, driven by Christianity and actively performic music. The former had been driven by family tradition while the latter was very much promoted by the musical talent of the parents and different of their children. The political instability in Germany and the increasing power of national socialist power taking over, including its final installment in 1933, made it extremely challenging for parents to provide their children with guidance along their childrens personal development. On the one hand the children should not loose their strength in developing their own free thinking and personality, while on the other they should not become victims within a system and society, which tried to enforce a specific category of thinking and personality, having a detrimental effect on a young persons mind. The parents Deckert therefore let their children first to assimilate their feelings out of the society, before they gradually asked them targeted questions, not to directly oppose but rather to inspire them up to a degree, such that the children were still in a position to make decisions on their own. The parents also took advantage to send some of their children to a boarding school, specifically promoting their musical skills and keeping them away from societal and political trends as much as possible. In his book, Führer Command, We Follow You, Hans Erik Deckert describes the first 18 years of his life, hence the period between 1927 and 1945. As a young boy he is part of a society outside of his home, where national socialism and the Führer looks to be the prospering future after a fairly disastrous economic crisis Germany and the rest of the world had through in the years before. It is normal that songs are sung, which adorn the Germanic culture and politics, that language is continuously aligned to this as well, that one has to serve to this culture starting with a mandatory participation in political organizations such as the Hitler Youth, and that a continuous erosion and brain wash proceeded from nurseries to grammar schools and even beyond. All of this became difficult for parents to control if not leading their children to become outsiders in the society in the end. Even church was not able to exclude itself from those trends. Children had been exposed to this infiltration all the time. For parents it became extremely difficult to prevent their children from such a superiority. All of this is authentically and lively described in the book, surrounded by additional chapters explaining the background and situation at the time. After a foreword describing the circumstances, Deckert makes reference to the history of the German Empire, starting in 1871 after the Franco-German war and describing the gradual development of Germany over the years, mainly until the economic crisis of 1929, when national socialist power was not to be overseen anymore. A vast amount of national socialist vocabulary including its interpretation has been summarized before elaborating on the Führers role and what made him apparent to a young boy like Deckert. This leads to a chapter, which has been entitled as The Ingenious Deception and which describes the instruments and measures, which had been taken to deform a young persons mind. This is supported by some characteristics of the so called Millennial Kingdom, describing how Christianity has even been blistered by the national socialist intoxication. With all those preparations, Deckert then describes his childhood, starting with the family provided, followed by the impacts the new national socialist state had on a young boy. This includes his time within the Hitler Youth as well as in a grammar school. During this period the war breaks out, he gets confirmed in the protestant Christian church environment he grew up and principally introduced into adolescence, where the parents are partially providing guidance. A major turning point in Deckerts life has been his admission to the Musisches Gymnasium in Frankfurt/Main together with his next elder brother. This institution had been established as a boarding school in 1939 to specifically train talented young boys in classical music, specifically emphasizing what was considered to be German culture at the time. Hitler himself got so much inspired while listening to the Regensburger Domspatzen (The Regensburg Cathedral Sparrows), which he even invited to his summer domain Obersalzberg, that he wanted to get an adequate institution established through his national socialist governance, of which the Musisches Gymnasium became the result. Kurt Thomas became the headmaster of the institution and was directly appointed to the Reich Minister of Education in Berlin. Kurt Thomas role became a rather diverse one. On the one hand he had to serve the national socialist system and on the other he had the ambition to decouple and hence protect his young disciples from the national socialists plague to the outmost extent. How life was under those conditions and experienced by a teenager, is very well documented in this book. This also includes the description, how youngsters could not be fully kept away from the brown plague of the NS regime and what limited influence parents had, specifically with children sent to a dist...