Youth and Indoctrination

Hitler's strategic view. Hitler regarded young Germans as the indispensable foundation of the future Nazi state. At a 1933 rally he told the crowd:

'When an opponent declares, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already."'

The aim was breathtaking in its ambition: to remake an entire German generation along Nazi racial, ideological and physical lines. Adults could be coerced or persuaded; children could be shaped from the start.

Why young Germans mattered. Several reasons made youth indoctrination a top regime priority:

• Uncontaminated by Weimar liberalism: young Germans who had not lived through the Republic could be educated without rival memories or values.
• Easier to indoctrinate: children accept what adults teach them; teenagers respond to belonging, uniforms and physical activity.
• Future soldiers and mothers: a state preparing for war and racial expansion needed soldiers (boys) and mothers of the next generation (girls). Both had to be physically fit, ideologically loyal, and racially conscious.
• Replacement for traditional loyalties: youth organisations could displace church, family and class as the primary loyalties of young Germans, attaching them directly to the regime.
• A thousand-year Reich required generations who would think and behave as Nazis. Indoctrinating the young was investment for the future.

The Volksgemeinschaft project. Capturing youth was part of the wider Volksgemeinschaft ('people's community') project — the Nazi vision of a racially defined national community in which class divisions had been overcome. Young Germans were to be the first generation born into the Volksgemeinschaft — formed by it rather than added to it.

Three pillars of indoctrination. The regime captured the young through three coordinated channels:

1. Hitler Youth and BDM — the regime's own youth organisations.
2. Schools — Nazified curricula and teachers.
3. Elite Nazi schools — for the future Party and SS elite.

Plus a fourth, more contested pillar: universities and higher education.

These were not competing channels but a single system. By the late 1930s the average German child would experience:

• Nazi-approved kindergarten and primary school.
• Hitler Youth or BDM membership from age 10.
• Nazi-taught secondary school with race biology and physical education.
• Hitler Youth or BDM until age 18.
• For boys: military service in the Wehrmacht.
• For girls: BDM-supervised domestic training, possibly the Reich Labour Service.
• Some elite: Adolf Hitler Schools, Napola, eventually SS Junker schools.

A young German growing up between 1933 and 1945 would be in regime-controlled education and organisation for the entire formative period of their life.

Family vs state. The regime's project inevitably created tension with families and churches. Many Catholic and Protestant parents disliked compulsory Hitler Youth membership; some tried to keep children in church youth groups (rapidly dissolved or merged from 1933 onwards); some resented the Nazi rewriting of school curricula. The regime usually won these conflicts — Hitler Youth membership became compulsory in December 1936 — but family and church loyalty did not disappear, and after 1945 surviving Germans often emphasised how their families had quietly resisted the regime's claims on their children. The reality was that the family-state contest produced mixed results: regime victory on paper, partial parental retention of values in practice.

The wartime acceleration. After 1939 the regime's claims on youth intensified. Sports and ideology gave way to direct war service: HJ boys manned anti-aircraft batteries from 1943; the Volkssturm of October 1944 mobilised teenage boys and old men for last-ditch defence; BDM girls served as nurses, anti-aircraft auxiliaries, and farm helpers. Many of the boys Hitler had told 'belong to us already' died in 1944-45 — a final, terrible vindication of Nazi indoctrination policy.

The wider point. Capturing youth was central to the Nazi project not just for ideological reasons but for the long-term strategic vision of a racial-imperial state. Adolf Hitler Schools graduates would lead in 1960; Hitler Youth graduates would fight in 1955. The regime's planning horizon was generational. The fact that the regime lasted only twelve years means we never see the full output of its youth indoctrination — but the partial results (millions of young Germans willing to fight, kill and die for the regime by 1944-45) suggest the project was alarmingly successful where it had time to operate.

Origins of the Hitler Youth. The Hitler Youth had been founded in 1926 as part of the Nazi reorganisation under Baldur von Schirach (Topic 8.1). By 1933 it had around 100,000 members — small but with the discipline and ideology of the parent party.

Growth after 1933. Once the Nazis took power in January 1933, the Hitler Youth absorbed or eliminated rival youth organisations:

• Communist and social-democratic youth groups: banned with the parent parties.
• Catholic youth groups: technically protected by the Concordat (July 1933) but harassed; effectively dissolved by 1939 despite Catholic protest.
• Protestant youth groups: forced to merge into the Hitler Youth in 1933.
• Liberal and non-political organisations (Scouts, Wandervogel): banned or coordinated.

Membership exploded:

• 1933: ~100,000.
• 1934: ~3.5 million.
• 1936: ~4 million.
• 1939: ~8 million — roughly 98% of eligible Germans aged 10-18.

Compulsion: the Hitler Youth Law (1936). Initially Hitler Youth membership had been formally voluntary — but pressure on schools and families made non-membership socially difficult. The Hitler Youth Law of 1 December 1936 made the Hitler Youth (with its junior and girls' branches) the official organisation of German youth, effectively making membership compulsory. A second law in 1939 confirmed the compulsion: all young Germans had to belong.

Structure: four organisations. The Nazi youth movement was structured by age and sex:

• Deutsches Jungvolk (DJV — German Young People): boys aged 10-14.
• Hitler Youth (HJ): boys aged 14-18.
• Jungmädel (JM — Young Girls): girls aged 10-14.
• Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM — League of German Girls): girls aged 14-18.

Plus a higher-age BDM-Werk Glaube und Schönheit ('BDM-Work, Faith and Beauty') for women 17-21, training for marriage and motherhood.

Hitler Youth (HJ) activities. HJ activities for boys were heavily militarised and ideological:

• Physical fitness: route marches, cross-country running, swimming, gymnastics, climbing.
• Military drill: marching in formation, saluting, parade-ground drill.
• Weapons training: from age 14, boys handled rifles; older HJ trained with anti-tank weapons.
• Camping and outdoor adventure: weekly meetings, weekend camps, summer trips — building 'comradeship'.
• Ideological lessons: Nazi history, race theory, anti-Semitism, anti-communism, the Hitler cult.
• Music and singing: Nazi songs (Horst-Wessel-Lied, marching songs).
• Specialist branches: Flying HJ (gliding, future Luftwaffe pilots), Motor HJ (motorcycles, future drivers), Naval HJ (boating, future Navy).

The implicit purpose was clear: prepare future soldiers. Many later Wehrmacht and SS recruits described HJ as 'pre-military training in everything but name'.

BDM (League of German Girls) activities. BDM activities were equally regimented but with different content:

• Physical fitness: gymnastics, sport, athletics, swimming — preparing 'healthy mothers'.
• Domestic skills: cooking, sewing, child care, housekeeping.
• Racial education: lessons on hereditary biology, the Nuremberg Laws, 'racially appropriate' marriage.
• Service: Land Year (Landjahr) — many BDM members spent a year working on rural farms, especially in eastern Germany, to 're-Germanise' rural areas.
• Hitler-Mädel ideology: girls were taught that their highest duty was bearing children for the racial state.
• Marriage preparation: BDM-Werk taught older girls how to run a Nazi household.

The implicit purpose was equally clear: prepare future mothers of the Volk. Some girls found the BDM liberating — escape from parents, opportunities for travel, female companionship — but the ideological message was relentless: motherhood, race, sacrifice.

Schirach and Axmann. The Hitler Youth was led by:

• Baldur von Schirach (1925-1940): Reichsjugendführer ('Reich Youth Leader'); founder of the modern Hitler Youth.
• Artur Axmann (1940-1945): took over when Schirach was made Gauleiter of Vienna; oversaw the wartime militarisation of the HJ.

Schirach was a relatively educated figure who tried to promote Nazi 'culture' (Nazi-approved literature, German classical music); Axmann presided over the HJ's wartime tragedy.

The Nazi rituals and look. HJ and BDM had distinctive uniforms, songs and rituals:

• HJ uniform: brown shirt (echoing the SA), black shorts, black neckerchief with leather toggle, swastika armband.
• BDM uniform: white blouse, dark blue skirt, black neckerchief, sometimes a sash.
• Songs: martial Nazi songs replacing folk songs; the Horst-Wessel-Lied (party anthem).
• Oaths: 'In the presence of this blood banner, which represents our Führer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the saviour of our country…'
• Hitler salute and ceremonial flag presentations.
• 'Patron saints': HJ celebrated young Nazi 'martyrs' like Herbert Norkus (a 15-year-old Hitler Youth killed in 1932 by communist street-fighters; commemorated in the 1933 propaganda film Hitlerjunge Quex).

The appeal. For many young Germans, HJ and BDM had real appeal:

• Adventure, camping, sport — exciting compared to school.
• Uniform, comradeship, sense of belonging.
• Escape from parents and social class.
• Travel: many working-class HJ saw the sea or the mountains for the first time.
• Status and recognition: HJ leaders had real authority.
• Patriotic purpose at a time of national renewal.

Many later memoirs describe HJ membership as 'the best years of our lives' until the wartime turn — a recognition that the appeal was real and that captures had emotional foundations.

The limits of the appeal. Not all young Germans were enthusiastic. Some resisted joining; many joined under pressure; some found HJ activities boring or brutal. Working-class youth in industrial cities often resented HJ leadership by middle-class boys. Catholic families maintained alternative loyalties despite the compulsion. By the late 1930s the regime had a near-monopoly of organised youth activity but not necessarily of youth enthusiasm.

The wartime turn. After 1939 the HJ shifted dramatically from leisure-and-ideology to war service:

• Land Service (Landdienst): HJ boys sent to farms to replace adult workers.
• Anti-aircraft service (from 1943): HJ boys aged 15-17 manned flak guns defending German cities; many killed by Allied bombing.
• Werewolf (Werwolf): planned partisan resistance to Allied occupation; few actual operations.
• Volkssturm (October 1944): teenage HJ boys and old men mobilised for last-ditch defence; many killed in the final months of the war.

The HJ thus delivered exactly what Hitler had wanted in 1933 — boys willing to fight and die for the regime — at a catastrophic human cost. By 1945 the HJ had become a mass casualty list.

By 1939 the regime had achieved an extraordinary feat: ~98% of German youth in a single ideological organisation, with compulsory state-supervised education on top. Few states in history have so thoroughly captured a generation. The success was real; the cost would be revealed in 1944-45 and in the lifelong moral burden of those who survived.

Nazifying the school system. Schools were the regime's second great instrument for capturing youth. The Nazi takeover of education had three components:

1. Removing 'unreliable' teachers. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (7 April 1933) removed Jewish and political opponents from teaching, alongside other civil servants. Around 30% of teachers in some districts were dismissed; the rest had to join the National Socialist Teachers' League (NSLB) and swear personal loyalty to Hitler.

By 1937, 97% of teachers were NSLB members.

2. Rewriting the curriculum. School subjects were rewritten around Nazi ideology:

• Race biology (Rassenkunde): pseudo-scientific lessons on Aryan/Jewish racial categories; pupils were taught to identify 'Jewish features' in classmates.
• German history: rewritten as racial struggle culminating in Hitler; Bismarck, Frederick the Great and Hitler presented as the great national leaders.
• Geography: emphasising Lebensraum (living space) in the east; teaching the 'natural' German need for territorial expansion.
• Mathematics: word problems featured tanks, bombs, soldiers, racial demographics ('a Jewish family of 5 receives 200 RM in welfare; an Aryan family of 5 receives 100 RM; calculate the cost...').
• Physical education: doubled in importance — three hours per week minimum; Nazi ideology emphasised physical fitness for war and motherhood.
• Religious education: reduced; Christianity gradually replaced by 'spiritual' lessons on race and Volk.
• Literature: Jewish and modernist writers banned; approved authors emphasised heroic militarism and Aryan virtue.

3. New textbooks. New approved textbooks replaced the Weimar ones. Notable examples:

• Der Giftpilz ('The Poisonous Mushroom') — antisemitic children's picture book by Julius Streicher, depicting Jews as deceitful and dangerous mushrooms.
• The Eternal Jew — antisemitic schoolbook.
• Race biology textbooks for upper grades, with photographs of 'racial types'.
• Mein Kampf excerpts in literature classes.

Daily school rituals. Schools followed Nazi rituals:

• Hitler salute at the start of each lesson.
• Photograph of Hitler in every classroom.
• 'Heil Hitler' as the standard greeting (replacing 'Good morning').
• Singing of Nazi songs in assembly.
• Hitler's birthday (20 April) as a school holiday.

For Jewish students:

• Excluded from public schools progressively (1933-38); compulsory exclusion after 9 November 1938.
• Forced to attend Jewish-only schools with limited resources.
• Subjected to public humiliation by teachers — required to stand at the front while race lessons described them.

Universities. Universities were Nazified through:

• Civil service law removed Jewish and political professors: about 15% of professors dismissed (Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and others emigrated).
• Compulsory student organisations: the National Socialist German Students' League (NSDStB) dominated.
• New compulsory courses on race biology, German history, military science.
• Book burnings (10 May 1933) organised by students themselves at universities — public destruction of Jewish, communist, liberal works.
• Disciplines reshaped: especially law, history, anthropology, philosophy were rewritten on Nazi lines.

Many leading German academics emigrated — a major loss for German science and humanities that the regime did not fully appreciate at the time.

Elite Nazi schools. For the future Nazi elite, the regime created three types of elite schools:

1. Adolf Hitler Schools (Adolf-Hitler-Schulen).

• Founded 1937 under Robert Ley (DAF) and Schirach (HJ).
• Boarding schools for boys aged 12-18.
• Selected from the most 'racially valuable' Hitler Youth members.
• Trained future political leaders of the regime.
• Heavy emphasis on physical fitness, ideology, leadership.
• About 10 schools by 1940; ~600 graduates a year.

2. National Political Education Institutes (Napola — Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten).

• Modelled on the Prussian military academies.
• Run by the Education Ministry but Nazi in spirit.
• Trained future military and administrative leaders.
• About 40 institutions by 1944.

3. Order Castles (Ordensburgen).

• Most exclusive — for graduates of Adolf Hitler Schools who had already proven Nazi credentials.
• Three locations: Sonthofen (Bavaria), Vogelsang (Eifel), Crössinsee (Pomerania).
• Trained the highest-level future SS and Party elite.
• Heavy emphasis on racial ideology, military leadership, ruthlessness.

The elite-school ideology. All three types of elite school shared a vision: a small, ruthless, racially conscious elite running the future Nazi empire. Pupils were taught Plato's Republic and Nazi versions of Nietzsche; they were drilled relentlessly in physical fitness and ideological commitment; many graduates joined the SS or the Wehrmacht and fought (and died) in the war. The elite-school programme was a serious investment in multi-generational regime maintenance — a thousand-year Reich required a leadership cadre.

Universities and academic life. Most German universities largely complied with Nazification. The book burnings of May 1933 were organised by students themselves, not imposed from above. Many academics happily adapted to Nazi requirements; some even contributed enthusiastically (Carl Schmitt in law; Martin Heidegger initially in philosophy). A minority resisted or emigrated, but academic resistance as a body was minimal.

The cost was real: German science, which had led the world in physics, chemistry and mathematics, lost many of its leading figures. Einstein, Max Born, Lise Meitner, Edward Teller, Otto Frisch and many others left Germany; many ended up working on the Allied atomic bomb project — a poetic justice the regime never appreciated.

The result. Between 1933 and 1939 the regime had transformed German education into an instrument of indoctrination:

• 97% of teachers in the Nazi teachers' league.
• Curricula Nazified across every subject.
• Jewish students excluded.
• New textbooks teaching race theory and antisemitism.
• Elite schools training the future leadership.
• Universities largely Nazified.
• Book burnings as public spectacle.

By 1939 a German child entering school could expect twelve years of regime-controlled education, often combined with Hitler Youth or BDM membership outside school. The captures were comprehensive — though, as in the Hitler Youth, never quite total.

Why youth resistance existed. Despite the enormous reach of the Hitler Youth and Nazi schools, some young Germans resisted. Their reasons were various:

• Religious objection: especially among Catholic families.
• Working-class resentment of middle-class HJ leadership.
• Cultural rejection: hatred of regimented uniformity, attraction to international culture.
• Family influence: parents passing on pre-Nazi values.
• Wartime disillusionment as the war turned bad and HJ became dangerous.

Two distinct youth-resistance groups deserve attention: the Edelweiss Pirates and the Swing Youth.

The Edelweiss Pirates (Edelweisspiraten). The Edelweiss Pirates were loose gangs of working-class teenagers in industrial Rhineland cities — Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen and Wuppertal — who refused to join Hitler Youth and developed their own counter-culture.

Features:

• Membership: working-class boys (and some girls) aged 14-17, often from poor districts.
• Symbol: the edelweiss flower as a badge (echoing pre-Nazi hiking culture).
• Activities: hiking, camping, swimming, singing forbidden songs — replacing Hitler Youth activities with their own version.
• Style: shaggy hair, casual clothing — deliberately anti-uniform.
• Songs: parodied Nazi songs, sang banned working-class anthems.
• Anti-HJ violence: Edelweiss Pirates beat up Hitler Youth patrols in their districts; HJ avoided certain neighbourhoods.
• Wartime escalation: as the war turned bad, some Pirates sheltered deserters, helped Allied airmen, distributed leaflets; a small minority became serious resisters.

Repression: by 1943-44 the Gestapo took the Pirates seriously. In November 1944 in Cologne, the Gestapo publicly hanged 13 members of the Cologne Edelweiss Pirates — including the 16-year-old Bartholomäus Schink — in retaliation for resistance activity. Other Pirates were sent to concentration camps.

The Pirates were neither a unified movement nor a political opposition — they were defiant teenagers — but their persistence shows the regime never fully captured working-class youth.

The Swing Youth (Swingjugend). The Swing Youth were a very different group — middle-class teenagers in Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt and other big cities who:

• Listened to American and British jazz — Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller — which the regime had banned as 'racially inferior' and 'degenerate' music.
• Wore long hair and Anglophile clothing: imitating British and American fashion.
• Danced 'swing' at private parties (the regime banned public swing dancing).
• Spoke English phrases in defiance of language nationalism.
• Rejected Hitler Youth conformity and racial ideology, though they were not generally politically active.

The Swing Youth were less violent than the Edelweiss Pirates but symbolically threatening — they refused the racial-cultural project at its core. Many were the children of middle-class families who had some access to forbidden music (parents' record collections, foreign-radio listening despite the ban).

Repression:

• Police raids on Swing parties from 1940 onwards.
• About 300 Swing Youth sent to youth concentration camps for 're-education' (the Moringen camp for boys, Uckermark for girls).
• A few core figures executed during the war.
• More commonly: harassment, dismissal from school, parental warnings.

The Swing Youth was not destroyed but harassed into a kind of submission. Its persistence — and the regime's anxiety about it — show that even Nazi cultural totalitarianism had cultural counter-currents.

Other youth nonconformity. Smaller and less visible youth nonconformity included:

• Religious youth groups that survived Nazi pressure (Catholic youth in some rural areas).
• Communist underground youth cells: rare, crushed when discovered.
• Individual diary-writing and private dissent (revealed by post-war memoirs).
• Refusal to join HJ: despite compulsion, perhaps 10-15% of eligible youth never joined or attended rarely.

The regime's response. By 1944 the regime had become more anxious about youth resistance:

• A special decree on youth criminality (October 1939) had already lowered the age of criminal responsibility.
• The Moringen (boys) and Uckermark (girls) youth concentration camps held thousands of teenagers labelled 'asocial', 'work-shy', or 'politically unreliable'.
• The November 1944 public hanging of the Cologne Pirates was meant to terrorise other young people.

These measures showed the regime taking youth resistance seriously, even as it remained a minority phenomenon.

The wider point. Youth resistance was a minority phenomenon — the great majority of young Germans were in the Hitler Youth, attended Nazified schools, and accepted what they were taught. But the persistence of Edelweiss Pirates and Swing Youth proves that Nazi indoctrination was never total. Even where the regime had complete institutional access to young Germans, some refused.

For history this matters in two ways. First, it qualifies the picture of total Nazi indoctrination — the regime had near-universal reach but not universal acceptance. Second, it demonstrates that resistance was always possible even at the height of Nazi power — a moral fact that complicates any post-war claim that 'we had no choice'. Some young Germans, with the same opportunities and pressures, made different choices. They paid for it; but they made it.

Indicators of success. By 1939 Nazi indoctrination of youth had achieved remarkable reach:

• ~98% of eligible Germans in Hitler Youth, BDM or junior branches.
• 97% of teachers in the Nazi Teachers' League.
• ~15% of professors purged from universities.
• New textbooks in every school.
• Elite schools training the future leadership cadre.

Most young Germans absorbed Nazi values: racial hierarchy, anti-Semitism, anti-communism, the Hitler cult, militarism, the Volksgemeinschaft. Many believed sincerely.

The wartime test confirmed real success:

• Millions of young Germans fought willingly for the regime, including in genocidal Wehrmacht and Einsatzgruppen operations.
• HJ boys manned anti-aircraft batteries from 1943; many fought to the death.
• The Volkssturm of October 1944 sent teenagers to die against Soviet armour; few mutinied or fled.
• SS recruits were disproportionately young Germans shaped by HJ.

In raw terms the regime had delivered a generation willing to kill and die for it — exactly Hitler's 1933 aim.

Indicators of limits. But the indoctrination had real limits:

• Edelweiss Pirates and Swing Youth show direct rejection of Nazi values by sub-groups.
• Catholic families retained alternative loyalties despite HJ pressure; rural Catholic youth often valued church above HJ.
• Working-class HJ membership was often resentful — class consciousness did not fully disappear under the Volksgemeinschaft.
• Some HJ leaders later resisted the regime — most famously Helmuth Hübener (Mormon HJ member in Hamburg) who distributed anti-Nazi leaflets and was guillotined in 1942 aged 17.
• Wartime disillusionment grew as the war turned bad; HJ enthusiasm declined from 1943.
• The Hitler myth weakened among young soldiers after Stalingrad and the bombings.

The picture is therefore broad reach with partial depth. Most young Germans accepted some Nazi values; most participated in the regime's organisations; many fought for it; but real Nazi fanatics were a minority, real resisters another minority, and the great majority were the shaped middle — complicit but not necessarily ideologically pure.

The post-war reckoning. After 1945 the Hitler Youth generation had to confront what they had become. Many had served as soldiers in atrocity-prone units; many had participated in the Volkssturm. The post-war response was complex:

• Denazification classified most former HJ members as 'followers' rather than fanatics.
• Many later denied the depth of their indoctrination or claimed they had been duped.
• A minority became anti-Nazi memorialists, working through their guilt publicly.
• The post-war German educational system emphasised democratic citizenship and historical memory — partly in reaction to what Nazi indoctrination had produced.

The Hitler Youth generation included writers, politicians and intellectuals who later led democratic Germany: Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), Günter Grass (Nobel laureate), and many others. The capacity of these individuals to grow into democratic adults shows that indoctrination, however thorough, did not fully determine outcomes.

Why indoctrination did not produce a permanent Nazi generation. Several reasons explain why even the most heavily indoctrinated generation did not remain Nazi after 1945:

• The regime collapsed: continued Nazi belief was no longer rewarded; the world that had made it credible was gone.
• Confrontation with the Holocaust: post-war revelations forced a moral reckoning, especially through the Nuremberg Trials and later media coverage.
• Allied reconstruction: denazification programmes, the new democratic constitution (Grundgesetz 1949), new schools and a new political culture.
• Generational shift: by the 1960s a new German youth was directly criticising parents' Nazi past (the '1968 generation').
• Individual moral capacity: many former HJ members had retained elements of conscience that re-emerged when the regime collapsed.

The wider point: Nazi indoctrination of youth was shockingly thorough but not permanent. The regime had achieved comprehensive institutional capture and produced a generation that fought for it; but it had not produced a generation that could not be reformed.

The verdict. Nazi indoctrination of youth was:

• Extraordinarily broad in reach (~98% in HJ/BDM by 1939; near-total school capture).
• Significantly successful in producing Nazi-aligned values and behaviour during the regime's lifetime.
• Catastrophically successful in producing young soldiers willing to fight and die for the regime (1944-45).
• Limited in depth by family, church and individual conscience.
• Not permanent — surviving Germans could and did become democrats after 1945.

The regime's youth project shows what modern totalitarianism can achieve when it has time and institutional access — and the limits even of comprehensive indoctrination. The result was alarming but not absolute. A generation could be shaped; but not utterly remade.

For the syllabus's purposes, the question 'how successful was Nazi indoctrination?' is best answered: strikingly successful at scale, partial in depth, and ultimately ended only with the regime itself. The Hitler Youth and BDM lasted twelve years; the moral consequences lasted decades.