It always makes me sneer when this is brought up. 3 days of some guy trying to create and manage (in very minor ways) and organization (that ultimately did nothing of consequence) consisting of way more people (teenagers) than he ever managed (actually, can you even honestly say a school teacher is adept at managing even 30 people? the frame within which they operate is largely set from above, they will do what they always do as long, as a teacher does what all the other teacher do), then on the 4th day dramatically exclaiming "I created a monster! and you all are part of it, and never even noticed!" isn't really much of an experiment. Then everybody accepts "the results of an experiment", because it supports the existing political narrative and it's such a nice story overall.<p>This is way, way over-hyped. Every 14 year old Tik-Tok channel owner with large enough community (especially if it ever managed to create new "viral" challenge or any other meme) has more to say about community management, than this guy.<p>However, even though I dismiss this so called "experiment", I think there are some things that could be pointed out about the German Reich in regards to it. Both are to point out it is really not as surprising that people followed the leader as we usually pretend it is.<p>First one is about how "normal people were inclined to support horrible things". Well, even though Hitler was extremely charismatic figure, the thing is — it wasn't really him who made people believe something weird, it's actually rather that his politics were quite populistic and he just said what almost everybody in the country was thinking to begin with. Even antisemitism wasn't something Hitler or his party introduced, every other person at the time was antisemitic, and even many higher-up party members attribute their commited antisemitism to reading Henry Ford books and not "Mein Kampf".<p>Second is actually about the teens. Yes, Hitlerjugend was a political organisation, but if you actually think about it, it was just giving teenagers what they want more than anything in the world: a sense of unity. Most of them don't get it today, and they actually suffer from that. In a sense, participating in an organisation like that is the most beautiful thing that can happen to a teen. We shouldn't forget that it was actually a very nice way for kids to spend their free time (which they have way too much of), with all these hikes and games and traditional boyscout activities. This alone would make it quite a prolific youth-organisation, as it really did these things well. But I actually think sense of unity it gave them is way, way more important, since every other teen struggles (and, in modern society, usually fails) to find something like that.