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And a Happy New Year from ARPLAN

For Christmas this year, ARPLAN gifts you something simple: a 1936 poem by an anonymous National Socialist from Auslandsdeutsche journal Die Brücke, which weaves National Socialist sentiment with the Christmas spirit and its Germanic traditions. The poem concerns a young “Hitler girl” who rejects the materialism and commercialization of the holiday with her gifting of traditional handicrafts, and who expresses a selfless purity and altruism through her concern and love for her family and her Führer. To allay her concerns, the poet teaches her that she can express her Christmas spirit best by extending it from her immediate family to the family of her nation – and thus the modern Winterhilfswerk program, in which Germans organized en masse to provide donations to the underprivileged, becomes analogous to the ancient ‘Germanic custom’ of the giving of gifts around the Christmas tree.

A HITLER GIRL’S CHRISTMAS WORRIES

A Hitler girl recently stood before me,

And said: “Now, soon there will drift across the German land,

Our Christmas celebrations.

I’ve already prepared for my favorites;

Handicrafts for my parents and aunts,

Grandparents and other relatives

They are lying in the drawer, wrapped up,

And with Christmas cards appropriately decorated.

I don’t think I’ve forgotten anyone,

Because all my loved ones will see the measure,

Of how wholeheartedly grateful I am to them