The Bund Deutscher Mdel had its origins already in the 1920s, in the first "Mdchenschaften" or "Mdchengruppen", also

known as "Schwesternschaften der Hitler-Jugend", Sisterhood of the Hitler [2] Youth. In 1930 it was founded as the female branch of the Hitler Youth movement. Its full title was "Bund Deutscher Mdel in der Hitler-Jugend" (League of German Girls in the Hitler Youth). In the final electioneering campaigns of 1932, Hitler inaugurated it with a mass meeting featuring the [3] League; on election eve, the League and Hitler Youth staged "evening of entertainment." It did not attract a mass following until the Nazis came to power in January 1933, but grew rapidly thereafter, until membership was made compulsory for eligible girls between 10 and 18 in 1939. Members had [4] to be ethnic Germans, German citizens, and free of hereditary diseases. Girls had to be 10 years of age to enter this League. The BDM used campfire romanticism, summer camps, folklorism, tradition, and sport to educate girls within the National Socialist belief system, and to train them for their roles in German society: [9] wife, mother, and homemaker. Their Home Evenings revolved about domestic training, but [10] Saturdays involved strenuous outdoor training. This was praised as ensuring health, which would [11] enable them to serve their Volk and country. The "home evenings" -- ideally to be conducted in [12] specially built homesalso included world view training, with instruction in history. This would include learning the Horst Wessel song, the Nazi holidays, about Hitler Youth martyrs, and facts [13] about their locality and Germans throughout the world. Physical educations included running, the [13] long jump, somersaulting, tightrope walking, rout-marching, and swimming. The importance of self-sacrifice for Germany was heavily emphasized; a Jewish woman, reflecting on her longing to join the League of German Girls, concluded that it had been the admonishment for self-sacrifice [14] that had drawn her most. The League was particularly regarded as instructing girls to avoid Rassenschande or racial defilement, which was treated with particular importance for young [15] females. The outbreak of war altered the role of the BDM, though not as radically as it did the role of the boys in the HJ, who were to be fed into the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) or the National Labor Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst, RAD) as soon as they turned 18. The BDM helped the war effort in many ways. Younger girls collected donations of money, as well as goods such as clothing or old newspapers for the Winter Relief and other Nazi charitable organizations. Many groups, particularly BDM choirs and musical groups, visited wounded soldiers at hospitals or sent care packages to the front.
[citation needed] [26]

Girls knitted socks, grew gardens, and engaged in similar tasks.

[27]

Girls also helped stage the celebrations after the capitulation of France.

The older girls volunteered as nurses' aides at hospitals, or to help at train stations where wounded soldiers or refugees needed a hand. After 1943, as Allied air attacks on German cities increased, many BDM girls went into paramilitary and military services where they served as Flak Helpers, signals auxiliaries, searchlight operators, and office staff. Unlike male HJs, BDM girls took little part in the actual fighting or operation of weaponry, although some Flak Helferinnen operated antiaircraft guns.
[citation needed]

Many older girls, with Hitler Youth were sent to Poland as part of the Germanisation efforts.
[28]

These girls, along with Hitler Youth, were first to oversee the eviction

of Poles to make room for new settlers and ensure they did not take much from their homes, as furniture and the like were to be left there for the settlers.
[28] [6]

Their task were then to educate ethnic

Germans, either living in Poland orresettled there from the Baltic states, according to German ways. This included instruction in the German language, as many spoke only Polish or
[29] [28]

Russian.

They also had to organize the younger ones into the League.
[30]

Because many Hitler

Youth leaders were drafted into the military, the task of organizing the boys into Hitler Youth also fell heavily on the League. household.
[30]

They were also to provide help on the farm and in the

As the only contact with German authorities, they were often requested to help with
[31]

the occupation authorities.,

and they put on various entertainments such as songfests to

[32]

encourage the down-spirited new settlers.

Some members were sent to the colony

[33]

of Hegewald for such efforts even when they had to receive gas masks and soldier escorts.