From Hitler’s Youth to the British child soldier: how the martial regulation of children normalises and legitimises war

The martial regulation of children and childhood is a longstanding feature of warfare and war preparedness, from youth paramilitary organisations to the enlistment of child soldiers. Yet, with some notable exceptions, the role and political expectations of children in conditions of war has has received limited attention in IR, especially beyond the Global South. In this chapter I examine two different modes of the martial regulation of children through a discursive examination of archival resources on the Hitler Youth and of more recent material around the ongoing recruitment of children by the British Armed Forces. I draw in these cases because British identity continues to rely heavily on the Nazi enemy other for its constitution. However, as my analysis shows, despite these cases being historically, culturally and ideologically divergent, some salient tropes around children, childhood and militarism clearly emerge from both. More specifically, both cases show how children’s roles in warfare can come to normalise and legitimise mass violence. Thus, in revealing how children make war possible, symbolically and literally, these cases enable me to argue that more consideration of the martial regulation of children should feature in our analyses of war and militarism in IR