“It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak—“child hero” was the phrase generally used—had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police.” (24).
The children of 1984 are used as a separate police force to monitor the actions of the people around them, including their parents. Theses “child heroes” are almost an exact duplication of the, Nazi Germany controlled, Hitler Youth, which was the youth organization that was controlled by Germany to create followers of Hitler. The Hitler Youth was used to create spies, children were also used as infantry to fight in world war II. According to Germany’s Final Measures in World War Two, “In 1943, it provided basic infantry training to boys over the age of 14, while 15-year-olds were set to work in anti-aircraft batteries” (Wilmot 21). The use of children during World War II was against the paradigm to United States citizens, but was exceedingly common in other military forces, like the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. Both the Party and Nazi Germany use similar tactics of control in their respective governments, which is what Orwell was trying to make people realize, so he could successfully satirize the government of