continuing to read Kater's Hitler Youth ...

Professor Kater has put forward an extraordinary proposition:

Girls did not possess the same degree of herd instinct that characterized the males, which motivated them to join groups, gang up on others, and eventually made them complicit in crimes such as assault and murder. Girls had constituted only one-third of the total membership in the Weimar youth movement, which suggests a greater tendency to maintain their individuality rather than submerging it in a mass group.
(72)

While I certainly would like to believe that, by virtue of having two X chromosomes, I can count on my inherent rugged individualism to protect me against being enthralled by fascist demagoguery and mob rule, I can think of several other things that that information about female involvement in the Weimar youth movement might plausibly suggest, none of them a grossly overgeneralizing piece of sexual essentialism.

Harrumph.