Founding of the Edelweiss Pirates

The Edelweiss Pirates formed at the end of the 1930s in western Germany. In the article “Inside Hitler’s Germany,” authors Matthew Hughes and Chris Mann explain, “Their uniform was a badge of edelweiss flowers with a checked shirt, dark short trousers and white socks, and soon a variety of groups called themselves “Edelweiss Pirates” (Hughes and Mann 61).

There were many subgroups of the Edelweiss Pirates including the Navajos, centered in Cologne, the Kittelbach Pirates of Oberhausen and Dusseldorf, and the Roving Dudes of Essen. The different groups were associated with their individual regions; however, the edelweiss badge identified and unified them as Edelweiss Pirates.

In addition, the Edelweiss Pirates were typically younger than the Swing Youths, as they were aged 14 to 18. They were mostly a non-political group primarily from the working class, unlike the aristocratic Swing Youths. Similar to the Swings, the Pirates were looking to defy Hitler’s order and the regulations imposed by the Nazi regime. The Pirates maintained an oppositional attitude “towards what they saw as the increasingly paramilitary obligations of the Hitler Youth” (Welch 63).

Many of these members had left school at a young age and were too young for the army but too mature for the Hitler youth. They wanted to spend the salaries they earned on whatever they pleased, and not participate in the sham collectivism of the Hitler Youth (Burleigh and Wippermann 222). In addition, the Pirates used many symbols to express themselves and their views. Their style of clothing, appearance, and type of songs all were symbols that were banned by the Nazi party.

According to one Nazi official in 1941, “Every child knows who the Kittelbach Pirates are. ‘They are everywhere; there are more of them than there are Hitler Youth…They beat up the patrols…They never take no for an answer,’” (Hughes and Mann 61). Thus, unlike the Swing Youth and the White Rose, the Pirates were often hostile to the Hitler Youth and used more direct and aggressive resistance methods to combat the limitations placed upon them by the Nazi party.