"The members of the Swing youth oppose today's Germany and its police, the Party and its policy, the Hitlerjugend, work and military service, and are opposed, or at least indifferent, to the ongoing war. They see the mechanisms of National Socialism as a "mass obligation". The greatest adventure of all times leaves them indifferent; much to the contrary, they long for everything that is not German, but English."
-From a Paper of the "Youth Guidance" office
“The sight of some three hundred dancing people thrashing about was absolutely horrid. No one can describe the dancing because no one danced normally. Indeed, this was the naughtiest of Swing dancing that can be imagined. Sometimes two boys danced with one juvenile girl, and at other times several couples locked themselves into a mass embrace and just hopped around. Many couples hopped together while holding hands and bent over wildly, so that their long hair flew across their faces and whipped their thighs as they spun. You had to worry about the sanity of some of them. The scenes that happened on the dance floor were fit for a lunatic asylum. Even the most hysterical and primitive Black jungle warrior war-dance would have paled in comparison to what happened here. Everyone jumped about like crazy while they mumbled English musical gibberish. The Band increased the tempo faster by the minute. No member of the band was sitting, because they were all getting hotter and wilder as they also succumbed to the jungle beat on the stage. You often saw boys dancing together with other boys, always with two cigarettes dangling from each corner of the mouth.”
-Hitlerjugend Patrol Report on a Hamburg Swing Dance, August 2, 1940.
Hans was born in Germany in the city of Ulm. Unlike his father and his sister Sophie, Hans did not develop his sense of opposition to the Nazi regime until he completed his service in the Hitler Youth.
During his time in the Hitler Youth, Hans grew to hate the militaristic order of Nazism and their overt suppression of individual freedoms, which Hans valued deeply. Upon leaving the Hitler Youth, Hans entered the University of Munich where he studied medicine.
While there, he met a group of peers that shared in his antagonism towards a National Socialist State. With the assistance of Kurt Huber, a Professor of philosophy at the University of Munich, Hans and his friends founded the anti-Nazi resistance group called the White Rose.
The group practiced passive resistance to the Nazi regime by distributing leaflets (six in total) that encouraged others to join the opposition to the Nazis. Unfortunately in February of 1943, Hans and his sister Sophie were found distributing leaflets on the University's campus and were immediately arrested by the Gestapo.
They were later charged and found guilty for high treason and he and his sister were executed by hanging on February 22nd 1943.
