Heroic Picture of the Day - Israeli Commemoration

Israel commemorates the Edelweiss Pirates at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, honoring them as “Righteous Among the Nations”.  The photograph below was taken from the "Hall of Names" at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.

Quote by "Youth Guidance"

"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

Quote by Hitlerjugend Patrol

“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.

Heroic Picture of the Day - White Rose

A Biography: Kurt Huber (1893-1943)

Kurt Huber was born in Switzerland to German parents in 1893.  Ensuing his father's death he moved to Munich where he became a Professor of philosophy in 1920.  Huber found the National Socialist movement's ideologies appalling and after meeting Hans and Alexander at a lecture he decided to join in the resistance endeavors of the White Rose. 

Professor Huber was the sole author of the sixth and final leaflet that was intended to target students, the leaflet called for the "flight against the party!" (Henderson 3).  However, the sixth leaflet never entered into circulation because Hans and Sophie, while distributing the leaflet, were caught and arrested by the Gestapo.

It was not long after the Scholl's arrest that the Gestapo learned of Huber's participation in the White Rose, and on July 13th, 1943 he was stripped of his citizenship and executed for crimes of high treason and attempts to overthrow the regime.  His legacy is honored with a square in his name located across the way from the University of Munich.  

The Swing Youth and the Effectiveness of their Resistance

The Swing resisted the Nazis by emulating both the physical appearances and liberal ideologies of America and Britain, which were not only Nazi Germany’s enemies, but symbolized the very freedoms the Nazis detested. Even at their core, the Swings represented a segregated aristocratic sector of German society, one that allowed for mostly rich kids to take part in, directly counteracting the “classless society” the Nazis attempted to promote throughout Germany. While the Swing Youth were not active politically or violently against the Nazis, their cultural image was in direct opposition to the Nazis, causing this rift between the two ends of the social extremes, and effectively threatening the Nazis containment of German youth.

The Swing Youth epitomized the kind of counter-culture the Nazis despised. The Swing’s taste in music, dance, and clothes not only clashed with traditionalist Germany, but also directly opposed the Nazis agenda. Nazi Germany saw the Swings as both a hostile and disrespectable group. The Nazis claimed that, “They do not appreciate the success of our forces in the field, and even disparage the ultimate sacrifice of our men in uniform. ‘What follows next is the inevitable and clearly discernable hostility toward any military service of their own,’” (Neuhaus, 53). In the eyes of the Nazis, the Swing’s idolization of American and British cultural ideals bordered on treason since Nazi Germany was the antithesis of the freedoms their enemies boasted.

In addition, unlike the Nazis, who tried to present National Socialism as a classless society, the Swing Youth was made up of mostly aristocratic Germans. Since the Nazis often used the phrase “classless society” as part of their brainwashing rhetoric, the Swing Youth were immediately seen as opposition to their quest to unify an impressionable Germany. In “No Nazi Party; Youth Rebels of the Third Reich,” Thomas Neuhaus states that, “The Swing Youth were accused of ignoring the welfare of German society as a whole in favor of their own individual well-being,” (Neuhaus, 54). This “selfish” quality of the Swings presented a cultural hurdle for the Nazis, since the Nazis took matters of dissention seriously.

Further, by 1940, the Swing Youth became such an ideological problem for the Nazis that they began to send Swings to concentration camps. Both Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the SS and the head of security service, respectively, announced the detainment and imprisonment of Swing Youth members for being “hostile towards the Third Reich,” (Neuhaus, 55). Many Swings were imprisoned and killed for resisting the Nazis rigid control over social culture in Germany.

Thus, the Swings were effective in that they challenged the Nazis claim over the youth of Germany. The Swing Youth successfully offered young Germans the opportunity to cultural freedoms, to the point where the authorities in Hamburg held a meeting about “the growing decline of the youth.” While many Swings were killed in concentration camps, they succeeded to taint Hitler’s dream of a uniform and traditionalist Germany youth.

Edelweiss Pirates (Navajos) Song

Des Hitlers Zwang, der macht uns klein,

(Hitler's compulsion, it makes us small)

noch liegen wir in Ketten.

(still, we're bound in chains)

Doch einmal werden wir wieder frei,

(But one day we'll be free again)

wir werden die Ketten schon brechen.

(We'll smash through the chains)

Denn unsere Fäuste, die sind hart,

(For our fists, they are hard)

ja--und die Messer sitzen los,

(Yes, and the knives are attached loosely)

für die Freiheit der Jugend,

(For the freedom of Youth)

kämpfen Navajos.

(Navajos are struggling)