Youth Opposition

• Although attendance at Hitler Youth meetings was compulsory by 1939, not all youngsters liked the increasing restriction of freedom of choice and alternative youth groups emerged.
• The ‘Edelweiss pirates’ emerged in working class districts in German cities by the late 1930s. Groups included ‘the travelling dudes’ of Essen or the ‘Navajos’ of Cologne.
• There were boys and girls involved, but disproportionately more boys who resisted the military discipline of the Hitler Youth, enjoyed wearing their hair longer, American style clothing and telling anti-Nazi jokes.
• ‘Swing Youth’ were mainly teenage groups located in big Northern German cities like Berlin, Hamburg and Kiel and tended to come from middle class families.
• They were inspired by banned American music, such as the ‘swing’ music of Glenn Miller or the Jazz music of Louis Armstrong. Attendance at illegal dances could number up to 6,000.
• Their opposition was limited to anti-Nazi graffiti and jokes up to 1939 and their opposition was cultural rather than political. Their numbers were small; there were 2,000 estimated Edelweiss Pirates in 1939, compared to 8 million in the Hitler Youth.