Militant Anti-Fascism. M. Testa
away from illegal political organizations, and remain unknown to the authorities. The enforced tedium of the Hitler Youth with its uniforms, daft songs and marching about was obviously anathema to disenfranchised and more independently minded youths. The compulsory sublimation of sexual appetites—boys separate from girls—whilst fetishizing flags and lederhosen was understandably repellent to many. Smoking cigarettes, getting prematurely drunk, listening to contemporary music and sexual cavorting has always been the prerogative of youth, much more than callisthenics and accordions—as has a natural anti-authoritarianism. The worldview that the Hitler Youth was putting forward was likewise unappetising to many with its focus on war as a natural state, hailing to the leader, and the subordination of individuality. It was inevitable that some youths would rebel.
Reports of brawls with members of the Hitler Youth (especially the disciplinary patrols), of assaults on uniformed personnel, and of jeers and insults aimed at Nazi dignitaries are legion.
—Detley J.K. Peukert in Inside Nazi Germany
Throughout the 1930s, reports of gangs or ‘cliques’ proliferated. They were often comprised of runaways who were avoiding the Hitler Youth or compulsory work schemes: Berlin police patrols would ‘periodically round up whole lorry-loads of youth.… There is a section of youth that wants the romantic life. Bundles of trashy literature have been found in small caves. Apprentices too are disappearing from home much more frequently and are drifting in the hurly-burly of the big cities’.84 It was a common phenomenon and one that worried the fascist establishment who warned that ‘a serious risk of political, moral and criminal breakdown of youth must be said to exist.’85 The spontaneity and informality of these gangs made them difficult to monitor and, as time went on, they became increasingly widespread, militant, and violent.
Get out your cudgels and come into town
And smash the skulls of the bosses in brown.
—Pirate song
The Edelweiss Pirates, the Kittelbach Pirates and the Navajos were all informal gangs that indulged in the standard deviations of sex, drinking, dodging work and avoiding the tedious adult authoritarians. The Edelweiss Pirates started at the end of the 1930s, wore distinctive outfits and emblems, and spent time escaping to the relative freedom of the countryside to party at weekends. Other gangs soon grew to prominence and were tied to a particular area: ‘groups from the whole region met up, pitched their tents, sang, talked and together “clobbered” Hitler Youth patrols doing their rounds’.86 In 1941, one mining instructor reported, ‘They beat up the patrols, because there are so many of them. They never take no for an answer. They don’t go to work either, they are always down by the canal.’87 Compulsive work was viewed negatively by the Pirates and ‘something to be evaded as much as possible by “skiving off,” idling and causing trouble’.88 Work was war work, and the Nazis knew that absence directly affected production; the Pirates could exploit this.
According to Mason,
The few direct armed attacks mounted by German resistance fighters against the hated Gestapo were the achievement of scattered gangs of ‘Edelweiss pirates’: groups of young people, utterly cut off from the inherited organizations and values of the working class movement, who in the last years of the war spontaneously developed into violent anti-fascist assault troops.89
On their rural sojourns, the Pirate gangs could relax, away from the pressure of everyday life, ‘though always on the watch for Hitler Youth patrols, whom they either sought to avoid, or taunted and fell upon with relish’.90 Although not ideologically aligned, the natural anti-authoritarianism of the Pirates began to take on political meaning: everything the Pirates wanted—freedom of assembly, sex, drink, music, travel—was seriously curtailed under the Nazis. If we are defined by our desires, then the Pirates were anti-Nazi by definition. In some cities, once the air-raid sirens had gone off and civilians sought shelter, many young people met up to continue the same kind of activities as at the weekend, unsupervised. These were moments of temporary freedom.
Other gangs were similar to the Pirates, only more politicised from the outset. In Leipzig between 1937 and 1938, working-class youth had been much more influenced by the socialist and communist climate of their communities and took pleasure in ‘their acts of provocation against the Hitler Youth.’ They were given to ‘speculations about the day when the violent overthrow of the regime would come’.91 Provocation was a political tactic at street level for the irate Pirates as they ‘looked for a new hangout in the reddest part of town…there were often massive clashes, and we were exposed to many a danger’.92
When the knives flash
And the Polish coffins whizz past
And the Edelweiss Pirates attack!
—Martyn Housden in Resistance and Conformity in the Third Reich
The Pirates were hardly simple street-corner gangs, and punishment for membership was severe. In 1940, the Gestapo in Cologne arrested 130 Navajos; elsewhere other Pirates were hanged; and in Düsseldorf, 739 were arrested. Also in Düsseldorf, the Edelweiss Pirates battled so frequently with Hitler Youth that in 1942 the latter reported no-go areas. In 1944, the ring-leaders of one Cologne gang were publicly hanged. The Gestapo raided the gangs on Himmler’s orders and arrested hundreds of youths who ended up in special courts, but runaways and deserters increased the ranks of the Pirates as the war went on. In Cologne in 1945, there were reports of twenty groups over one-hundred-strong who raided food stores and attacked and killed fascists. As the war neared its end, some Pirates joined with the resistance, along with anti-Nazi deserters and escapees: ‘They got supplies by making armed raids on military depots, made direct assaults on Nazis, and took part in quasi-partisan fighting. Indeed the chief of the Cologne Gestapo fell victim to one of these attacks.’93
Students also engaged in acts of resistance. Hans and Sophie Scholl organized a small group to distribute anti-fascist leaflets at Munich University, whose alumni mainly consisted of, according to Dulles, ‘girls, cripples and Nazi “student leaders”’.94 They became known as the White Rose group and built a propaganda network in nearby cities as well. The principal protagonists, the Scholls, were caught and executed, and the bravery of these young anti-fascists has been commemorated by a Berlin school and a film. Others fared slightly better on arrest: Anton Saefkow was a member of the communist resistance and a friend of Ernst Thaelmann who was arrested in 1933 and almost tortured to death. Saefkow then spent the next ten years in a camp until he escaped and became a leading figure in the anti-fascist underground.
Make sure you’re really casual, singing or whistling English hits all the time, absolutely smashed and always surrounded by really amazing women.
—Detley J.K. Peukert in Inside Nazi Germany
The Swing Youth were upper-middle-class jazz enthusiasts given over to eccentric dress, a heightened appreciation of the trombone, and resistance through rhythm. Jazz was strictly verboten under Hitler who detested ‘negro music’ and its African-American origins, so adherence to it became a political statement. They faced opposition from the Hitler Youth who reported their ‘long hair flopping into the face…they all “jitterbugged” on the stage like wild creatures. Several boys could be observed dancing together, always with two cigarettes in their mouths’.95 Not only was the music viewed as outlandish but so were the clothes of the Swing Youth: ‘English sports jackets, shoes with thick light crepe soles, showy scarves, Anthony Eden hats, an umbrella on the arm whatever the weather’.96
KPD vs. SPD
One of the most contentious issues in Germany was the relationship between the KPD and the SPD. Both had nothing to gain from the electoral success of the Nazis other than arrest, torture, imprisonment, and death. In 1922, the combined vote of the SPD and KPD was 52.3 percent, which (although dropping later due to rising unemployment, shortage of food and bourgeois reaction) was surely an indication of the potential of left-wing and anti-fascist sentiment. The KPD was opposed to the SPD because the communists were agitating for a revolution, whereas the socialists were in government and had sanctioned state violence to suppress revolutionary activity. It was difficult for KPD to side with the reformist SPD when the socialists had used the police to break strikes and attack workers. During the