The Kids Who Led the Resistance Movements Against the Nazis

History books often remember underground political groups like the Communist party or the Social Democrats, espionage groups like the Red Orchestra, or militaries from America and Britain as the primary resistance against Nazi forces. But you may be surprised to learn that, in fact, the most vocal and visible resistance came from young people, mainly teens and those in their early 20s, with the four largest and most prominent of these youths being The White Rose, the Edelweiss Pirates, the Swing Youth, and the Zazous. So let’s dive into their respective rather inspiring stories, shall we?

To begin with, The White Rose: “We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!” These are just a few of the powerful words published and distributed throughout Germany by a group of students at the University of Munich in an effort to incite their fellow countrymen to rebel against Nazi forces throughout 1942 and 1943.

As for notable figures in this group, perhaps the most famous of all were siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl. So what inspired them to rebel in this way?

In the 1930s, Hans and Sophie were both teenagers living in Germany, and, despite their parents trying to dissuade them, feeling a sense of pride and patriotism in their homeland, Hans joined the Hitler Youth at the age of 15 in 1933, and Sophie joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls) at the age of 12. At the time, Adolf Hitler was pounding the favorite drum of seemingly all politicians- making the country great again. And the Scholl children, like so many others, believed him. However, their parents, Robert and Magdalena Scholl, were far less enthusiastic, believing that the Nazi party would lead Germany to ruin, something that Robert wasn’t exactly shy about, stating of Hitler, “He’s expanding the armaments industry, and building barracks. Do you know where that’s all going to end?”

A pacifist who saw the writing on the wall, he further stated after the establishment of the first concentration camp in 1933, “This is war. War in the midst of peace and within our own people. War against the defenseless individual. War against human happiness and the freedom of its children. It is a frightful crime.”

Nevertheless, all his speeches were ignored by his 6 children, with Elisabeth Scholl, who by the way only died 3 years ago in 2020 at the age of 100, later stating, “We just dismissed it: he’s too old for this stuff, he doesn’t understand. My father had a pacifist conviction and he championed that. That certainly played a role in our education. But we were all excited in the Hitler youth in Ulm, sometimes even with the Nazi leadership.”

Inge Scholl would go, “…there was something else that drew us with mysterious power and swept us along: the closed ranks of marching youth with banners waving, eyes fixed straight ahead, keeping time to drumbeat and song. Was not this sense of fellowship overpowering? It is not surprising that all of us, Hans and Sophie and the others, joined the Hitler Youth? We entered into it with body and soul, and we could not understand why our father did not approve, why he was not happy and proud. On the contrary, he was quite displeased with us.”

Nevertheless, he allowed his children to do as they wished. As noted by Richard Hanser, author of A Noble Treason: The Story of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Revolt Against Hitler, “They could say whatever they wished, and they all had opinions. This was far from customary practice in German households, where, by long tradition, the authority of the father was seldom questioned or his statements challenged… His aversion to mindless nationalism was not only unchanged but stronger than before. In his dinner-table discussions with his children, he could interpret events for them with an insight unblurred by current prejudices or official pronouncements.”

A friend of the family, Susanne Hirzel goes on, “Sophie’s relationship with Robert Scholl held a depth of mutual understanding… it continued to exist despite the pain she caused her father by joining the [League of German Girls] – she could observe his distress when he watched Party displays on the cathedral square outside their Ulm window, or when he argued with Hans – her father had not tried to prevent her from joining. He knew that opponents to tyranny could never be created by force, only by personal experience.”

And experience is exactly what they got over the coming years, slowly becoming disillusioned with the Nazi Party as they observed their activities and what they were being taught in the Hitler Youth and League of German Girls. As you might imagine, the children of a man who believed strongly in the freedom to express your opinions and do as you believed in, didn’t exactly mesh with totalitarianism and unconditional subordination under Nazi rule, nor did family opinion of the Nazis improve when the teenage Hans was briefly arrested in 1937.

On this one, a few years previous, at the age of 16, Hans had had homosexual encounters with two individuals by the names of Ernest Reden and Rolf Futterknecht, the latter of which revealed this relationship to the authorities. Hans was also accused of being a member of a non-sanctioned youth organization, the Deutsche Jungenschaf. However, the judge in the case ultimately released him, stating Hans’ sexual dalliance with another boy was simply a, to quote, “youthful failing”, and that the rest was just an example of “youthful exuberance”. He also noted Hans’ otherwise exemplary conduct as a member of the Hitler Youth, even rising to squad leader, was sufficient to let him off this time and give him a clean slate.

Fast-forward to August of 1942, and Robert, like his son before him, likewise found himself arrested- in this case for telling his secretary, “The war! It is already lost. This Hitler is God’s scourge on mankind, and if the war doesn’t end soon, the Russians will be sitting in Berlin.”

As for his secretary, who turned him in for this, she would state she had nothing against Robert, “I liked him. I had to suppress my personal feelings. I was fond of Herr Scholl, and I was grateful to him. But when he said those things about the Führer and the war, I knew I couldn’t let it pass.”

As for Robert’s children, at this point Sophie was attending Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilians-University studying biology and philosophy, though during this particular summer was required to work at a metallurgical plant in Ulm as a part of compulsory work via the Reich Labour Service. This was her second stint in this, with her previous time working as a nursery teacher in the auxiliary war service.

As for Hans he was also studying at the same university, and likewise in this particular summer of their father’s arrest was required to do his duty for Hitler- in his case, serving his second stint on the front, formerly in France, and in this one as a part of Operation Barbossa. Serving beside him at this time were two of his medical student friends Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf.

Previous to this service time and shortly before the arrest of Hans’ father, Alexander and Hans, and a few others in their circle, had started to publish their political opinions, albeit anonymously, in the hopes of encouraging others to resist the Third Reich, with the small group writing the first four leaflets criticizing the regime in June and July of 1942. These were subsequently distributed in various ways, from leaving them random places, to even mailing them to countless people across Germany, including being sent to be distributed at other universities. They briefly paused such activities while deployed, but upon their return to school in October, doubled down and the group expanded considerably.

As for the contents of the groups’ leaflets, the first essay published by the White Rose noted rather prophetically, “Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes—crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure—reach the light of day?”

Going further with leaflet 2, they state, “Hitler himself wrote in an early edition of ‘his’ book – a book that is written in the most awful German I have ever read, despite which the nation of poets and thinkers have elevated it to the status of the Bible: ‘You would not believe how one must deceive a nation in order to rule it.’ If this cancerous growth in the German nation was not too noticeable in the early phases, then that is because there were enough forces for good at work to try to slow its growth. But as it grew larger and larger and finally ascended to power by means of one last vulgar corruption, the abscess erupted and defiled the whole body…. Now it is a question of mutually coming to our senses, of mutually keeping one another informed. We must always keep these things in mind and allow ourselves no rest until the last man is convinced of the utmost necessity of his battle against this system…. Since Poland was conquered, three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in that country in the most bestial manner imaginable. In this we see a terrible crime against the dignity of mankind, a crime that cannot be compared with any other in the history of mankind…. Jews are human beings too – it makes no difference what your opinion is regarding the Jewish question – … these crimes are being committed against human beings… Each man wishes to be acquitted of his complicity – everyone does so, then lies back down to sleep with a calm, clear conscience. But he may not acquit himself. Everyone is guilty, guilty, guilty!”

Not mincing words with their opinion of Hitler, by Leaflet 4 they wrote, “Every word that proceeds from Hitler’s mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war. And when he names the name of the Almighty in a most blasphemous manner, he means the almighty evil one, that fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the stinking maw of hell and his might is fundamentally reprobate. … There is no punishment on this earth that is adequate for the deeds of Hitler and his followers. Out of love for the generations to come, we must make an example [of them] after the conclusion of the war so that no one will ever have the slightest desire to attempt something similar.”

The fifth leaflet, “Appeal to All Germans”, came after the core members’ return from the front during Operation Barbarossa, at which point they became convinced Germany was shortly going to fall. Nearly 10,000 copies of this leaflet were distributed in January of 1943 throughout Germany, urging Germans to rise up and create a new state based on protecting individual’s rights. They wrote, “With mathe­mati­cal certainty, Hitler is leading the German nation to disaster. Hitler cannot win the war, he can only prolong it! His guilt and the guilt of his assistants have infinitely exceeded all measure. A just punishment grows ever closer!… Germans! Do you and your children wish to suffer the same fate as the Jews? Do you wish to be measured with the same measure as your seducers? Shall we forever be the most hated and rejected nation in all the world? No! Therefore, separate yourselves from the Na­tional Socialist subhumanity! Prove with your deeds that you think differently! … Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the protection of the individual citizen from the caprice of criminal, violent States – these are the bases of the new Europe.”

This brings us to the sixth and final leaflet, distributed on February 18th, 1943, a little over two weeks after the German defeat at Stalingrad. It was then that the White Rose movement became emboldened in the hopes that the crushing defeat on the Eastern front would inspire the mostly silent opponents of the Nazis within Germany to rise up. Their target audience on this one was their fellow students.

And so it was that on that February the 18th, the two Scholl siblings took a suitcase full of copies of the sixth leaflet, this one written by Professor Kurt Huber who had joined the group a couple months before in December, and brought it to their university, leaving stacks of the leaflets around for students to find.

The leaflet, in part stated, “The day of reckoning has come – the reckoning of German youth with the most abominable tyrant our people have ever been forced to endure. We grew up in a state in which all free expression of opinion is ruthlessly suppressed. The Hitler Youth, the SA, the SS, have tried to drug us, to regiment us in the most promising years of our lives. For us there is but one slogan: fight against the party! The name of Germany is dishonoured for all time if German youth does not finally rise, take revenge, smash its tormentors.”

After leaving stacks of the document around, Sophie decided to toss the remaining pamphlets off of a railing and into the central hall. Unfortunately, this action was spotted by a janitor and maintenance man, Nazi party member Jakob Schmid. He thus quickly reported the students to the Gestapo and they were promptly arrested.

Initially things didn’t seem so bad, however, Sophie had managed to get rid of any incriminating evidence before being caught and it was seemingly just Schmid’s word against theirs. However, Hans had not managed the same, and upon being searched, he was found in possession of a draft of a seventh leaflet, written by fellow White Rose member Christoph Probst. In a last ditch effort to destroy the evidence against Probst and himself, Hans tore the document and then attempted to eat it, but enough remained when they managed to stop him that the Gestapo was able to later match the handwriting to Probst after they discovered another letter from Probst in Hans’ lodgings.

While being interrogated, however, Hans attempted to play off Probst’ participation by stating, “With regards to political matters, I exercised influence on Probst. Without my influence, he undoubtedly would never have reached these conclusions. I have withheld this acknowledgment for so long because Probst’s wife is currently confined to bed with puerperal fever following the birth of their third child… I must say that I commissioned Probst to put his thoughts in writing a while ago. The last time we met – at the beginning of January 1943 – he gave me the piece of paper that I tore up today. I must expressly note that I said nothing to Probst about using his written notes for producing leaflets. I similarly assume that Probst was absolutely in the dark about the actions I had undertaken…”

The Gestapo weren’t buying it, however, and, on February the 20th when Probst went in to pick up his paycheck before intending to go see his wife, Herta, and their new daughter Katja, he was arrested. This was something his young wife was not initially informed of by the nurses, as she was extremely ill after giving birth to the couples’ third child, and the nurses didn’t want to upset her while in that state.

As for Sophie, Hans’ efforts to try to put all the blame on himself almost succeeded there, with the lead interrogator, Robert Mohr, initially convinced she was innocent. That is, until Sophie decided to do the same as her brother and try to protect other members of the group by putting the responsibility for the leaflets on herself, and admitting her actions freely. During her trial, Sophie also spoke directly to Chief Justice Roland Friesler, saying “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare to express themselves as we did.”

For his part, Justice Friesler, who by the way had the fun nickname of the “Hanging Judge” owing to his propensity to sentence the vast majority of the people brought into his courtroom at this time to death, stated during the trial that he didn’t understand how good kids who had once been members of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls, along with Probst once serving in the Luftwaffe, could have had their minds twisted so severely.

As for the Scholl parents, Robert and Magdalena were banned from the courtroom, but that didn’t stop them from trying to force their way in anyway, with a guard barring them stating, “You should have brought them up better.” That said, Robert did manage to get into the courtroom after begging the defense attorney, “Go to the president of the court and tell him that the father is here and he wants to defend his children!” Ultimately he was allowed to briefly speak to the judge… who promptly had him thrown out after. As he was dragged out, he reportedly shouted, “There is a higher justice! They will go down in history!”

And so it was that on February 22nd, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl, along with Christoph Probst, were sentenced to death, with the ruling in part stating “[We] find: That the accused have in time of war by means of leaflets called for the sabotage of the war effort and armaments and for the overthrow of the National Socialist way of life of our people, have propagated defeatist ideas, and have most vulgarly defamed the Führer, thereby giving aid to the enemy of the Reich and weakening the armed security of the nation. On this account they are to be punished by death. Their honor and rights as citizens are forfeited for all time.”

Despite executions normally being preceded by a 99 day buffer between sentencing and execution, in these three’s case, the sentences was ordered to be carried out that very same day, presumably to make sure no outside political unrest could build if anyone were to call for their release. On top of this, initially the executions were to be public hangings, but there was concern this could make the three political martyrs and further, again, have the potential to incite unrest. Thus, the executions were carried out in relative secret, with even the media being mostly mum about the specifics on this one, just noting the trio were degenerates and things of this nature.

Surprisingly for all involved, when the Scholl parents asked to be able to speak with their children before their executions, the request was granted around an hour before. As for Hans, he told them, “I have no hatred. I have put everything behind me.”

Sophie was brought to see them next, and when her mother broke down and lamented, “I’ll never see you come through the door again.” She responded, “Oh mother, after all, it’s only a few years’ more life I’ll miss.”

Within an hour of this, Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst were beheaded by guillotine at the Munich-Stadelheim prison. First Sophie, then Hans, and finally Christoph. Sophie and Christoph reportedly said nothing as the guillotine was dropped. But Hans shouted “es lebe die Freiheit!” (“Long live freedom.”)

As for Sophie’s last known words, her cellmate Else Gebel claims the last thing Sophie said to her was, “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause?… It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days? How many young, promising lives? What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt.”

Unfortunately, although we now recognize these individuals as exceptionally brave, heroic rebels in the fight against the Nazis, the public reaction at the time of their deaths was far different than Sophie allegedly anticipated. As soon as the siblings were executed, classmates at their university rallied at the school to condemn The White Rose’s actions, and Hans, Sophie, and all of their cohorts were considered “traitors to the Fatherland.” The man who had turned them in, Schmid, was subsequently given a reward of 3,000 Reichsmarks and a promotion. On top of that, a special ceremony was even organized in his honor at the University, with masses of students giving him a standing ovation at the event. (As a brief aside to cleanse our palette a bit over this sequence of injustices, after the war, Schmid was promptly himself arrested, and given a five year sentence in a labor camp, with his part in the deaths of the Scholls and Probst helping him get the official label of “Major Offender” and the labor camp sentence.)

In any event, two months later, on April 19th, 1943, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, Professor Kurt Huber, and 10 other White Rose members were also sentenced to death, and another 13 members were given prison sentences. Ultimately some members of their families were arrested, too, in the Nazi practice of assuming ‘guilt by relation,’ also known as ‘Sippenhaft.’ This included Robert Scholl, who was arrested five days after his children were killed and given an 18 month prison sentence, allegedly for listening to illegal radio broadcasts.

In any event, in his defense plea, Professor Huber said that The White Rose endorsed “fighting for the right […] to […] political self-determination.”

Noteworthy in Alexander’s case, his family managed to not only petition for clemency, but received a response from Hitler himself, who wrote to them simply, “I reject all petitions for mercy.” Alexander, who would ultimately be canonized as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, for his part, accepted his fate well, writing to his family, “I am going with the awareness that I followed my deepest convictions and the truth. This allows me to meet my hour of death with a conscience at peace. Think of the millions of young men who have lost their lives out on the field-their fate is the same as mine…In a few hours I will be in a better life, with my mother, and I will not forget you; I will ask God to grant you solace and peace.” He would also state to his lawyer, “I’m convinced that my life has to end now, early as it may seem, for I have fulfilled my life’s mission. I wouldn’t know what else I have to do on this earth.”

All that said, the harsh punishments dealt to these students backfired in a way, which is a slight silver lining. Word of the trials, executions, and imprisonments of these students made its way to Norway and Sweden in March of 1943, and reports began to spread throughout Scandinavia and Great Britain. The leaflets and the successive reports on them became an important resource in foreign reporting, including the sixth and final leaflet being smuggled out of the country by German lawyer Helmuth James Grad von Moltke.

Between July 3rd and July 25th, Britain’s Royal Air Force even dropped several million copies of this sixth leaflet over Berlin, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Köln, Münster, and Weimar. Further, on August 2nd, 1943, the International Student Assembly held a rally in New York in honor of the student resistance in Munich. Among the many notable speakers at the rally, was United States’ First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Of course, while these student’s efforts were not initially honored in their home nation, when the war was over, public opinion of The White Rose within Germany shifted drastically, with the first memorial held in Munich in their honor taking place in November of 1945, a mere 6 months after Germany surrendered. The students were commended for their attempts to awaken the German people from their lethargy, and today all over Germany, streets, squares, schools, and public institutions are named for various members of The White Rose. The Scholl’s father, Robert, also almost immediately became mayor of Ulm from 1945-1948, after being released from prison when Allied troops arrived in the region.

The aforementioned author of A Noble Treason, Richard Hanser, summed up: “…the Scholls and their friends represented the “other” Germany, the land of poets and thinkers, in contrast to the Germany that was reverting to barbarism and trying to take the world with it. […] Their actions made them enduring symbols of the struggle, universal and timeless, for the freedom of the human spirit wherever and whenever it is threatened.”

Not all youth-led Nazi rebellions were so political, however. In fact, most weren’t nearly as political as The White Rose, which brings us to our next group- The Edelweiss Pirates, initially composed of mostly 14-17 year olds who were perhaps the most stereotypical rebellious teens to ever rebellious teen. By the end of the 1930s, when the Nazi party was in full force, there were several gangs made up of former Hitler Youth who now opposed the ideologies they had learned there. Regardless of what they called themselves or where they were from, many of these gangs fell under the umbrella of an unofficial group called the “Edelweiss Pirates,” so named for the edelweiss flower badge many resistance members wore. In a time when gathering in groups and participating in extracurricular activities outside of the approved Hitler Youth activities was criminalized, the Edelweiss Pirates essentially said ‘to hell with that’ and rebelled by doing whatever they wanted to do, including declaring an unofficial war on the Hitler Youth, attacking them at every opportunity.

As one Nazi official stated, “Every child knows who the… 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.”

Not just beating up their fellow teens, because all of the work in Nazi Germany was in some way done in service to the Nazi party, the Edelweiss Pirates refused to work. If they did turn up to their jobs, they didn’t engage or make any effort to be productive. Therefore, these gangs garnered a reputation for being lazy, useless, slackers, and parasites, leeching off of the government and giving nothing in return.

They saw their friends and family go to war in order to defend the restrictive and oppressive rules laid forth by the Third Reich, and they wanted no part of it. One teenager, and

Edelweiss Pirate, said: “Everything the [Hitler Youth] preaches is a fraud. I know this for certain, because everything I had to say in the [Hitler Youth] myself was a fraud.” Apart from their recognizable pins, the Pirates also often had long hair and wore colorful clothing. They played and sang songs by Jewish composers and watched broadcasted anti-Nazi messages. Groups of Edelweiss Pirates gathered in cafes, parks, or out on the streets. They took hikes and road bikes to the country to go on illegal camping trips. They played pranks and performed acts of sabotage, they painted graffiti and passed around anti-Nazi propaganda. As time went on, these acts became bolder, and far more serious, however, with some Pirates raiding army camps to obtain firearms and explosives to use to attack Nazi officials. Some even derailed train cars full of ammunition in order to supply adult resistance groups with explosives. A Pirate in France named Jean Julich noted how he and his friends threw bricks through munitions factory windows and poured sugar water into the gas tanks of Nazi vehicles. Some Pirates also stole food and supplies from stores or freight trains.

As you might expect, some of this did not go unpunished, though in many cases their extreme youth helped shield some from being executed at least. For example, the aforementioned Jean Julich was arrested at the age of 15, and subsequently imprisoned and tortured for four months. In contrast, on November 10th, 1944, his slightly older friend Barthel Schink, whom he was arrested alongside, was publicly hanged in Cologne, France, accused of killing five people, though he was given no trial. “The cause of Barthel Shink’s hanging was his membership in the Edelweiss Pirates,” Julich explained, adding, “He planned to blow up a Gestapo building [but he] never killed anyone.” Of the thirteen people hanged on that November day, Schink was the youngest, put to death shortly before his seventeenth birthday.

Moving on from the Edelweiss Pirates, the next group we’ll focus on are the Swing Youth, or “Swing Jugend”, comprised mostly of 14-21 year olds. These were the young people across Germany and Europe who rebelled via another classic of youthful rebellion tactics- via their music and dance.

Jazz music and dancing became popularized in the Roaring 20s, and spread quickly throughout the Western world, Germany included. However, in Nazi Germany, broadcasting jazz music became banned. That said, despite swing music being a derivative of jazz, it was never entirely outlawed, so many could get away with listening to and dancing to swing. However, if the swing music was known to come from a Jewish person, like the King of Swing Benny Goodman, a known Jew living in New York City, it was considered degenerate, and anyone caught listening to it could face severe consequences, with no doubt their elderly persecutors lamenting the noise kids call music these days.

As you might imagine though, swing music was nearly impossible to regulate completely, so swing and jazz alike continued to reach the teens and young people of Nazi Germany. In fact, one way some of the Swing Jugend were able to discover new songs and new dance moves was by going to the movie theater where anti-American propaganda reels were played. Here, German teens could watch Americans doing the lindy hop, a hugely popular dance at the time, helping to stay up-to-date with the latest dance moves.

One sub-group of the Swing Youth was the Hot Club of Frankfurt. This was a jazz band who basically just wanted to play their music. Its founders were fourteen year old Horst Lippmann and twenty-one year old Hans Otto Jung, and they, along with a few of their friends, played jazz music in the back of Lippmann’s parents’ restaurant. Someone kept a lookout at all times, and if the Gestapo were nearby, the band would switch to music that was more Nazi acceptable.

Hans Otto Jung recalled later, “Jazz meant more than just music to us during the war. […] The Nazis did not like jazz and wanted to suppress it. That made us love it even more.” Although the Hot Club focused more on playing jazz music rather than swing, some of their members intersected with the Swing Youth, and their values were very similar. At their core, they, like the Swing Youth, celebrated non-Aryan culture and defied the rules imposed by the SS through their music.

Despite not being strictly against the law at first, the swing scene was still deeply frowned upon by Nazi authorities. One of the biggest issues Nazis had with these groups was their acceptance of Jewish teenagers; however, this was never an intentionally political move on the part of the Swing Youth. They just wanted to dance and play music with their friends. The German-American journalist Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi, a biracial swing youth in Hamburg at the time, noted, “The Nazis hated our guts. Any chance they had, they would kick us in the pants or make life miserable for us. There was nothing ideological about us. We were nonpolitical, just anti Nazi regimentation.”

But as time went on, it didn’t matter why the Swing Youth rebelled against the status quo — the Gestapo began to consider any rebellion as a direct political attack against Nazi rule. One trademark of the Swing Youth that particularly irked the Gestapo was their greeting “Swing Heil,” a play on the traditional Nazi greeting “Sieg Heil”, meaning “Hail Victory,” thus “Swing Heil” meant “Hail Swing.” As you can imagine, this was practically blasphemy to Hitler’s supporters.

A 1944 Reich Ministry of Justice report on the Swing Youth would sum up the Nazi brass view of them, “The most striking example among these groups is the so-called Swing Youth, on whom there have been reports from various parts of the Reich. They began in Hamburg. These groups are motivated by the desire to have a good time and have increasingly assumed a character bordering on the criminal-antisocial. Even before the war boys and girls from Hamburg from the socially privileged classes joined groups, wearing strikingly casual clothing and became fans of English music [i.e. American music] and dance. At the turn of the year 1939/1940 the Flottbeck group organized dances which were attended by 5–6000 young people and which were marked by an uninhibited indulgence in swing. After the ban on public dances they organized dances at home, which were marked above all by sexual promiscuity… The hunger for English dance music and for their own dance bands led to break-ins in shops selling musical instruments. The greed to participate in what appeared to them to be a stylish life in clubs, bars, cafes and house balls suppressed any positive attitude towards responding to the needs of the time. They were unimpressed by the performance of our Wehrmacht; those killed in action were sometimes held to ridicule. An attitude of hostility to the war is clearly apparent… The members dress in clothes which imitate English fashions. Thus, they often wear pleated jackets in tartan designs and carry umbrellas. As a badge they wear a colored dress-shirt button in their lapels. They regard Englishmen as the highest form of human development. A false conception of freedom leads them into opposition to the Hitler Youth.”

And so it was that in 1940, the Swing Youth’s lifestyle was officially criminalized. A police ordinance was decreed under the guise of “protecting” young people. Over the next five and a half years, the Gestapo conducted raids wherever Swing Youth were caught gathering.

And this is when the real acts of resistance among the Swing Youth kicked off. Teens and young adults viewed these laws as a severe infringement on their freedoms and personal life. One thing perhaps universal across all cultures is you don’t mess with kids’ music if you don’t want them to get really, really pissed off. While their actions didn’t start as a political movement, the Nazis had, in fact, turned it into one. So these kids continued listening to their illegal music and dancing their forbidden dances, Nazis be damned.

Word of the Swing Youth’s rebellion against Nazi regime reached the desk of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, and in January of 1942, he issued instructions to his officers that

“all the ringleaders … and all teachers with enemy views who are encouraging the swing youth are to be assigned to a concentration camp.”

And so it was that by December of 1942 nearly 400 people were arrested for their participation in swing culture, with roughly ninety percent of those arrested younger than twenty-one years old. Although most were not convicted, nearly all spent weeks in jail and faced rather brutal interrogations by Gestapo officials who hoped to uncover more illicit swing rings. When the kids were sent home, their jazz records were confiscated, and many of them were forced to have their hair cut short as punishment. This short hair was a way to easily identify anyone who had stepped out of line, and made it harder for them to get away with criminal activity later on. Some of the Swing Youth were even sent to the front lines, and Jewish swing kids endured the Holocaust. Because of this, many Swing Boys and Girls died in the name of musical freedom.

This now brings us to the final group we’ll touch on today- the Zazous, a group that shared similarities — and in fact was likely greatly influenced by — the Swing Youth and the Edelweiss Pirates. Although what the Zazous were actually rebelling against was the Vichy regime (which was the official government in France from 1940 to 1945), half of the territory was occupied by Nazi Germany and the Vichy regime actually worked in collaboration with the German officers, so any resistance against the Vichy regime would also be a direct snub at Nazi authorities.

This group of young rebels derived their name from the song “Zah Zuh Zah” by the American musician Cab Calloway. Calloway was also known for wearing ‘zoot suits,’ which became another identifying feature of the Zazous.

As for their activities, the Zazous gathered in cafes, clubs, parties, cinemas, and private homes in order to openly discuss their distaste for politics and the military state they were now governed by. They further dressed in apparel that directly opposed what was deemed appropriate at the time. Rather than the neat, tailor trim clothing that was mainstream due to government-endorsed fabric rationing regulations, the Zazous wore oversized apparel which usually contained an exorbitant amount of pockets, belts, and other embellishments. They got their extra material by stealing or black market means, or by upcycling some of the items they already owned. Another instruction issued by the government at the time pertained to hair — barber shops were encouraged to collect hair trimmings which could be used to make things like slippers. So in retaliation, the Zazous wore their hair long and generally refused to step foot in a barber shop.

Further, when the regime began forcing homosexuals to wear pink badges to identify themselves similar to Jews wearing the yellow star of David badges, the Zazous made up their own badges labeled with “Zazou.”

Speaking of gay individuals, one young French Zazou, seventeen year old Pierre Seel, along with his boyfriend, were deported to a German concentration camp for being homosexual. Noteworthy here is that homosexuality had not been illegal in France for almost a century and a half at this point, nor did the Vichy Regime officially recriminalize it, though persecution of homosexuals under that government was rampant. As for Seel, in 1939 his watch had been stolen from a club frequented by gay men, and when he reported the theft to the police, they began investigating his reasons for being associated with that club, subsequently having his name added to the list of homosexuals by the police.

Two years later the Gestapo were cracking down on suspected homosexuals in the region and he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. While there, he was tortured, including being sodomized with a piece of wood. Even more brutally, he was also forced to watch his boyfriend’s execution, via being publicly stripped naked and then devoured by attack dogs. Because Pierre was Catholic and the authorities there later deemed that he had been successfully “re-educated”, he was ultimately released from the concentration camp for ‘good behavior,’ and was able to return to France. That said, shortly thereafter he was forcibly conscripted and made to fight alongside the Germans on the Eastern front.

Not just supportive of gay individuals, another example of the Zazou’s showing solidarity and rebelling against the norms was their representation of black culture. Under the guise of showing support for the black musicians they admired, some Zazous would dress up in blackface. While this act might be misinterpreted today, at the time it was meant as a demonstration of solidarity, and to annoy the Nazis.

In the end, while their methods may have differed, and they certainly weren’t alone, The White Rose, The Edelweiss Pirates, the Swing Youth, and the Zazous all had one thing in common: standing up for their and other’s freedom to be able to live the lives the way they wanted to live despite being under the rule of arguably one of the most oppressive regimes in modern history.

As White Rose survivor Jürgen Wittenstein would state, “The government—or rather, the party—controlled everything: the news media, arms, police, the armed forces, the judiciary system, communications, travel, all levels of education from kindergarten to universities, all cultural and religious institutions. Political indoctrination started at a very early age, and continued by means of the Hitler Youth with the ultimate goal of complete mind control. Children were exhorted in school to denounce even their own parents for derogatory remarks about Hitler or Nazi ideology.”

Nevertheless, these students resisted anyway, in what small ways they could. And while some of them paid for this with their lives, as Robert Scholl so prophetically put with regards to the price his own children paid in their resistance, “There is a higher justice. They will go down in history.” Nailed it again Robert.

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