[Special Issue] Youth Organization in Post-War Germany: A Primary Analysis Exploring Antifascism in the Kriegskinder Generation
Elena Senecal
In 1946, school-aged children in West Berlin were asked to record their opinions on post-war Germany in their German Language exams. Named kriegskinder, or children of war, many of them suffered loss of family and identity in the regime transition of fascism to a formation of democracy [1]. A teenaged girl named Gisela said in her exam, ‘“The collapse of the old Reich has shaken me deeply and let me keep doubting the world.”’ [2]
Re-education of adolescents and teenagers in postwar West Germany became an important part of American-directed integration of the German state into a capitalistic democracy. None of the four Allied powers performed re-education the same way, but all were focused on integrating German youth into a post-Nazi society and emphasizing young people’s guilt in the crimes committed during the Third Reich [3]. Denazifying youth through education is a useful tool in analyzing the circumstances of the immediate postwar period in occupied Germany, but does not detail the personal experiences of youth in the transition period between Nazism and democracy in the Western zones and communism in the East. This essay will explore through both primary and secondary sources the emotional experiences of Germans under the age of twenty while facing their own deradicalization in both East and West zones, arguing that adolescents and teens struggled with forming a new identity that was not linked to National Socialism, but managed through their own efforts to reconcile with generational trauma and separating themselves from fascism in the post-war era.
The Zero Hour and Former Hitler Youth
The term used to define the immediate post-World War Two years is defined as the Stunde Null, or the ‘Zero Hour’, where the main focus for occupying forces in Germany was to cleanse the state and population of Nazism on an institutional and individual level [4]. In this phase of German history, younger generations were expected to bend to the burgeoning education systems of the new, occupied governments that held them responsible for a large part of the destruction that occurred under Nazi rule [5]. Opposed to this American focus on insisting the responsibility of young people for grassroots violence in Nazi Germany, many teenagers and young adults pointed to the older generation of Germans who held state power during the Third Reich, calling their elders ‘guilty of us’ for making organizations like Hitler Youth (HJ) and the League of German Girls (BDM) mandatory for children over the age of ten [6]. Generational gaps in current issues are not unique to postwar Germany, but this points to a large, personal rift between youth and older people around them, both relatives and authority figures.
Generational infighting about whose guilt weighs the most does not discount the conformity of youth during the Third Reich. Nazism emboldened the concept of youth as the ideology’s guiding light to glory, the essence of National Socialism is rooted in youthful resurgence against the elders, who brought the order of liberal democracy and socialism to Europe [7]. With the interchangeability between ‘Aryan’ German and the young person, some adults began to express concern over the indoctrination of youth into Nazism due to the embellishment of their role in Third Reich social engineering. Victor Klemporer, a Jewish survivor who lived in Germany, wrote
‘The thinking and feeling of this generation has been poisoned from their ABC’s on, it has never learned, seen, or inhaled anything but Nazism; in itself it is completely free of guilt, but at the same time it is utterly immersed in the original sin of Nazism and utterly saturated with it” [8]
Contrary to the theory of child radicalization surviving the war, an emotional state of historical denial among the German public is also discussed when looking at the Hitler Youth generation. Studies on the psychological ‘forgetting’ of the Third Reich focus on adults in West Germany, but experiences that parents endure often spread to the mindsets of their children in the form of generational trauma. In the immediate post-war, Germans faced a paradox of needing to acknowledge the consequences of Nazism by the order of the international community but also coming to terms with the mental harm caused from the war’s destruction, occupation and unconditional surrender [9]. Scholars in the 1950s, such as Hannah Arendt, responded to the German guilt paradox by stating that there was no show of guilt, rather a repression of responsibility for the Holocaust in favour of historical silence during the transition of becoming a western-aligned democracy [10].
Concerns that former Hitler Youth were retaining fascist ideology or an emotional inability to mourn and take responsibility at the same time does not encompass the individual experience of young people outside of adult analysis, but what is for certain is that there existed a cultural youth crisis in the first few years after the War. Youth groups formed out of the importance for younger generations were dismantled during the occupation and, as Fisher states, an ‘abandonment of youth as a unique and celebrated form of life.’ [11] By the end of the war, state-funded groups had been mandatory by 1936, 98% of German children and teens were involved in Hitler Youth or the BDM [12]. External expectations on German youth to accept the horrific actions of their older counterparts yet being separated from social organization creates a cycle where children feel a similar disillusion that their parents were experiencing as adults.
Youth Response in West Germany
Information on the experience of young people is often analyzed through the primary recordings of adults watching youth exist in post-war West Germany. But the study of children from the minds of adults does not provide accounts of internal experience within the kriegskinder generation. This section of the essay will explore different primary sources to show the mindset of young people during American occupation, specifically the readiness by teenagers and young adults to deNazify themselves without losing a sense of social community within their generation.
The dissolution of youth groups by Allied forces introduces the first primary source, an advertisement for a new, German youth group focusing on bringing together former members of the Hitler Youth, BDM and other Nazi organizations into a non-fascist social group. The organization, founded in November, 1946, was named Deutsche Jugendring, or the German Youth Ring, that aimed to de-radicalize German youth through leisure activities and educational work [13]. The source is a leaflet describing the intentions of the group, issuing,
‘a unanimous appeal to join together in Youth Rings in the spirit of democracy everywhere in Germany, in city and countryside and in all zones, to work together with the goal of establishing the German Youth Ring. German youth, out of a sense of the highest human and political responsibility toward the youth of all nations, affirms its commitment to democracy, social justice, and the community of nations.” [14]
The leaflet provides a sense of hope for young readers, emphasizing that membership is intended to cross the boundaries of ideology and geography within the zones of occupation so that every young German can contribute to a new cultural identity in a post-Nazi Germany. The leaflet outwardly addresses former members of the Hitler Youth and BDM, urging them to, ‘make yourselves available to the newly formed youth leagues and associations. However, we do ask that you dispense with the creation of purely traditional groups’ [15]. In a short advertisement, the German Youth Ring tries to appeal to all younger people who were affected by the Nazi regime but want to start changing the way their generation interacts socially and politically. This document demonstrates an active effort by young people to come to terms with the post-war consequences of the Third Reich, taking hold of their political responsibility to maintain a free, democratic state [16].
Youth did not always respond to post-war youth organizations, but were as important to understanding the move to antifascist, western-aligned young people rebuilding the cultural map of West Germany. Some student-age adults, who would have been the prime age for Hitler Youth and BDM membership, purposely rebelled against joining groups due to immense distrust over politically-aligned youth groups, even progressive democratic ones like the German Youth Ring. These groups often formed their own, loose cliques similar to casual friend groups instead of organized, community action, and spent time at theatres, concerts and art galleries, pictured below [17]. Mentioning these groups is important because when they attended movies, they often preferred American films, showing a distinct move towards American culture, an idea antithetical to Nazism because of US occupation [18].
Youth Movement in East Germany
At the end of World War Two, the German state was split between four zones of occupation, with the Soviet Union possessing territory in the East. In Berlin, also split four ways, youth culture grew in a similar fashion to the West but with a socialist agenda. Youth Organizations like the western German Youth Ring were also created in East Germany in the form of the Freie Deutsche Jugend or the Free German Youth. This was founded in February 1946, with the priority of ‘rebuilding our homeland on an antifascist-democratic basis…’ [19].The message is the same between the West and East German groups, but there is a distinct difference in language and doctrine. In the Free German Youth document, there remains a nationalistic tone in the commitment to denazification. Following the group’s statement of intent, the document lays out specific points of focus, including, ‘The active participation of all boys and girls in the rebuilding of our fatherland.’ [20]
The nationalistic implications of the Free German Youth agenda is not by accident. In all four zones, Allied occupation governments all had their own forms of denazification and re-educating German children and teens, the Eastern, communist side heavily politicized their actions in youth control. Adult communist officials were concerned about forming an official youth group with antifascist sentiments but politically endorsed by the communist government [21]. Concentrated focus of communist officials against actions of young Germans makes individual testimony from members of communist youth movements less available than the mix of conformity and non-conformity in the West.
The political, militaristic nature of the Free German Youth is exemplified in a photo example, taken several years after the group’s formation in October, 1949, where young men and women carry East German and organizational flags in a formal march [22]. Scholars observed that the ‘Stalinization’ of East German Youth prevented any democratic intention associated with the Free German Youth was never to be, because the group was under the total control of the communist party [23]. Some scholars attached the ‘Stalinist’ youth group idea with the concept of a communist ‘master plan’ to exert control over younger German citizens in a step-by-step agenda, but this is not the case. Control over East German youth within their organizations was centralized by communist leadership, but rather than a detailed map of what youth movements were supposed to do, the Soviet control over youth groups was out of political instability and that young East Germans were majority anti-communist [24].
Youth groups and education are decent examples of youth action against fascism in post-war Germany, and act as a vector for younger people to voice their concerns with coping after the end of Nazism. As seen at the beginning of this essay with testimony from German Language exams, schools in both East German districts in Berlin used the personal emotions of students as a mode for re-education. The Penzlaur Berg was one of the rare school-led projects that aimed to see in a structured way how students were feeling about the chaotic changes happening in the late 1940s [25]. These essays are important for understanding the feelings of children and teens in divided Germany, but it should be stated that some of the write-ups were influenced by parents and teachers. Material written for teachers in different classrooms produced multiple results, but the most common feature were the comments on ‘rubble women’, female German citizens responsible for cleaning up Berlin’s bombing debris [26]. Public association with women and the reconstruction of Germany became a key component in myth-building in East Germany, away from the chauvinism of National Socialism for all generations, but school essays show the rubble women’s salience in young minds cultivating a new identity [27].
A second essay demonstrates youth action in school-age adolescents is from twelve year old Walter Giese, who suggested that students would feel more comfortable in the new education system if corporal punishment was removed from school policy [28]. Walter went on in his essay, stating that more classrooms needed to be built so students could have a wider variety of classes, demanding a solution from school authorities [29]. While not actively mentioning fascism in his assignment, Walter’s efforts to improve the lives of children he attends classes with shows an inspiring move to better the new, East German state he lives in.
Walter’s essay also shows the poor conditions these children were working in when getting educated under the new curriculum. Many school buildings around Berlin were destroyed by bombing, some rooms and corridors unusable. Another student reported in her work that some of her teachers were living in the schoolhouses because their homes had been lost in raids and served as shelters or infirmaries for Polish refugees [30].
Not all schools in East Germany suffered these deficiences, many students and parents relaying that schools were a safe, warm place for children who would have been playing in bombed out buildings and debris while parents tried to reconstruct their own homes [31]. Educational institutions in all German zones were integral to the emotional healing of children because schools were safe but also provided structure in a society full of chaos and confusion and allowing youth to obtain social community without the use of National Socialism to bring teens and children together [32].
What these sources show is an important, grassroots effort by youth to deNazify their generational community while the older generation controls the formation of a new Germany without the consultation of youth. Younger people were left with an emotional lack of community that was so heavily emphasized in the Nazi period, and the generational trauma and responsibility for the genocidal consequences of the Third Reich. As seen in this essay, it is clear that a groups of student-aged Germans were making an effort to distance themselves from Germany’s fascist past and taking political accountability for shaping their country into a democratic, modern state.
Personal Reflection of Youth Action in Present-Day Europe
As seen in this essay, a key aspect of promoting political and social representation is through the actions of youth and young adult groups. On a trip to Vienna with other undergraduate and graduate students, I had the opportunity to meet and interact with KSŠŠD, a student’s association in Vienna promoting Slovenian representation in Austria and anti-fascist activism. The KSŠŠD has been an integral group in cultivating and preserving Slovenien historical memory for a century as of 2023, older than the post-war youth groups mentioned in this essay. Their work is especially important in present-day Europe as right-wing populism grows more popular in government and among voters.
Much like the Deutsche Jugendring aimed to de-radicalize others in the initial years after the war, the KSŠŠD uses planned activities and social gathering spots to promote Slovenian representation and antifascist efforts. The KSŠŠD offers language courses to preserve the Slovenian language in Austria, manages an independent library for people to learn about Slovenian history and organizes social events like festivals. While the goals of the two groups are different as the KSŠŠD focuses on Slovenian memory politics in addition to activism, there is a similar effort being made to use youth action to spread a progressive, inclusive message about history, culture and civil society.
Works cited
Blessing, Benita. (2007) “Methodological Considerations: Using Student Essays as Historical Sources. The Example of Post-War Germany,” Paedagogica Historica 43(6). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230701722663.
Brockman, Stephen. German Literary Culture at the Zero Hour. Suffolk:Boydell & Brewer, 2004.
Caldwell, Peter C. & Hanshew, Karrin. 2018. Germany Since 1945: Politics, Culture, and Society. London: Bloomsbury.
Fisher, Jaimey. Disciplining Germany: Youth, Reeducation, and Reconstruction after the Second World War. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2007.
German History in Documents and Images. The German Youth Ring: Programmatic Leaflet (November 19, 1946). URL: https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=4486.
German History in Documents and Images. Young People in Front of a Cinema in Hamburg-St. Pauli (1948). URL: https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2611.
German History in Documents and Images. Demonstration by the Free German Youth at the Marienborn Zonal Border Crossing, Saxony-Anhalt (October 1, 1949). URL: https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2604.
McDougall, Alan. Youth Politics in Eastern Germany: The Free German Youth Movement, 1946-1968. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Priem, Karin. 2016. “Seeing, Hearing, Reading, Writing, Speaking and Things: On Silences, Senses and Emotions During the ‘Zero Hour’ in Germany,” Paedagogica Historica 52 (3): 286-299. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2016.1151057.
Sahrakorpi, Tiia & Watton, Cherish. “Coming of Age in Postwar Germany: Young Women’s Search for New Emotional Subjectivities, 1946-50,” Journal of Social History 56, no. 1 (2022) 168-194. DOI: https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/10.1093/jsh/shac002.
Notes
[1] Tiia Sahrakorpi & Cherish Watton. “Coming of Age in Postwar Germany: Young Women’s Search for New Emotional Subjectivities, 1946-50,” Journal of Social History 56, no. 1 (2022) 168.
[2] Sahrakorpi & Watton, “Coming of Age in Postwar Germany,” 168.
[3] Ibid., 169.
[4] Karin Priem.“Seeing, Hearing, Reading, Writing, Speaking and Things: On Silences, Senses and Emotions During the ‘Zero Hour’ in Germany,” Paedagogica Historica 52, no. 3 (February, 2016) 287.
[5] Sahrakorpi & Watton, “Coming of Age in Postwar Germany,” 170.
[6] Stephen Brockman. German Literary Culture at the Zero Hour (Suffolk:Boydell & Brewer, 2004) 171.
[7] Brockman. German Literary Culture at the Zero Hour, 172.
[8] Ibid., 173, taken from Klemperer, Victor. Kultur: Erwägungen nach dem Zusammenbruch des Nazismus (Berlin: Neues Leben, 1946).
[9] Jaimey Fisher. Disciplining Germany: Youth, Reeducation, and Reconstruction after the Second World War (Detroit: Wayne State University, 2007) 6.
[10] Fisher. Disciplining Germany, 6.
[11] Ibid.,4.
[12] Ibid., 4.
[13] German History in Documents and Images. The German Youth Ring: Programmatic Leaflet (November 19, 1946). URL: https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=4486.
[14] German History in Documents and Images. The German Youth Ring: Programmatic Leaflet (November 19, 1946).
[15] German History in Documents and Images. The German Youth Ring: Programmatic Leaflet (November 19, 1946).
[16] Ibid.
[17] German History in Documents and Images. Young People in Front of a Cinema in Hamburg-St. Pauli (1948). URL: https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2611.
[18]German History in Documents and Images. Young People in Front of a Cinema in Hamburg-St. Pauli (1948).
[19] German History in Documents and Images. Founding Resolution of the Free German Youth [Freie Deutsche Jugend] (February 26, 1946). URL: https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=4484.
[20] German History in Documents and Images. Founding Resolution of the Free German Youth [Freie Deutsche Jugend] (February 26, 1946).
[21] Alan McDougall. Youth Politics in Eastern Germany: The Free German Youth Movement, 1946-1968 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 2.
[22] German History in Documents and Images. Demonstration by the Free German Youth at the Marienborn Zonal Border Crossing, Saxony-Anhalt (October 1, 1949). URL: https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2604.
[23] McDougall. Youth Politics in Eastern Germany, 3.
[24] McDougall. Youth Politics in Eastern Germany, 5.
[25] Benita Blessing. “Methodological Considerations: Using Student Essays as Historical Sources. The Example of Post-War Germany,” Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 6 (2007) 761.
[26] Peter C. Caldwell & Karrin Hanshew. Germany Since 1945: Politics, Culture, and Society (London:Bloomsbury, 2018) 19.
[27] Blessing. “Methodological Considerations: Using Student Essays as Historical Sources. The Example of Post-War Germany,” 769.
[28] Ibid., 770.
[29] Ibid., 770.
[30] Blessing. “Methodological Considerations: Using Student Essays as Historical Sources. The Example of Post-War Germany,” 770.
[31] Ibid., 772.
[32]Ibid., 772.
Elena Senecal
Picture: Hitlerjugend Aufmarsch. Glückliche Jugend Marsch zum Führer (Reichsparteitag Nürnberg, c. 1935) on Wikimedia Commons. No known copyright restrictions. No changes have been made.
