The Swing Youth were a youth counterculture of jazz and swing lovers in Germany formed in Hamburg in 1939. Primarily active in Hamburg and Berlin, they were composed of 14- to 21-year-old Germans, mostly middle or upper-class students, but also including some in the working class. They admired the "American way of life", defining themselves in swing music and opposing Nazism, especially the Hitler Youth. They loosely structured themselves into “clubs” with names such as the Harlem Club, the OK Gang, and the Hot Club. This underground subculture, distinctly nonconformist with a focus on African-American music, was active in the German youth scene. Despite being largely apolitical and unstructured, the Swing Youth were targeted and, in some cases, repressed by the Nazi government.
Monument to the "Weiße Rose" in front of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Prisoners at Ravensbrück concentration camp
The League of German Girls or the Band of German Maidens was the girls' wing of the Nazi Party youth movement, the Hitler Youth. It was the only legal female youth organization in Nazi Germany.
Members of the BDM, 1935
Hitler Youth and BDM in China, 1935
Berlin girls of the BDM, haymaking, 1939
BDM, gymnastics performance, 1941