Many of them left school at age 14 - which was common for working-class teens at the time - in order to sever ties with the Nazis, and some dropped out of the Youth. Aged 14 to 17, these teenagers rejected the Hitler Youth’s and League of German Girls’ dark aspects: restrictions on teenagers’ fun and freedom of thought, and training kids for military service. The Edelweiss Pirates, or Edelweißpiraten, was a collective of local anti-Nazi resistance groups founded largely in western Germany. “These boys and girls enter our organizations 10 years of age, and often for the first time get a little fresh air after four years of the Young Folk they go on to the Hitler Youth, where we have them for another four years….And even if they are still not complete National Socialists, they go to Labor Service and are smoothed out there for another six, seven months….And whatever class consciousness or social status might still be left…the Wehrmacht will take care of that.” Who Were The Edelweiss Pirates? It soon became clear that the goal of the Hitler Youth was to indoctrinate Germany’s young people with Hitler’s aggressive, Nazi worldview.Īs Adolf Hitler himself described it in 1938:

Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images Hitler Youth members burn books at an unspecified location.

Although the Youth initially focused on standard activities such as camping, sports, and games, it increasingly became militarized, training its young boys for armed combat. Four years later, the Nazis established an equivalent organization for teenage girls called the Bund deutscher Mädel, or League of German Girls.Īt its height, the Hitler Youth had eight million members, making it the largest youth organization in the world. Formed in 1922 as the Youth League of the Nazi Party, it was renamed the Hitlerjugend, or Hitler Youth, in 1926 and was comprised of German boys aged 14 to 18. To understand the Pirates, we first have to understand what they were up against. The Hitler YouthĪccording to Sally Rogow of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Center, the Edelweiss Pirates was “one of the largest youth groups who refused to participate in Nazi youth activities.” Hailing from working-class backgrounds, the Edelweiss Pirates resisted Nazism in any way they could - all before their 18th birthdays. They saw themselves as the opposite of the infamous Hitler Youth, rejecting their paramilitary structure, Nazi ideology, and gender segregation. Much like the tenacious edelweiss flower clinging to the crags of Austria’s Alps that the group was named after, these young Germans resisted Nazi indoctrination. 1938.ĭespite leaving behind little information on their exploits, a group of German teenagers known as the Edelweiss Pirates played an important role in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The Pirates emerged in western Germany out of the German Youth Movement of the late 1930s in response to the strict regimentation of the Hitler Youth. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images A group of Edelweiss Pirates in Nazi Germany.

Two young pirates clipt art