'Swing Kids' Movie Trailer (1993), Christian Bale, Kenneth Branagh: SwingJugend in Nazi Germany [View all]

Wiki. The Swing Youth (German: Swingjugend) were a group 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 the National-Socialist ideology, especially the Hitler Youth (German: Hitlerjugend).

Name: The name Swingjugend was a parody of the numerous youth groups that were organised by the Nazis, such as the Hitlerjugend. The youth also referred to themselves as Swings or Swingheinis ('Swingity'); members were called 'Swing-Boy', 'Swing-Girl' or 'Old-Hot-Boy'.

Counter-culture: During the Nazi regime, all the youth (those aged 10 to 17) in Germany who were considered to be Aryan were encouraged to join the Hitler Youth and the League of German Maidens. The leaders of these organisations realized they had to offer some attraction in the area of social dancing to recruit members. Instead of adopting the popular swing dance (because it was viewed as degenerate and tied to the 'damnable jazz'), they resorted to the new German community dances. This proved to be unsuccessful, and instead of embracing the Hitler Youth pastimes, city girls and boys crowded the swing dance joints. This seemed to be the case particularly in the town of Hamburg, where the swing scene was huge.

The Swing Youth used their love of swing and jazz music to create their sub-culture with one former Swing Kid Frederich Ritzel saying in a 1985 interview: "Everything for us was a world of great longing, Western life, democracy – everything was connected – and connected through jazz".

.. This group consisted mostly of teens and young adults from the upper-class homes of Hamburg. Their objectives were originally more self-indulgent in nature, being privileged with wealth and German heritage, they spent their money on expensive clothing and liquor. The British musicologist Ralph Willett wrote that the Swing Youth wanted to emulate "the cool, languid demeanour" of British and American film stars. When the restrictions on jazz became law, their pastime would become a political statement, setting them in clear opposition to the Nazi Party. German musicologist Guido Fackler described the Swingjugend embrace of American music and the "English style" in clothing as reflecting the fact that:

The Swingjugend rejected the Nazi state, above all because of its ideology and uniformity, its militarism, the 'Führer principle' and the leveling Volksgemeinschaft (people's community). They experienced a massive restriction of their personal freedom. They rebelled against all this with jazz and swing, which stood for a love of life, self-determination, non-conformism, freedom, independence, liberalism, and internationalism...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Kids_(1993_film)