Association of German Youth

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Bund Deutscher Jugend (BDJ) was an association founded in 1950 with a strictly anti-communist orientation and partly paramilitary organization in the Federal Republic of Germany . It was supported by the US government as a stay-behind organization for a potential attack on the Soviet Union . At the beginning of 1953, the BDJ, under the code name LCPROWL, and its armed branch, the Technical Service, were banned as an unconstitutional organization because of “participation in a secret organization” ( partisan training ).

history

The BDJ was founded on June 23, 1950 in Frankfurt am Main , which was also the headquarters of the organization. The founder and chief thinker, and later also chairman of the BDJ, was the doctor and publicist Paul Lüth (1921–1986).

In April 1951, the Technical Service was founded on the programmatic basis of the partisan writings by Paul Lüth as a secret sub-organization of the BDJ with the aim of building an armed resistance movement against Bolshevism . This happened at a time when there was no Bundeswehr and there was great fear in the West that in the shadow of the Korean War the Soviet Union could launch an attack on Western Europe.

The background to its establishment is that US intelligence services sought to set up units in Germany and Eastern Europe in the first post-war years of the Second World War , which would offer resistance in the event of an attack by the Soviet Union on West Germany or other Western European states and prevent a Communist takeover in these countries. The American secret services CIC and CIA used the BDJ as an opportunity for undercover guerrilla training. Many of the members of the BDJ were veterans of the Wehrmacht or the Waffen SS .

Content profile

The BDJ's statutes and official program revealed little about actual political goals. Traditional right-wing extremist thought patterns were deliberately kept out of the program and self-image. The BDJ derived the political guidelines and guidelines for daily politics from Paul Lüth's 78-page confidential memorandum Bürger und Partisan . According to Lüth, since 1939 the world has been “fighting against totalitarianism”.

“In the end it should turn out that there is no reason to fear that Stalin might succeed, which so many others before him did not, who were by no means below him in spirit and energy. Resistance is always possible, and in the end the dictatorship is still defeated "

- Paul Lüth : 1951, p. 7

According to Lüth, there was not only a threat of an open, military attack by the Soviet Union on the West, but above all a communist infiltration of the western states: "Stalin is among us." Resistance actions are therefore necessary in peacetime in order to weaken the defenses by communists and to prevent their allies. In his memorandum, Paul Lüth committed to conspiratorial partisan activity as the preferred form of resistance and propagated conspiratorial methods of underground political activity. In this context, for example, the infiltration of existing parties was discussed. In a second memorandum from Lüth, which appeared in 1951 as a “strictly confidential memorandum” for the officials of the BDJ, he focused on purely strategic questions, on “the purely technical means of defending against Bolshevism”.

In contrast to the preparation of the functionaries from citizens to partisans, a different language and self-presentation was presented to the outside world. The magazines of the BDJ were shaped by the self-image of the autonomous youth movement of the 1950s, which referred to the pre-war traditions of the Bündische Jugend and the Wandervogel . This dual strategy - preparation for underground work internally and presentation as part of the bourgeois youth movement externally - was only possible because of the tight hierarchical organization. According to the judgment of Herbert Römer, the BDJ regional leader Hamburg / Schleswig-Holstein and the last federal chairman, “the majority of the members had no idea” of the conspiratorial approach.

On the occasion of the election successes of the Socialist Reich Party (SRP) appeared in mid-1952 under the title “… and tomorrow the whole world! Neo-Fascism and the Neo-Fascists “an official criticism and discussion of right-wing extremism. The main argument here was totalitarianism, by equating fascism and Bolshevism. In the endeavor to neutralize the Federal Republic, the BDJ saw the identity of interests between the SRP and the Soviet Union, an endeavor which hindered the incorporation of the Federal Republic into the Western alliance. The “anti-fascism” of the BDJ was therefore not based on a real rejection of fascist ideology, but on the interests of its American financiers and backers.

Even if the BDJ did not have an openly right-wing extremist program and officially neo-fascist tendencies were undesirable, according to the then Hessian Prime Minister Georg-August Zinn these "often emerged" to the state parliament. Militant anti-communism, individual anti-Semitic statements made on record by BDJ functionaries in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, references to right-wing extremist tendencies in the constitutional protection reports of the federal states and, above all, the targeted recruitment of former soldiers of the Waffen SS and NSDAP can all be indicative of the right-wing extremist orientation - Officials are rated.

organization

The board of the BDJ consisted of the federal leader, deputy federal leader, secretary and treasurer. The organization itself was divided into five main departments (politics, organization, administration, youth affairs and social work), with each main department having at least three sub-departments.

The BDJ issued three publications, the information service , the workbooks of the BDJ and Our Generation . In terms of membership, a distinction was made between young groups (14-17 years of age) and girls and boys groups (over 18 years of age).

State associations existed in Bavaria, Bremen, Franconia, Hamburg / Schleswig-Holstein, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Württemberg-Baden.

An evaluation of the biographical data of the management team by the authors Peter Dudek and Hans-Gerd Jaschke revealed that the BDJ functionaries were remarkably old for a youth group. Accordingly, there was also an over-dominance of former officers, none of whom could continue to work in their old profession after 1945. The historian Ernst Nolte valued the BDJ as "an anti-communist organization in which former officers, former National Socialists and also some communists had come together to counterbalance the very strong and active ' Free German Youth ' in the early 1950s ".

According to the BDJ, the total number of members was 16,000 in September 1950 and 17,500 in early 1951. The Hessian Ministry of the Interior, on the other hand, spoke of a membership of only around 700. In a report of December 19, 1950, the Hessian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution stated that the BDJ had received the greatest response from academic and former officer circles of the younger generation. Most of the participants in the partisan training were between 30 and 45 years old.

One of the best known recruits for the BDJ was Klaus Barbie .

financing

Draft of a CIA report on BDJ financing (excerpt)

When it was entered in the register of associations at the Frankfurt District Court in 1950, the association's assets were given as DM 1.7 million.

The funding of the BDJ and its technical service was primarily and to a considerable extent by American agencies.

The then Hessian Interior Minister stated that, in addition, companies that worked with American capital and were influenced by American army agencies largely supported the BDJ. With a monthly income of 80,000 DM in 1950, the Ministry of the Interior, after deducting membership fees, decided on donations of 40,000 to 50,000 DM per month.

A total of three sources of debt funding were identified, including US agencies and industry circles as well as federal agencies. The BDJ received 10,000 DM from the Federal Ministry for All-German Issues in 1952 for its Whitsun meeting.

Political activity

Analogous to the partisan tactics propagated by Lüth, there was a dichotomy in daily political business. A majority of the BDJ members committed themselves according to traditional principles of group youth work, without knowledge of the conspiratorial efforts of a leadership elite that built a right-wing extremist partisan organization with structural features of the Freikorps. This included leisure activities such as tent camps, sports or making music, as well as organizing trips and participating in the World Youth Festival. In addition, there was the participation or holding of rallies and the distribution of hand and sticky notes. At the first annual general meeting of the BDJ on May 6, 1951, it was announced that within eleven months the federal government had distributed 2.4 million leaflets and sticky notes nationwide and had put up 215,000 posters. For example, at night in the summer of 1950, BDJ activists put stickers with the inscription “I am a traitor - I support the communists” on the windows of shops whose owners suspected they were close to the KPD.

There was a nationwide response to incidents such as the BDJ Whitsun meeting from May 31 to June 2, 1952 in Frankfurt. Members of the Bundestag August-Martin Euler (FDP) and Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU) were the main speakers. Ten participants were arrested in clashes with the police, among them the BDJ functionary Friedhelm Busse .

Partisan training, which was carried out in close cooperation with American military agencies, was part of the daily conspiratorial business. For example, courses were held at the American military training area in Grafenwoehr, which included military training, political training and the use of weapons. The technical service also had an intelligence service that created lists and files of political opponents and politicians. The President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution stated in November 1952 that the person sheets "were similar in layout and structure to those used by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution".

Detection and Prohibition Procedures

The Hessian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution observed the BDJ, but did not consider it dangerous. In December 1950, the BDJ described it as a “strong right-wing troop”, which, however, rejected any kind of right-wing radicalism and “for the time being (...) was not an acute danger”. A year later, the State Office also judged in its report to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution: "An acute danger is not discernible with the BDJ, although the tone and content of the propaganda and training material make it possible to turn to a radical right-wing line."

On September 9, 1952, the BDJ functionary and former SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Otto, who was responsible, among other things, for creating the “black lists”, presented himself to the Frankfurt criminal police and gave detailed information about the militant character of the organization. It was from this admission that the authorities owed their knowledge of the paramilitary activities of the BDJ. During a raid by local police units on the premises of the BDJ, it turned out that the USA had financed the organization with a monthly sum of 50,000 DM as well as supplied weapons, ammunition and explosives. In Wald-Michelbach in the Odenwald , an arms depot with machine guns, grenades, light artillery pieces and explosives were found. The evaluation of the confiscated documents also unearthed “black lists” of 40 German leaders - mainly SPD politicians - who had been classified as not reliably anti-communist and who were to be “put aside” or “withdrawn from circulation” on “Day X”. Whether this meant her murder or just internment cannot be determined with absolute certainty from the documents. Among them were Herbert Wehner , the then SPD party leader Erich Ollenhauer , the Hessian interior minister Heinrich Zinnkann and the mayors of Hamburg and Bremen . In order to enable the most efficient possible access to these people in an emergency, the BDJ had already smuggled members into the SPD.

The Federal Prosecutor's Office led the investigation. She released four arrested BDJ functionaries on instructions from the Federal Ministry for All-German Issues . On October 2, 1952, US agencies first admitted to having supported the BDJ, but claimed to have stopped funding six months earlier and had no knowledge of the continued existence of the organization. A German-American commission of inquiry was set up. However, their work was hindered by the American side. Her work was suspended on November 17th. The official result of the investigation was that the USA had no knowledge of the illegal activities of the TD.

The CIC took over the BDJ members arrested by the German police and subsequently refused access to the German authorities who intended to bring charges of illicit gun possession and planned murder . CIC agents continued to confiscate all available documents and refused to hand them over to the German authorities.

As a result of the investigations into the case initiated in Germany, US authorities admitted to having financed and supported the BDJ for the training of guerrilla fighters for a possible war with the Soviet Union.

On January 7, 1953, the BDJ was initially banned in Hesse as an unconstitutional right-wing extremist organization. The technical service and other regional associations were banned by February 1953.

literature

  • Peter Dudek, Hans-Gerd Jaschke: The Union of German Youth (BDJ) - A product of the Cold War . In: Peter Dudek, Hans-Gerd Jaschke (Hrsg.): Origin and development of right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic . tape 1 . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1984, ISBN 3-531-11668-1 , pp. 356-388 .
  • Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, Ulrich Stoll: The partisans of NATO. Stay-behind organizations in Germany 1946-1991 . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86153-840-0 .
  • Christopher Simpson: Guerrillas for World War III . In: Blowback. America's recruitment of Nazis and its effects on the Cold War . Collier / Macmillan, 1988, ISBN 0-02-044995-X , pp. 146–148 ( Excerpts [accessed on July 21, 2008] German edition: The American Boomerang. Nazi War Criminals in the Pay of the USA , Vienna (Ueberreuter) 1988. ISBN 3-8000-3277-5 ).
  • Romans of our century . In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 1951, pp. 7 ( online ).
  • Everything for Germany . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1952, pp. 6 ( online ).
  • Attack and destroy . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1990, pp. 73 ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Heiko Buschke: German press, right-wing extremism and the National Socialist past. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 210
  2. ↑ Heiko Buschke: German press, right-wing extremism and the National Socialist past. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, pp. 212–213.
  3. ↑ a b Dudek, Jaschke: Origin and development of right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic. 1984, p. 361.
  4. ↑ Dudek, Jaschke: Origin and Development of Right-Wing Extremism in the Federal Republic. 1984, p. 364.
  5. ↑ Dudek, Jaschke: Origin and Development of Right-Wing Extremism in the Federal Republic. 1984, p. 363.
  6. ↑ a b c Heiko Buschke: German press, right-wing extremism and the National Socialist past. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 213
  7. ↑ Ernst Nolte: Germany and the Cold War. Piper 1974, p. 460.
  8. ↑ Peter Dudek and Hans-Gerd Jaschke, Der Bund Deutscher Jugend (BDJ) - A product of the Cold War , In: Origin and development of right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic , Volume 1, Westdeutscher Verlag 1984, page 360. The footnote here refers to the Report of the Hessian Interior Minister on the BDJ which can be viewed in the Federal Archives in Koblenz, BAK ZSg 1-12 / 2 (2).
  9. ↑ Jürgen Bevers: The man behind Adenauer: Hans Globke's rise from Nazi lawyer to Eminence Gray of the Bonn Republic. Ch.links Verlag 2009, p. 139.
  10. ^ Further Developments in the West German Police Investigation of the Paramilitary Adjunct of the League of German Youth. (PDF) Central Intelligence Agency , November 6, 1952, accessed February 5, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Dudek, Jaschke: Origin and Development of Right-Wing Extremism in the Federal Republic. 1984, p. 366.
  12. ↑ Quoted from Peter Dudek, Hans-Gerd Jaschke: Origin and development of right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic. To the tradition of a particular political culture. Volume 1, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1984, p. 378.
  13. ^ Federal archive document BAK ZSg 1 - 12/2 (2), p. XXIV; quoted from Dudek, Jaschke: Origin and development of right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic. 1984, p. 364.
  14. ↑ a b Heiko Buschke: German press, right-wing extremism and the National Socialist past. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 211.
  15. ↑ Peter Dudek, Hans-Gerd Jaschke: Origin and development of right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic. To the tradition of a particular political culture. Volume 1, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1984, p. 357.
  16. ↑ Attack and Destroy . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1990, pp. 73 ( online ).
  17. ↑ German Says US Set Up Saboteurs . In: New York Times . New York October 9, 1952 ( Online - not viewed).
  18. ↑ More Germans Hit US Sabotage Plan . In: New York Times . New York October 12, 1952 ( Online - not viewed).
  19. ↑ Heiko Buschke: German press, right-wing extremism and the National Socialist past. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 216.
  20. ^ German Saboteurs Betray US Trust . In: New York Times . New York October 10, 1952 ( Online - not viewed).
  21. ↑ “The CIA operations that General Truscott abbottled also included the support of the group called“ Bund der Deutschen Jugend ”. […] By 1952 the number of members had risen to more than 20,000. They enthusiastically took weapons, radios, cameras and money from the CIA and buried it all over the country [...] made a list of politicians from the majority parties [...] to be killed when the time was right [...] ”(conversation with Tom Polgor and McMahon with Tim Weiner Author of: CIA: The whole story . S. Fischer, Frankfurt aM 2008, ISBN 978-3-10-091070-7 , pp. 106 (American English: Legacy of ashes . Translated by Elke Enderwitz). )