Young team

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The young team was an Alsatian autonomist organization between 1933 and 1939 .

The name Jungmannschaft initially referred to a supplement published by Hermann Bickler for the Elsässische Landeszeitung (ELZ) in 1931 . In 1933, with the support of Friedrich Spieser , Bickler developed an independent publication organ from this supplement that represented Alsatian folkism and Alsatian particularism and spoke out strictly against the assimilation of Alsatians into the France of the Third Republic . Under the name of this press organ and with the same political goals, Bickler built a political organization in the following years.

Under Bickler's leadership, the young team gradually developed from an autonomist to a separatist group and was soon assessed as pro- Nazi by the French police . The young team was a cadre party organized according to the leader principle with shop stewards , cells, local groups and a "council of management" with Bickler as leader. Its members wore a brown uniform with a black armband and a red wolf's tang , comparable to the coat of arms of the Nationaal-Socialistische Bewegungsing in Nederland (NSB) , which was created around the same time as the young team. The motto was "Free people - in their own country" and the marching song was "You should stay true to Alsace". At the meeting of the young team on May 17, 1933, according to a report by the Sûreté Générale, Bickler is said to have said: "The rest of us from the young team, we were created to be inspired by Hitler's ideas and to spread them in Alsace. We have Hitler character in us. "In 1942 Bickler wrote:" We fight as National Socialists and the enemy treats us as such. "

Protestant theology students and pastors were among the leadership. Despite the name, the majority of the members of the young team were between 18 and 45 years old, some of them even older. In order to evade the legislative measures of the French government against the groups of the extreme right (the so-called ligues ), the young team gave itself a party statute in 1936 and called itself Alsace-Lorraine Party . However, they continued to see themselves as a movement and therefore did not take part in elections. Since March 1937, the fighting paper “Frei Volk” has been published, initially fortnightly and then weekly , in which the German Reich was defended against attacks in the French press and its racial ideology was applied to the political situation in Alsace.

There were clear differences to National Socialism in the absolutely positive attitude of the paper to the Christian (and especially Protestant) religion as well as in the non-imperialist ideology of the people, which did not know and formulate any imperialist claims against other people. The occupation of "the rest of the Czech Republic" by National Socialist Germany in March 1939 caused unease, and warnings were given against a policy of assimilation similar to that of the French government in Alsace.

In 1937 and 1938, members of the group caused a stir with anti-French provocations (collecting the tricolor , singing the Deutschlandlied ). According to a report by the Sûreté nationale from April 1938, the young team comprised 116 local groups with around 1,000 members.

During the Sudeten crisis , after a meeting in Strasbourg at which Bickler had again represented separatist and anti-French positions, on October 3, 1938 the police searched the headquarters of the youth team. On April 21, 1939, the organization was banned by the French government in view of the increasing tensions with National Socialist Germany.

After the occupation by German troops in 1940, the majority of newly appointed came NSDAP - district leader in Alsace from the ranks of young men.

literature

  • Lothar Kettenacker: National Socialist Volkstumsppolitik in Alsace . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1973 (Studies on Contemporary History. Published by the Institute for Contemporary History ), ISBN 3-421-01621-6 .
  • Karl-Heinz Rothenberger: The Alsace-Lorraine homeland and autonomy movement between the two world wars (European university publications, vol. 42). Frankfurt / M.-Munich, Peter Lang-Verlag 1976. ISBN 3-261-01485-7 .
  • Philip Charles Farwell Bankwitz: Alsatian autonomist leaders 1919-1947 . The Regents Press of Kansas, Lawrence 1978, ISBN 0-7006-0160-0 .

Remarks

  1. ^ Report of the Sûreté Générale of April 28, 1938, Pref. Strasbourg, quoted from 'Rothenberger', The Alsatian-Lorraine Home and Autonomy Movement between the Two World Wars , Frankfurt 1975, page 217
  2. ↑ Bickler, Resistance Ten Years of People's Struggle of the Alsatian-Lorraine Young Team, p. 25, quoted from 'Rothenberger', The Alsatian-Lorraine Home and Autonomy Movement between the Two World Wars , Frankfurt 1975, page 217
  3. ^ Karl-Heinz Rothenberger: The Alsace-Lorraine homeland and autonomy movement between the two world wars . Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1975. pp. 217-218.
  4. ↑ Kettenacker 1973, pp. 26-32; Rothenberger 1976, p. 216 and p. 322 (note 698 and 701); Bankwitz 1978, pp. 52-53.
  5. ↑ Bankwitz 1978, p. 55.
  6. ↑ Kettenacker 1973, p. 126.