Jazz Music During the Third Reich

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created more fans of jazz by exposing the genre to the public in masses via radio. In addition to blocking Jazz music from the radio, other actions were taken against the genre. Jazz inspired dancing such at the fox-trot or Charleston were also banned in all western German youth hostels. (Kater)

Ultimately the ban on Jazz music ended up backfiring on the Germans. Like most teenagers that adopt countercultures. Jazz music became a form of political resistance for youths in Germany who did not agree with the social and political orders that were being imposed on them. Called Swing Kids or Swing Youths, these youths showed resistance by embracing Jazz music, throwing dance parties, and making fun of the jazz propaganda created by Reich members. In addition to participating in parties and gathering in cafes and restaurants these swing youths also dressed and wore their hair in styles that the Nazis’ opposed. Author Tom Neuhaus of the article, No Nazi: Youth Rebels of the Third Reich, states the following about the swing youths dress and attire. “Boys often grew their hair long and wore it slicked back. Key elements of the Swing costume included English-style double breasted suits, long jackets, American-style foot suits as worn by Black American musicians, hats and coats, provocatively accessorized with a foreign newspaper…Swing Girls attempted to resist the conformity of the German Girls’ League by emphasizing their individual felinity. For Charlotte Heile, for example, fashion was of supreme importance. She described her appearance, including conspicuous makeup and lilac lipstick, as the ‘crass opposite of Hitler’s ideal woman’. The notion of independent woman who went out, smoked and drank had ben abhorrent to large parts of society from the 1920s…” (Neuhaus) Alike many subcultures in todays society, the swing youths definitely stood out amongst the Hitler youth of Nazi Germany. As those who were part of the Hitler youth often had a uniform look to their style and dress.

The Swing Youths resistance did not go unnoticed by Reich members. As a matter of fact they were viewed as criminals and some were even persecuted. At a swing in festival in Hamburg in 1940, police raided the event and arrested 500 youths. The SS chief summoned the “ringleaders” to concentration camps for two to three years for their defiance. (Taylor) “A file compiled by the Gestapo is said to have contained more than 3000 names of Swing Kids already by the end of 1930’s in Cologne alone. In terms of numbers, that would mean these youths represented as much larger resistance potential than any other opposition group in Germany made up by adults.”(Taylor) The SS commander punished these members by having them beat, and made them work. The Swing youths were harshly punished because they were considered enemies of the Reich. Though this act was meant to warn others to stop their behavior, jazz continued to live on as a means of rebellion for anti-nazi youth.

In the article, “How Jazz Loving Teenagers, the Swingjugend, Fought the Hitler Youth and Resisted Conformity in Nazi Germany”, Author Josh Jones quotes from a German site called Swingstyle. This site carries information about swing culture and swing youth. Swingstyle stated that “the real Swing Kids were politically unsophisticated. Despite being seen as a “youth problem” by Nazi authorities. They actually cared little for contesting official policies towards Jews or other matters. They just wanted to have fun at a dark time in their country’s history, and avoid the war if possible.” (Jones) Interestingly enough, in such a dark and scary time the Swing youths actions was actually very radical for that time. Their attitudes towards the Gestapo made a mockery of Nazi ownership and ideologies. Jones concludes with, “Their embrace of an international, racially mixed culture, jazz, was itself a radical political act in Nazi Germany, even if they had no theoretical concepts of what that embrace meant for their future of their country. And their violent rejection of the Hitler Youth makes them even more compelling. It seems to me that the Swing Kids do indeed deserve a celebratory place in history.” (Jones)

Incidentally, the Swing kid development was an aftereffect of the Nazis forceful arrangements towards jazz. The Nazis had unintentionally set the phase for a political resistance through music by putting legitimate taboos on it. Jazz was no longer just a style of music, however an image of rebelliousness with the Nazi standards. The individuals like the swing youths who tuned in to it demonstrated an appreciation of African American and Jewish musicians, a appreciation for American music and style developments and innovativeness, and a nonchalance for the Reich’s laws. By ousting jazz from standard Germany, the Nazis had pushed the music into counter culture group. They had incidentally given dissidents another weapon of defiance.

In spite of the fact that the development was indistinct and unstructured, it represented a special group of individuals, if just a minority, who all things considered upset the Nazis arrangement of social order. The swing movement development prospered notwithstanding, and because of, Hitler’s totalitarian administration. The Nazis endeavored to rid jazz music but failed. If anything, they enabled jazz to end up as the foundation of a noteworthy counterculture, the swing kids.

To completely comprehend the Swing movement by the anti-nazi youth as a type of political defiance, we must understand that it was not just regarded a political risk by the Nazis’, but it was their classification of jazz. The Swing kids utilized jazz as their platform for insubordination mostly because it was illegal, but also because it was highly appealing to them, and, according to the Nazis’ definition, a political danger to the people of Germany. On the off chance that the Nazis had possessed the capacity to uphold their ban on the genre, the swing development would have been less fruitful, or even impossible. In any case, the Nazis’ failed attempt to completely ban jazz added to a historical moment in which jazz was flourish and be used as an act of political resistance.

Works Cited

Jones, Josh. "How Jazz-Loving Teenagers–the Swingjugend–Fought the Hitler Youth and Resisted Conformity in Nazi Germany." Open Culture. N.p., 5 July 2016. Web. 18 Apr. 2017.

Kater, Michael H. "Forbidden Fruit? Jazz in the Third Reich." American Historical Review 94.1 (1989): 11. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Apr. 2017.

Morton, Brian. "Swing Time for Hitler." Nation 277.7 (2003): 33-38. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Apr. 2017.

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