Germany’s Swing Kids As Contradictions and Misfits during the Second World War

In many ways “Swing Kids” in Germany were similar to the Zazous youth subculture in Paris, France or to other youth cultures in major European cities. In Germany of the 1930s & 40s, however, Swing Kids were harassed or persecuted, and in some cases even jailed & imprisoned in Nazi war camps – all due to their associations with U.S. jazz music. An important element of Swing Kids in Germany had to do with the racialization of jazz music, which thus made an association with jazz music and culture a political matter. While jazz & swing music may have been taking the world by storm in the 1930s, in Germany jazz music signified the adoption of African American music and dance culture by some of Germany’s youth population.

Significantly, Germany’s Swing Kids were also adopting an attitude towards authority as well as their generation’s growing sense of internationalism, which directly contradicted the policies and politics of the emerging Nationalist Socialist régime as the Nazis were taking Germany into the Second World War. This paper seeks to investigate the discursive aspects of Swing Kids in Germany before and during World War II by examining the public discourse related to Swing Kids. By focusing on jazz music and its attendant discourse(s), this investigation explores the contradictions inherent in a youth subculture that saw Germany’s future as open, liberal and international, all in the face of a political and cultural machine that was pushing towards hyper-nationalism and militarism.