German American Bund

C.  Youth Groups and Bund Camps

Just as the Bund vigorously stepped up its Americanization program, it simultaneously increased its efforts to cultivate Deutschtum within the youth of America.  Such efforts continued to confuse Americans about the true nature of the Bund.  The youth group formed one of the most important divisions of the German American Bund.  Bund leaders realized that new recruits would not come from Germany.  Their future salvation depended on their ability to win young adherents from the German community in America.  The Bund believed youth represented a link between past and future generations of German-Americans and that children were critical to the perpetuation of both Deutschtum and the Bund movement.  However, to the dismay of the Bund, the German youth rapidly sank into the American melting pot where they became singularly American.  Deutschtum among the youth was in jeopardy as young German-Americans lost appreciation for their German language, customs, and traditions.  The hateful environment of the Great War had estranged German-American children from their parents and, as Bundists asserted, perpetuated a host of lies against their Fatherland which needed to be set straight.  To combat this cultural estrangement, the Bund youth movement would teach German Americans how to be good Americans while recapturing the lost heritage of their ancestors.[1]

The Bund’s opposition to the American melting pot and the Americanization of their youth was largely misunderstood. Statements, such as “all efforts will be required in order to put a stop to the former crippling by the Americanization of their young,”[2] led many to understand that the Bund was against Americanism.  To correct this misunderstanding, the Bund took pains to explain in their newspapers and propaganda that their opposition to Americanization did not mean that they were un-American.  The Bund pledged its love and devotion to American values and institutions and it certainly did not oppose their children becoming Americanized.  Bundists professed that it was their steadfast German-ness which made them good Americans and that the loss of Deutschtum was a grave detriment to America.  As the Bund’s 1937 Yearbook writes, “Present Day Germany considers that every person of German ancestry and German blood…a German racial comrade.  Germany does not ask you to neglect your duties as an American, but Germany says; only he who is a good German can become a good American”[3]  

According to the Bund, the “mongrelization” of America robbed the nation of one of its greatest assets, its German element.  Awake and Act! stated: “The proposed racial amalgamation…always reverts to the lowest type.  God avert from the United States the day when its mixture of races shall conform to a common diameter!”[4]  A Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter article explained:

There is nothing in the ritual of the Amerika-Deutscher Volksbund to show that it opposes the Americanization of the children of immigrant stock, but when it goes far as to estrange the child from his parents and relatives, and to destroy its faith in the mother race, to make it…any other kind of American but German-American, the organization feels itself justified and duty bound to put a stop to it.”[5] 

 

The Deutschtum of the youth had to be preserved for the benefit of America.  Thus, the Bund found an effective argument to cleverly reconcile its German character with its American program. 

            The Bund attempted to teach the youth to be good Germans so that they could be good Americans.  To illustrate, the German Youth group newspaper Junges Volk paid tribute to German-American contributions to American history. Its central message was that German-American children should not be ashamed of their ancestry, but rather, they should treasure their heritage.  It was, after all, the youth who carried on the tradition of German service to America.  The Junges Volk also harped on the theme that America needed to preserve her original Nordic-Germanic racial make-up.  Articles were often imbued with racist and anti-Semitic ideology as well.  The melting pot of America may have changed the look of the nation but German-American children should never lose sight of the fact that “Germans had settled the land long before these swarms of human parasites arrived on America’s shores.”[6]  Similarly, the Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter boasted that “next to the Puritans, the Germans have contributed more to the making of the American character than any other race.”[7]

Kuhn attempted to explain the interconnectedness of Americanism and Deutschum:

We try to teach them [German-American children] to be Americans but don’t forget your homeland.  These youngsters ask a thousand question.  They heard many things about Germany; they heard on the streets you are a Nazi, you are a German…We are trying to tell then that those accusations you heard about Germany are not so; but always with the understanding that you are an American and should be American’ but the only way you can be a good American is by respecting your old Motherland.[8]  

 

The Bund, he explained, did not want to stop the Americanization of their youth, but rather, “We want them to be, we want to bring them up in the American way but don’t forget your old Motherland.  That is the idea in a nutshell.”[9]  In short, German-American children needed to cultivate and preserve the nation’s Deutschtum, for good Germans made the best Americans, and the German-American youth were the upcoming generation who would have to continue the fight for America. 

The Bund youth group was a critical extension of the Bund’s program of Kampfendes Deutschum. The ideals of the Bund were to be perpetuated through the youth.  As Kuhn stated, “The youth is our great hope, the life-line of our organization.”[10]  Feelings of Deutschtum which had been lost in the American melting pot would be cultivated through the Bund’ youth groups which essentially took its cues from the organizations and practices in Germany.  Kuhn’s movement was essentially a carbon copy of the Hitler Youth.  Children were divided into two age groups by sex:  eight to thirteen and fourteen to eighteen.  At eighteen, boys could join the OD; girls at eighteen entered the women’s auxiliary.  Uniforms of the youth organizations imitated the Hitler Jugend with swastika buckles and lighting bolt insignia. The Bund’s 1937 Yearbook lauded the efforts of the Bund youth organizations as a vital service to the homeland.  Because few new recruits from Germany were arriving in America, it was especially important to maintain a strong and healthy state of Deutschtum in America; to perpetuate something of a little piece of Germany in the United States.[11] Membership in a Bund youth group was thus considered tantamount to fulfilling an obligation to the Fatherland. 

During the summer months, children could attend one of the twenty four recreational camps which were owned and operated by the Bund.  Camp activities were highly regimented.  A typical day began with reveille at six thirty and packed in an itinerant schedule of swimming, singing, chores, sports, group gathering, and instruction on the German language and the principles of National Socialism.  Before meals all children gathered around the flagpole to salute the Bund and American flags.  At night they gathered around campfires and listened to short wave broadcasts from Germany, and sang Hitler Youth songs.[12]

In 1937 at the opening ceremony of Camp Nordland, the Bund’s largest camp located in Andover, New Jersey, it was proclaimed that,

Our camp is designed principally to be a new place which breathes of the spirit of the New Germany. Conscious of this fact, the camp is consecrated to our youth.  It is there that our boys and girls shall be educated; it is there that the spirit of camaraderie and the feeling of belonging to one community…where they shall be strengthened and conformed in national Socialism so that they will be conscious of the role which has been assigned to them as the future carriers of racial ideals in America. Hereby we give you over “Camp Nordland,” to your holy mission.  We consecrate you as a little piece of German Soil in America, as a symbol of our motto “obliged to America, tied to Germany.[13] 

 

In short, Nordland and the other camps served as an oasis of Deutschtum, a cultural haven and a massive endeavor to preserve and inculcate the National Socialist interpretation of Deutschtum.  Bund literature expressed the mission of the camps to  become a “haven of rest, of strength and joy to all German Americans…to make our own men and women and particularly our G-A Youth stronger, healthier and happier, clean-minded, capable race-proud and eager to stand by our People’s tradition and ready to help us make the whole of America conscious of our work being indeed real Americanism…[14]  The Bund advertised Camps Siegfried and Nordland in its leaflets as havens where German Americans could find fellowship and participate in health restoring recreation and enjoy good food at nominal prices.  Adults as well as children had access to the recreational camps and a complete lifestyle could be found within the Bund’s social, educational, and cultural activities.[15] Admission was 10 cents; meals were thirty-five cents and up.[16]  The Bund camps aimed to reinvigorate, rejuvenate and were places where German Americans could acquire a “new outlook on life,” a “new spirit,” a “sacred will.”[17]  The camps represented the bizarre dual German/American character of the Bund.  Special emphasis was placed on German language and American citizenship. Bund camps celebrated George Washington’s birthday, Hitler’s birthday, Labor Day, German Day, Christmas and the celebration of the winter solstice.

Bundists proclaimed and sincerely believed that they were dedicated American citizens.  By strengthening their Deutschtum, they could offer more to their adopted nation and thus make America stronger.  However, its flagrant imitation of Nazi Germany with its swastika flags and goose-stepping uniformed men enraged the ire of the American population.  Most Americans saw the Bund as nothing more than a subversive foreign organization whose doctrines and symbolization stood in glaring contrast to the values and symbols of true Americanism.  Kuhn would eventually discern these crossed signals and adapt the Bund to be genuinely more American. 

The Bund camps became a popular target for the group’s detractors who often charged that the camps were nothing more than Nazi centers of subversive indoctrination. Critics charged that the Bund youth wore foreign uniforms and were being trained in paramilitary exercises.  Kuhn attempted to explain the innocuous nature of the camps.  He attempted to clarify that the regulations of Camp Nordland were very similar to those of the Boy Scouts and that “the uniforms for youngsters are-have nothing to do with Germany.  They are not German uniforms.  It is made in the style of the Boy Scout.”[18] Kuhn added, “Our youngster movement belongs to the German American Bund and has nothing to do with Germany whatsoever.”[19] While there was no evidence to substantiate the charges of Nazi military drills occurring at the camps, it was farcical to suggest that the Bund Youth Camps emulated the Boy Scouts.