Entangled utopias : the Nazi mobilization of ethnic German youths in the Batschka, 1930s-1944

Abstract

This article presents novel research on Nazi youth programs amongst the Batschka’s “Donauschwaben.” Illustrating how “reichsdeutsche” and “auslandsdeutsche” youths came into contact through Nazi youth programs during the 1930s and early 1940s, it traces how youth exchanges shaped diverse but mutually constitutive utopian imaginations of “Germanness” and “German” space. Children from the Reich promulgated visions of a “utopian” but “corrupted” Batschka, while ethnic German youths gained visions of a Germany which they could, in adhering to National Socialism, seemingly help build. As this article argues, utopias were not merely created “from above” and then multiplied and altered “from below”; rather, they also helped spur activity and violence in line with Nazism’s geopolitical and ideological aims.