Swing+Kids+-+Movie+analysis


 * Swing Kids – An analysis of life in Nazi Germany **

** Title: ** Swing Kids ** Director: ** Thomas Carter ** Starring: ** Christian Bale (as Thomas), Robert Sean Leonard (as Peter) and Kenneth Branagh (as Herr Knopp, Gestapo official).

Release Date: 5 March 1993 (USA)
** Synopsis: ** The story of a close-knit group of young kids in Nazi Germany who listen to banned swing music from the US. Soon dancing and fun leads to more difficult choices as the Nazi's begin tightening the grip on Germany. Each member of the group is forced to face some tough choices when they attempt to be Swing Kids by night and HJ (Hitler Youth) by day. This is the story of one group of Swing Kids and how Nazi rule and persuasion tore them apart and set them against each other. In this guide you will be analyzing different features of the German society under the Nazi regime. Particularly, you will focused on Nazi politics towards young people. But also you will analysed Nazi segregation policies towards Jewish and other minorities, and the practices developed to finish with the resistance to their rule such as the Swing Kids. To this purpose, this guide is organized under different subtitles that will guide you in your readings, providing you with the necessary information to answer the questions, analyzing both different scenes from the movie as well as other sources. You will be asked to refer to scenes from ‘Swing Kids’ in order to support your answer. Enjoy! ;) ** NOTE: ** when the source is a scene from the movie you will notice that between [ ] appear numbers indicating which minute of the original movie begins the scene to be analysed. You will use this information if you watch the movie from the file uploaded on intranet. If not, you may use the youtube link to watch it completely.

** Part A - Living in a totalitarian state: Cohesion or coercion? [26] **

1) Mention the features a **totalitarian state**. [5] 2) What was the **Enabling Act** and in which context was it passed? [5] 3) Can the Enabling Act be considered as a step towards a totalitarian state? Explain your answer.[7]  4) What was the **SS** and which were its activities? [5] 5) Mention **two**methods of **repression** the Nazis used to control the population. [2]  6) Mention **two** methods of **cohesion** the Nazis used to control the population. [2]

** Part B - Youth and Education in Nazi Germany [29] **

** Source A: ** A Walt Disney production titled “Education for death”.Watch the video following the link []

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** Source B: excerpt of Hitler’s speech at Reichenberg, December 2, 1938. **

“(...) Our Youth must learn nothing else, but only to think like and act like Germans! We must get our boys into a Party organization at the age of 10, where they can be immersed for the very first time in the totality of pure German spirit. Then, after four years, they will be transferred from this Young Folk (Jungvolk) into the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend). There we will keep them for another four years. One thing for certain, we will never surrender them back into the clutches of the enemies of our German State. Instead, we will immediately place them into our Party! Following this, we will put our young men into the ranks of the mandatory Labor Front (Arbeitsfront), the Stormtroopers (SA), the Party Guards (SS), the Motorized Party Unit (NSKK) and so on. Then, after they have been members of these organizations for up to two years but failed to become true National Socialists, we will reprocess them back through the mandatory Labor Front for another half-year of curative treatment. […] In this manner, they will not live freely apart from the service of Germany for their entire lives!"

1) Watch Source A. What can you tell from this source about **education in Nazi Germany**? Give evidence from the source. [5] 2) Read Source B. How far does source B support the view given in source A about the **goals of education** in Nazi Germany? Explain your answer making reference to the sources. [8] 3) Using __the sources and your knowledge__ explain why did Hitler want to gain the support of Germany’s youth? [8]

** Source C: **// From reports by the Social Democratic Party in exile, 1934. //

Youth is still in favour of the system: the novelty, the drill, the uniform, the camp life. Many believe that they will find job opportunities through the persecution of the Jews and Communists. For the first time the state controls the young people in the countryside through the SA and the Hitler Youth. The new generation has never had much use for education and reading. Now nothing is demanded of them; on the contrary, knowledge is publicly condemned. They are so fanatical that they believe in nothing but their Hitler.

** Source D: **// From ‘Germany Today’, a British magazine published in May 1938. //

The discipline in the Hitler Youth is declining in the western part of Germany. Many young people no longer want to be forced to join, but instead wish to do as they like. Usually only a third of the whole group attends meetings. They are even threatened with expulsion from the Hitler Youth for staying away. Those who do attend sing soldiers’ songs and make a lot of noise without doing any constructive work.

** Source E: **// From recollections of Hitler Youth members. //

There were boys from all classes of families, though mainly middle class and workers. There were no social or class distinctions, which I approved of very much. There was no direct political indoctrination until later after Hitler came to power. We did march in parades and hated the SPD but that was all part of it. When I became a leader, I found the absolute obedience unpleasant, and found that people were expected not to have a will of their own.

** Source F: ** Arvid is having an argument with Peter and Thomas about the Nazi control over German culture and how the Nazi propaganda has affected Thomas view of the world. [1h 10min. to 1h 17min] []

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** Source G: ** Peter and Thomas have a discussion about their activities in the Hitler Youth. [1h 27min to 1h 30min] []

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1) Using __Sources C to G__ evaluate how far was the Hitler Youth an effective movement to co-opt the young Germans? Explain your answer. [8]

** Part C - Youth Resistance in Nazi Germany: the Swing Kids [28] **

** Source A: // excerpt from Reichsjustizministerium Report, early 1944. // At the height of the war, the Reich Ministry of Justice made these observations as regards the Swing Movement. **

“(...) One of the most striking appearances among dangerous groups within the Reich is the so-called Swing Youth. They are reported to exist in many different parts of the country….These cliques begin their activities out of a selfish impulse to amuse themselves, but rapidly deteriorate into anti-social criminal gangs. Even before the war, boys and girls from the elite social set in Hamburg would get together dressed in notorious baggy or loose clothing and become entranced under the spell of English music and English dance. The Flottbecker Clique (Swing Kids from Hamburg) organized private dance parties attended by 500-600 teenagers during the winter of 1939-40. These lewd affairs included unrestrained Swing dancing. The Authorities rightfully banned such house dances, but the cliques were addicted to the English beat and continued to organize unlawful jamborees full of sexual mischief. The enormous cost of this illicit lifestyle was met by criminal resort to petty theft and music store burglaries. […] They do not appreciate the success of our forces in the field, and even disparage the ultimate sacrifice of our men in uniform. What follows next is the inevitable and clearly discernable hostility toward any military service of their own. Clique members […] mimic the decadent English way of life, because they worship the Englishman as the highest evolutionary development of mankind. Their mistaken ideals of individual freedom (which, in Nazi opinion countered true German freedom to help the greater community by ridding it of pestilence and Jews) leads them to openly oppose the Hitler Youth. […] The drunken free-sex affairs were typified by alcoholic excesses and dance orgies where teenagers “swung” and got “hot”. Because of evacuation methods necessitated by wartime conditions, these cliques have now been scattered from their rooting grounds.”

** Source B: Hitlerjugend Patrol Report on a Hamburg Swing Dance, August 2, 1940. **

“The sight of some three hundred dancing people thrashing about was absolutely horrid. No one can describe the dancing because no one danced normally. Indeed, this was the naughtiest of Swing dancing that can be imagined. Sometimes two boys danced with one juvenile girl, and at other times several couples locked themselves into a mass embrace and just hopped around. Many couples hopped together while holding hands and bent over wildly, so that their long hair flew across their faces and whipped their thighs as they spun. You had to worry about the sanity of some of them. The scenes that happened on the dance floor were fit for a lunatic asylum. Even the most hysterical and primitive Black jungle warrior war-dance would have paled in comparison to what happened here. Everyone jumped about like crazy while they mumbled English musical gibberish. The Band increased the tempo faster by the minute. No member of the band was sitting, because they were all getting hotter and wilder as they also succumbed to the jungle beat on the stage. You often saw boys dancing together with other boys, always with two cigarettes dangling from each corner of the mouth.”

1) According to Source A, why is the **Swing Youth ‘perverted’**? Support your answer with reference to the source. [5] 2) Read Source A. How far does this source show that the ideas of the Swing Movement affected the **moral of Germans fighting the war** (WWII)? Explain your answer making reference to the source. [7] 3) Read Source B. How far does the **description of the source fit the scenes** from the movie in which young Germans met in the night clubs to dance swing? Explain your answer making reference to the source and the scenes from the movie. [8]  4) Using __the sources and your knowledge__ explain what was so threatening to the Nazis about swing? [8]

** Part D - Propaganda in Nazi Germany [35] **

** Source A: ** Arvid is having an argument with Peter and Thomas about the Nazi control over German culture. [1h 10min. to 1h 17min] []

** Source B: // The US Ambassador to Germany, writing in 1936. // **

The German people are so open to propaganda that they can forget the less pleasant aspects of Nazi rule. A systematic campaign of propaganda has been introduced to break down resistance and to strengthen the enthusiasm of those already converted to the new order. With steam-roller effectiveness, the activity of the Ministry of Propaganda has reached out into every corner of the Reich, into every walk of life. Nevertheless, not all German people are so easily persuaded to believe in Hitler’s policies.

** Source C: // William Shirer, an American journalist, writing in 1959. Shirer had lived in Germany during the 1930s. // **

During the 1930s, I myself was to learn how easily one is taken in by an untruthful and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though, unlike most Germans, I was able to read foreign newspapers every day and listened regularly to foreign broadcasts, my job meant the spending of many hours a day in reading through the German press, checking the German radio, consulting with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was worrying to find that a steady diet of bias and lies made an impression on one’s mind and often misled it. It is difficult to escape the results of continuous propaganda.

1) Name **two**media that Goebbels promoted using propaganda. [2] 2) What were the **Nuremberg** **rallies**? [5] 3) Why was **radio** broadcasting particularly important to Goebbels? [7]  4) Watch Source A. What can you tell from this scene about the **impact of propaganda** in everyday life (through simple things such as a song, a way of speaking, the use of specific vocabulary)? Explain your answer making reference to the scene. [5] 5) Read Sources B and C. How far do these two sources show that **propaganda was accepted** by the German people? Explain your answer. [8]  6) Use __all three sources__. Is one of these sources more useful than the other as evidence on **how the Nazis controlled the German** people? Explain your answer. [8]

** Part E - Persecution of minorities in Nazi Germany [52] **

** Source A: ** A Walt Disney production titled “Education for death”. Watch the video following the link []

** Source B: ** Peter and Thomas during their HJ lessons [0h. 56min. to 0h. 58min.] []

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** Source C: // An American, writing in 1936. // **

According to Nazi doctrine, there is such a thing as a pure Aryan race. This Aryan race has its purest breed in Germany. It must be kept pure. Praise for the German race, hatred for Jews, and contempt for other inferior and democratic races. These are the doctrines to be drilled into the minds of the Germans.

** Source D: ** “The Eternal Jew” an Nazi Anti-Semitic film depicting the Jewish as subhuman individuals who lived and acted like rats. The film shows how Jewish lived in the ghettos in Poland. What it, of course, does not mention is that the conditions in which they lived in those ghettos were the product of Nazi policy and not the Jewish’ own will to live in such terrible conditions. []

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** Source E: // A Jewish man writing in 1980 about his memories of Kristallnacht in a German city. // **

On 9 November 1938 we stood at the window of our house and watched while they burned down the big synagogue across the street. The area was crowded with thousands of spectators; they made a circus out of it. We saw it all. Suddenly people burst into our rooms with axes and bars and smashed everything up. We ran to the local police station for help. They looked at us and just laughed. We fled from them to find shelter with a family my father knew.

** Source F: // From the message sent to all police headquarters by the head of the security service (SD) and Gestapo, 1.20 am on 10 November 1938. // **

a) Only such measures should be taken which do not involve danger to German life and property. b) Businesses and private apartments of Jews may be destroyed but not looted. c) The demonstrations which are going to take place should not be hindered by the police. d) Foreign nationals – even if they are Jews – should not be molested. Directly after the events of this night, as many Jews as possible – especially the well-off ones – are to be arrested. Above all only healthy, male Jews, not too old, are to be arrested. The appropriate concentration camp should be contacted immediately in order to confine them in these camps. Special care is to be taken that the Jews arrested on this order are not maltreated.

1) What is **Social Darwinism**? How can it be related to Nazi’s racial doctrine? [5] 2) Watch (again) Sources A and B. Which similarities can you find about the idea of the Germans being a **‘superior race’**? Explain your answer making reference to both sources. [8] 3) Why did many racial groups suffer under the Nazi regime? [7]  4) Other than the Jews, identify **two** groups persecuted by the Nazis because they were considered inferior. [2] 5) What were the **Nuremberg Laws**? (include dates) [5]  6) What happened on **Kristallnacht**? (include dates) [5] 7) Read Source C. What can you tell from this source about Nazi racial attitudes? Support your answer with reference to the source. [5] 8) Watch Source D. How far does this scene from the movie support the Nazi view about Jewish people being an ‘inferior race’? Explain your answer using the source and your knowledge. [7] 9) Read Sources E and F. How far do these two sources show that the government approved of the mistreatment of the Jews by 1938? Explain your answer. [8]