Summer Camp 1944

The "original" (as in, from 1944), on the other hand, is just here.

Summer Camp

Here's a delightful little video I just found on YouTube. It's actually a clip from the 1996 film Der Unhold, (The Ogre) which stars John Malkovich as a Frenchman convicted of kiddie fiddling who ends up working for Goering by recruiting handsome young lads to join the HJs.

Haven't seen it, but it sounds interesting!

Early one morning, in the quiet of the world...

War

It's worth remembering that although what we think of as "Scouting" today, according to the Baden-Powell method, is in fact Peace Scouting, nonetheless it really has its origins in the military. Boy Scouts specifically have always been used, especially under conditions of near "total war", such as in civil and colonial wars.

I'm not sure which war this is from - or even if these boys are French, for that matter!

Der morgige Tag ist mein

Obviously Cabaret is one of the gayest films ever made. (Lisa Minnelli, for crying out loud!) And this particular scene works much better on the stage. The song 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me' is actually a chilling/thrilling pastiche of the sort of volkische stuff the Hitler Jugend actually used to sing - so much so that when the play first came out in Germany there were former HJs who protested that it brought back bad memories for them of their having been made to sing those very same words as children. More to the point, and especially if you ignore the incongruous way it's sung in this clip (by a dyed-blonde boy with too-even teeth and beauty-spots), it's also hugely charming little lied. In the stage-version its a song that's reprised several times in the first act in between scenes, normally by stage-hands as they move furniture around. It's only at the end of Act I, with the "Fatherland, Fatherland"-verse and the salute, that it becomes clear what the song's really about. Unlike in the film-version, which features the two fey male characters slipping smugly away, on stage it actually makes for an engaging climax to the first half of the play (the second half of which, like the Third Reich itself, sadly doesn't even nearly live up to the promise of its beginning).

The German version is on line here.

The Original Scout Salute

Strange but true!

Actually I think this picture was taken in America, where the salute was virtually the same as the salute ("raised hand", at any rate) for making the Pledge of Allegiance. This old way of doing things I believe pertained in America up until the 1930s, when it suddenly became politically incorrect - for some reason.

Hitler Youth

I've mentioned the Hitler Youth a couple of times with relevance to Scouting here and here. These pics are just a few that I've found on the 'Net. [H/T: Here]