A Duty to Forget? The 'Hitler Youth Generation' and the Transition from Nazism to Communism in Postwar East Germany, c. 1945-49

In Soviet-occupied East Germany during the mid- to late 1940s,a remarkable but scarcely remarked-upon transition took place.Hundreds of thousands of young Germans who had previously beenmembers of the Nazi youth organizations, the Hitler Youth (HJ)and the League of German Girls (BDM) flocked to join the Communist-ledFree German Youth (FDJ), a unisex ‘united youth organization’founded under Soviet auspices in March 1946. This paper examinesthe experiences of this ‘twice betrayed’ generation,whose members rapidly—though with varying degrees of enthusiasm—switchedallegiance from Nazism to Communism after the Second World Warand ultimately exchanged life in one authoritarian youth organizationfor life in another. Drawing on archival and interview material,it first seeks to outline Communist attitudes towards denazificationamong the young in the postwar period, before going on to examinefrom a grass-roots perspective the experiences, motivations,and attitudes of those who exchanged their HJ or BDM membershipbooks for those of the FDJ. Despite, or perhaps because of,East Germany's strongly-espoused and rigidly dogmatic ‘anti-fascism’,open discussion of the Nazi past was—for a variety ofreasons—taboo during the immediate postwar period, particularlyamong the young. This paper concludes by discussing the reasonsbehind this ‘pact of silence’ between the Communistsand the ‘Hitler Youth generation’—and howit impacted upon subsequent generations of young people ‘borninto socialism’.     

Ideological change and settlement continuity in the French countryside: the development of agricultural syndicalism in Loir-et-Cher during the late-nineteenth century

The development and spread of new ideas within rural France during the late-nineteenth century was essentially effected within an old pattern of rural settlements. In general, this paper considers the basic dichotomy between nucleated and dispersed settlements and its influence on the spatial patterning of a particular rural ideology, agricultural syndicalism. It also examines the role of the basic conflict between urban and rural attitudes in the transformation of ideas about the organization of agricultural activity. More specifically, this paper analyses the relationships between the clustering of populations, proximity to urban centres, literacy levels and the spatial diffusion of agricultural syndicalism in Loir-et-Cher during the late-nineteenth century. It concludes that the character of rural settlements was not a directly moulding influence on the spread of agricultural syndicalism, that the transformation of rural ideologies was essentially achieved under urban influence and that generalizations about agricultural syndicalism applicable at one scale are not necessarily applicable at another scale.