Germany’s new Hitler Youth
Posted by Thomas Klikauer
For decades, Germany has had a very active – brutal and very dangerous – milieu of Neo-Nazis that operate throughout the country and not just in Germany’s capital of Berlin and East-Germany.
One of the more recently discovered Neo-Nazi platoons consist of young fascists who became known as The Young Eagles or Jungadler. To the unsuspecting outsider, the name ‘young eagles’ appears rather innocent.
This is yet another cohort of heirs of Germany’s infamous Hitler Youth. This time, it’s the Neo-Nazis’ Brandenburg (East-Germany) unit. In-itself, this is neither new nor particularly newsworthy.
What is, however, most illuminating is the link between this Neo-Nazi youth organization and Germany’s legal system of courts and public prosecutors. This is nothing new.
Historically, Adolf Hitler’s conversion of democratic Weimar into a fascist dictatorship included the goose-stepping (Gleichschaltung) of Germany’s legal system. This, too, is not new.
Meanwhile, what is new is that this process is currently replayed, not just in the plans of German Neo-Nazis but also – in bitter reality – in several countries. The forcing into line of the legal system marks an authoritarian take-over of a formerly independent system known as the rule of law.
Back in Germany, plans to eliminate the independent legal system often entails today’s Neo-Nazis. Most disturbingly, a public prosecutor in Brandenburg’s judiciary has been suspected of having revived and supported a Neo-Nazi-style youth outfit called Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend or HDJ.
In typical Neo-Nazi fashion, original Nazi (1933-1945) Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth or HJ) was slightly renamed by today’s Neo-Nazis into HDJ. The Neo-Nazis simply inserted a “D” for Deutschland/Germany.
Cunningly, Hitler (H) became “Heimattreu”. The all important “H” (for Hitler) was replaced by a more acceptable looking “H” (for Heimattreu). All in all, these shrewd renaming carries three important elements of current Neo-Nazi ideology:
- Homeland: The Heimat or homeland carries connotations to the mythical Aryan soil of a pre-Christian community – an essential element of Hitler’s anti-Semitic and race-based Volksgemeinschaft.
- Devotion: To the innocent outsider, the term Treue can simply mean loyalty and devotion. For German Neo-Nazis, it means: Meine Ehre heißt Treue – my honor is loyalty/devotion. This, too, sounds rather unassuming. It was, however, the official motto of Hitler’s SS. The SS was instrumental to the Holocaust. For Germany’s Neo-Nazis, the Treue in all this signifies the SS’s devotion to Hitler (then) and the Neo-Nazis’ devotion to Hitler and the SS (today). In other words, this also reminds Germany’s Neo-Nazis of their beloved Hitler Nazism.
- Nazi-Coding: Finally, the rather cleverly inserted “D” for Deutschland/Germany makes the entire renaming appear distant to Hitler’s HJ. Yet it reflects a typical Neo-Nazi fashion. The coding should appear to be distant from Hitler’s HJ while doing exactly that. The insertion of the “D” allows Neo-Nazis to pretend that their Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend is nothing more than a bunch of young people who like their homeland. Perhaps this is the most important part of the entire construct.
The HDJ was officially banned 15 years ago. As for German Neo-Nazi, banning does not necessarily mean being prosecuted or persecuted by Germany’s state and police.
All of Neo-Nazis’ name-giving also means that the most recent Neo-Nazi platoon – The Junge Adler (young eagles or HDJ 2.0) – should not appear to look too much like the “officially” banned HDJ.
Originally, the HDJ came out of a Neo-Nazi meeting in 1968 in Germany’s Teutoburg Forest – a symbolic place for Hitler and today’s Neo-Nazis.
The Neo-Nazi troupe was set up in the spirit of the Hitler Youth as a remake of the youth loyal to their Germanic homeland. In this context, homeland means the Aryan Volksgemeinschaft. To Neo-Nazis, it always implies the elimination of Jewish people to make the homeland Judenrein.
Meanwhile, the actual name of the recent Neo-Nazis outfit, the Junge Adler dates back to a propagandistic Nazi feature film called Young Eagles. The movie was produced in 1944 and featured German stars Dietmar Schönherr and Hardy Krüger.
The Nazi film was intended to encourage better performances in Hitler’s arms industry. It is also a grim example of the mendacious phrased Volksgemeinschaft – Hitler’s anti-Semitic, racist, and nationalistic Aryan Volks-community.
The movie’s storyline includes young apprentices working for an aircraft manufacturing factory and working in secret night shifts to achieve production targets – after a fire at the factory. True to Hitler’s hierarchical-Führer community, Theo, the son of the director, proves himself well in this.
Yet, Theo arrogantly invites his classmates to a pub and while drunk damages a parked car costing him 800 Reichsmarks to repair. He then lies to his father who takes him out of the local high school and puts him in the factory as an apprentice.
The fact that the father can pay the outstanding bill for the repair of the car – while ordinary people would not have the means to do so – is conveniently ignored. The Volksgemeinschaft is about race – not class.
The propaganda movie ends with a touching musicale. Everyone is happy. The fact that Hitler’s Second World War was still raging is nowhere mentioned. Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels liked the film intensely.
The movie fits in with Goebbels’ infamous Sports Palace speech about the total war of February 1943. The film cost 2 million Reichsmarks to produce and when it raked in 4.5 million Reichsmarks, the Nazis saw this as evidence of the film’s success from its German audience.
The master-propagandist Goebbels had realize that Germany’s population was accustomed to shallow, light, and often rather silly mass-entertainment – a welcomed distraction from the brutalities of Hitler’s race war. Germans did not want to watch deeply ideological films.
The title of the Nazi film – Junge Adler – is a name given to an, until very recently virtually unknown, Neo-Nazi youth organization called the Junge Adler.
The Neo-Nazi group Junge Adler, in turn, is the illegal continuation of the Loyal German Youth or HDJ that was banned in 2009 by Germany’s federal minister of the interior.
There runs a straight line between Hitler’s “HJ” and the Neo-Nazi “HDJ” and the more innocent-sounding Junge Adler. The renaming was to hide all these realities, including the fact that the name Junge Adler came out of a 1944 Nazi propaganda movie.
The purpose of this ghastly Neo-Nazi troupe The Junge Adler is to attract children and young people to the ideology of Neo-Nazism by pretending – just like Hitler’s HJ once did – to be merely organizing apolitical events for leisure and outdoor hiking.
All three – Hitler’s HJ, its direct successor the HDJ, and now: The Junge Adler – dish out romantic folk songs to manipulate children further and further to the orbit of Neo-Nazi ideology.
Yet, a recent HDJ insider offered even more explosive insights. A lawyer from East-Germany’s state of Brandenburg, who was promoted to the very powerful position of Chief Prosecutor in 2023, continued the HDJ as a member and supporter – under the code name The Junge Adler.
Perhaps what happened next was not without reason. On the 25th of January 2025, prosecutors and officers of the police’s political crime section from Berlin searched the Neo-Nazi prosecutor’s office in the neighboring Brandenburg upon Havel.
To make matters more confusing, this Brandenburg is located in the East-German state of the same name, Brandenburg.
At the same time, two residential buildings in Germany’s capital were also searched. The key figure to all this is a senior public prosecutor – the Oberstaatsanwalt.
Before the Neo-Nazi prosecutor started at Brandenburg’s prosecutor general’s office, the lawyer is said to have worked in Potsdam’s Ministry of Justice.
Worse, the Neo-Nazi-lawyer was placed into a department that was responsible for right-wing extremism, Neo-Nazism, and cases of political crimes. It is a bit like making Donald Trump head of Black Lives Matter.
Being in the right place, the Neo-Nazi “might” have given valuable tips to his far-right associates. So far, it isn’t quite (yet) possible to find out whether the man is temporarily suspended from official state service and if his access rights to sensitive databases have been revoked.
Meanwhile on the state-official side of things, the Brandenburg’s prosecutor’s office asks for understanding. It simply stated that in general, no information is provided with regard to any official legal measures.
The protection of Nazis in Germany has a long history – particularly in Germany’s judiciary system.
Not surprisingly, Potsdam’s ministry of justice is keeping a low profile. Perhaps not to annoy local Neo-Nazis, evil heretics might, of course, wrongfully claim this.
The ministry’s spokesman also referred to the ongoing investigations and the personal rights of the un-named Neo-Nazi.
Real Nazis (1920s to 1945) and Neo-Nazi (post-1945) have always enjoyed their legal rights in Germany – unlike their victims and in particular those who were killed by Neo-Nazis.
Old Nazis (1933-1945) had their rights protected during Germany’s Denazification (1945-1951) and the subsequent Re-Nazification (1950s to 1970s) when rafts of Hitler-Nazis were welcomed into the official ranks of Germany’s businesses, army, administration, cultural and educational system as well as the judiciary.
To clarify the relationship between German Neo-Nazism and the state further, many will still remember Goebbels’ statement that,
it will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy,
that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.
Perhaps in the awareness of Goebbels’ dictum, Berlin’s chief prosecutor too, keeps his head down. Possibly, as his office said, because there is a great danger of public prejudice.
Prejudice against Neo-Nazis! Poor Neo-Nazis, one really feels for them. They should be protected from public prejudice.
Protecting Neo-Nazis means that the German state will not provide information even in the case of a so-called initial suspicion. Expecting anything else from Germany’s Neo-Nazi-protection state would have been a surprise.
The case of the Neo-Nazi NSU killers (10 deaths) and especially the case of so-called security agent Andreas Temme – nicknamed Little Adolf – has shown as much.
Meanwhile, it came to light that relatives of the Brandenburg’s Neo-Nazi public prosecutor held official positions in the Neo-Nazi HDJ.
According to the official line of the ministry of justice, the man himself is said to have behaved completely inconspicuously. What a surprise! The German state missed a Neo-Nazi – how unthinkable!
In any case, German Nazis are good in appearing inconspicuous. How this is done was for everyone to see when Auschwitz’ boss Rudolf Höss lived an inconspicuous life in the Zone of Interest.
As for toady’s Neo-Nazis, most of what is known about today’s Neo-Nazi-prosecutor’s case comes from German newspapers and the public broadcaster ARD.
Broadcasted on television just three days before Germany’s federal election on 23 February 2025, however, the matter was sidelined by the headline grabbing issue of Germany’s election.
This is also not a surprise. The right programming schedule can make unwanted reports disappear – how marvelous.
Despite all this, Neo-Nazi leaflets, photographs, calendars and handwritten notes had been leaked to newspapers. Journalists were also able to evaluate private Neo-Nazi videos.
According to that, the Neo-Nazis of the Junge Adler outfit have made trips to Germany’s remote Harz Mountains and as far as Narvik in Norway. The Neo-Nazis set up tent camps for Nazi-style celebrations in the years 2018 to 2024.
The Neo-Nazi insider also said after seeing the material, for me, this is clearly the beginning of a long weekend of the [Neo-Nazi] HDJ with setting up an archway, a tent site, sitting around a campfire and then singing nice little völkische [read: racist, antisemitic and Aryan] songs to manipulate children towards the far right.
Much of this has a long history.
After Hitler-Nazism’s defeat by the Allied Forces in 1945, several Neo-Nazi organizations were founded in the young Federal Republic of Germany that exposed children to far-right indoctrination.
One of which was the aforementioned Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend that rose to prominence during the 1990s. It came into being by separating itself from another Neo-Nazi organization called Freibund Jugend.
For years, there had been evidence of successor organizations to the HDJ. The HDJ was banned in 2009. In 2014, it became known that children and young people in the remote Lüneburg area participated in a right-wing Neo-Nazi tent camp – some dressed in full Neo-Nazi uniform.
This time, they belonged to a Neo-Nazi youth squad called Sturmvogel. Already in 2013, a Neo-Nazi summer camp of this youth squad was held in East-Germany’s Grabow (Brandenburg).
By the end of 2015, the state government of Brandenburg started to warn against the activities of the Neo-Nazi outfit Sturmvogel.
It noted, behind the ethnic-national youth camps exists a right-wing extremist parallel world. At that time, the Neo-Nazi youth made headlines in Brandenburg and beyond.
Much of this came in connection with the rise of the neo-fascist AfD and its hardcore Neo-Nazi platoon Führer Andreas Kalbitz. This is, yet, another point at which German Neo-Nazism and the neo-fascist AfD party merge.
Bald-headed Kalbitz is a kind of Untersturmführer – akin to a local SS platoon leader. He holds this position either in his Neo-Nazi outfit or the AfD or both.
Local Führer Kalbitz had participated in a Pentecost [Pfingsttreffen] meeting of the HDJ long before the foundation of his beloved Neo-Nazi party, the AfD.
According to his own statement, top-Neo-Nazi Kalbitz only wanted to look around there for the sake of his personal interest. Sure!
Typically, Neo-Nazi Kalbitz denied that he had really participated in the HDJ – while parading around the camp in full Neo-Nazis uniform.
Despite the false claims by the Neo-Nazi, he is listed on the program of this neo-Nazi troupe. Worse, Neo-Nazi Kalbitz once belonged to the now “officially” dissolved Neo-Nazi völkische (read: Neo-Nazi) wing of the AfD – a hardcore and even more radical Neo-Nazi setup inside a Neo-Nazi party.
Kalbitz is no longer an “official” AfD’s faction leader. He is no longer a member of the state parliament and is not even a party member anymore.
For PR reasons, the AfD distant itself from the all too outspoken Neo-Nazi, once Kalbitz came under intense media scrutiny. Since then, Kalbitz operates, even more as before, in the murky corners of German Neo-Nazism.
To maintain the fantasy that the AfD is not a Neo-Nazi party, the AfD declared Kalbitz’s party membership “retroactively” void in 2020.
It remains crucial to note that Neo-Nazi Kalbitz had also belonged to a far-right setup called Republicans in 1994. He had concealed this in his application for admission in 2013 when he joined the AfD.
While platoon leader Kalbitz and his Neo-Nazi HDJ story attracted attention in the years 2020 to 2022, the aforementioned Junge Adler continued – as so often the case – in secrecy. It was left alone by the German state.
The Brandenburg’s Neo-Nazi prosecutor had, what is called special knowledge about the Neo-Nazis in his very own home-state.
He was actively involved in the Neo-Nazi outfit of the Junge Adler. And he was also running a Führerschule – a school for future Neo-Nazi leaders. This has yet to be proven.
So far, much of what has been said above is “officially” only a suspicion against Brandenburg’s Neo-Nazi prosecutor. As for German Neo-Nazis, the presumption of innocence applies, of course.
But even if it turns out that the allegations are incorrect, the prosecutor may still have one more problem. And that kicks in at the time when he knew about the existence of a banned Neo-Nazi organization.
Paradoxically, the Neo-Nazi prosecutor has an official state duty – as an official of the German state and as a public prosecutor, in particular – to report crimes and the activities of banned Neo-Nazis like the HDJ-styled Junge Adler. Membership in such a group is a criminal offense.
In the end, the yet to be named Neo-Nazi prosecutor and his Neo-Nazi outfit of the Junge Adler show a rather cozy relationship a German Neo-Nazi enjoys with the state. Historically, this dates back to the 1920s.
One wonders if today’s Neo-Nazis celebrate the 100th anniversary of continuous state support.
Photo: (source: https://www2.lunapic.com/editor/?action=candy)
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