Alternate Fronts

Abstract

Chapter 2 investigates the previously unexplored history of extracurricular youth mobilization among the Vojvodina’s ethnic Germans during the interwar period. It traces the many specifically “German” youth organizations that flourished as Yugoslav German cultural organizations like the Kulturbund, local pro-Reich Erneuerer, Third Reich teachers, Hitler Youth agents, Yugoslav sports groups, and both local and “reichsdeutsche” Catholic and Protestant agencies entered the youth mobilization race, attempting to imbue young Donauschwaben with specific notions of “Germanness.” As the chapter indicates, the initial organizational plurality and relative indifference to exclusivist national causes “from below” shifted towards the late 1930s: by 1940, over 90 percent of Yugoslavia’s young Donauschwaben had joined the local pro-Nazi Deutsche Jugend, creating a formidable army of potential home and battle front recruits ready and willing to fight for Hitler’s Reich.