The Bund Deutscher Jugend (BDJ, en, League of German Youth) was a politically active German association with extreme right-wing anti-communist leanings, founded in 1950. In the beginning of 1953 the BDJ and its paramilitary arm, the Technischer Dienst, were forbidden as extreme right-wing organisations because of the planned murder of roughly 40 people and the creation of a secret organization.
Prohibition proceedings
A 1952 raid by local police units on the BDJ's premises revealed that the U.S. funded the organization with a monthly budget of $50,000 and supplied it with arms, ammunition, and explosives. A weapons cache consisting of machine guns, grenades, light artillery guns, and explosives was found in the
Odenwald near
Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...
. Seized documents also contained an assassination list naming 40 German political leaders - mainly politicians of the German social democratic party,
SPD
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany.
Saskia Esken has been t ...
. Among them were
Herbert Wehner
Herbert Richard Wehner (11 July 1906 – 19 January 1990) was a German politician. A former member of the Communist Party, he joined the Social Democrats (SPD) after World War II. He served as Federal Minister of Intra-German Relations from 1966 ...
, the former head of the SPD party,
Erich Ollenhauer
Erich Ollenhauer (27 March 1901 – 14 December 1963) was the leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1952 until 1963. He was a key leader of the opposition to Konrad Adenauer in the Bundestag. In exile under the Nazis, he re ...
, the Hessian Minister of the Interior, , and the Mayor of Hamburg and Bremen. For a case of "emergency" scenario, the BDJ had already funnelled members in the SPD.
The U.S. Army
Counter Intelligence Corps
The Counter Intelligence Corps (Army CIC) was a World War II and early Cold War intelligence agency within the United States Army consisting of highly trained special agents. Its role was taken over by the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps in 1961 and ...
(CIC) took over custody of the German BDJ members and denied West German authorities access to them in the following months because the authorities intended to indict the members on charges of unlawful possession of weapons and planned murder. CIC agents continued to seize all remaining documents and refused to surrender them to West German authorities. As a result of the ongoing investigation, U.S. authorities admitted to having paid the BDJ to train guerrillas in case of war with the Soviet Union.
Ideology
The
Hessian federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (german: Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz or BfV, often ''Bundesverfassungsschutz'') is Germany's federal domestic intelligence agency. Together with the Landesämter für Verfassungss ...
first described the BDJ in their reports as "strongly right wing" and "not yet an immediate danger to society". The office later amended the reports and added that the shift of the BDJ into right wing extremism was viewed as a possibility.
On 9 September 1952, the high ranking BDJ member and former SS-
Hauptsturmführer
__NOTOC__
(, ; short: ''Hstuf'') was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was used in several Nazi organizations such as the SS, NSKK and the NSFK. The rank of ''Hauptsturmführer'' was a mid-level commander and had equivalent seniority to a ...
, Hans Otto, who created a "hit list" with the names of 40 German politicians for the BDJ, surrendered himself to the police.
The BDJ was reclassified as an "unconstitutional right wing extremist group" and subsequently banned by the federal state of
Hesse
Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major historic cities are Dar ...
on 7 January 1953 and the other states by February of the same year.
See also
*
Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit
*
Operation Gladio
Bibliography
All FOIA documents relating to project LCPROWL(243 documents)
References
*
{{Authority control
1950 establishments in Germany
1953 disestablishments in Germany
Far-right politics in Germany
Defunct organisations based in Germany
Anti-communist organizations
Anti-communism in Germany