ABSTRACT
The story of the German youth movement between 1925 and 1933, the year Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the Reich, is an uninterrupted chain of unions, splits, and reunions. Ernst Buske thought in practical terms; instead of talking about a Reich in nubibus he preferred to concentrate on the work that could actually be done by young Germans. The Deutsche Freischar had its Utopians and romantics who said that their Bund, in its structure and ideas, had already anticipated the new Reich, that it was the new aristocracy which would replace the bourgeois, materialistic regime. In March 1933, several weeks before the Bunde came under real pressure, the leaders of the Freischar announced that they wanted to join the Hitler movement, and that those who were unwilling or not eligible to join it would have to leave the Bund.
