Bund Deutscher Jugend

The Bund Deutscher Jugend (BDJ, English: League of German Youth) was a politically active German association with right-wing and 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 "involvement in a secret organisation" (guerrilla training).[1]

History

The BDJ was founded on 23 June 1950 in Frankfurt/Main. The founder and main theorist and later chairman of the BDJ was Paul Lüth.[2] The CIA-cryptonym for the BDJ was KMPRUDE[1] and for the Technischer Dienst LCPROWL.[3] The project outline in a declassified CIA file states the following objectives:[4]

  1. The utilization of the League during the October 15 elections in Eastern Germany
  2. Consolidating the League as a permanent nation-wide organization
  3. Employing the League in political warfare operations
  4. Guerrilla warfare and sabotage training of selected segments of the Leagues membership.

In April 1951 the Technischer Dienst (technical service), a secret subsection of the BDJ, was founded on the programmatic basis of the partisan writings by Paul Lüth with the aim in mind, to form an armed resistance movement against "Bolshevism".[2] The operation ran under the name LCPROWL BDJ Apparat.[1] As of 1951 the budget for one year was $125.000.[3]

The group was allegedly founded as part of the CIAs program of creating guerrilla and stay-behind groups in Germany and Western Europe that would fight the Soviets should they occupy Western Europe during a future confrontation. The CIA was training them in covert guerrilla warfare to be part of this future resistance movement. Many members of the BDJ were veterans of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS.[5][6][7]

Prohibition Proceedings

A raid of local police units in the premises of the BDJ in 1952 revealed that the U.S. funded the organization with a monthly sum of $50,000 and supplied it with arms, ammunition and explosives. A weapons cache with machine guns, grenades, light artillery guns and explosives were found in the Odenwald near Frankfurt am Main.[8] Seized documents also contained an assassination list naming 40 German political leaders - mainly politicians of the German socialist party, SPD. Among them were Herbert Wehner, the former head of the SPD party, Erich Ollenhauer, the Hessian Minister of the Interior, Heinrich Zinnkann and the Mayor of Hamburg and Bremen. For a case of "emergency" scenario, the BDJ had already funneled members in the SPD. The CIC took over the custody of the German BDJ members and refused in the following access by German authorities who intended to raise an indictment due to unlawful possession of weapons and planned murder. CIC agents continued to seize all documents still available and refused to surrender them to the German authorities. As a result of the ongoing investigation U.S. authorities admitted to have financed the BDJ for the training of guerrillas in case of war with the Soviet Union.[9]

Ideology

The charter and the official program of the BDJ reveal few details about the actual political motivations of the group. Deliberately any extreme right-wing ideology was kept out. The political guidelines of day-to-day politics were collected in the confidential, 78 pages long, memorandum "Bürger und Partisan" (Citizen and Partisan) by Paul Lüth. According to Lüth the world was in a "defense war against totalitarianism".

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 3 Research Aid: Cryptonyms and Terms in Declassified CIA Files - Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Disclosure Acts
  2. 1 2 Declassified CIA File: "Bund Deutscher Jugend" (League of German Youth)
  3. 1 2 Declassified CIA file: Project LCPROWL - Amendment No. 2
  4. ↑ Declassified CIA file: Project Outline: LCPROWL (Januar 24 1951)
  5. ↑ (in German)Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt)
  6. ↑ "Oberbundesanwalt fordert BDJ-Akten" (in German), Frankfurter Rundschau (Frankfurt)
  7. ↑ "Alleged Secret Organization: Guerilla Training in Germany" (in German), The Times (London)
  8. ↑ Partisans in Germany: An Arms Dump in the Odenwald. In: The Times. London, October 11, 1952
  9. ↑ German Saboteurs Betray U.S. Trust. In: New York Times. New York October 10, 1952

See also

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