Original German WWII HJ National Youth Organization 12″ Metal Marching Snare Drum – Marschtrommel Original Items

Original Item: Only One Available. During the NSDAP period, every HJ National Youth Organization Bann (Regiment) had a band, and every Stamm (Battalion) a fife and drum corps. Two types of drum were used, the large Landesknecht field drums and a smaller, military-style side drum. The latter employed a diamond pattern along the top and bottom extended rims, in red and white for the H Jugend or black and white for the Deutsches Jungvolk.

This original 3rd Reich Marschtrommel marching side drum was used in parades by the boys of the HJ National Youth Youth Organization. It is of all metal construction, with a brass body and steel rims painted with the correct red and white diamond pattern. The lugs and tensioners are all steel, and feature round slot-head lugs similar to those still used by German percussion company SONOR.

This specific type of side (snare) drum is known as a Prussian drum, characterized by its shallow metal body. It would have been suspended from the belt by a drum hanger, held away from the body by its wire thigh brace, and played with drum sticks which would usually have been painted black, and otherwise held in a leather frog hung from the belt.

The drum still has heads, but they are in poor condition with the bottom head torn. We have no idea if they are period, as they look to be made from plastic, as with most modern drum heads. The snare for the bottom is completely missing, though the mounting lugs are still present.

Comes ready to be displayed!

In 1922, the Munich-based NSDAP established its official youth organization called Jugendbund der NSDAP. It was announced on 8 March 1922 in the Völkischer Beobachter, and its inaugural meeting took place on 13 May the same year. Another youth group was established in 1922 as the Jungsturm Adolf “AH”. Based in Munich, Bavaria, it served to train and recruit future members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the main paramilitary wing of the NSDAP Party at that time.

One reason the HJ so easily developed was that regimented organizations, often focused on politics, for young people and particularly adolescent boys were a familiar concept to German society in the Weimar Republic. Numerous youth movements existed across Germany prior to and especially after World War I. They were created for various purposes. Some were religious and others were ideological, but the more prominent ones were formed for political reasons, like the Young Conservatives and the Young Protestants. Once AH came onto the revolutionary scene, the transition from seemingly innocuous youth movements to political entities focused on AH was swift.

Following the abortive Beer Hall Putsch (in November 1923), NSDAP youth groups ostensibly disbanded, but many elements simply went underground, operating clandestinely in small units under assumed names. In April 1924, the Jugendbund der NSDAP was renamed Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung (Greater German Youth Movement). On 4 July 1926, the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung was officially renamed HJ Bund der deutschen Arbeiterjugend (HJ League of German Worker Youth). This event took place a year after the NSDAP Party was reorganised. The architect of the re-organization was Kurt Gruber, a law student from Plauen in Saxony.

After a short power struggle with a rival organization—Gerhard Roßbach’s Schilljugend—Gruber prevailed and his “Greater German Youth Movement” became the NSDAP Party’s official youth organisation. In July 1926, it was renamed H -Jugend, Bund deutscher Arbeiterjugend (“H” Youth, League of German Worker Youth”) and, for the first time, it officially became an integral part of the SA. The name H -Jugend was taken up on the suggestion of Hans Severus Ziegler. By 1930, the Hjugend (HJ) had enlisted over 25,000 boys aged 14 and upward. They also set up a junior branch, the Deutsches Jungvolk (DJ), for boys aged 10 to 14. Girls from 10 to 18 were given their own parallel organization, the League of German Girls (BDM).

In April 1932, Chancellor Heinrich Brüning banned the H Youth movement in an attempt to stop widespread political violence. However, in June, Brüning’s successor as Chancellor, Franz von Papen, lifted the ban as a way of appeasing “AH”, the rapidly ascending political star. A further significant expansion drive started in 1933, after Baldur von Schirach was appointed by H as the first Reichsjugendführer (Reich Youth Leader). All youth organizations were brought under Schirach’s control.