Be(com)ing “German”. Borderland Ideologies and Hitler Youth in NS-occupied Slovenia (1941–1945)

On the example of the Austrian-Slovenian borderlands Upper Carniola and Lower Styria under National Socialist occupation, the article examines Germanization practices directed at youth as part of the Nazi struggle for domination in Europe. Following a historical example of how to approach the topic of youth in contested borderlands in terms of theory, sources and methodology, this investigation questions categorizations of belonging deployed in these areas. It shows that the ideological fight for border regions may rely and build upon a long tradition of emphasizing and evoking the very “borderness” of territories and people. These specific narratives are called borderland ideologies and rely on harsh differentiations between “us” and “them” characterized by a high degree of flexibility and ambiguity. This vagueness of being and becoming “German”1 is elaborated based on the example of the Hitler Youth’s involvement in defining and spreading this supposed “Germanness”. In this manner, the article demonstrates that the cornerstones of grouping and ordering people were constructed categories such as culture, language and descent. Showing that the grounds for evaluation as well as the hierarchy of the latter were interchanged in subjective and opportunistic ways, the article puts national, ethnical and cultural claims of belonging into question.