The Edelweiss Pirates by Savannah Carter

To start it off, the Edelweiss Pirates were mainly led by Bartel Schink. However, By 1940 Hitler Youth had almost eight million members; with meetings and rallies to support Nazi events. However, their form of brainwashing did not work on Bartel. He disagreed and was in fact uncomfortable with the things he needed to do to support the Hitler Youth. Yet, he was not alone and had started many hikes and bike rides with other kids in Hitler Youth who did not agree with Hitler's ways. They then started to call themselves the Edelweiss Pirates, named after the Edelweiss Flower. They also wore Checkered shirts, white socks, and scarves distanced the boys (there were very few female members) from the sterile attire of the Hitler Youth squad. They did not like being told what to wear and what to do. The Pirates took action and started doing things like pouring sugar water into the gas tanks of Nazi vehicles, and spray-painting walls and buildings in the dead of night with slogans such as “Down with Hitler” and “No More Nazi Brutality.” Their motto was “Eternal War on the Hitler Youth.” The Pirates’ anti-Nazi activities escalated from attacking Hitler Youth patrols to stealing from Nazi supply lines, looting Nazi warehouses, and dropping anti-Nazi leaflets in city centers. They then started to commit many more acts of sabotage such as derailing train cars and disrupting Nazi supply chains. They even wanted to join the Allied forces to fight Nazis on the battlefield. However when Pirates were captured their heads were shaved to humiliate them, then they were beaten and sent to reform schools, psych wards, or labor camps; in some of these punishments, they sang songs against the Nazi regimen to show they did not agree nor care for Hitler's rules. On July 1944, Barthel and several other Pirates were arrested for planning to blow up a Gestapo headquarters in Cologne. They were in prison and left tortured for four months. On November 10, 1944, a gallows was set up on a public thoroughfare in Cologne. Barthel Schink and four other teen Edelweiss Pirates, along with seven adult members of the anti-Nazi resistance, were hanged in front of hundreds of Nazis. Barthel was 16 years old. It was only in 2005 they were “politically rehabilitated” their criminal status was removed and honored the surviving five members still in Cologne, Germany. “The street where the public execution took place has been named Schink Strasse and there is a plaque recognizing Berthel and the other martyred Edelweiss Pirates.”