Swing Kids essays

Swing Kids essays Living in Hamburg, Germany during the period of the Adolph Hitler regime was not easy for anyone. The WWII movie, Swing Kids, followed the lives of coming of age teenagers who were faced with situations that questioned their integrity. These particular boys Peter, Thomas, and Avrid were best friends and were determined to withstand their friendship through trying times in Nazi Germany. What set these boys apart from all their peers, who were joining Hitlers Youth Brigade at the time, were that they rebelled from the Nazi movement, by embracing the forbidden pastimes of British fashion, Harlem Slang, American movies, and Swing music. Most importantly, Swing Kids portrayed each young mans struggle to choose between friendship, family and freedom as the Nazi movement swept through Germany. Swing heil, swing heil as the swing kids would often say as they greeted each other. The main basis behind the swing movement was that they strictly opposed the fascist oppression that was being caused by the infamous Adolph Hitler. But the three particular young men in this movie, Peter, Thomas and Avrid, were not as vocal about their opposition with the Hitler youth brigade. Instead they would disguise as supports of Hitler by day and by night they were full-fledged swing kids, who attended swing dance clubs with their fellow swing kids. Peter was very defiant, Thomas was very emotionally weak, and Avrid was the intelligent and very hypercritical character. Life was going very well, the boys attended school to become engineers, they had a strong friendship, and most importantly they had swing music, which played a very big part in their lives. It was not until a practical joke, that every took a bad turn. After an attempt to steal a radio from a local bakery, Peter gets caught and luckily Thomas gets away. After being taken into custody by the Gestapo, Peter is punished for his actions. In hopes of giving ...