Subcultures -- be they goths, punks, nerds, or latter-day codpiece enthusiasts -- exist for the purpose of banding together with others of like mind to temporarily escape the unpleasantness of the larger, non-codpiece-appreciating world. But sometimes that unpleasantness gets pretty serious. So what's a good codsman to fado? Give up what he loves? Hell no! He buckles down, and he builds the most gargantuan, elaborate, vulgar codpiece this world has ever seen. Just like these folks ...
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The Swing Kids Of Nazi Germany
via cjhsla.org
When you think "Adolf Hitler," you probably think "good with children." His version of the Boy Scouts had just as much fire-starting and knot-tying as the original, only practiced on different subject matter. Astoundingly, not all kids in Nazi Germany wanted to spend their spare time wearing jackboots and dancing on the graves of their enemies. Some just wanted to wear zoot suits and dance to jazz.
via cjhsla.org
These guys were performing a criminal act. No, it wasn't criminal awkwardness.
The Swingjugend, or Swing Kids, originated in the very earliest days of the Nazis' rise to power. They mostly came from middle- and upper-class German families -- in other words, the precise group Hitler targeted to become prominent members of the Nazi party by offering them special schooling and membership in the aforementioned Hitler Youth. But they eschewed his state-sponsored hatred in favor of listening to a type of music "strictly banned by the Nazis as being 'degenerate' and Negro-influenced."
via Wiki Commons
As depicted in this propaganda, which (while racistly drawn) fails to make jazz look uncool.
Though there are reports of German Swing Kids brawling with members of the Hitler Youth West Side Story-style, they were largely a peaceful movement, their usual form of protest being to categorically ignore the Nazis' strict curfews and bans on foreign music and dancing. Said ignorance ended rather predictably, of course: in concentration camps.