Artamanen

Founded in 1926, the Artamanen was a German nationalist, agrarian-romantic movement, which was exempted from a 1934 Nazi purge of youth organizations and became the core of the Hitler Youth.

Several important Nazi figures were involved, including Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hoess, Walter Darre, Walter Granzow, Alfred Rosenberg, Baldur von Schirach and Friedrich Schmidt. Hoess explained that when he  joined the SS in 1933, "I was on an estate as a leader of an Atamanen group at the time the Reichs Fuehrer SS [Himmler] summoned me and sent me to Dachau.