Friday A/V Club: The Nazi Summer Camps of New York

Those aren't Boy Scouts.

Audrey Amidon of the National Archives writes:

I have one great party trick. Anytime someone asks me if I've ever come across something really cool while working in the Motion Picture Preservation Lab, I tell them about the time we had what looked like footage of a Boy Scout camp and then the Boy Scouts raised a Nazi flag along with the red, white, and blue. Without fail, I get the attention of anyone in within earshot.

The footage is below. To skip straight to the flag-raising ceremony, go to 13:47:

Needless to say, those aren't Boy Scouts. They're young members of the German-American Bund, an infamous American Nazi organization of the 1930s and early '40s. The Bund operated several summer camps in the years before World War II. This one was located in Windham, New York.

The film, which was shot around 1937, is in the public domain, so if you're making a mockumentary set in a dystopian timeline where Germany won the war, feel free to borrow all the flag-raising footage you need.

(For past editions of the Friday A/V Club, go here.)