Nikita Klæstrup

• The 1930s
In the early 1930s KU experienced a major increase in membership and peaked at more than 30,000 members under the leadership of chairman Jack G. Westergaard. KU became somewhat of an institution by being the first non-leftist organization to use 'modern campaign methods', such as posters, pamphlets, marches, demonstrations and gatherings. Hosting open air meetings with thousands of participants, demonstrating in the parks of Copenhagen, and flying over Copenhagen in propeller airplanes with conservative air leaflets became the trademark of the organization. One such incidence, when Copenhagen was plastered with thousands of campaign posters in a single night - is this day commemorated in the official KU song.
Like other youth organisations of the era, KU also took a critical stance towards democracy in the early 30's, and the ability of democracy to handle the economical and societal crisis that the West was facing. Parts of KU wanted to replace parliamentarism with a corporative system, and found symbolic inspiration in fascist Italy and Germany. This reflected itself in the green uniforms and leather straps members of KU wore and the formation of 'Stormtropperne', a security patrol designed to protect open air speakers from violent assaults by socialists. The German Sturmabteilung was the inspiration. This more unfortunate period of KU history is something the organization still struggles with, even though the KU-organization in Aarhus continue to keep a banner from this period on display.
The uniformation, and the formation of a security patrol was also used by the young social democrats and the young communists, but has since been ascribed solely to KU. The uniformation only lasted for 3 days before it was banned by the Danish parliament following a violent incident in which a young social democrat from 'DSU' killed a young communist in a bar brawl. It has also been insinuated by layman history, most notably in the popular Danish TV-series 'Matador', that KU was directly inspired by Nazism and anti-semitism, which however, was never the case, and has since been rebutted by history.