Education under National Socialism

Education under National Socialism describes the theory and practice of "total education" in National Socialist Germany from 1933 to 1945. It includes pre-school, school and extracurricular education as well as higher education during the time of National Socialism . The aim was to shape the so-called “Aryan” youth into “ race- conscious national comrades”, “to steel their youthful bodies” and to educate them to become convinced National Socialists .

Phases of education and training policy

The National Socialist youth and education policy could not be implemented in one fell swoop in 1933, but gradually supplanted the educational system of the Weimar Republic :

1. Phase of securing power (1933–1935): without any deeper interference in the school system except for the dismissal of politically undesirable educators, centralization and harmonization of state and society, new youth organizations.
2. Phase of war preparation (1936–1940): Interventions in the school structure, new curricula, compulsory Hitler Youth and camp education, exclusion, reorganization of teacher training . In December 1936, the 13th grade was canceled without replacement for the boys in the 12th grade in order to get two officers' classes in 1939.
3rd phase of the expansion of power and disintegration (1941–1945): situation of lack of war, recruitment of pupils ( flak helpers , Volkssturm ) in the final phase, minimalization of education in the occupied territories.

Significance of the youth for the Nazi state

The Nazi regime paid special attention to young people, as the foundation stone for the racist national community of the future was to be laid with the education and training of the young generation.

Implementation of the Nazi ideology in education

With their anti- intellectual , anti- humanist , racist and chauvinist concept of “ethnic education”, the National Socialists opposed enlightenment and reason. Nazi propaganda and the Führer cult were constantly present in school lessons and also in the Hitler Youth (pictures of Hitler, Hitler salute, swastikas, flags, roll calls). While the social differences were to be approximated by the ideology of the national community (all Aryan Germans as national comrades ), hatred against supposedly inferior groups of people (“ sub-humans ”) was stoked.

Shortly after the assumption of power in 1933, all Jewish teachers and a third of the teachers were dismissed in the course of the Gleichschaltung . The remaining teachers were asked to join the National Socialist Teachers' Association (NSLB) . Occasionally there were teachers who left their profession for political reasons and were only able to resume their work after the end of the war. Others tried to keep their distance from National Socialist ideas within the school system. 9,000 of approx. 300,000 teachers refused such membership in the NSLB, but 97 percent joined this organization. 32 percent of the teachers organized in the NSLB, i.e. around 100,000 teachers, were also members of the NSDAP . For the leadership corps in the Nazi hierarchy, especially its middle and lower levels, the educational specialists played a significant role. In 1937, seven teachers were Gauleiter and deputy Gauleiter, 78 district leaders and 2,668 local group and base leaders of the NSDAP.

Early Childhood Education

In addition to the kindergartens , which were redesigned according to National Socialist ideas, there were attempts to “breed” “the new person” in the sense of National Socialism. From the educational writings of the doctor Johanna Haarer (1900–1988), such as The German mother and her first child or mother, tell about Adolf Hitler! , it becomes clear how much the ideological demand for harshness under National Socialism also shaped the way young children were dealt with. From birth onwards, she treats children as creatures whose cries and pleadings should not be given in. The development of a loving relationship between parents and children is to be prevented, whereby raising children is of course the responsibility of the mother.

As part of the Lebensborn campaign , homes were built to support the offspring of the SS . In the homes, single women could give birth anonymously to their children. Around 8,000 children were born in the German homes. Later, the National Socialists also kidnapped children from occupied European countries who looked close to the ideal Aryan type, and gave them to SS families to "raise" them.

school

In Hitler's view, school was above all a preliminary stage to military service. The Wehrmacht was therefore also called the “School of the Nation”. This rubbed off on everyday school life, as war and struggle became omnipresent in all subjects. For pre-military training and a combative attitude, not only the subject sport, but above all the Hitler Youth training, further school camps and the stay in school camps were used ("field games"). The National Socialist Teachers 'Association (NSLB) was founded as a party branch of the NSDAP as early as 1929; after Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor , all other teachers' organizations were banned. Until 1935 the university lecturers also belonged to the NSLB, then to the NSDDB .

Students from a commercial college from 1939 in front of a school building when it was not only used for school purposes

In the Weimar Republic the school system, especially the elementary schools, was structured heterogeneously under the sovereignty of the federal states. From 1934 the Reich Ministry of the Interior took over parts of the school sovereignty of the federal states and began to centralize and standardize the school system. This development was driven forward in 1934 with the establishment of the Reich Ministry of Education . From 1937, the Nazi regime reshaped the secondary school system, shortened the time to graduation to 12 school years, and abolished the joint schooling of boys and girls ( co-education ) with the exception of the so-called advanced schools (higher joint schooling from the 7th school year) and de-science teacher education . Also from 1937 on, denominational schools were closed against the Reich Concordat.

Schoolgirls on duty during the flax harvest in 1942 under the direction of the teacher

From 1934 onwards, Saturday was declared the “State Youth Day”, on which all members of the Jungvolk and Jungmädelbund (i.e. only 10 to 14 year olds) had HJ service and the other students had to attend school. In order to avoid differences in the teaching of the material and to indoctrinate all students, there were no specialist classes on Saturdays, but two hours of “national political” lessons, as well as sports and “needlework” for the girls and handicrafts for the boys. The State Youth Day brought with it numerous difficulties: One of the main problems was that there were not enough qualified JM leaders who could meaningfully complete the HJ service on the State Youth Day. This led to complaints from parents and schools. In addition, many of the guides were still students themselves, were in training or had to work so that they had to be given leave of absence for the service. This in turn led to conflicts with secondary schools and employers. Finally, there was also a problem that the subject matter had to be spread over five days instead of the previous six days, which some schools solved by shifting lessons in the higher grades to the afternoon. Nevertheless, there were around 120 hours of missed lessons per school year, so that a serious drop in performance was feared. As a result, the State Youth Day was abolished with effect from January 1, 1937.

As exercise, sport was an important part of Nazi education and, with five hours per week, a focus of the timetable. “A healthy mind in a healthy body” was chosen as the motto for this , a quote from the Roman poet Juvenal . In addition, it was promoted to appoint sports teachers as headmasters.

In order to promote the new elite , special Nazi elite schools, supported by different wings of National Socialism, were founded: above all

the national political educational institutions (NPEA, popularly Napola),
the Adolf Hitler Schools , the Reich School of the NSDAP ,
the SS Junker Schools and the advanced order castles .
the secondary schools to support talented elementary school students from low-income groups.

The German home schools as boarding schools, which were established primarily from 1942 on, were also intended to contribute to education in the National Socialist sense . The German home school at Iburg Castle was one of them .

The school magazine Hilf! Also played an important role in the implementation of the Nazi ideology in the school system . (Subtitle: Illustrated school newspaper ) published by the National Socialist Teachers' Association (NSLB). It was published from October 1933 to September 1944, monthly before the start of the Second World War, afterwards more irregularly. The 32 pages, 16 pages in the war years, initially cost 10 pfennigs, but were then distributed free of charge. From 1937 Henrich Hansen was the main editor . The magazine had a circulation of up to five million copies per issue and reached almost the entire student body from the age of 10.

The Nazi propaganda contained in the magazine was effectively packaged into a harmonious overall package of content and images that conjured up a folkish family idyll. In addition to the typical student topics of the time, such as traffic education , natural science and health education , various propaganda topics took up a large space. The First World War was represented very often in the form of adventure and hero stories, but also with factual texts; likewise the Germanic early history. Furthermore, topics such as genealogy and race theory were part of the student texts. The story is openly racist and anti-democratic . One of the most important authors of the magazine was Johann von Leers , who at times was also responsible for the “political editing” as its editor .

Educational goals

Boys taking shooting lessons

At school, one of the main goals of the Nazis was to spread their racist ideology and prepare students for a new war. The representative of the Reich Youth Leader for the Training of German Youth, Helmut Stellrecht, wrote in his official book “The Defense Education of German Youth ” published in 1936:

“The spirit of attack is the spirit of the Nordic race. It works in their blood like an indescribable longing [...] Our boys have to learn to shoot. The rifle must lie in their hands as naturally as the penholder [...] You want to educate people as if shooting weren't also education, as if military training wasn't actual education. 'Knowledge is power' is written on the school doors, as if power could be embodied in something more than in a weapon. "

Inexpensive produced supplementary books should replace or supplement the school books and spread the National Socialist ideology. On January 15, 1935, the Reich Minister for Education and National Education Bernhard Rust published the guidelines on racial studies , in which biology was assigned the focus of racial studies. Race studies should also be taught in all other subjects.

The basis was the idea of the “political soldier” for boys and the robust National Socialist mother for girls. In addition, the male youth was trained to develop willpower and determination, to absolute obedience, to discretion and a willingness to take responsibility, as well as imparting further military virtues. The scientific education, which Hitler had already disregarded in Mein Kampf, was devalued.

In addition to the technical instruction, which was particularly retained in the higher schools, alternative forms of education also appeared in order to promote the enthusiasm and the sense of togetherness among the young people of the "Aryan race". The National Socialists borrowed elements from reform pedagogy . Many educational reform institutions were not closed until the mid-1930s. Wilhelm Kirchner z. B. declared in 1939 (alluding to Émile von Rousseau ): “So we will not begin, for example, racial education and will end up with intelligent treatises on racial issues. We will let the child gather ideas in dealing with plants, animals and humans for years without even using the word race. ” Elvira Bauer's reader, published in 1936 and distributed free of charge by the party organizations of the NSDAP ,“ Don't trust a fox on green heather and no Jew with his oath ”, spoke a clear language.

Subjects and content

Until 1937, the guidelines for teaching had hardly changed or were from the Weimar era. This gave the impression that initially only little had changed (e.g. the inclusion of boxing in the canon of physical exercises ), but then, among other things, high schools were increasingly converted into high schools, the subjects reorganized and remaining independent textbook publishers dissolved. The religious education was increasingly restricted and teacher training for Religious Education set from the 1939th

The textbooks for all subjects were edited in accordance with the National Socialist worldview . In mathematics textbooks, for example, when the tasks were formulated, “subliminal feelings of inhumanity and hatred” were generated, such as “a madhouse costs xxx RM, how many German families could get an apartment from it?”, “How many high school students would there be in Berlin if the Aryan parents had sent their children to high school on the same scale as the Jews? (Berlin had 4,242,500 inhabitants) "or" How long does a bomber take from the French border to your hometown, and how big is the area that it can destroy in your city center when fully equipped (numbers are given)? ". So not only fear (and thus anger) was generated, but also “war-capable knowledge” was imparted. The natural sciences also became part of military education.

In the subject German, which together with geography and history formed so-called “German-language subjects” , what corresponded to the National Socialist ideology was taken from the Norse and medieval literature (especially Edda , Nibelungenlied ) (as in the reading book “Ewiges Volk”) , without including want to convey a representative picture of Nordic literature. More recent literature was also used, but taken out of context in such a way that poets such as Hölderlin were presented as motivating for war. This was the express goal of the lesson: “The material, the educational material, is to be chosen and evaluated in such a way that the student will repeatedly come across the idea of being a soldier without consciously realizing it.” In the subject geography (“geopolitics”) the " people without space " ideology, taught in history revanchism (against the Versailles Treaty ) and racial arrogance. The subject of physical exercise was upgraded by the hour and also received military sports camps as extracurricular courses.

However, many plans remained mere declarations of intent. Up until the outbreak of war, new textbooks were by no means written and distributed across the board. After that, the change in teaching and learning materials was only of secondary importance. At the latest with the start of the Allied bomber offensives and the deportation of Kinderland , there was a widespread shortage of materials, including in schools.

Pedagogical accompanying fields

Some topics from everyday school life have so far been treated or examined less often or only incidentally. The fact that HJ and BDM education played an important role in the Nazi education concept as a separate, parallel pillar alongside school, was often discussed in separate monographs. An important secondary aspect for the local administration is hardly mentioned. The HJ and BDM "girls" often ruined the facilities in the schools, where they had to meet again and again because suitable space was not available elsewhere. They often behaved inconsiderately and vandalized in the classrooms. In most cases the administrations fought in vain against the often arrogant Hitler Youth leadership. The city administration had to swallow that, as almost all of those responsible were party members themselves.

In the school system, despite the youth cult, flogging continued to exist, often brutally administered. Parents' complaints were mostly ironed out. The topic of sexuality was kept silent, but was an issue in schools and camps. Few Nazi educators had the courage to help the young people entrusted to them. Also, cigarette and alcohol consumption was not a feature of the later flak helpers. School celebrations had to adhere to certain forms. Even party members in the faculty could attract anger and criticism through clumsiness. When exchanging school letters internationally, young people showed great openness and longing for peace in the years after the First World War. In the first years of the Nazi regime, the supervisory officers encouraged written and personal encounters (as part of school trips). Then this too came under the focus of total surveillance. The almost liberal handling has been discontinued. During school trips abroad, Hitler Youth students occasionally appeared provocative and damaged the reputation of the sending schools.

With a view to preparing the students for war, model aircraft construction, coupled with physics, was supported. The model making was supposed to arouse enthusiasm for flying and thus for the air force in the boys. Silkworm breeding, which was introduced and organized in almost all schools, had a similar hidden objective. The silk produced was intended to aid the production of parachutes for the parachutists and Air Force pilots in general. The school gardening should prepare for the war economy . The financial outlay for these campaigns was considerable. They held on to it until shortly before the collapse. For girls, the subject needlework (as part of works) has been designed accordingly. The many collections and the annual efforts for the winter relief organization were discussed more often .

Training to become a master housewife took place in the women's technical schools. The examination tasks also dealt with specific tasks under war conditions: For example, I (as a mother) have so much RM (Reichsmark) available and have to host a children's birthday party for six children. What kind of cakes, drinks and possibly sweets do I offer as prices, and what does it cost? Child and baby care was also a focus of the girls’s high schools in order to relieve the mothers involved in the armaments industry or in companies. Here, the young girls were often overwhelmed when they were given specific help with the assigned families.

A separate subject area is also the progressive introduction to modern media in the context of the lessons at that time, combined with ideological influence and goal setting. Radio, film, slides and banners were used systematically, and a canon of school and educational films were produced. Films suitable for young people were targeted, and television appeared at the latest during the 1936 Olympic Games.

Extra-curricular education

For the training of enthusiastic, ready-to-work National Socialists, the complete registration of the Aryan youth in extracurricular organizations of the Hitler Youth and its female branch, the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), was particularly important. There she was emotionally connected with strong experiential educational approaches (also through the uncontrolled gathering of girls and boys) ideologically and trained as a paramilitary. The law on the Hitler Youth of December 1, 1936 made them compulsory state youth. The attitude was also trained and checked in the sports clubs by a Dietwart . School education should be devalued and ideological education in camps and youth organizations strengthened.

The Hitler Youth (HJ), which had either smashed or affiliated all other youth associations except for the Catholic ones, was declared state youth in 1936 and now organized all young people - in 1939 there were 8.7 million - in the German Reich: out of ten Up to 14 years they belonged as "Pimpfe" to the Jungvolk or as "Jungmädel" to the Jungmädelbund, from 14 to 18 years as "Hitlerjungen" to the HJ or as "Mädel" to the Association of German Girls (BDM).

From 1943 the National Socialists deployed minors born between 1926 and 1928 as flak helpers and from 1944 as soldiers in the Volkssturm .

University

As early as mid-1931, the National Socialist German Student Union founded in 1926 , a division of the NSDAP , was so strong that it became the leader within the German student body . The book burning in May 1933 was a public action carried out by the student body with the support of National Socialist professors. The student associations were also subject to synchronization and either dissolved by 1936 or were forcibly dissolved. All students should be organized in so-called comradeships of their respective university. On the other hand, the initially pursued goal of barracking all early semesters in National Socialist comradeship houses was given up again by order of Hitler.

With the law against overcrowding in German schools and universities of April 25, 1933, the National Socialist rulers stipulated in April 1933 that a maximum of 1.5% of the new study places could be allocated to so-called non-Aryans (mostly Jews).

There were some of the teachers who had taken a relevant position before the Nazi era , many were among the so-called March dead . After the Reichstag elections on March 5, 1933 and the subsequent Enabling Act, you joined the NSDAP early on or became involved in National Socialism without belonging to the party. At the end of the Nazi regime, 60 to 70% of university teachers were members of the party or a party organization.

Teacher training

The Nazi formation turned against a university education especially elementary school teacher , so called the jobs created in the Weimar Republic, teacher training colleges in college for teacher training around and replaced it from 1940 to 1943 at great expense by teacher training institutions , provided more for which no high school was . So the war losses should be compensated. The contents were descientific and replaced by ideological elements. For high school teachers , too , the preparatory service was shortened to one year in December 1940 . To indoctrate the teachers, the Central Institute for Education and Teaching set up so-called teacher camps for training purposes in Rankenheim south of Berlin in 1936 on behalf of the Nazi Ministry of Education .

Dealing with so-called "folk pests"

In the Weimar Republic , school discrimination against minorities had largely been abolished, even if the practice was partly different. With the law to restore the civil service of April 7, 1933, primarily Jewish professors and teachers were dismissed from the civil service. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 fundamentally eliminated the legal equality of the Jewish minority, as represented by the Weimar Constitution. The applicability of the Reich Citizenship Law as one of the two Nuremberg Laws was also transferred to "Gypsies" by their commentators. Thus the Roma, Sinti, Lalleri and others living in the German Reich were also a. not only in political, social and legal practice, but also formally to a group of lesser law.

The National Socialists dealt just as harshly with the Polish minority living in the country ( Polonia and Ruhr Poland ). Initially, the Poles were allowed to keep their clubs etc., but these were increasingly placed under state control, subject to more and more bans and finally banned in 1938. Many children of Polish origin were expelled from school in the same year. Poles' shops were also closed and handed over to Germans. Many Poles also lost their jobs. The aim was to get the Poles to return to their homeland. Despite this, 150,000 Poles still lived in Germany in 1938, mainly in the Ruhr area and Berlin.

In addition, the Nazi regime limited the proportion of “ foreign ” (primarily Jewish ) students in German classes to 1.5%. In the following years it banned them from participating in school events, class trips and visits to school camps. After the November pogroms in 1938, public schools and universities were closed entirely to Jewish children. In some auxiliary schools, teachers and school management took part in selecting students for transfer to youth concentration camps. This affected "difficult to bring up" children from families that were viewed as " anti-social ".

Due to anti-Semitism , the members of the Jewish minority , predominantly German citizens, were initially forcibly transferred to "Jewish schools" with reduced educational quality by local authorities and banned from teaching on June 30, 1942. Children and young people with a Jewish background were murdered in mass extermination camps ( Holocaust ). The camouflage expression for this was " Final solution to the Jewish question ".

The pupils excluded from the public institutions were to be taught in schools of the Jewish communities or the Sinti, whereby the Sinti often did not have the means to set up schools. The Jewish institutions initially worked on strengthening the students' ties to Germany, later they mainly prepared for emigration. These schools gave the Jewish students a shelter from the discrimination they were exposed to on a daily basis. In addition, the children and young people were made aware of their Jewish identity as a positive value, and they were able to counter the devaluations by the National Socialists with strengthened self-respect. On the other hand, they offered the rulers a control option that later made the deportation and murder easier. With the realization of the Holocaust , the special facilities were closed in 1942.

In the case of schoolchildren from the Roma and Sinti minority with German citizenship, the responsible ministry attached importance to "admission to public elementary schools" (RMfWEV decree, March 22, 1941). On the other hand, children of non-German nationality were to be trained. On site, however, on the initiative of local authorities, more and more "Gypsy classes" and "Gypsy schools" emerged, as they had already existed in individual cases before the transfer of power in the Weimar constitution, despite legal equality . With the beginning of the deportations of the “gypsies” and “mixed gypsies” to the “ gypsy camp Auschwitz ” in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp from March 1943 in the wake of the Auschwitz decree, there was no need for an explicit school ban.

School policy in occupied Europe was also shaped by racism. In Poland in particular , the Germans set up a school system, as Herman Nohl had already called for in 1933. It aimed at the Germanization of children of German origin and the segregation and enslavement of Polish students. The Polish educators were dismissed, 17,000 were murdered under German rule, including Janusz Korczak (1878–1942). In 1940 Heinrich Himmler demanded that there should be no higher school for the Slavs : “The aim of this elementary school is simply to be: simple arithmetic up to a maximum of 500, writing the name, a teaching that it is a divine command to be obedient to the Germans and to be honest, hardworking and good. I don't think reading is necessary. "

The proportion of children in the camps of the Soviet forced labor was high. Some of them had been deported from their home areas. Sometimes in targeted child-raising campaigns ("Hay harvest"), sometimes they came to the Reich with their mothers as small children or were born here. As far as these small children were judged to be “good-bred”, they were taken from their mothers for forced adoption and given to German families. Children who, in the opinion of the race experts, were unsuitable for “unraveling” the German national community, came in many cases to institutions designated with the euphemism of foreign children foster homes . There they were deliberately malnourished. The mortality rate ranged from 25 to 50%, in some cases 90%. Tens of thousands starved to death in this way. The burial costs of 15 Reichsmarks had to be paid by the poor mothers. The older children - usually from the age of 10 - were used to work. School attendance was forbidden to all children of Eastern European forced labor.

On the initiative of the Reich Defense Council , the RKPA set up youth concentration camps in Moringen (boys) and in the Uckermark (girls) under the euphemism of “youth protection camps” in 1940 for “difficult to educate”, “neglected”, “work-shy”, nonconformist and resistant young people . In Lodz such a camp for Polish youth, which was created Jugendverwahrlager Lodz .

reception

In 1939, 8.7 million boys were in the Hitler Youth and thus exposed to ideological manipulation. Community experiences such as tent camps or excursions served to prepare for military service as well as to educate people to become a “national community”. Here everyone was by no means the same, but everyone had their own task and responsibility, which - according to the ideological claim - were assigned to them regardless of their origin, class or wealth of their parents. Under the motto “Youth leads youth”, young people were given the opportunity to take on management positions. The BDM (4.5 million members in 1944) also offered the young girls independence from their parents' home and independence.

resistance

The White Rose resistance group around Hans and Sophie Scholl formed the core of the student resistance against National Socialism.

The approximately one hundred members of a resistance group around the two workers Herbert Baum and Martin Kochmann came from the working class and the petty bourgeoisie . Most were of Jewish origin. The group had a communist-socialist self-image. The proportion of women and girls was high. After an arson attack on the propaganda exhibition “The Soviet Paradise” in May 1942, the group was broken up. Over twenty members were sentenced to death. Herbert Baum died in custody after severe torture.

Other forms of youth resistance were directed against the ideological appropriation by the Hitler Youth. Examples of this were Helmuth Hübener or the rather informal youth scene of the edelweiss pirates, which was particularly active in West Germany .

There was occasional organized resistance from teachers. Different forms of "inner distancing" from National Socialism are mentioned by the experience generation. Specifically, teachers opposed the interference of the Hitler Youth in the classroom. Others report that they did not present given educational content or only presented them with a clear distance . An example of a teacher in active resistance is Kurt Steffelbauer .

Despite or perhaps because of the compulsory membership, the Hitler Youth did not succeed in recording all young people one hundred percent. The Catholic youth organizations tried to preserve the independence granted in the Concordat; Parents made efforts to exempt their children from membership; and a number of young people refused to force themselves or withdrew by not attending the Hitler Youth meetings at all or as little as possible. During the war, youth gangs of their own were even formed later and attacked the Hitler Youth.

Nazi educational science

Even before 1933, educators were considering a National Socialist education. Corresponding works are z. B. "Human Formation " by Ernst Krieck , who later rose to become one of the main representatives of the National Socialist educational sciences, but also some ideas of the co-founder of the adult education center Herman Nohl on the rural movement, the youth movement and the philosophy of life were taken up by the National Socialists.

Like other humanities scholars, the educators also served those in power and developed concepts for the implementation of the racist worldview. Others tried to preserve the autonomy of pedagogy as a science. In accordance with the Führer principle , a pluralistic discussion of Nazi education was ruled out. Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust was not able to fully enforce his lesson plans until late (from 1937/39) and reserved the right to "examine the guidelines after the end of the war."

The above Former elementary school teacher Ernst Krieck, who rose to become professor, was the first to formulate National Socialist pedagogy. He started from an “organic” model of society in which upbringing serves to prepare for the social position that can be derived from the origin, and accordingly he uses the term “breeding”. The National Socialist philosopher and pedagogue Alfred Baeumler wrote: "It is the racial school that we are looking for" (1942, p. 70). Theodor Wilhelm , another important representatives of the National Socialist Education, at the same SA -member and editor of the National Socialist International Review of Education , legitimized in his work Nazism in theory and practice, both the exclusion of Jewish officials as well as the murder of the Hungarian Jews who he saw it as a "European task". National Socialist pedagogy and the didactics associated with it saw themselves as normative, that is, based on the “highest norms of meaning”. Almost all theorists referred to the paragraph in Hitler's "Mein Kampf" on education. There it was said that sergeants were the better teachers. The youth must turn into soldiers in order to be able to "endure injustice and justice in silence".

sources

Source editions

Wolfgang Elz, Ralph Erbar: "You are the Germany of the future." School in early National Socialism (1934–1936) using the example of the Adam-Karrillon-Gymnasium in Mainz. Edition of a class diary and suggestions for practical implementation. (= PZ information. 7/2008). Bad Kreuznach 2008, ISSN 0938-748X .
Markus Köster and others: School under the swastika. Contemporary film recordings from the Martin Luther School in Plettenberg . Published by LWL-Medienzentrum für Westfalen, Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-923432-59-2 (DVD with booklet; documentation online ; PDF; 607 kB).

Educational writings in National Socialism

Alfred Baeumler: Politics and Education. Speeches and essays. Junker and Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1937.
Alfred Baeumler: Education and Community. Junker and Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1942.
Alfred Baeumler: Race as a basic concept in educational science. In: H. Kannz (Hrsg.): National Socialism as an educational problem. German educational history 1933–1945. Frankfurt 1984, pp. 276-279.
W. Kirchner: The völkisch country school on the move . Diesterweg, Frankfurt am Main 1939.
Ernst Krieck: Outline of educational science. Five lectures. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1927. (several editions 1933 to 1944)
Ernst Krieck: Völkischer overall state and national education . Heidelberg 1931. (2nd edited edition. 1933)
Ernst Krieck: Human formation . Leipzig 1933, 4th edition. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1939.
Ernst Krieck: National political education . Leipzig 1933. (20th edition. Armanen-Verlag, Leipzig 1937)
Ernst Krieck: Basic education . Erfurt 1934.
Ernst Krieck: National Socialist education based on the philosophy of education . 1937.
Johanna Haarer: Our little children. 6th edition. Lehmanns, Munich 1940.
Johanna Haarer: The mother and her first child . Completely reworked u. exp. Ed., 1222th - 1231th thousand d. Total run Gerber, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-87249-158-X (original title: The German mother and her first child . First edition: Lehmanns, Munich 1934, without reference to the original title and year of first publication).
Franz Lüke: The ABC of the breed. Publisher Ferdinand Kamp, Bochum. (from the "School for Racial Policy" in Munich)
Herman Nohl: Land Movement, Eastern Aid and the Task of Education. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1933.
Theodor Wilhelm: The idea of the professional civil service. A contribution to the political theory of early German constitutionalism. Mohr, Tübingen 1933.
Theodor Wilhelm: The cultural power of Europe in the war. In: International Journal of Education. 13, Issue 1/2, 1944, pp. 1-14.

Contemporary literature outside the German Reich

Ralph Keysers: l'Enfance nazie. L'Harmattan, Paris 2013, ISBN 978-2-343-01172-1 .
Ödön von Horváth : Youth without God . Amsterdam 1937. (New editions: Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1970, Gesammelte Werke, Volume 13; Cornelsen Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-464-61402-6 )
Erika Mann : Ten million children, the education of the youth in the Third Reich . 1938. (New edition: Ellermann, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-7707-0213-1 )

Autobiographical

Wolfgang Klafki (Ed.), Gerda Freise: Seduction - distancing - disillusionment, childhood and youth under National Socialism, autobiographical issues from an educational perspective . (= Pedagogy series ). Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 1988, ISBN 3-407-34015-X .
Johannes Leeb (ed.): We were Hitler's elite students, former pupils of the Nazi elite schools break their silence . Heyne, Munich 1999-2004, ISBN 3-453-16504-7 .

literature