Authors: Lynn H. Nicholas
These fantastic changes lay in the future, and the Catholic Church, survivor of centuries of similar assaults, bulwarked by tradition, was never in serious danger. Though some of the highest Nazi officials substituted the new “naming ceremonies” for traditional christenings, others did not: even Hitler counted Göring’s daughter among his many old-style “godchildren.” And to the end, many an altar boy covered his Hitler Youth uniform with a surplice during Communion. But basic curriculum requirements and the appointment of personnel in the denominational schools were already in the purview of the state, and it was in these areas that Nazi control would immediately be felt.
Even before 1933, there had been incidents that gave a preview of the coming purge of the teacher corps. In May 1932, Nazi youths in Party uniforms (which were forbidden by Weimar dress codes), elated by the success of their Party in a by-election, hung a swastika flag over their Berlin school in expectation that Hitler would be called to power. After requests by faculty members to remove the flag were ignored by the pro-Nazi janitor, one of the teachers, a Jewish war veteran who had lost an arm in battle in 1917, climbed across the roof and, applauded by all, pulled the flag down. His glory was short-lived. After hearing complaints from the Nazi youths, the school’s director, to the outrage of the great majority of his students, decreed an investigation and suspended the teacher.
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A year later such an investigation would no longer be necessary. In early April 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was promulgated. The first of hundreds of anti-Jewish laws that would be enacted during the twelve years of the Third Reich, this one required that all “non-Aryan” employees of the government, which included teachers, “retire.” In many jurisdictions the existing educational bureaucracy was replaced with Party loyalists, and committees of three teachers (a favorite Nazi format), which were soon dubbed “Murder Committees,” were set up to investigate the racial background and political leanings of their peers.
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Enforcement was frequently applied without warning. A teacher arriving at school one day would simply be notified that he could no longer go to his classroom. These abrupt dismissals were often a shock to students and victim alike. As one teacher recalled:
There was nobody to say goodbye to, because everybody else had gone to the classroom.… In the afternoon … colleagues, pupils, their mothers came, some in a sad mood, others angry with their country, lovely bouquets of flowers, large and small in their arms. In the evening, the little house was full of fragrance and colors, like … a funeral, I thought; and indeed, this was the funeral of my time teaching at a German public school.
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Jewish teachers such as this one were not the only ones purged. Anyone suspected of leftist or overly religious leanings could be fired, sometimes in humiliating conditions. Those who managed to stay on had to sign a declaration that “neither by written nor spoken word had they said anything publicly against National Socialism and its Führer.”
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In one top Berlin school it was reported that “an old teacher was chased from the school with a mob of children hooting behind him.”
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In the elite Grosse Schule Gymnasium in Wolfenbuttel, a popular Protestant religion teacher was removed for persisting in teaching Luther’s catechism and the Scriptures instead of the doctrines of the Nazi “German Christian” Church. His replacement’s “religion” class, which dwelt heavily on
Volkisch
ideology, was declared an elective and was so thoroughly boycotted that it had to be canceled. Furious Nazi authorities ordered an investigation, expelled some of the dissenting students, and availed themselves of the opportunity to fire the school’s revered headmaster (who had managed for some time to circumvent their sillier directives) on charges of “failing to prevent a church instigated conspiracy.”
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Even for patriotic and politically correct teachers, who were in the great majority, the first years of Nazism were confusing indeed. Basic curriculum requirements had always been set by the state in order to guarantee equal preparation for the diploma, but the various schools and localities had had great leeway in their choices of subjects, textbooks, and religious instruction. Individual teachers tried to deal as best they could with the extremely fragmentary and illogical instructions and prohibitions emanating from both Berlin and their local Nazi governments, which might suddenly issue a directive condemning the German icon Goethe for being too international and liberal, or in an arbitrary fit of rather impractical chauvinism eliminate the teaching of French in Karlsruhe, which lies right on the French border.
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Other pronouncements, such as the following guidelines for history teachers, were simply too ridiculous to swallow, and were even condemned by Propaganda Minister Goebbels:
The superior Egyptian culture was the result of the influx of Nordic Hittites. The Nordic Indians, Medes and Persians created the history and culture of Asia.… The ancient Greeks with their superior civilization originated from Germanic Central Europe, and Grecian civilization deteriorated when democracy was introduced into the country. This was due to the fact that the inferior southern races intermingled with the Nordic master race.… The Nordic blood injected into decayed Italy created the High Renaissance.… International influences and the influx of foreign elements have retarded German progress, contaminating German blood.
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Coordinated directives for the schools were slow in coming, due, in great part, to a struggle within the Nazi leadership over who would control the educational system. As in every field, the teachers were required to join a central, government-controlled organization, the German Teacher’s League. Alongside this umbrella organization existed more extreme Party groups, including the National Socialist Teacher’s Union, while certain preexisting organizations, such as the upscale Congress of German Philologists, continued to function.
The confusion was resolved on May 1, 1934, with the creation of the federal Ministry of Education under the direction of Bernhard Rust, Education Minister for the state of Prussia, a former teacher who in pre-Hitler days had been fired for political activity and rumored mental instability. During the summer and fall of 1934 a barrage of directives began a more coordinated transformation of the schools. More Nazi texts became required reading. Elected parents councils and faculty advisory groups were abolished in favor of the Führerprinzip, or “leadership principle,” which would soon rule all government organization and which put complete control of school affairs in the hands of the headmasters, who were naturally appointed from among the Party faithful. Saturday classes were to be given over to Nazi Party and Hitler Youth activities. Proposals were floated for an extension of the summer vacation, which would, as we shall see, allow the young even more time for such programs. Speakers were sent forth to the teachers organizations to promote the new ideas. On October 28, 1934, the secondary school teachers belonging to the Congress of German Philologists were informed that
it will no longer be tolerated that anyone speak against Germany. Within the scope of that which is national, and in the name of that which is social, we shall clearly and unequivocally permit every source of energy, every genius, particularly in the field of science, to develop
itself completely and freely.… Nevertheless, the people and State are in complete control, and we cannot deviate from this even if objective science should be the theme of discussion.
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In another meeting one speaker repudiated purely objective science that “did not adopt a definite attitude,” while another stated outright that the “aim of higher institutions of learning” was to train the “political fighter for Adolf Hitler’s Germany.”
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To back up these theories, the Minister of Education showered the schools with helpful pamphlets and teaching instructions. Grammar teachers were given lists of suggested essay titles, such as “Adolf Hitler, the Savior of the Fatherland” or “The Renewal of the German Racial Soul.” These measures were not at first taken very seriously by many teachers, who often ignored the new academic offerings and continued to use the classics or taught the new matter with obvious sarcasm. Even those who were willing to go along with the new ideology were unsure just how to introduce the “Nazi spirit” into math class or whether to present Charlemagne as a hero or a traitor to Germanism. In Catholic areas crucifixes were left on the wall next to the obligatory portraits of the Führer, and many instructors did not give a quite proper Nazi salute. One popular teacher greeted his students daily as follows:
He entered our classroom, walked to the wooden map holder that stood in the front corner by the window, raised one of its arms until it pointed toward the ceiling, saluted it silently with his own raised arm, then turned to us, smiled and said: “Good Morning, boys, sit down.” There was no German salute for us, no “Heil Hitler,” in his classroom and we knew exactly what risks he took.
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Education Minister Rust could not, at this early date, simply fire every recalcitrant teacher and still keep the schools going. It was clear that a new cadre of uniformly trained Nazi teachers would have to be provided. This was fiercely resisted by the more elite teachers, but Rust plowed ahead. In late 1934 he ordered education authorities in the various states to move teacher training colleges away from the established university centers, deemed “too intellectual,” to more bucolic locations, where the students could be indoctrinated without interference and would presumably benefit from contact with the pure German peasantry. In addition, special vacation camps were to be established, where present and future teachers would be given courses on the principles of National Socialism and be forced to participate in programs emphasizing “military sports” and “a
sense of community.” This, of course, had little appeal to old-line teachers, and observers of the German scene reported in the spring of 1935 that neither idea had been generally implemented in the provinces.
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But while individual teachers could run their classes as they liked, they could not stop the predominance of “approved” texts. The racially oriented history themes advocated by Minister Rust were backed up by “geopolitical atlases” of Germany showing the various expansions and contractions of its tribes and principalities, the “encirclement” policy that forced Germany into World War I, the resulting loss of colonies, and the nation’s “enslavement and mutilations,” all illustrated with cartoonlike graphs showing the economic hardships caused by Germany’s postwar reparations payments. Even more lurid maps, festooned with warlike symbols, showed the Reich’s military weakness vis-à-vis its neighbors. All this was followed by detailed charts showing the enclaves of German settlement in Eastern Europe and by graphs that revealed Germany’s declining birthrate in relation to other races and predicted that by 1960, Slavs would outnumber Germans by nearly two to one. Despite this imbalance, another graph titled “Overpopulation in Germany—Lack of Inhabitants in the East” somewhat confusingly informed the student that Germany’s population density was fifteen times that of the Soviet Union.
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Articles in the amusement sections of newspapers backed up these ideas. In the
NS Kurier
for Württemberg and Hohenzollern, a jolly picture urged boys and girls to clip out and collect maps and pictures of monuments in areas “previously controlled by Germany.” These included the cathedral of Strasbourg in France and buildings in Upper Silesia, which “with approximately 1 million inhabitants went to the Poles and with it a flourishing coal and iron industry.”
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The American diplomat who transmitted this information noted that the idea seemed to be to “kindle the feeling of revenge in the German people.” Part of the revenge was aimed at the United States, characterized as a “leaderless and democratic” mongrel society made up of “European rejects” mixed with Negroes and Jews, which was now the richest nation in the world but which would soon succumb to labor troubles and racial strife.
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The prediction was backed up by heavy coverage in the Nazi press of the spate of vicious lynchings of American blacks.
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In case the kids didn’t read the papers, leaflets on population issues appeared regularly in people’s mailboxes. Writing thirty years later, Melita Maschmann still remembered what the colorful pamphlets looked like:
I must have been still at primary school the day I pulled a map out of our letter box which pleased me because of its gaiety. The countries of
Europe stood out from one another in bright colors and on each country sat, crawled, or stood a naked baby. I showed the map to my father … he explained to me that each of these children was a symbol of the birthrate of the country. The German families had on average far less children than, say, Polish families. That was why only a frightened little girl sat on the patch of blue that meant Germany. On the yellow patch, just next door to the right, a sturdy little boy was crawling on all fours aggressively in the direction of the German frontier. “Look at the boy,” said my father. “He is bursting with health and strength. One day he will overrun the little girl.”
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The indoctrination was not limited to history and geography. Familiar math books were replaced with such titles as
Aerial Defense in Numbers
and
National Political Application of Algebra
. Even the dreaded word problem was adapted to the new ideology:
An airplane flies at the rate of 240 km per hour to a place at a distance of 210 km in order to drop bombs.… When may it be expected to return if the dropping of bombs takes seven and one-half minutes?
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Physics and chemistry classes dwelt on aeronautics, calculating missile trajectories, and toxic gases. Grammar books no longer asked pupils to parse sentences or pluralize innocuous phrases full of grandmothers and dogs, but used examples filled with innuendo, like this one on the prefix “in”: “Example 53: If the German people remain unified they will be invincible, incomparable, inimitable, indomitable.…”
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