Education in Nazi Germany (4)

Question 1

How did the Nazis education system change from 1933?

Answer 1

• The state school structure stayed in place, but private primary school education was abolished.
• Fee-paying secondary schools and universities remained (only for ‘pure Germans’), but they emphasised physical fitness.
• Prevented Jews from attending the same schools and universities via the Nuremberg Laws.
• Corporations became Nazi Comradeship and students had to join the Nazi student union.
• 20th April 1933 = opened three National Political Education Institutions - free boarding schools to train an elite groups of boys as government administrations.

Question 2

Change to teachers

Answer 2

• Established the National Socialist Teachers League in April 1929 - 6k members in Jan 1933. By 1938, it was impossible to get a job if not a member of the union, with 97% of teachers joining.
• Purged ‘undesirable’ teachers, like anti-Nazi and Jewish teachers, by the law of April 1933. Additionally, barred women from teaching.
• 24th Sept 1935 decree = gave Nazis control over appointments.
• It ran courses that teachers had to attend to absorb Nazi ideology they were expected to teach.
• Often disrespected by administration and pupils. It grew unpopular as a profession = in 1938, 2,500 new teachers qualified and there was 8,000 teaching vacancies.

Question 3

Changes to the curriculum

Answer 3

• ROLE = teach loyalty to Hitler and Germany, physical fitness (childbirth or for fighting) and racial purity.
• Varied from state-to-state with general outlines but from 1935, there was a stream of central directives covered all years in education and its subjects - prepared children for separate and stereotyped lives (home economics for girls and science for boys).
• Censored, burned or simply mutilated textbooks - adapted to glorify German to increase nationalism.
• Printed booklets to support new areas of the curriculum (e.g race studies taught Aryans were superior, Slavs were inferior and Jews were the source of Germany’s problems.

+ Significant increase of sports for both sexes = account for 15% of the curriculum.
+ History = focus on Volksgemeinschaft (nationhood).

Question 4

Outside of school

Answer 4

• Nazis also controlled extracurricular activities, setting up the Hitler Youth movement with separate groups for boys and girls.
• Hammered home the messages taught in schools.
• Issued pamphlets for the leaders of meetings and summer camps to teach issues from the unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles, to racial purity, to the importance of having strong healthy babies.
• Members were expected to report on anything their teachers (or family) did that was against Nazi teachings.
• In 1933, 1% joined. Compulsory in 1939, pressuring parents to enrol their children that membership was 8 million by 1940.

Question 5

Outside of school - boys

Answer 5

• Joined the Pimpfen (Little Folk), aged six, moved to the Jungvolk (Youngsters) at 10 and then joined the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) for 14-18.
• Prepared boys for the military.
• Opened up their first schools in 1937 - their physical training focus did not equip students to work as administrators.

Question 6

Outside of school - girls

Answer 6

• Joined the Jungmadel (Young Girls) at 10, then joined the Bund Deutsches Madel (Association of German Young Women) aged 14, moving to the Glaube und Schoneit (Faith and Beauty) aged 17-20.
• Taught girls nurturing and domestic tasks.

Question 7

Why did the Nazis value education and schools?

Answer 7

Valued schools as places to indoctrinate children and encourage them to become good Nazis (joining the military or producing the next gen of Aryans as mothers).
- However, they were anti-intellectual - children were not allowed or encouraged to think for themselves.