The Past: While the Children Are Watching
“She asked point-blank what my grandfather thought about Adolf Hitler and what he said about the war… (grandfather was withholding paper for the war effort) … After much too long a pause I came to the decision that I liked this nosy teacher less than my grandfather.”
–Imgard Paul “On Hitler’s Mountain: My Nazi Childhood”
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) came to power as Chancellor at the beginning of the Third Reich (Nazi Germany) and began to be the voice as a Dictator of Germany’s totalitarian state in 1933. His first goal was to indoctrinate the public, and systematically disenfranchise the Jewish from society. Hitler believed that “he alone, who owns the youth, gains the future” (Hitler, speech, 1935) and by using children regardless of age as the eyes for his operations of state, the education system became the first key method that ensured Hitler’s ideology ensnared the youth. If Hitler sought to rule the intellectual force of society to his ideology (Marx & Engels, 1976, p. 1) he needed to subject his citizens to biased education.
Indoctrination of the German youth began through Hitler Youth Camps (Hitler Jugend) that pushed the Ideology of Alfred Rosenberg’s (1983–1946) ideas about anti-Semitism. These ideals went on to become Germany’s main source of education which raised Hitler Jugends’ membership from 6,000 in 1924 to…
