Dr. I.L. Kandel’s article entitled “Education in Nazi Germany” highlights Nazi policy regarding the reeducation of the citizenry with the goal of showing that totalitarian states utilize education as a method of subordinating all individuals comprising the nation. During his analysis, Kandel makes the claim the Nazi Party’s policies regarding education were influenced by the idea of Gleichschaltung – coordination; all policies aimed to construct a uniform citizenry answer to the whim of its single governmental entity. In constructing his argument, Kandel references four major types of educational reform – both informal and formal – that allowed the Nazi Party to consolidate power and gain total control over the beliefs, attitudes, and …show more content…
Doing this satisfied the Nazi goal of creating a Volksgemeinschaft – a racially unified nation whereby the citizens were subject to the will of the state.
Regarding the implementation of concentration camps, Kandel writes: “The first phase of each revolution was marked by terrorism, violence, and murder, with concentration camps or penal colonies for any opposition that might survive or emerge. In a sense, this was a form of education of a negative kind.” Political opponents of the Nazi Party were persecuted and placed in concentration camps as these individuals hindered the ability of the government to create a nation that would follow the Nazi ideology. Goebbels states: “‘anyone may grumble or criticize the government who is not afraid to go to a concentration camp.’” Concentration camps were used as a form of informal education reconstructing the German citizenry’s beliefs of right action and wrong action; wrong action led to detention within concentration camps. With the help of the Gestapo, the Nazis eliminated tens of thousands of political enemies. Concentration or penal camps allowed the Nazis to reconstruct the beliefs of the German people to fit the party’s ideals which
The motive of this investigation is to analyze the extent of which the Volksgemeinschaft policy affected the rising of German anti-Semitism. The policy arose from the yearning of a society in which there would be less to no differences in class and more unification within the people. The Volkgemeinschaft itself can be defined as a “people’s community.” One of the aspects to consider when analyzing the importance of the Volksgemeinschaft is the terrific and grand impact it had on millions of people. Many people in recent years, as well as in previous years have had numerous unanswered questions about this policy, and this researcher intends to answer a major and essential question; the effect of the policy on German anti-Semitism. Some of the ways in which this investigator plans to analyze and answer this inquiry include collecting information from various reputable internet sites, as well as books such as Michael Wildt’s “Hitler 's Volksgemeinschaft and the Dynamics of Racial Exclusion,” and newspaper articles regarding the policy. The parameter to this investigation will be within the time frame of 1919 and 1939 during which we can see the various changes in German society taking place.
Education was deemed as an important factor in creating a strong, powerful Germany. The Nazi party modified the schooling system and used it as a tool to indoctrinate the youth with Nazi ideology. According to Bernhard Rust, Reich Minister of Education, “the whole function of education is to create Nazis”. In 1933, the Nazi policy passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which permitted civil servants of Jewish background and socialist or liberal views to be
The document serves to support Hitler’s plan to create a community of German people, the Volksgemeinschaft, in which women played a crucial role. Nazi ideology defined the community in opposition to the individualistic society produced by liberal democracies and the false sense of community promoted by the communists. In other words, Hitler aimed to create a German community of people that
Schools were riddled with propaganda like a disease, it controlled people instead of just influencing them. “The youth organizations, particularly the Hitler Youth, have been accorded powers of control which enable every boy and girl to exercise authority backed up by threats.”(Spartacus Educational, 1997) Even as the kids were being controlled, adults who worked in certain areas that refused to respect the Nazi Party ultimately became fired. “Teachers who did not support the Nazi Party were sacked.”(Spartacus Educational, 1997) Most of all, almost everyone became submissive and obeyed the Nazis. “Gradually, the old teachers were replaced with younger ones, those with Nazi orientations.”(Spartacus Educational, 1997) As so, the new teachers that had been radicalized conformed with and embraced the new curriculum. This new school curriculum was not very overwhelming but, most of the commands shaped the German children. The Holocaust Explained argues that, “Hitler and the Nazis wanted all young Aryans to be physically fit and perfectly obedient.”(The Holocaust Explained, n.d.) As more people and children submitted to the Nazis, commands that were made out of the bounds of an average school’s limits were enforced. Children were bribed out of their freedoms for money, unknowingly and
The whole program to rebuild Germany was based on the idea that Germany had been betrayed and that the only way for Germany to avenge itself upon its enemies and put an end to the conflict that had begun in 1914 was through military action. (Nelson) Through the bad state of the country, the Nazis were able to use propaganda that influenced the German people to believe that it was right to punish the groups who they believed were to blame for their
concentration camp which at the time people thought this was a good thing. The thesis relates
In response to the factional society of the Weimar Republic, Nazism endeavored to create a new, more-unified society; an ideal national community, populated by an ethnically and culturally homogenous citizenry dogmatically obedient to the theories, laws, and policies of the central governing apparatus (the Nazi Hierarchy and ultimately Hitler). To attain its aims, Nazism employed a variety of tactics: laws were enacted to ethnically purify the population (e.g., the 1935 Nuremberg Laws), sentiments were propagated with the intention of uniting the population behind its leadership (i.e., the Führer Principle), and policies were
In the beginning the concentration camps they were not even planned, to be mainly for Jews, in the beginning they had started with criminals and political prisoners. Later on Adolf Hitler wanted to have a “better” future, so who ever interfered in his plan was a threat so he had sent them to jail. People who
Hitler took this hatred he possessed for the Jews and his pursues of Aryan supremacy to an extensive degree. Between 1939-1945 Hitler took action, extermination, or death camps were established for the sole purpose of killing men, women, and children. Jews were not the only victims of the Nazis during World War II, The Nazis also imprisoned and killed people who opposed their regime on grounds of their ideology; Roma (Gypsies); Germans who were mentally impaired or physically disabled; homosexuals; and captured Soviet soldiers. Heinous crimes inflicted upon the prisoners within the concentration camps and during Hitler’s reign were intense beyond belief. So called camp doctors would torture and inflict incredible suffering on Jewish children, Gypsy children and many others. Patients were put
During the first part of Hitler’s Regime, the government established concentration camps to confine and detain anyone the Nazi’s though as political, cultural and ideological opponents. The first Concentration camp was built in January, 1933, right after Hitler came into power. Hitler gained further support for his ideas by propaganda, which filled the media of Germany with pro-nazi material. All forms of communication; newspapers, radio, books, TV, art, music and movies were controlled by the Nazis. This way, nonother than what the Nazi’s wanted published could only be distributed to its society, and preventing news about the Holocaust from getting anywhere outside of Germany. This propaganda identified the Jews as an inferior ‘race’, and the source of Germany’s defeat and economic depression in world war one on them.
In the Nazi camps, troublesome people would be killed. This all goes together to
In order to successfully address this question, one must first consider the definition of the very nebulous term Volksgemeinschaft. It was an expression used to depict the harmonious, classless national community ideal made up of the Herrenvolk, or master race. As a term used polemically by the Nazis to engender a form of "identity politics" and therefore oppose any notion of politics based on universal and objective class interests that it aimed to transcend, it helped them gain collective support from an already economically, psychologically and politically distraught post-war nation. The Volksgemeinschaft ideal was one of the key elements of Nazi ideology and was used to legitimate much of the regime's social policy whilst also
Hitler thought of the Jewish population as a worthless society and treated the individuals as worthless creatures. When Hitler came to power, he established the camps "for the purpose of isolation, punishing, torturing, and killing Germans suspected of opposition to his regime."10 The Germans wanted to guarantee the death of as many Jews as possible "while extracting some useful labor from the doomed."11 The camps were set up technically and psychologically to
The fear and intimidation in Nazi Germany played a major role in consolidating and maintaining power between 1933 to 1939. Suppressing opposition, by using the SS and the Gestapo was particularly significant as it allowed the Nazi’s to be the strongest political party in Germany and therefore establish its authority. The Nazi’s managed to run a terror and totalitarian state by intimidating its own citizens, to preserve their power, and by using an aggressive behaviour with non-Aryans, such as concentration camps and Einsatzgruppen. Moreover, the Nazi’s adopted propaganda to spread their ideas and beliefs to all of Germany, and this allowed them to have mass support and to be internationally recognised. Hitler also appealed to the educational
The Nazi party taught children to be obedience and to be able to make any sacrifice to save the country.