History - Life in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 - Policies Towards the Young

Education (control of teachers)

1. School leaders

2. Jobs

3. Politics

4. Behaviour

1. 1934, leading Nazi, Bernhard Rust made Education Minister

2. April 1933, Nazis passed a law allowing them to sack teachers and headteachers they didn’t approve of. In Prussia, Rust sacked over 180 secondary headteachers

3. All teachers had to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler and join the Nazi Teachers’ League which ran political education courses setting out Nazi ideas teachers should support. 1939, over 200,000 teachers had attended

4. Teachers taught students to do the Nazi salute, decorated classrooms with Nazi posters and flags, started and ended each lesson with students saying “Heil Hitler”

Education (control of curriculum)

1. New subjects

2. Traditional subjects

3. PE

4. Female students

5. Textbooks

6. Assemblies

1. Race studies added. Students taught how to classify racial groups and that superior Aryans should not marry inferiors

2. Changed to make more useful to a Nazi society, or made vehicles for Nazi ideas

3. Time allocated for sport was doubled. 1939, took up one-sixth of lesson time

4. Domestic science (cookery and needlework) became compulsory

5. Had to be approved by Nazis. History books explained Treaty of Versailles was planned by Socialists. Mein Kampf became a compulsory school text

6. Students gathered in school halls to listen to major political speeches on the radio

Nazi youth movement

1. German youth groups

2. Pressure on young people

3. Forcing young people

1. Hitler banned almost all non-Nazi youth groups

2. To join Nazi youth groups. 1936, if they wanted to use sport facilities they had to join Hitler Youth.

3. March 1936, compulsory for Germans from the age of 10 to join Nazi youth groups. Only ‘unwanted’ minority groups were omitted

Hitler Youth

1. Members

2. Political training

3. Physical training

4. Military training

5. Character training

1. 14-18 year old German boys

2. Swear an oath of loyalty to the Fuhrer, attend residential courses and lessons where they were taught Nazi ideas, report anyone disloyal to the Nazis, wore Nazi branded uniforms

3. Regular camping and hiking expeditions, regional and national sports competitions with awards

4. Practice skills useful to troops (map-reading and signalling), by 1938 1.2 million boys trained in small-arms shooting, separate military divisions for specialist training

5. Activities stressed the need for comradeship, loyalty, competition, ruthlessness. Drilled by SA instructors (lengthy exercise in winter, harsh punishments), forced them to obey orders in hardship

League of German Maidens

1. Members

2. Activities similar to the Hitler Youth

3. Trained

4. Taught

1. 14-21 year old German girls

2. Political activities (rallies, oaths of allegiance). Physical and character building activities (camping, marching)

3. To be a housewife

4. The importance of racial hygiene, how they should keep the German race pure by only marrying Aryan men