THE CHANGED EMPHASIS
In May, 1934, the newly organized and “purged” body of teachers began to give lessons in “National Socialist Meanings.” There were new fundamental maxims, and new textbooks. The scale of values, in order of importance, is set by the Führer:
Hereditary tendencies; general racial picture.
The character (degree of adherence to National Socialism).
The physical makeup or “body” (degree of usefulness in the event of a future war).
(And, last) Knowledge. (Here, the knowledge of objective reality, regarded as a last offshoot of liberalism, is often punishable where it is not merely regarded as absurd and reprehensible.)
But what could the knowledge of objective reality mean? Where would its place be, in a system which reduces all sciences to a single new science called Wehrwissenschaft (the science of defense, although the connection between the German “Wehr” and the English “war” is no coincidence). Education in relation to weapons, then, takes the place of education as we know it. The whole concept is peculiar to Hitler’s Germany. It has been most directly put by a high school principal, Hans Willy Ziegler, in the N.S.L.B. periodical Die Deutsche Schule (June-July, 1935): “Education in relation to weapons, then, is no special branch of general education; rather, it is, in point of fact, the very core of our entire education.”
The “core” grows, penetrates into the political branches, history, “geo-politics,” etc., and even into those which seem to be unpolitical, like mathematics and language. The textbooks demonstrate this growth.
The large, heavy schoolbooks we knew as children, one for each year, Fourth Grade Geography, First Grade History, have not entirely vanished. But they have lost most of their importance, and are replaced by the decisive little pamphlet that supplements the textbook — the propaganda pamphlet.
Three explanations rise for the changed emphasis: