First, “knowledge” is listed all the way down, far below “hereditary tendencies,” “character,” and “the body.” The old textbook, with its ballast of objective knowledge, might stand in the way of physical training in the use of weapons.
Second, development of character in the Nazi sense calls for little instruction in objective truth — that has been acknowledged — but rather for expedient falsifications, propaganda to fit the moment. If the Führer wishes to stress, in his “propaganda for Germanhood abroad,” the sad straits of Germans living in America, a pamphlet will appear, and will disappear as quickly if it seems necessary (to facilitate student exchange, for example) to play up friendly relations. The little pamphlets can be manipulated according to the news; the fat readers could not have been juggled this way.
The third explanation, and the most inclusive, has to do with the “politics of the bad conscience.” Anyone who visited the German Pavilion at the Paris Exposition of 1937 noticed that special care was taken to avoid all Hitler, Nazi or war propaganda. Nothing suggested that you were seeing an exposition presented by, and representative of, the most war-willed dictatorship in the world. There was not one picture of Hitler, not one anti-Jewish poster, not one model of a bombing plane. Hitler, as showman, did not seem convinced that a display of objectives would be popular among visitors from outside of Germany.
As dictator of education, Hitler entertains the same doubts of popular approval in the outer world. And so, following his habit, he advances “diplomatically,” wrapped in mystery, and the official textbooks are confined within acceptable limits; the new Reich Reader is no more honest than the German Pavilion. The Reader is full of patriotic mediocrity, cant about “Earth” and “Blood,” and a few remarks by the Führer and his officials. There are none of the riches that might have been included — nothing by Goethe or Lessing, and of course nothing by Heine.
The Reich Reader would frighten no one. It is not an open scandal; it smells of barrenness, cheerlessness, and bad taste — just as the Pavilion did — but not of danger.
But the little leaflets!
The unofficial, or semi-official, propaganda pamphlets, scattered throughout the curriculum by the Nazi Teachers’ Union or related organizations as though by chance — they are the real Reader….
The Führer offers the world a protective series of texts, only slightly offensive, while the essential pamphlets are covered by the curtains of the official libraries.
The first book that the child out of kindergarten sees is the Primer; and this, at the express wish of the Führer, has been revised to suit the times. Various primers go to different regions, but they all deal, in word and picture, with camp life, marching, martial drums, boys growing up to be soldiers, and girls to take care of soldiers.
Rhineland Children, a primer written by Richard Seewald and Ewald Tiesburger, is the most effective introduction to the military life. Children learned to read, in the past, through words more peaceful than: