School for Barbarians

by Mann Erika

And we must be grateful to countless teachers that the Stürmer can publish, again and again, classroom photographs that show copies of the paper hanging on the wall — complete unexpurgated editions, including outrages and bedroom scandals, listing the names of those who have “trespassed,” and those who have been “seduced,” and are to be spat upon. The Stürmer prints letters from teachers asking their colleagues to use it along with the textbooks, and naive letters from children which prove the success of this pedagogic instrument. And for those children whose teachers have the conspicuous courage to keep the Stürmer out of the classroom, there are the newsstands where the Stürmer is displayed at every other corner in every German town.

The front page of the New York Times guarantees daily “all the news that’s fit to print.” We might have promised that for this book; but the pornography of the Stürmer is not printable. It must suffice to mention its existence and importance, and, most significant of all, to demonstrate its use as a text in the German schools “for the better development of racial knowledge in primary near-to-life instruction,” in the language of New Germany.

RELIGION

Religious study in the Third Reich has no meaning different from that of other instruction: it means lessons in National Socialism, the religion of the National Socialists. Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth Leader, cries, “The experience of comradeship in battle, the experience of unity is, for us, not only a political but a religious experience as well.” And Alfred Rosenberg is even clearer: “When an S. A. man puts on his brown shirt, he is no longer a Catholic, a Protestant or a believer in Germanhood” (not even that!) “but only a German fighting for his entire nation.”

That Religion is still taught in the schools seems, at first glance, merely a tactical concession, to make it possible to remain within acceptable limits and avoid battle with the strong power of the Church. An attempt is made to turn this necessity into a virtue, to enlist simple faith, which demands no proof, into the service of the cause. “Faith” is to replace “knowledge.” The German must believe in the world mission of Germans; in German superiority; in the divine purity of his Führer. The lessons in Religion are an opportunity to bring up children in a faith which, to be sure, is at the other pole from Christianity, in that it preaches hate as against love; arrogance versus humility; force versus charity. Nevertheless, it is called by the National Socialists “positive Christianity.”

Every class in Roman Catholicism opens with the formula: “Heil Hitler! Blessed be Jesus Christ, in all Eternity, Amen,” and closes with: “Blessed be Jesus Christ, in all Eternity, Amen. Heil Hitler!” The sequence, sandwiching everything else between Heils, is enforced by an edict of January 5, 1934. And the Protestant religious lessons, which include the same formulas, must, according to the “Plan for Teaching Evangelical Religion in Public Schools in the National Socialist Spirit,” emphasize “that the existence of our people, in their racial peculiarity, has been willed by God and that it is an act of unfaithfulness toward God if racial values are not considered or if they are destroyed.”

All of this is simple, if you accept the premise that Hitler has come to his people directly from God. After that, there can be no scruples: his plans are God’s plans, his methods God’s methods, and his will God’s will. It is so easy that a man like the Reichsstatthalter of Saxony, Martin Mutschmann, can exclaim, “Our faith is nothing but the Weltanschauung of the Führer! No one can serve two masters! This world-theory gives expression to the will and to the conscience given us by God!” And Dr. Robert Ley, leader of the German Workers’ Front, adds, “Our only aim and purpose must be to live according to the teachings of Adolf Hitler, which are the gospel of the German people.”

“Our only purpose,” they say, “our only aim. The gospel,” they assert. Nothing could be less complicated.

Of course, at the beginning, while the regime was still expecting an opposition (which never materialized), it must have been difficult to combine the “New Gospel” with the lessons in Christian faith which had been hastily prepared for school use. Edicts, then, were ambiguous and complex, lacking the admirable directness of Mutschmann or Ley today.

The edicts addressed to teachers of religion may be summarized: Both faiths, National Socialism and Christianity, draw their strength from the God of the Universe. Teachers must remember that they have to do away with differences of opinion, and emphasize the German experience of God. The Old Testament must be carefully expurgated. Only those portions of it which treat of biological questions or are necessary for the understanding of the New Testament are to be used. For, as a whole, the Old Testament mirrors the Jewish spirit, and tells of the downfall of a people having nothing to do with godly matters.