Nazi control of the youth through education

• Under the Nazis, education was less about academic development than ‘creating Nazis’ as the Nazi Education minister, Bernhard Rust, described it.
• In April 1933 the Nazis passed a law allowing the sacking of any teachers not conforming to their educational methods. In the state of Prussia alone, 180 secondary headteachers were dismissed.
• All teachers had to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler and be members of the Nazi Teachers’ League, which ran political education courses to instruct teachers what to teach and how to deliver it
• All classrooms would contain Nazi posters and flags and a portrait of Hitler.
• Each lesson would begin and end with the Nazi salute and the children saying ‘Heil Hitler’.