Inside Hitler’s Germany Part 2

[Hitler] declared that public education was compulsory and the children could not be educated at home. The state, not the family, or church had first dibs regarding the child's education.

If Germany was going to be the country Hitler envisioned it to be, the children would have to belong to the Reich. To parents, Hitler calmly said, "Your child belongs to us already..what are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community."

Hitler believed quite rightly, that he who controls the youth controls the future. Parents were responsible for raising the child's body, but the Reich would educate the child's soul.

Private or denominational schools were later closed in Germany due to increased taxes and excessive regulation.  In the end, educational options for parents were squeezed out.

The children in Germany were subjected to films that presented the Nazis' view that the Jews were subhuman and that they were an unnecessary burden on society. Darwin's evolutionary notions were also presented in the classroom to extol the virtues of the Aryan race (the Germans) and that the evolutionary idea of survival of the fitness could be hurried along by the extermination of the weak. Since only the fittest survive it makes good sense that "might makes right." Hitler asked, "Why can't we be as cruel as nature?"

With private schools abolished by 1938, all education was unified under the Nazi ideology. Textbooks were rewritten to reflect the view of racial fitness, the rationale for military expansion, and an emphasis on German history and culture. Those who did not fall in line with the Nazi agenda were reprimanded, expelled, or executed. If teachers wanted to keep their jobs, they had to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler.

The purpose of school was not independent thought, but rather to transform the attitude and values of children to conform to what the state wanted.

Hitler's educational philosophy was patterned after that of the Soviet revolutionaries. His goal was to build an army of young radicals who would pay lip service to the past but forge a new path that would ensure that German ideals were passed on from generation to generation.

Truth was now defined as that which promoted the Nazi state; the goals of a revived Germany were to take precedence over individual thought and research.

Children had to be indoctrinated and understand that groupthink was more important that the individual. Through psychological pressure, any student who did not agree with the educational agenda stood out as an  embarrassment.

Young people were instructed to encourage their parents to become good Nazis.

Source: When a Nation Forgets God: 7 Lessons We Must Learn from Nazi Germany (2010) by Erwin W. Lutzer.