German Elementary Education from 1890 to 1945

In this innovative analysis of German elementary education Katharine Kennedy uses textbooks curricula and pedagogical texts to trace continuities and changes in the lessons taught in the elementary schools of Wilhelmine Weimar and Nazi Germany. Children in all three periods were exposed to recurring texts that reinforced attachment to God region and fatherland. However they also encountered evolving symbols of the nation and shifting ideas about the identity of Germany and the German people. By blending lessons on Hitler race and heredity with traditional narratives Nazi education conveyed its ideology under the cloak of virtue patriotism and normality. It provides a compelling example of how a dictatorship manipulates religion and tradition to legitimize a brutal lawless and racist regime.