This chapter explains the Napolas’ significance within the Nazi state, laying out the main arguments of the book as a whole. It sketches the programmatic intentions of the key figures involved in the schools’ founding and subsequent development—Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust, and NPEA-Inspectors Joachim Haupt and August Heißmeyer. It also provides an overview of relevant sources and secondary literature, as well as a brief summary of the schools’ overall aims and ethos. Put simply, we can see the Napolas as a microcosm in which many of the Third Reich’s most fundamental tendencies can be found in magnified form. The schools aimed to realize the more ‘Socialist’ elements of National Socialism by providing free or heavily subsidized places for children from working-class families, whilst also forming pupils into the avant-garde of the Volksgemeinschaft (the Nazi national community defined by race). All in all, in-depth analysis of the Napolas proves the worth of treating educational history as contemporary history, rather than leaving it languishing on the sub-disciplinary margins of historical enquiry.
