The Reichsschulen and the Napolas’ Germanizing Mission in Eastern and Western Europe

Heinrich Himmler, August Heißmeyer, and the NPEA Inspectorate were eager to create a transnational empire of Napolas and ‘Reichsschulen’ in all of the territories occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. These schools both mirrored and contributed to broader National Socialist occupation and Germanization policies throughout Eastern and Western Europe. They were intended to create a cadre of ‘Germanic’ or ‘Germanizable’ leaders, loyal above all to the SS. The chapter begins by exploring the genesis of the Reichsschulen in the occupied Netherlands—Valkenburg and Heythuysen—which were adopted as a ‘Germanic’ prestige project by the Reich Commissioner of the Netherlands, Arthur Seyß-Inquart. The chapter then turns eastwards to consider the role of the Napolas which were established in the conquered Czech and Polish lands, focusing on NPEA Sudetenland in Ploschkowitz (Ploskowice), NPEA Wartheland in Reisen (Rydzyna), and NPEA Loben (Lubliniec). All in all, the Napola selection process in the occupied Eastern territories can be seen as the peak of all the ‘racial sieving’ processes which the Nazi state forced ‘ethnic Germans’ (Volksdeutsche), Czechs, and Poles to undergo, inextricably bound up with the Third Reich’s wider race, resettlement, and extermination policies. The ultimate aim of all of these schools was to mingle Reich German and ‘ethnic German’ or ‘Germanic’ pupils, educating the two groups alongside each other, in order to create a unified cohort of leaders for the future Nazi empire, and to reclaim valuable ‘Germanic blood’ for the Reich.

Foundation and Administration

This chapter provides a concise account of the Napolas’ foundation, and the bureaucratic tasks involved in their administration by the NPEA-Inspectorate (Landesverwaltung der Nationalpolitischen Erziehungsanstalten in Preußen/Inspektion der Nationalpolitischen Erziehungsanstalten). It also investigates the schools’ relationship with other organizations within the Nazi state, including the SA, the SS, the Nazi Party, and the Hitler Youth. Among these institutions, the competition to gain power over the schools was constant, with Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS, gradually gaining the upper hand. As such, the Napola administration provides a particularly apt case study of the constant polycratic wrangling which lay at the heart of the Nazi state, as well as mirroring the relative power and respective positions of the SA and SS within the dictatorship’s organizational hierarchy. The chapter concludes by exploring the Inspectorate’s methods of recruiting and controlling Napola headmasters (Anstaltsleiter) and teachers (Erzieher). Ultimately, Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust, along with NPEA-Inspectors Joachim Haupt and August Heißmeyer, desired to create a cadre of ideologically sound and fanatically loyal staff who conformed completely to the National Socialist ideal of the ‘Führer personality’.

Hitler Was a Vegetarian

We all have morals, including Hitler who was contemptuous of meat eaters, a self-proclaimed vegetarian and militant protector of animals. He was also a devoted son, devastated when his mother died. Often tagged “criminal of the century,” Gestapo in chief Heinrich Himmler was responsible for running all Nazi concentration and extermination camps. He was also a die-hard vegetarian, fervently opposed to hunting. Such facts are hard to fathom. They show that the central moral philosophy and psychology question is not whether some have morals and others don’t. The real questions are, What kind of morals, what are they made of, where do they come from, and, more important for this book, what holds them together in spite of blatant inconsistencies?

Typography and nationalism: The past and modernism under Nazi rule

In 1941, the Nazi regime revoked the long-established convention of typesetting German texts in Fraktur styles.1 This study examines the significance of the messages conveyed by letterforms in Nazi propaganda and the extent to which the regime put into practice its professed typographic policies. Taking into account different audiences and channels, it focuses on books by the Ahnenerbe institute controlled by Heinrich Himmler, the women’s magazine NS-Frauen-Warte and the newspaper Völkischer Beobachter. Fraktur styles seem to have functioned as the main letterforms of the blood and soil ideology, but another strand of Nazi typography departed from Fraktur and probably translated the importance of the Oera Linda book and the Codex Aesinas in the image of a supposedly ‘Aryan’ past. Meanwhile, the Nazi propaganda incorporated forms and norms that it appropriated from modernist typography, a topic implicitly raised in the dispute between Max Bill and Jan Tschichold in 1946. Typography functioned as an instrument for exclusion, racial discrimination and gender stereotyping and to mark the boundaries of the ‘Aryan’ community, challenging the notion of print-language as intrinsically inclusive expressed in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities.

Educational activities and learning in the Lebensborn project of Nazi Germany

During the time of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, that is, to the end of World War II, the most horrific crimes in human history took place. Nazi Germany was based on militarism, racism, anti-Semitism, ideologism and occultism. First, the Nuremberg Laws were passed, which led to the Holocaust, and on December 12, 1935, in Munich, by the order of the commander of the SS troops, Heinrich Himmler, a secret state Lebensborn project was established. The goal of this state project was to create a pure Aryan race, which was considered a key condition for Germany to become the world's leading power in military, economic and cultural terms, and for the German people to rule the world with their sublime tradition and culture. The Lebensborn project involved the birth of children from biological mothers carefully selected from the ranks of racially pure young, beautiful and healthy German girls and biological fathers from the ranks of SS troops, who would later be housed in Lebensborn homes or in the homes of SS officers or prominent purely Aryan families. Children abducted all over Europe, who met the criteria of seemingly belonging to the members of the pure Aryan race, were also accommodated in these homes. In addition to custody and upbringing, the educational activities and teaching of these children in Lebensborn homes were carried out under strict supervision, based on the principles of fascist pedagogy the point that will be discussed in this theoretical study.

HANS FRANK E L’ISTITUZIONALIZZAZIONE DI UN REGIME

At the end of September 1939 Polish Campaign opened the Second World War and Germans took control of their portion of territory, according to the German-Soviet agrements of August-September 1939, giving it a juridical, institutional and socialeconomic structure subject to the Reich, with specific functions and aims, as the reorganization of the administrative system through the institution of the General Government of Poland. Nevertheless, every historiographical reflection cannot be separated from the survey of Governor Hans Frank’s role. His position was in fact relevant owing to his cultural and professional education, his loyalty to Hitler, his personal uncertainties, his role of First Reich’s Jurist and private Hitler’s lawyer, before becoming Governor of Poland. The need of a management of Poland with SS caused frictions and jurisdiction conflicts, both at the political-institutional and on a personal level with some of the main responsible officials on behalf of Heinrich Himmler. The analisys of these atypical territorial entity through an approach which was technically correct before humanitarian is basic to understand inner workings and to try to produce a framework of the system as complete as possible about the administration of these sui generis “State”.

HANS FRANK E L’ISTITUZIONALIZZAZIONE DI UN REGIME

At the end of September 1939 Polish Campaign opened the Second World War and Germans took control of their portion of territory, according to the German-Soviet agrements of August-September 1939, giving it a juridical, institutional and socialeconomic structure subject to the Reich, with specific functions and aims, as the reorganization of the administrative system through the institution of the General Government of Poland. Nevertheless, every historiographical reflection cannot be separated from the survey of Governor Hans Frank’s role. His position was in fact relevant owing to his cultural and professional education, his loyalty to Hitler, his personal uncertainties, his role of First Reich’s Jurist and private Hitler’s lawyer, before becoming Governor of Poland. The need of a management of Poland with SS caused frictions and jurisdiction conflicts, both at the political-institutional and on a personal level with some of the main responsible officials on behalf of Heinrich Himmler. The analisys of these atypical territorial entity through an approach which was technically correct before humanitarian is basic to understand inner workings and to try to produce a framework of the system as complete as possible about the administration of these sui generis “State”.