Erika Mann - School for Barbarians

Here is an enemy whose life is left!

One little girl of the village of Niederdondeleben was to be confirmed. Her teacher, the village pastor, wrote the following words into the child’s album:

To the Fatherland, not the Party!

Service to the Fatherland makes one great and free; Service to the Party, narrow and small, untruthful and unjust.

The Fatherland needs strong characters; the Party fears and hinders them.

By so much as the Fatherland means more to you than does the Party, so much more does your compatriot mean to you than a co-member of the Party.

The Black Corps (organ of the S.S.) in its issue of September 23, 1937, which has “by chance” glanced at the poetry album in question, quotes from it, and remarks: “At the moment, Dr. Müller is under arrest and in training to become a martyr.” It goes on to suggest that fathers look into the albums of their impressionable daughters to see if they cannot find some “snotty pastor’s verses therein!”

This is, again, the first circle, the smallest, and least attacked limit of the family. But parents who, for their part, are under the Hitler Youth, have to obey. Their wishes and justified interests are ignored; and the parents play possum, too, and cannot be called a real enemy.

The New York Times of November 30, 1937 relates a story of Draconic punishment typical of the force with which penalties are given in the Reich. The parents here were members of a society of Bible students in Waldenberg, in Silesia, and were both accused of having infected their children with pacifist ideals and of influencing them against the Nazi regime. The father declared in court that he exercised no influence whatsoever upon his children, and the answer given him was that whether or not his statement was true, the atmosphere in the home of Bible students could not be anything but poisonous for children; no one could live in it without becoming an enemy of the State. The father admitted a previous conviction for having failed to send his children to some National Socialist school festival. He assured the court that the children had not wanted to go. But the court’s opinion was that this in itself showed the harmful effect of the parents’ influence, and handed down the following verdict:

“Law, in the service of racial and national interests, confides the care of the children, only under certain circumstances to the parents-Namely: if the children are brought up as the nation and the State decree. It is above all important to enlighten the children, so that they be aware that they, too, are part of a mighty nation, whose citizens are inseparably bound together by unanimity of opinion in all decisive questions. Anyone who raises children in such views as are likely to place them in opposition to the racial and national popular unity has failed to fulfill the conditions under which the education of his children has been entrusted to him. For reasons of general weal, such people will be forbidden to continue the upbringing of their children. The only chance of rectifying this lies in the complete separation of the children from the parents.”

And so the children were taken from their parents, not for a crime proved or committed or even contemplated, nor for expressed opinions, but solely because the atmosphere of such a home could not bring these children of Bible students up to revere the State. And the one offence, an old and trival one, was raked up to stand against the family.

One thing is clear, from the angle of the men in power: an example had to be made. All parents had to be warned; surely, from now on, everyone who had children would avoid Bible groups and pacifist ideas.

The extremity of these measures indicates the extent of the real fear of the Nazis, who are striking these blind blows, in the dark, against a “hidden” opponent — afraid even of the ruins of institutions they have crushed.

The Nazis have destroyed or undermined:

1. The family, and the private life of the Germans.

2. The quality that gave the Germans the name of “the nation of poets and philosophers”: their love of truth, science, and all objective thought.

3. The power of the Church in Germany.

They have destroyed everything which for centuries was holy to German citizens.

Adolf Hitler’s regime knows that certain people cannot be other than enemies — family members, professing Catholics and Protestants, men of science, and all other groups alienated by the destruction of their rights and sacred possessions.

The regime knows that its only hope lies in the young, those unaware of denial and destruction, who cannot know the news unless somebody — one of the enemies — informs them.

The regime knows that, attached to their parents, attending school, the children are still open to those suspicious influences. They have religious training. And there is a generation of enemies who still live in the country and who, later, will provide the jobs for these children to step into, and there, perhaps, learn.

The regime, fearful in spite of pomp and celebration, is making preparations.

The Frankfurter Zeitung of June 26, 1937:

“We have recently been informed that an order has been proclaimed by the Reich Minister of Education to the effect that all reports of school graduations or diplomas are to omit any mention of the activity of the pupil in the National Socialist Party and its sub-organizations.”

This proclamation was not to be made public (according to some official correspondence), for it needed a preliminary notice to explain it. Repeatedly, the activities of pupils in organizations had been described as harmful to their academic development, and mention of these were likely to injure their future chances. Rudolf Hess, Representative of the Führer, has compelled the Minister of Education to command that no mention be made of the Party or its organizations — and that, for children of school age, means expressly the Jungvolk and the Hitler Jugend, the Jungmädels and the B.D.M. The secret order, published by mistake, overreaches itself. Wouldn’t it have been enough to issue an edict forbidding unfavorable notices (suicidal to the teachers who wrote them, considering the status of the schools)? But no notice at all! There is a good reason for it. Usually, the school rating of children stands in inverse proportion to their activity in the State Youth, because of the time the organization work requires and the emphasis it puts. And if a business man finds a boy with a good organization record and good marks, he will not believe the good marks; or he will prefer not to have an obvious government agent, perhaps even a government spy, working for him. And the boy himself, turned down at every job, will consider his report with its seductively high marks, and blame his failure on the notice that he was Gefolgschaftsführer. How many of these cases must have added up before the edict was issued, behind Herr von Schirach’s back! And how it must have confused the children, to have their proudest title, this rank that ornaments their position in the State, commanded secretly to be kept a secret!

These are policies dictated by a bad conscience, directed now, not against a world of enemies, but against the most promising members of the new State in a commonwealth of people whose boast is of complete unity.

That’s how things are. Hitler’s regime says: We have enemies in Germany, many of them, and we can only pray to Wotan that, as in the past, they will fear us more than we fear them. But we have youth on our side. That makes us strong. Also, we have the guns.

They have the guns and that makes them strong. But the youth? There are proofs to the contrary. In this force of millions, who are supposed to be truly and irrevocably Nazi, the young men, the university men, are the first to show disappointment and disgust. They protest by leaving empty benches before Storm Leaders disguised as professors and by crowding the halls for those few who have a little knowledge of the extra-Nazi world. And these men were, yesterday, the State Youth.