How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Hitler was now the law, as Goering said, and as late as May and June 1933 the Fuehrer was declaiming that "the National Socialist Revolution has not yet run its course" and that "it will be victoriously completed only if a new German people is educated." In Nazi parlance, "educated" meant "intimidated"—to a point where all would accept docilely the Nazi dictatorship and its barbarism. (2.7.80)
When Hitler says "education," he means indoctrination and propaganda. Sounds like a vision of robot people parroting only what they've been force-fed.
Quote #5
On the evening of May 10, 1933, some four and a half months after Hitler became Chancellor, there occurred in Berlin a scene which had not been witnessed in the Western world since the late Middle Ages. At about midnight, a torchlight parade of thousands of students ended at a square on Unter den Linden opposite the University of Berlin. Torches were put to a huge pile of books that had been gathered there, and as the flames enveloped them more books were thrown on the fire until some twenty thousand books had been consumed. (2.8.40)
How to destroy a culture? Burn its books. What a sickening vision—these were students. Since biblical times, book burnings have been used to destroy "heretical" ideas or ideas threatening to the entrenched power structure. The Nazi book burnings were mostly symbolic, because other copies of those books were available, but it was a way of showing utter contempt for anything that might have contradicted the party line. What were the students so afraid of?
Quote #6
Every morning the editors of the Berlin daily newspapers and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the Reich gathered at the Propaganda Ministry to be told by Dr. Goebbels or by one of his aides what news to print and suppress, how to write the news and headline it, what campaigns to call off or institute and what editorials were desired for the day. In case of any misunderstanding a daily written directive was furnished along with the oral instructions. (2.8.57)
Although education and access to information aren't necessarily the exact same thing, Shirer returns repeatedly to the subject of Nazi control over the German press. One of the reasons why the German public was so oblivious to Hitler's lies in the lead-up to the Second World War was because it was very difficult for the average person to learn the truth of what was going on in the world beyond the tight bubble of Nazi propaganda.