How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Even today I think back with genuine emotion on this gray-haired man who, by the fire of his words, sometimes made us forget the present; who, as if by magic, transformed dry historical facts into vivid reality. There we sat, often aflame with enthusiasm, sometimes even moved to tears... He used our budding national fanaticism as a means of educating us, frequently appealing to our sense of national honor.
This teacher made history my favorite subject.
And indeed, though he had no such intention, it was then that I became a young revolutionary. (1.1.59-61)
Aww, isn't this sentimental? The history teacher Hitler is describing in Mein Kampf was Leopold Poetsch, a man who later joined the Nazi S.S. after Hitler began to seize political power. It's great to have a teacher who sets you aflame with enthusiasm, but not if he or she is fanning the flames of racism and hate. Thanks, Mr. Poetsch. Can we be excused now? (1.1.62)
Quote #2
What were the ideas which he acquired from his reading and his experience and which, as he says, would remain essentially unaltered to the end? That they were mostly shallow and shabby, often grotesque and preposterous, and poisoned by outlandish prejudices will become obvious on the most cursory examination. That they are important to this history, as they were to the world, is equally obvious, for they were to form part of the foundation for the Third Reich which this bookish vagrant was soon to build. (1.1.110)
Shirer notes that Hitler read constantly during his destitute years in Vienna and later described that period of his life as the critical time for his political, historical, and social education. ButHitler's so-called "knowledge" of subjects such as German and European history, racial and religious difference, and the nature of human rights was often obscenely, horrifically false. He read a ton of anti-Semitic literature that was widely available in Vienna at the time and bought all of it.
Quote #3
Though some of the party roughnecks, veterans of street fighting and beerhouse brawls, opposed bringing women and children into the Nazi Party, Hitler soon provided organizations for them too. The Hitler Youth took in youngsters from fifteen to eighteen who had their own departments of culture, schools, press, and propaganda, "defense sports," etc., and those from ten to fifteen were enrolled in the Deutsches Jungfolk. (2.5.14)
In its early stages, the Hitler Youth movement was designed to foster the growth of the party: in later years, as we'll see soon, it was designed to ensure that all young people in Germany grew up immersed in Nazi ideology. Hitler abolished all other youth organizations.
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.
Quote #7
I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. […] It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one's inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it. (2.8.67)
Just in case Shirer's earlier points about miseducation through Nazi propaganda weren't clear enough, he admits that even he found it hard to be totally immune and impervious to its effects. That's a pretty courageous and honest admission. Fortunately, he was able to get his hand on foreign newspapers during his travels.
Quote #8
"When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side,'" he said in a speech on November 6, 1933, "I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in this new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.'" (2.8.70)
What Hitler is describing is social engineering through the miseducation of the young. Scary. He wants to create a new society with no memory of the old.
Quote #9
Every person in the teaching profession, from kindergarten through the universities, was compelled to join the Nationalist Socialist Teachers' League which, by law, was held "responsible for the execution of the ideological and political co-ordination of all teachers in accordance with the Nationalist Socialist doctrine." (2.8.72)
So much for academic freedom, or the free pursuit of knowledge and inquiry.
Quote #10
By the end of 1938 the Hitler Youth numbered 7,728,259. Large as this number was, obviously some four million youth had managed to stay out of the organization, and in March 1939 the government issued a law conscripting all youth into the Hitler Youth on the same basis as they were drafted into the Army. Recalcitrant parents were warned that their children would be taken away from them and put into orphanages or other homes unless they enrolled. (2.8.101)
Just in case you thought that we were blowing things out of proportion when we characterized public school education in Nazi Germany as social engineering, this passage ought to clear things up. Hitler was determined to indoctrinate Germany's youth with Nazi ideology. The public schools, Hitler Youth organization, and other programming worked hard to get the job done.