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Autobiography Pedagogy Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 22

the-real-hitler

 

Night of 27th-28th September 1941

Misery—Social discrimination
—Organisation of study.

 
 
If my parents had been sufficiently well-to-do to send me to a School of Art, I should not have made the acquaintance of poverty, as I did. Whoever lives outside poverty cannot really become aware of it, unless by over-throwing a wall. The years of experience I owe to poverty—a poverty that I knew in my own flesh—are a blessing for the German nation.

We must pay attention to two things: 1. That all gifted adolescents are educated at the State’s expense. 2. That no door is closed to them.

Since I hadn’t been able to finish my secondary studies, an officer’s career would have been closed to me, even if by working I had learnt more about it than is proper for a boy who has matriculated to know. Only an officer could win the Pour le Mérite. And at that, it was quite exceptional for an officer of middle-class origin to receive it.

In that closed society, every man existed only by virtue of his origin. The man who lacked this origin, and university degrees into the bargain, could not dream of becoming a Minister, for example, except by the short-cut of Social Democracy.

The view that suppression of these discriminations would be harmful to authority proved to be without foundation. A competent man always has the authority he needs. A man who is not superior by his talent invariably lacks authority, whatever his job may be.

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Christendom Pedagogy Science Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 39

the-real-hitler

 

24th October 1941, evening

Religion versus science—Science hits back
—The Church and religious beliefs.

 
 
Religion is in perpetual conflict with the spirit of free research. The Church’s opposition to science was sometimes so violent that it struck off sparks. The Church, with a clear awareness of her interests, has made a strategic retreat, with the result that science has lost some of its aggressiveness.

The present system of teaching in schools permits the following absurdity: at 10 a.m. the pupils attend a lesson in the catechism, at which the creation of the world is presented to them in accordance with the teachings of the Bible; and at 11 a.m. they attend a lesson in natural science, at which they are taught the theory of evolution. Yet the two doctrines are in complete contradiction. As a child, I suffered from this contradiction, and ran my head against a wall. Often I complained to one or another of my teachers against what I had been taught an hour before—and I remember that I drove them to despair.

The Christian religion tries to get out of it by explaining that one must attach a symbolic value to the images of Holy Writ. Any man who made the same claim four hundred years ago would have ended his career at the stake, with an accompaniment of Hosannas.

Whoever sees God only in an oak or in a tabernacle, instead of seeing Him everywhere, is not truly pious. He remains attached to appearances—and when the sky thunders and the lightning strikes, he trembles simply from fear of being struck as a punishment for the sin he’s just committed.

Does the knowledge brought by science make men happy? That I don’t know. But I observe that man can be happy by deluding himself with false knowledge. I grant one must cultivate tolerance.

To seek to deny it is folly. In that case, it’s better to believe something false than not to believe anything at all. Who’s that little Bolshevik professor who claims to triumph over creation? People like that, we’ll break them. Whether we rely on the catechism or on philosophy, we have possibilities in reserve, whilst they, with their purely materialistic conceptions, can only devour one another.

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Architecture Berlin Painting Paris Pedagogy Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 42

the-real-hitler

 

29th October 1941, evening

Stupid pedagogical system—
The monuments of Paris.

 
 
It’s all wrong that a man’s whole life should depend on a diploma that he either receives or doesn’t at the age of seventeen.

I was a victim of that system myself. I wanted to go to the School of Fine Arts. The first question of the examiner to whom I’d submitted my work, was: “Which school of arts and crafts do you come from?” He found it difficult to believe me when I replied that I hadn’t been to any, for he saw I had an indisputable talent for architecture. My disappointment was all the greater since my original idea had been to paint. It was confirmed that I had a gift for architecture, and I learnt at the same time that it was impossible for me to enter a specialised school, because I hadn’t a matriculation certificate.

I therefore resigned myself to continuing my efforts as a self-taught man, and I decided to go and settle in Germany.

So I arrived, full of enthusiasm, in Munich. I intended to study for another three years. My hope was to join Heilmann and Littmann as a designer. I’d enter for the first competition, and I told myself that then I’d show what I could do! That was why, when the short-listed plans for the new opera-house at Berlin were published, and I saw that my own project was less bad than those which had been printed, my heart beat high. I had specialised in that sort of architecture. What I still know about it now is only a pale reflection of what I used to know about it at that time.

Von Kluge asked a question: “My Fuehrer, what were your impressions when you visited Paris last year?”

I was very happy to think that there was at least one city in the Reich that was superior to Paris from the point of view of taste—I mean, Vienna. The old part of Paris gives a feeling of complete distinction. The great vistas are imposing. Over a period of years I sent my colleagues to Paris so as to accustom them to grandeur—against the time when we would undertake, on new bases, the re-making and development of Berlin.

At present Berlin doesn’t exist, but one day she’ll be more beautiful than Paris. With the exception of the Eiffel Tower, Paris has nothing of the sort that gives a city its private character, as the Coliseum does to Rome.

It was a relief to me that we weren’t obliged to destroy Paris. The greater the calm with which I contemplate the destruction of St. Petersburg and Moscow, the more I’d have suffered at the destruction of Paris. Every finished work is of value as an example. One takes the opportunity of learning, one sees the mistakes and seeks to do better. The Ring in Vienna would not exist without the Paris boulevards. It’s a copy of them.

On the whole Paris remains one of the jewels of Europe.

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Marriage Pedagogy Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 59

the-real-hitler

 

Night of 1st-2nd January 1942

You cannot avoid God
—The marriage ceremony.

 
 

Discussing a letter from Frau von Oeynhausen, Chr. Sehr, examined the possibility of replacing religious instruction in schools by a course of general philosophy, so that children should not lose the sense of respect in the presence of things that transcend our understanding.

Someone proposed that this new type of instruction should not be described as “philosophy.” It would be more like an exegesis of National Socialism. The Fuehrer gave his opinion: It’s impossible to escape the problem of God. When I have the time, I’ll work out the formulae to be used on great occasions.

We must have something perfect both in thought and in form. It’s my opinion that we should organise marriage in such a way that couples do not present themselves one by one before the officer of the civil authority. If each couple assembles a following of ten relatives or friends, with fifty couples we shall have five hundred participants—all the elements of a majestic ceremony!

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Ancient Greece Pedagogy Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 100

the-real-hitler

 

3rd March 1942, midday

Ideas on a curriculum for schools.

 
 

I don’t believe there’s any sense in teaching men anything, in a general way, beyond what they need to know. One overloads them without interesting either them or anybody else. It’s better to awaken men’s instinct for beauty. That was what the Greeks considered the essential thing. To-day people persist in cramming children with a host of unrelated ideas.

Do you see the necessity for teaching geometry, physics and chemistry to a young man who means to devote himself to music? Unless he has a special gift for these branches of study, what will he have left over of them later? I find it absolutely ridiculous, this mania for making young people swallow so many fragmentary notions that they can’t assimilate.

If a pupil is particularly brilliant in his speciality, why embarrass him in his studies by obliging him to assimilate notions that are beyond his powers of assimilation? Wouldn’t it be better to help him further in the direction that comes naturally to him?

Forty years ago, the teaching of history was restricted to a dry listing of dates. There was a total absence of principles. What happened when the teacher, into the bargain, lacked the necessary gift forgiving these dead things a soul? Such teaching was a real torture.

Some children have so much vitality that they can’t sit still, and won’t and can’t concentrate their attention. It seems to me useless to try to force them. I understand, of course, that such an attitude annoys the teachers. But is it just to deprive a child of the possibilities that life offers him, simply because he’s unruly?

I remember that on the average I spent a tenth of the time my comrades spent in doing my prep. My selected branch was history. I felt sorry for those of my comrades who never had a minute for play.

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Pedagogy Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 107

the-real-hitler

 

4th April 1942, midday

Rules for a good education.

 

I’m in favour of an absolutely strict law of inheritance, declaring that a single child shall inherit everything, and all the others shall be thrown out into life and obliged to ensure their livelihood themselves. The father who truly loves his child bequeaths him a healthy heredity and a good education.

A good education consists in the following: (a) forming the child’s character by giving him a sense of what is good; (b) giving him a background of solid knowledge; (c) it must be strict as regards the object to be attained, and firm as regards the methods used.

Furthermore, the father who has a lot of money must take care to give his child as little of it as possible. The man who wishes to bring up his child rightly must not lose sight of the example of nature, which shows no peculiar tenderness.

The peasant class has remained healthy in so far as this form of law has been applied to the countryside. One child inherited the estate, the others received nothing, or almost nothing.

That’s exactly the practice amongst the English nobility. The title passes to a single one of the descendants, to the exclusion of all the others. By thus ensuring that the bananas don’t fall from the trees into the mouths of the young people, one protects them from cowardice and idleness. I’ve given instructions that, from now on, estates given to our colonists in the Eastern territories may not be parcelled out. Only the most capable son will be entitled to inherit his family’s farm, the other children will have to break a road through life themselves.

Such measures apply to the family as they do to other living things. Every human organism, however small, can recognise only one chief—and it is only in this way that the patrimony acquired by a family has a good chance of being preserved.

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Heinrich Himmler Pedagogy Table talks (commercial translation) Third Reich

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 110

the-real-hitler
 
5th April 1942, evening

Shall we try to Germanise the French?—Example of Austria—Germanisation of Holland—Fusion of all Germanic races—But no excess Germanisation—Distrust of the Poles.

During dinner, the Reichsfuehrer SS declared that, in his view, the best way of settling the French problem would be to carry off every year a certain number of racially healthy children, chosen amongst France’s Germanic population. It would be necessary to try to settle these children, while still very young, in German boarding-schools, to train them away from their French nationality, which was due to chance, to make them aware of their Germanic blood and thus inculcate into them the notion of their membership of the great group of Germanic peoples. The Fuehrer replied:

“Sinister theory!” For my part, all these attempts at Germanisation don’t mean much to me—in so far, at least, as no successful attempt is made to found them on an appropriate conception of the world. As regards France, one must not forget that the military reputation of that country is not due to the people’s moral worth, but essentially to the fact that, on the Continent, the French were able to exploit certain military combinations of circumstance that were favourable to them (during the Thirty Years’ War, for example). Every time they were confronted by a Germany that was aware of herself, they got a thrashing—under Frederick the Great, for example, in 1940, etc. The fact that they won victories of universal significance under the leadership of that unique military genius, the Corsican Napoleon, makes no difference at all. The mass of the French people has petit bourgeois spiritual inclinations, so much so that it would be a triumph to succeed in removing the elements of Germanic origin from the grasp of the country’s ruling class.

Austria, too, her own history—secular five times over—a history that truly is not devoid of highlights? Obviously, in discussing these problems one must remain very careful, when confronted by Dutch and Norwegians. One must never forget that in 1871 Bavaria would never have agreed to become part of Prussia. Bismarck persuaded her only to agree to become part of a great association linked by kinship—that is to say, Germany. Nor did I, in 1938, tell the Austrians that I wanted to incorporate them in Germany, but I insisted on the fact that Germany and Austria ought to unite to form the Greater German Reich. Similarly, when speaking to the Germanics of the North-west and North, one must always make it plain that what we’re building is the Germanic Reich, or simply the Reich, with Germany constituting merely her most powerful source of strength, as much from the ideological as from the military point of view.

The Reichsfuehrer SS then spoke of the creation in Holland of boarding-schools for the political education of the young, two for boys and one for girls, to be called “Reich Schools”a title approved by the Fuehrer. A third of the pupils would be Dutch and two-thirds German. After a certain period, the Dutch pupils would have to visit in turn a similar school in Germany. The Reichsfuehrer SS explained that, to guarantee that instruction would be given in accordance with the purposes of the Germanic Reich, he had refused a financial contribution from Holland and had asked Schwarz to set aside a specific sum exclusively for the financing of these schools. There was a project for the creation of similar schools in Norway. They, too, would be financed solely by the Reich Party treasurer. “If we want to prevent Germanic blood from penetrating into the ruling class of the peoples whom we dominate, and subsequently turning against us, we shall have gradually to subject all the precious Germanic elements to the influence of this instruction.” The Fuehrer approved of this point of view.

One mustn’t forget that, unless he is convinced of his racial membership of the Germanic Reich, the foreign legionary is bound to feel that he’s betraying his country. The fall of the Habsburg monarch clearly shows the full size of this danger.

It’s not possible to unite the Germanic peoples under the folds of the black-white-and-red flag of the old German Empire—for the same reason as prevented the Bavarians from entering the German Reich, in 1871, under the flag of Prussia. It’s the reason why I began by giving the National Socialist Party, as a symbol of the union of all Germanics, a new rallying-sign which was valid also inside our own national community—the swastika flag.

Let’s avoid attempting the Germanisation of our vital space on too great a scale. Let’s be cautious, especially with the Czechs and the Poles. According to Himmler, history proves that the Poles have their nationality tattooed oh their bodies.

It’s very important for the future that the Germans don’t mingle with the Poles, so that the new Germanic blood may not be transmitted to the Polish ruling class. Himmler is right when he says that the Polish generals who genuinely put up a serious resistance in 1939 were, so to speak, exclusively of German descent. It’s an accepted fact that it’s precisely the best elements of our race who, as they lose awareness of their origin, add themselves to the ruling class of the country that has welcomed them. As for the elements of less value, they retain the characteristics of their ethnic group and remain faithful to their Germanic origin. The same caution is necessary towards the Czechs. They’re skilled at not awakening the distrust of their occupiers, and are wonderful at playing the rôle of subjects.

We shall not win the peace, on the racial level, unless the Reich knows how to maintain a certain stature. Confronted with the United States, whose population is scarcely greater than ours, our strength lies in the fact that four-fifths of our people are of Germanic race.

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Art Painting Pedagogy Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 143

the-real-hitler

 

30th June 1942, at dinner

War as an inspiration in art—
reform of the Art Academies.

 

This war is stimulating the artistic sense much more than the last war. The works of the artists whom I have recalled from the front after a year or two in the field bear the hall-mark of personal experience and are among the most valuable examples of present-day art that our exhibitions can show.

These war paintings establish beyond discussion that the real artist is ripened by his own personal experience of life and not by study in some art academy. Most of the academy professors lack both the insight and the judgment necessary to bring real talent to the fore. Recall, if you please, how the beautiful seascapes of von Bock were refused by the Prussian Academy, although in their wonderful sweep they alone of current paintings gave a true picture of the northern seas. This same Prussian Academy which rejected these pictures was, however, not ashamed to adorn its walls with absolute muck.

Even in my exhibition in the House of German Art they always try to gain acceptance for the daubs of their own protégés. But when it comes to flinging these confections out, I am exceptionally obstinate! My views on the value of the academies are well known. And under present conditions it is difficult to see how talent, other than that which in practical life is incapable of producing a real picture, can be injected into the art schools as they are now constituted.

It is a characteristic of the present-day academies that they invariably try to stifle genius. No sooner does a real genius make his appearance in the circle of these very moderate “big-wigs” of the academies, than up they rise with their whole plumage ruffled in wrath against him.

If we wish to smoothe the way for an incipient genius in the academies and ensure him a practical livelihood in spite of the academies, then we must radically alter the whole structure of the academic world. They must be split up into a series of individual studios, on the lines of the State studios. Then the greatest artists available must be approached and asked if they would care voluntarily to take over one of these studios. Those who agree must be allowed a completely free hand, themselves to chose those pupils whom they consider worthy of further tuition.

If we organise the academies along these lines, then all the nonsense, claptrap and jargon, and all the juggling with mathematical formulae—a nonsense that only the sparrow-like brain of mediocrity could have conceived—will stop. And the great task of the academy will be, first, last and always, to teach the pupil to paint.

I always get angry when I think of how in the teachers’ training colleges the future school-teachers are stuffed with an inchoate mass of material, when all they will be called upon to do later is to teach the children the rudiments of the three Rs.

What special knowledge, for goodness’ sake, is required to teach six-year-old kiddies to say a, b, c correctly! It is equally ridiculous to try to cram children at school with all sorts of things. If you ask them, two or three years after they have left school, you’ll find that they have forgotten practically all about them. The curriculum of a school should be drawn up with the object of teaching the children those things which will enable them in after-life to take their places as decent citizens. And keep the children as much as possible in the open air! We shall then have a healthy rising generation, capable of roughing it without falling on their backs.

Categories
¿Me Ayudarás? (book) Autobiography Degenerate art George Orwell Music Pedagogy Sexual "liberation"

Extermination • V

Libro
 
Below, six translated
excerpts from the chapter
“Musical betrayal”:

 
 

His phobia toward the degenerative aspects of the culture that began to appear in Mexico, especially in music, continued throughout the 1960s and early 70s, when I was already studying in his method. Rock music bothered him and even predicted, more than once, that in a hundred years mankind would continue listening to Beethoven but no one would remember the Beatles.

* * *

At that time [the 1990s] I did translation work. That same year [1993] I quoted something in my diary that I had translated that vindicates what my father said about musical pedagogy. I do not know if the quotes are accurate as the translated text was informal. But the question is to collect what comes in my diary: “Plato and Aristotle discussed the role of music as ‘harmonizing body and soul’. Plato went further: ‘The type of music of a nation cannot be altered without changing the customs and institutions of the state’.”

Very true. The “sexual liberation”—permissiveness of promiscuity and debauchery in plain English—modified the type of music in the West. My father never noticed that music education lies primarily in preventing the child or adolescent of the dissipation forces that became fashionable since the 1960s. A hard ethos as that of the Republican Romans would, I believe, repudiate the degenerate music insofar as the ethos and the musical tastes are two sides of the same coin. My father certainly heard the musical degeneration when it initiated in Mexico; he criticized it and resented much what he heard but eventually he followed the crowd [esp. Hollywood] and his descendants strayed even further. Rephrasing Plato, my brothers and nephews completely disharmonized their souls because of such bad manners. In other words, any pedagogic method that fails to separate the child from the surrounding culture of our time won’t work.

* * *

I must clarify that, although the rhythmic exercises taught in [school X] are indeed silly and childish, they do not reach what my beloved Nazis called “degenerate music.” This leads to the simplistic melodies of “disipacionism” to use the term of Hajo Liaucius in the book that I compiled; the obvious and inane tunes that move us into hedonistic relaxation, so well exemplified in the music that horrified Solzhenitsyn when America sheltered him for a few years and harshly scolded the gringos at Harvard. As unlike Solzhenitsyn almost everyone, including white nationalists, are addicted to degenerate music, they have been unable to realize that the best minds sensed that such “music” would be used by the System to degrade the spirit of the population, and to control it. A passage in 1984, for example, written before the birth of rock, proved prophetic. The music in the totalitarian world, Orwell says: “had a savage, barking rhythm which could not exactly be called music, but resembled the beating of a drum… The proles had taken a fancy to it.”

* * *

In another of my ring-binders (my texts are scattered in many places), in April 18, 2005 I wrote that the methods of Orff and Kodály were also fraudulent “if they don’t produce aversion in the pupils towards the music of Neanderthals, like rap.” In other words, it is impossible to have a double life: say, a traditional marriage with children and maintaining a lasting relationship with a homosexual lover. My brother and his musical colleagues do something similar to this hypothetical bisexual: they studied classical music and go to table dances or dance salsas; they have read the classics but plug their minds to the idiot box called television; they married in the church and get civil divorces before the first conjugal dispute; they teach Bach and in their cars listen disco music.

* * *

One time my nephew visited my parents and confessed to my father that, with his cousins, he was composing music for their rock group. My father did some technical questions and my nephew [who studies music composition] answered. Then, my father delivered a very gentle speech about rock. He said it was a “rhythmic, monotonous and a highly repetitive cry; very simple.” My nephew, incidentally, played the rubbish of progressive rock from his cell phone to show the grandfather the new ringtones. My father continued his criticism of rock concerts: “The volume is so tremendous that equalizes everything; what you hear is a barking rhythm,” just what Orwell said in his best-achieved novel.

Then my father spoke of an old article by a commentator on classical music that had opined about rock. He mentioned the name of the critic (that I failed to annotate), who had written about the “tremendous, crushing phenomenon” which was rock in its origins. My father spoke at length about African rhythms as a preamble to classify the rock. That they play it “to the extent that hypnotize” and the members of the tribe do not dance in dancing couples. Rather, the ritual ends in rapes that surprise the tourists. “I see the same in rock. The volume is so strong and it is so much of it that the affair ends really badly.”

* * *

What I said in my dairies was true: only by cutting off the child from the failed culture that surrounds him it is possible to educate him. We need a Fourth Reich to put things in order.

Categories
Autobiography Hitler Youth Pedagogy Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 178

the-real-hitler

29th August 1942, evening

Do we keep Belgium, France and Norway?—We must adopt the arrogance of Britain—Education and stuffed heads—The safety valve of military service—Once we were a people of energy.

Fundamentally speaking, Belgium, France and Norway are not our natural enemies. I have no desire to incorporate all Frenchmen in the Reich; those who dwell on our borders and with whom we have contact were all Germans four hundred years ago.

With our eighty-five million Germans, we have in the Reich itself a major part of the population of the Germanic races.

No other nation possesses so strong a proportion of these elements. It would then be a sorry business if, with such strength at our disposal, we failed to bring law and order to ancient Europe. We may have a hundred years of struggle before us; if so, all the better—it will prevent us from going to sleep! People sometimes say to me: “Be careful! You will have twenty years of guerrilla warfare on your hands!” I am delighted at the prospect! With a number of small armies we can continue to dominate a large number of peoples. In the future our divisions will not be in dull garrison towns like Lechfeld and Hommerburg, but will be sent to the Caucasus! Our lads have always shouted with joy at the prospect of service abroad, and I shall see to it that in the future they range the four corners of the world. Germany will remain in a state of perpetual alertness.

We will adopt the British attitude of arrogance. In the time of the old German Emperors, let it not be forgotten, the Kings of England were of little more account than the King of Denmark today. In the first war, we found, on going through the paybooks of prisoners of war, that many of them had served in the South African War, They had been all over the world, and for them the fatherland was their Regiment! With men like that, nothing is impossible!

For the future it will, I think, be essential to introduce a three-year period of military service; only by so doing can we ensure efficiency in the handling of new technical weapons. A three-year period will be a great advantage to those who later propose to adopt a learned profession, for it will give them ample time to forget all the muck that was jammed into their heads at school; they will have time to discard everything which will not be of future use to them, and that, in itself, is most valuable.

Everybody, for example, learns two or three foreign languages, which is a complete waste of time. The little one learns is not of the slightest use when one goes abroad. Everybody, I agree, should receive a basic education. But the whole method of instruction in secondary and higher schools is just so much nonsense. Instead of receiving a sound basic education, the student finds his head crammed with a mass of useless learning, and in the end is still ill-equipped to face life.

Lucky are those who have the happy knack of being able to forget most of what they have been taught. Those who cannot forget are ripe to become professors—a race apart. And that is not intended as a compliment! In 1933 things were still being taught in the higher educational establishments which had been proven by science to be false as long ago as 1899.

When I was a schoolboy, I did all I could to get out into the open air as much as possible—my school reports bear witness to that! In spite of this, I grew up into a reasonably intelligent young man, I developed along very normal lines, and I learnt a lot of things of which my schoolfellows learnt nothing. In short, our system of education is the exact opposite of that practised in the gymnasia of ancient days. The Greek of the golden age sought a harmonious education; we succeed only in producing intellectual monsters.

The primary task of education is to train the brain of the young. It is quite impossible to recognise the potential aspirations of a child of ten. In old days teachers strove always to seek out each pupil’s weak point, and by exposing and dwelling on it, they successfully killed the child’s self-confidence. Had they, on the contrary, striven to find the direction in which each pupil’s talents lay, and then concentrated on the development of those talents, they would have furthered education in its true sense. Instead, they sought mass-production by means of endless generalisations.

A child who could not solve a mathematical equation, they said, would do no good in life. It is a wonder that they did not prophesy that he would come to a bad and shameful end! Have things changed much today, I wonder? I am not sure, and many of the things I see around me incline me to the opinion that they have not. I was shown a questionnaire drawn up by the Ministry of the Interior, which it was proposed to put to people whom it was deemed desirable to sterilise. At least three-quarters of the questions asked would have defeated my own good mother. One I recall was: “Why does a ship made of steel float in the water?”

If this system had been introduced before my birth, I am pretty sure I should never have been born at all! Let us, for God’s sake, throw upon the windows and let the fresh air blow away nonsense of this nature! Put the young men into the Army, whence they will return refreshed and cleansed of eight years of scholastic slime!

In the olden days we were an energetic people; but gradually we developed into a people of poets and thinkers. Poets do not matter, for no one takes them seriously; but the world is greatly overburdened with “thinkers.” I keep a bust of Scharnhorst on my table; it is he who started our people back on the road to sanity. The world at large welcomed this Germany of poets and thinkers, because it knew how they sapped our virility.

Still, we have made progress in the field of education, in spite of having a pedant at the head of the Educational Department. With another in control, progress would have been more rapid.

Just think how in the old days a bit of paper could alter the course of one’s whole life! Look at my school reports—I got bad marks in German! My disgusting teacher had succeeded in giving me an intense dislike for my mother tongue! He asserted that I would never be capable of writing a decent letter! If this blundering little fool had given me a grade five, I should have been precluded from becoming a technician! Now, thank God, we have the Hitler Youth, where the child is judged on all his qualities, and not solely on his scholastic attainments; character is taken into consideration, the talent of leadership is encouraged, and every child has the legal right to show what he can do.

_____________________________

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published by Ostara Publications.