{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"Helen Roche","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0014","url":null,"abstract":"The conclusion succinctly summarizes the primary aims of the book as a whole, before considering how ‘effective’ the education provided by the Napolas was in comparison with the Third Reich’s other educational institutions. The NPEA appear to have been in the vanguard of many educational developments which the Reich Education Ministry subsequently intended to apply more broadly throughout the German school system. They also formed a prototype for the non-elite system of state boarding schools founded by August Heißmeyer at Hitler’s behest in 1941—the Deutsche Heimschulen. The programme of the Adolf-Hitler-Schools, rival elite schools founded in 1937 by Reich Organization Leader Robert Ley and Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach, was also to a great extent deliberately copied from that of the Napolas; however, these Party elite schools were never able to realize their full potential and compete with the NPEA on equal terms. The Napolas were also more effective in their provision of a National Socialist ‘total education’ than ‘civilian’ schools and the Hitler Youth, as well as institutions such as the Reich Labour Service (RAD), the ‘Year on the Land’ (Landjahr), or the Order Castles (Ordensburgen). Taken on their own terms, then, the National Political Education Institutes can ultimately be seen as the Nazi dictatorship’s most effective educational experiment.","PeriodicalId":104530,"journal":{"name":"The Third Reich's Elite Schools","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121426934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Endkrieg and the Last of the Napolas","authors":"Helen Roche","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"For pupils at the Napolas, the last few months of World War II heralded an inexorable transition from ‘total war’ to total chaos. Boys as young as 15 or 16 were called up into the armed forces, and many of the schools had to be evacuated wholesale in the face of the advancing Allied armies. This chapter explores the experiences of pupils from a range of different Napolas throughout the Third Reich, as Germany’s territories shrank around them. Some boys were forced to fight their ‘liberators’ to the last, having been drafted into makeshift units of the SS, the Wehrmacht, or the Volkssturm; others fought on willingly even after the armistice, unable to believe that the regime to which they had given their all had collapsed into utter ruin. Many were merely concerned to reunite themselves with their families, even if they were unsure whether any of their relatives remained alive, or if their homes would still be standing. Yet others simply wished to flee and avoid internment at all costs, once they knew that the war was truly lost. In this chapter, the last days of four different groups of NPEA are charted: Stuhm, Köslin, and Rügen, which had most to fear from the encroaching Red Army; Rottweil and Reichenau in south-west Germany, which fell into French hands; Göttweig, Traiskirchen, and Wien-Theresianum in Austria; and Berlin-Spandau and Potsdam, whose pupils were caught up in a series of desperate last stands as Hitler’s capital was finally reduced to rubble.","PeriodicalId":104530,"journal":{"name":"The Third Reich's Elite Schools","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126438446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Centralism versus Particularism","authors":"Helen Roche","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Shortly after the establishment of the first NPEA in Prussia, ‘copy-cat’ Napolas were swiftly established by the educational authorities in Saxony, Anhalt, and Württemberg—an initiative which did not always meet with the Reich Education Ministry’s whole-hearted approval. This chapter charts the—ultimately successful—attempts by the NPEA authorities to centralize the Napola system and place the Napolas in the federal states outside Prussia under the sole power of the Reich. From this perspective, the NPEA can be seen as a bellwether for the type of fully centralized ‘reformation of the Reich’ (Reichsreform or Verreichlichung) which the National Socialist regime desired to effect not only in the realm of education, but in all spheres of government, devolving power and autonomy from the federal states to Berlin. The cases of the schools at Klotzsche in Saxony, Ballenstedt in Anhalt, and Backnang and Rottweil in Württemberg, are each considered in detail. In conclusion, the chapter sites the NPEA-Inspectorate’s efforts to create a Reich-wide educational system within the context of broader impulses towards centralization within the Nazi state.","PeriodicalId":104530,"journal":{"name":"The Third Reich's Elite Schools","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123874594","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Foundation and Administration","authors":"Helen Roche","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"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’.","PeriodicalId":104530,"journal":{"name":"The Third Reich's Elite Schools","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132244586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Reichsschulen and the Napolas’ Germanizing Mission in Eastern and Western Europe","authors":"Helen Roche","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":104530,"journal":{"name":"The Third Reich's Elite Schools","volume":"310 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124405766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Annihilation of Tradition?","authors":"Helen Roche","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"When it came to founding new Napolas, the NPEA authorities often used the strategy of laying claim to educational institutions with venerable traditions, Nazifying and ‘Napolising’ them. This could include the appropriation of well-known humanistic boarding schools with a Protestant ethos such as Schulpforta (alma mater of Nietzsche, Ranke, and Fichte), or the Klosterschule in Ilfeld, which were both taken over as going concerns. However, the National Socialist regime’s deep hostility towards Catholic foundations also led to the forcible expropriation of former monastic schools such as the Ursuline convent school in Haselünne, or the Missionary School of the Society of the Divine Word (Steyler Orden) in St. Wendel, which were transformed into NPEA Emsland and NPEA Saarland respectively. Expropriation could also be used to punish oppositional non-religious schools such as the aristocratic Landschulheim in Neubeuern, Bavaria. Although most of these schools still retained the curriculum of a ‘humanistic Gymnasium’, teaching both Latin and ancient Greek, by the end of World War II, their existing traditions had been almost completely expunged. We can therefore see these forms of expropriation and Napolisation as part of a more general movement towards the de-Christianization of education during the Third Reich, with the NPEA in the vanguard. This chapter treats the schools at Schulpforta, Ilfeld, Haselünne, St. Wendel, and Neubeuern as case studies, concluding with a brief treatment of NPEA Weierhof am Donnersberg, a former Mennonite school which had collaborated with the Nazi authorities even prior to its transformation into a Napola.","PeriodicalId":104530,"journal":{"name":"The Third Reich's Elite Schools","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128542015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"For Girls Only","authors":"Helen Roche","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"The schools for girls at Hubertendorf-Türnitz, Heythuysen, Colmar-Berg, and Achern are the least well-known and well-understood component of the Napola system. This chapter begins by giving an account of how the girls’ schools came into being, their aims, and the heated ministerial debates which dogged their foundation. It then describes everyday life at the girls’ schools, and the similarities and differences between their curriculum and that of the boys’ schools. Finally, it sites the aims and practice of the so-called Mädchen-Napolas within recent historiography on women and gender in Nazi Germany. The political infighting which the girls’ schools provoked, the lack of clarity surrounding their programme, and the piecemeal and contested nature of their development, reflect the fundamental flexibility (or incoherence) of the Nazi state’s attitude towards the ‘women question’ more generally. On the one hand, the girls who attended the Mädchen-Napolas were educated to believe that growing up female in Nazi Germany need be no bar to experiencing comradeship, leadership, and a successful career, and they were given an education broadly analogous to that of their male counterparts. On the other hand, the girls were still trained to see taking care of a husband and family as an ultimate good; their later public or political roles would have been largely limited to the state-sanctioned female spheres of the Nazi womens’ and girls’ organizations, and the caring professions. Ultimately, the Mädchen-Napolas demonstrate, in microcosm, both the scope and the totalitarian restrictions inherent in Nazi attitudes towards young women.","PeriodicalId":104530,"journal":{"name":"The Third Reich's Elite Schools","volume":"528 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124501048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ostmark","authors":"Helen Roche","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Following Austria’s annexation by the Third Reich, the NPEA authorities were eager to pursue every opportunity to found new Napolas in the freshly acquired territories of the ‘Ostmark’. In the first instance, the Inspectorate took over the existing state boarding schools (Bundeserziehungsanstalten/Staatserziehungsanstalten) at Wien-Breitensee, Wien-Boerhavegasse, Traiskirchen, and the Theresianum. Secondly, beyond Vienna, numerous Napolas were also founded in the buildings of monastic foundations which had been requisitioned and expropriated by the Nazi security services. These included the abbey complexes at Göttweig, Lambach, Seckau, Vorau, and St. Paul (Spanheim), as well as the Catholic seminary at St. Veit (present-day Ljubljana-Šentvid, Slovenia). This chapter begins by charting the chequered history of the former imperial and royal (k.u.k.) cadet schools in Vienna, which were refashioned into civilian Bundeserziehungsanstalten by the Austrian socialist educational reformer Otto Glöckel immediately after World War I. During the reign of Dollfuß and Schuschnigg’s Austrofascist state, the schools were threatened from within by the terrorist activity of illegal Hitler Youth cells, and the Anschluss was ultimately welcomed by many pupils, staff, and administrators. August Heißmeyer and Otto Calliebe’s subsequent efforts to reform the schools into Napolas led to their being incorporated into the NPEA system on 13 March 1939. The chapter then treats the Inspectorate’s foundation of further Napolas in expropriated religious buildings, focusing on NPEA St. Veit as a case study. In conclusion, it outlines the ways in which both of these forms of Napolisation conformed to broader patterns of Nazification policy in Austria after the Anschluss.","PeriodicalId":104530,"journal":{"name":"The Third Reich's Elite Schools","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129409825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Prussian Paradigm?","authors":"Helen Roche","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"The very first Napolas which were founded at Potsdam, Plön, and Köslin, as well as those which were subsequently founded at Naumburg, Oranienstein, Bensberg, Berlin-Spandau, and Wahlstatt, were deliberately established on the premises of the former Prussian cadet schools, which had been refashioned as civilian ‘State Boarding Schools’ (Staatliche Bildungsanstalten/Stabilas) after World War I, in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles. To an extent, the NPEA authorities deliberately wanted to resurrect the tradition of the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps at the Napolas, but in a new, Nazified guise. This chapter explores the extent to which the former cadet-school Napolas retained or regained their militaristic Prussian spirit, and examines continuities between the Prussian cadet schools, the Stabilas, and the NPEA. It begins by chronicling the demise of the cadet schools and their resurrection as civilian state schools, more or less dedicated to upholding the Weimar Republic, during the aftermath of World War I. It then goes on to chart the rise of revanchist sentiment and the formation of illegal Hitler Youth cells at the Stabilas during the early 1930s, before analysing the process of Napolisation which took place in 1933–4 in greater detail. In conclusion, the chapter sites the Napolas’ Janus-faced attitude towards the cadet-school tradition within existing debates regarding the affinities (or otherwise) between Prussianism and National Socialism, and the degree of continuity which existed between the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.","PeriodicalId":104530,"journal":{"name":"The Third Reich's Elite Schools","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124330332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Demands of Total War","authors":"Helen Roche","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198726128.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"The quality of school life at the NPEA gradually deteriorated during wartime—chronic shortages of everything from steel to salt, from teaching staff to stable-hands, increasingly impinged on the schools’ day-to-day functioning. This chapter begins by considering the great expectations placed on the Napolas by the Inspectorate and the armed forces, in their capacity as de facto officer training schools. Secondly, it describes daily life at the NPEA, including the ‘war missions’ (Kriegseinsätze) which pupils were expected to undertake as leaders on the children’s evacuation programme (KLV) or as anti-aircraft auxiliaries (Flakhelfer). It also explores the all-important connections between the Napola home-front and former pupils at the battle front, as exemplified by the school newsletters or Altkameradenbriefe, which were expressly designed to foster a transgenerational sense of comradeship among all who belonged to the Napolas’ ‘extended family’. Finally, the chapter briefly examines the ways in which the NPEA system profited from or abetted the wartime crimes of the Nazi regime, including the expropriation of asylums and Jewish property, and the use of forced labour (not least that of concentration-camp inmates). The conclusion then situates the experience of the Napolas within the context of existing scholarship on the state of German education and society during this turbulent period of total war. Ultimately, the NPEA were better able to withstand the privations of war than most ‘civilian’ schools during this period, due not least to their centralized administration, and their supposedly vital contribution to the war effort.","PeriodicalId":104530,"journal":{"name":"The Third Reich's Elite Schools","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115711171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}