Inside Germany
Education for Death. By Gregor Ziemer. (Constable. 7s. 6d.)
GREGOR ZIEMER was for many years President of the American Colony School in Berlin. By repeatedly bribing a high official with a pound of coffee, he managed to obtain an interview with the German Minister of Education, Dr. Bernhard Rust. As a result of this interview he was given permission to visit all German insti- tutes of "Education," including sterilisation clinics and " mother- and-child " homes. Education for Death is the story of his journey through Hitler's realm of education.
He has produced a very recommendable book. He started his observations in an unbiased way. He collected material, saw every-
thing and everybody for himself, saw things which some of us knew, but which even more did not want to know. . He realised and describes how the whole future generation of Germany—(and he did not come across a single child or group or class of children who migift be an exception!)—will be conditioned or formed by Hitlen education for death, for murder and aggression for the Herrenvolk and the Nordic Chosen Race. "If we are realistic," Ziemer con- cludes, "we take a critical look at Hitler's schools, and admit frankly that Hitler's educational system which has set itself the task of sweeping democracy from the face of the earth, is an even greater menace than his army or his Luftwaffe."
When he returned after years of absence to America, he looked with surprise at the fact that nobody responsible for education had taken in the truth about this greatest enemy to the future of our civilisation. "Have we in our Schools the deep-rooted enthusiasm for Democracy that German Schools have for Hitler's ideology? ", he asks, in order to reply in the negative. He blames, justifiably, the wishful thinkers, the idealists because so far they have refused to accept the blatant and naked ?acts. In this country, as the most outstanding example, Mr. Victor Gollancz builds most of his hopes for a better future on the premises that Hitler has not "already so corrupted the German youth that, when they get the new environ- ment, health will not return " ; and that the German people, in- cluding the youth, was in 1939 "overwhelmingly opposed to war." Mr. Ziemer proves not by book-knowledge or wishful thinking, but by first-hand investigation how dangerous and false such hopes are.
There are many details one might be inclined to criticise in the book. Very little, if anything, of the material is unknown to people who have attempted for a long time to face the ugly facts. It is written too much in slang and the style of the popular Press it is difficult to believe that after years of Headmastership in Berlin Ziemer knew as little about the horrors of Nazi education as he pretends ; his quotations are often fat too long ; he repeats over and over again his surprise and justifiable disgust at Hitler's breeding policy, that girls between 14-18 must bear children, whether they ic like it or not, whether they are married or not.
But in spite of these criticisms, it is a book which contains most unpleasant but undeniable facts, facts which we cannot ignore if we do not want to lose the peace again. Facts which must no longer be ignored by all the well-meaning educationists and intellectuals.
Some time ago, I re-read the so topical Georges Sand—Flaubert correspondence. When the Germans were outside the walls of Paris
in 1870, Flaubert made this confession to Georges Sand: "Al'!
we intellectuals! Humanity is far from our ideal! and our immense error, our fatal error, is to think it like us and to treat it accordingly." Mr. Ziemer's book is—after two further German 2s. world-wars—a strong reminder to all intellectuals of the bitter truth
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