“NAZI EDUCATORS.”

Evening Star, Issue 24286, 29 August 1942, Page 4

“NAZI EDUCATORS.”

Hitler has declared that whoever controls youth controls the future, and in order to carry out that idea Nazi officialdom has launched a campaign to control and Nazify the education and activities of youth in the occupied countries. Tho policy adopted' takes two directions. One is that in the so-called “ Germanic ” countries—Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and Luxemburg—an appeal to the ties of blood is made, and the Germans are using every effort to win over the youth in those States to their New Order. Tho aim is an enlarged Germanic confederation which shall include a much greater area than that which has existed in the past. The mistake the Nazis are making is that they are trying to gain their ends Iby means of force and terrorism, and the employment of the Gestapo. In Norway, tor instance, juvenile organisations are under strict control, democratic clubs have been suppressed, and the Nazis have deliberately allowed general education to fall into chaos, despite native efforts to keep the standards high. In Belgium and the Netherlands similar methods are employed, and where opposition has been siiown universities have been closed and professors imprisoned!. The second direction that the Nazi policy takes is based on tho assertion that a lower race needs less room, less clothing, less food, less culture than a higher race; consequently Czechs, Poles, Greeks, and Serbs must learn only sufficient German to appreciate German commands in order to become toilers in the New Order. The education of Polish children has been stopped at the age of twelve, while two-thirds of the Czech youth have been deprived of all secondary education. The Nazi plans are deep and far-reaching, and characteristically German, hut the vision of their promoters is limited by lack of realisation that the fundamentals of liberty and of civilisation cannot permanently be outraged. It is inevitable, therefore, that these and other ambitious Germanisation schemes are doomed to failure.