The Third Reich's Elite Schools: A History of the Napolas

by Helen Roche

Overview

Drawing on material from eighty archives in six different countries worldwide, as well as eyewitness testimonies from over 100 former pupils, Helen Roche presents the first comprehensive history of the Third Reich's most prominent elite schools, the National Political Education Institutes (Napolas / NPEA). The Napolas provided an all-encompassing National Socialist 'total education', featuring ideological indoctrination, premilitary training, and a packed programme of extracurricular activities, including school trips and exchanges throughout Europe and beyond.

Combining all the most seductive elements of reform-pedagogy, youth-movement traditions, and the militaristic ethos of the Prussian cadet schools, the schools took pupils from the age of ten, aiming to train them for leadership roles in all walks of life. Those who successfully passed the gruelling entrance examination, which tested applicants' physical prowess, courage, and alleged 'racial purity' along with their academic abilities, had to learn to live in a highly militarized and enclosed boarding-school community.

Through an in-depth depiction of everyday life at the Napolas, as well as systematic analysis of the ways in which different schools within the NPEA system were shaped by their previous traditions, this study sheds light on the qualities which the Nazi regime desired to instil in its future citizens, whilst also contributing to key debates on the political, social, and cultural history of the Third Reich, demonstrating that the history of education and youth can illuminate the broader history of this era in novel ways. Ultimately, the NPEA can be seen as the Nazi dictatorship's most effective educational experiment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198726128
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/11/2022
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Helen Roche, Associate Professor in Modern European Cultural History, Durham University

Helen Roche is Associate Professor in Modern European Cultural History at Durham University, having previously held research fellowships at Cambridge and UCL. She has published extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century German history, including the history of education, National Socialism, and classical reception studies. Key publications include Sparta's German Children (2013), Brill's Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (ed., 2018), and 'Surviving "Stunde Null": Narrating the Fate of Nazi Elite-school Pupils during the Collapse of the Third Reich', which was awarded German History journal's 'Best Article Prize' in 2015. Recently, she co-founded 'Claiming the Classical', a global research network which maps twenty-first-century political appropriations of the ancient world. She is currently researching the history of everyday life under fascism in interwar Europe.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Napolas in Historical ContextPART I: GENESIS1. Foundation and Administration: The Napolas' Position within the Polycratic Nazi State2. 'Selection', Teaching, and Everyday Life3. 'Missions' and Extracurricular ActivitiesPART II: VARIETY WITHIN UNITY4. The Prussian Paradigm? Resurrecting Cadet-School Traditions at the Former Staatliche Bildungsanstalten5. Centralism versus Particularism: Harnessing Regional Ambitions and Negotiating Federal Tensions at the NPEA in Saxony, Anhalt, and Württemberg6. The Annihilation of Tradition? The 'Napolisation' of Humanistic and Religious Foundations7. Ostmark: The Annexation of the Viennese Bundeserziehungsanstalten and Heißmeyer's 'Dissolution of the Monasteries'8. The Reichsschulen and the Napolas' Germanizing Mission in Eastern and Western Europe9. For Girls Only: The NPEA für MädchenPART III: NEMESIS10. The Demands of Total War11. The Endkrieg and the Last of the Napolas12. Epilogue: Post-warConclusion

Editorial Reviews

"The Third Reich's Elite Schools can lay claim to the status of a standard work [...] The book's great merit lies in its abundance of meticulously researched case studies [...] At no point in her account does Roche indulge in moralisation or judgment, and that makes her investigation all the more nightmarish and impressive." — Rüdiger Gröner, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

"Roche has managed what very few historians of institutional or organizational studies are able to do: she has successfully embedded the historical trajectory of an understudied system of Nazi elite schools in the wider currents of German and European history, employing a balanced and empathetic analytic approach, crystal-clear prose, and easy-to-follow expositional structure. Her work is therefore guaranteed to appeal to a wide and varied readership and hopefully attract other historians to this vital scholarly arena [...] [and is] written with a keen eye for the modern reader." — Tim Mueller, H-German

"[E]xtensive, detailed and thorough... an essential reference point for future investigations into this field. This applies not only to historians of education but more broadly to people interested in the Nazi period and Nazi rule in particular... [Roche's] critical handling and deconstruction of autobiographical narratives [...] is exemplary [...] Overall, in combining a detail-oriented narration with anecdotal evidence, the book [...] explains the multifaceted functioning of the Napolas and of Nazi rule in an informative and captivating manner." — Lisbeth Matzer, History of Education

"The first comprehensive study of these National Socialist educational institutions [...], founded on an impressive source base [...] Roche very effectively carves out the schools' ambivalent relationship between tradition and innovation [...] Overall, with her source-rich and interestingly-written total history of the NPEA, which includes countless individual case studies, Roche has not only achieved a weighty contribution to the history of education, but also offers beyond that vital insights into countless subjects of contemporary historical research" — Jana Wolf, Sehepunkte

"...an incredibly detailed, richly described, and meticulously researched book contribution to the education history of Nazi Germany... A word like "comprehensive" does not...capture just how detailed and expansive this study is. The source material Roche drew upon is mind-bogglingly varied and extensive. ...the conclusions to each chapter fulfill Roche's intention of embedding this educational history within the wider contexts of Third Reich history. The Napolas do indeed reveal the basic mechanics of the Hitler dictatorship writ small. The Third Reich's Elite Schools thus reminds us how enlightening and important the history of education can be." — Kristin Semmens, Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire de l'éducation

"...a comprehensive, timely account... Helen Roche's synthesis of long years' research on the "avant-garde of the Volksgemeinschaft" offers a highly welcome contribution to the history of the perversion of educational practice under National Socialism." — Klaus-Peter Friedrich, Neue Politische Literatur

"This is a monograph that will be of interest to scholars and students of education and of the Third Reich alike. Roche has written a comprehensive and meticulous survey of a very specific area of German history, using an extensive source base... Throughout[,] Roche balances the detailed and divergent experiences of individual schools and students whilst highlighting the wider connections to the history of the Third Reich these experiences demonstrate. Her introduction argues for treating educational history not as a subgenre but as a valuable prism for exploring wider historical trends and how the ideals of a regime are inculcated in the next generation. This well-researched and scrupulously referenced monograph ably demonstrates how this can be achieved." — Robin Smith, German History

"...a new foundational work on the topic... Roche's analysis is thorough and sound [with] a writing style that is both informative and easy to follow... Overall, Roche's book is a fine work of scholarship that deals with a subject that needs serious revision. She successfully distills her vast amounts of research into an easily consumable volume that is an asset to any historian studying the Third Reich." — James Lautens, H-War

"Roche's account of the NPEA is a tour de force, providing an immense amount of both historical content and analysis. [...] By demonstrating how the NPEA were connected to all features of life in Nazi Germany, Roche has succeeded in telling a history of Nazi Germany through the lens of one of its most significant, but largely forgotten, pedagogical experiments." — Barnabas Balint, Holocaust and Genocide Studies

"The sheer scale of this undertaking and breadth of sources used to accomplish it are impressive, and the author's deft writing is accessible to field experts and amateurs alike. Her integration of oral history is particularly noteworthy, offering a personal touch to her subject often missing in archive centric accounts." — Andrew Santora, Strategic Visions

"Helen Roche's impressive study [...] is deeply researched, carefully contextualized, and thoroughly engaging. This outstanding book merits the attention of those who seek to understand how National Socialism worked and how people became Nazis." — Katharine Kennedy, Central European History

From the Publisher