Come on now, be a Shmarty: Nazi Germany's educational system

[Faeelin]

I started reading the new series on the Third Reich, by Richard J. Evans. A Fascinating look at the Reich.

My God, what a stupid, stupid people.By thend of the 1930s, thousands of teachers were leaving their jobs because they couldn't handle it any more; by 1938, there were only 2500 teachers graduating a year, to replace the 8,000 new teachers needed. Class sizes increased to 43 students per teacher, compared to 37 in 1927, less than1/14 of all secondary schoolteachers were under the age of 40.

As you'd expect in a state where the leader stated that "the training of mental abilities is only secondary [to the breeding of healthy bodies]", by 1939 emplyers "were complaining that graduates' standards of knowledge of language and arithmetic were poor and that the level of school knowledge of the examinees has been sinking for some time".

The Theird Reich, in 1939, had 41,000 students in universities, from 104,000 in 1931.In Technical uniersities, numbers fell from 22,000 in 1931 to 12,000 in 1939. Amongst the smaller student body, the percentage of students going into the sciences had declined, going from 12% to 8% of the student body. Meidicine, oddly enough, was the real winner, going from 1/3 of the student body in 1932 to nearly half in 1939. Meanwhile, the number of females in higher education fell from 17,000 in 1932 to under 6,000 in 1939; hardly an encouraging sign.

So, rather than landing Aryan supermen on the moon, the Nazis, it seems, are going to face severe problems keeping up with the US and any other liberal democracies in terms of science and technology.

And you people thought the Soviets were bad...

 

[Deflare]

And this, of course, isn't taking into account state-mandated alterations to history, genetics, and some forms of medicine to conform with Nazi racial policies. Stalin raised a few generations of incompetent geneticists by banning the teaching of Mendelian genetics; Nazi Germany would have been so, so much worse.If this is any indication, it looks like Germany was heading for a situation like that of North Korea; as old researchers died or emmigrated, Germany would grow decreasingly advanced technologically, and more and more focused on multi-million men armies.
Assuming your source is correct, it looks like Germany was heading for complete intellectual collapse.

 

[Straha]

That is true but the reich will do better than the USSR by virtue of being a fascist economy instead of a communist one...

 

[Straha]

That is true but the reich will do better than the USSR by virtue of being a fascist economy instead of a communist one...

 

[MrP]

Barring their hilariously bad war-economy spending, o'course

 

[Leo Caesius]

That is true but the reich will do better than the USSR by virtue of being a fascist economy instead of a communist one...

It's six of one and half a dozen of the other, isn't it? I mean, in the end, aren't both of them centrally controlled?

 

[Faeelin]

That is true but the reich will do better than the USSR by virtue of being a fascist economy instead of a communist one...

So, as successful as Argentina, Spain.... you can see why I'm skeptical that they'll do well.

In fact, even during the war, when the Germans were occupying vast swathes of Russia's industrial heartland, the Russians were outproducing them. (Compare the USSR producing 24,446 tanks to 9200 for Germany in 9,200, or 25,436 aircraft to Germany's 15,409).

 

[Faeelin]

It's six of one and half a dozen of the other, isn't it? I mean, in the end, aren't both of them centrally controlled?

Ah, but the Germans are also busy pursuing economically productive strategies like engaging in the resettlement of the Ukraine, to produce, umm, grain, that rare strategic commodity.

 

[Leo Caesius]

So, essentially, what you're saying is that a triumphant Nazi Germany would be something like the late German Democratic Republic, only bigger, more inept, and genocidal? Sounds like a winner to me.

 

[Deflare]

It's six of one and half a dozen of the other, isn't it? I mean, in the end, aren't both of them centrally controlled?

Sorta yes, sorta no. In fascist economies, the government gives lots of power to particular corporations and plays their rivalries off of each other- like feudalism with companies instead of nobles. Under communism, all corporations are owned directly by the state and have no power at all.

 

[NapoleonXIV]

Sorta yes, sorta no. In fascist economies, the government gives lots of power to particular corporations and plays their rivalries off of each other- like feudalism with companies instead of nobles.

Now... where is that familiar from?

 

[PaleHorseRiding]

The reason they were having the problems they had was because they were a centrally planed government so they decided what they wanted they wanted biology to be big to that is what was if they decided something else was then it would be. U can do biology medicine with thier racial theories

 

[carlton_bach]

The reason they were having the problems they had was because they were a centrally planed government

No. Really. Nazi Germany wanted for all the world to look like a centrally planned government, and handed out titles and departments like one, but it was, if anything, a centrally unplanned state. Its economy was based on fierce competition tempered by generous subsidies for the well-connected and expropriation for the undesireable. The government at the higher levels largely functioned through a system of 'Chinese Whispers' whereby a policy was outlined by Hitler, interpreted by his underlings, implemented piecemeal, then the results reported back as far up as it took for anyone to dare make a decision (which is why Hitler had to sign off on the size of doorbolts for tanks, but not on the start of the Shoah).

The problem was simpler. The Nazis were lousy at educational policy. They took funding away from schools and universities to support sports facilities and the military, they fired 'undesireable' teachers and professors and replaced them with politically reliable ones, regardless of talent, they changed the main policy thrust every half year or so, and they introduced a whole new level of playing politics to education. The minister of education, Rust, was called 'Reichsunruhestifter' (Reich provider of chaos) behind his back. They also changed career tracks, making traditional academia less attractive as positions in the civil service and party elite increasingly went not to lawyers and PhDs (as they traditionally had), but to party ideologues and paramilitaries. It really was one of the greatest frustrations to the middle class in Nazi Germany that talent, education and ability very obviously did not count.

Their schools and universities stayed decent, but that was largely in spite of the system. Whereas Communism had a high regard for the natural sciences, but ideologically micromanaged the system to the point of choking, the Nazis largely disdained intellectual achievement, but simply weren't interested, leaving corners of excellence to flourish in a sea of underfunded mediocrity. There really is no way to predict how it will play out, but I suspect a stronger role of something like an apprenticeship system - graduates learning more on the job. It would work as a stopgap and jive with the Nazi idea of 'Gefolgschaft'.

 

[Rasputin]

What this seems to suggest is that if the Germans won the war in the east and managed a peace in the west, settling down for a Cold War standoff, they'd have collapsed even sooner than the Soviet Union did. The political system was chaotic and dysfunctional, and was busy training a generation of intellectually-stunted man-children who knew lots about making long jumps with their teeth but nothing about how the world worked.

When Hitler died, I'd expect the whole thing to fall like a house of cards. Too many people would be irritated with the whole apparatus.

 

[carlton_bach]

When Hitler died, I'd expect the whole thing to fall like a house of cards. Too many people would be irritated with the whole apparatus.

Depends on how late that day comes. Hitler didn't destroy the old power structure, he just set up a competing apparatus and messed up command channels. If he dies in the 40 or early 50s, the civil service system, police, military and judiciary are still relatively intact and it is quite possible that a traditional group simply takes over the state without overly much fuss and purges the Nazi party. Coups were always easy in Germany, with everyone doing as they're told. But if he lasts longer, things are liable to get very, very nasty.

 

[Chingo360]

Now, we (germans) have one of the best educational systems, beyond the US, the stuff i learned in 8th grade (in the US), i learned in 5th grade (in Germany)

 

[Rasputin]

Funny how history turns out, isn't it?

Hitler was apparently going down the pan mentally by the end of the war anyway, so I wouldn't expect the man to last beyond 1950. On the other hand, an extended limbo period involving Hitler as a spluttering imbecile may allow other Nazi members to step into higher positions of authority and give the command structure some permanence. I still don't give it more than a decade, though.

 

[carlton_bach]

Now, we (germans) have one of the best educational systems, beyond the US, the stuff i learned in 8th grade (in the US), i learned in 5th grade (in Germany)

And yet...

The US is not really a fair comparison given the much wider discrepancies between the top and bottom schools there. Germany's system dates to the 1960s, and in terms of the OECD, Germany is excellent - for the 1960s. Pity it ain't the 60s any more. But again, that was the Nazi legacfy, too. Most of our institutions were remade, and since the postwar years, inertia has been accumulating...

 

[Straha]

Now, we (germans) have one of the best educational systems, beyond the US, the stuff i learned in 8th grade (in the US), i learned in 5th grade (in Germany)

Germany is a backwater these days. Even FRANCE is more notable than them.

 

[MrP]

Germany is a backwater these days. Even FRANCE is more notable than them.

I noted when I visited Germany that their language teaching was far and away in advance of ours (UK), but science appeared to be a couple of years behind where we were. I don't know how accurate this is. It was a decade ago. However, I wouldn't call Germany a backwater!