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

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

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. "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 schol