Losing the War in Germany: The Educational Front

by OTTO ZAUSMER

1

THE German newspaper headline asked very bluntly: “Who learns from whom?” The article itself left no doubt that the question was strictly rhetorical: the American would-be teachers have learned from their German pupils, not the Germans from the Americans.

This may be a shocking statement but it is correct.

The Germans have learned little, if anything, in almost five years of occupation. But American officials on the spot have learned a great deal. Among other things, American educators in Germany have come to understand that the United States has limped behind Britain and France in the re-education of Germany; that it would not take more than two minutes to list the accomplishments of the first years of occupation; that no amount of money can buy democracy in Germany (or anywhere else); that economic and political reconstruction must end in failure if re-education remains stalled; thal re-education cannot be grafted on a nation’s body but must be given time — a generation or longer—to grow from within; and finally, that the program drawn up by competent educators could work if State Department and Pentagon had also learned a lesson since 1945.

Unfortunately, they have not, and pleas and warnings have been in vain. One of the most recent SOS calls has come from Dr. Arno Jewett, Professor of Education at the University of Texas. After studying education in the U.S. zone Dr. Jewett wrote in the Official Military Government Information Bulletin: “There is almost no evidence of democracy in German academic high schools.”

This stern verdict is in sharp contrast to the cheerful progress reports which Pentagon and State Department release for political reasons. It has been confirmed by other competent observers, among them Dr. Alonzo G. Grace, Director of the Educational and Cultural Relations Division of Military Government —a prominent scholar who resigned as Commissioner of Education of Connecticut last year in order to head the educational setup in Germany. In a survey for the Commission on the Occupied Areas, appointed by the American Council on Education, Dr. Grace wrote last summer: —

If we hope to make any imprint at all on the German people by using the “observe, advise, and assist” formula, then we must face squarely the necessity of a basic program over a long period of time. . . .

There is no reason to believe that after twelve years of indoctrination in Nazi ideology, German youth has accepted the democratic ideal. . . .

The thinking American is somewhat embarrassed and chagrined by the average European concept of American culture. ... It is essential that we let the German people know that the United States has something beside CARE packages and material aid.

In this the United States has failed almost completely. Fortunately, it is not too late; not yet. Naturally, it would have been easier — and in the long run less expensive — to establish German education on a democratic basis when the first post-war reconstruction work was being done. To introduce necessary changes today or tomorrow would require destruction of part of the recently built foundation. The problem would have been big enough even immediately after V-E Day. But every day of delay increases the future price and reduces the chances of ultimate success.

W hat Germany needs is not re-eduecation but a new education. It would have been comparatively easy to make pulp of the Nazi textbooks, to fire the most ardent Nazi teachers, and to discredit the Hitler regime in the eyes of the youth. But that would not have been enough.

Nazism was a mass psychosis which had its roots in the educational and social setup of the country. Despite its high scholastic standard, German education failed miserably in the training for society and for political maturity. It produced “leaders" and “subjects” — oftentimes very scholarly subjects— but no citizens.

At the time when Adolf Hitler was an unknown private in the Kaiser’s army, Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of modern experimental psychology, wrote in his essay The Nations and Their Philosophy (1915): —

We shall learn three things [from this war]. The first derives from the unconditional trust which we may put in our much decried militarism. . . . No, we shall not follow the advice of our enemies to abandon our militarism. We shall he in need of it in the future. . . . Military training has become a means of education which provides physical training and an attitude of duty for our youth. German military service like German gymnastics is a genuinely democratic institution unlike sports through which the wealthy young people of England satisfy their needs for physical exercise and for a stimulating pastime.

If this was the “wise” counsel of one of the most outstanding scholars Germany has ever produced, can anybody be surprised to find a Minister of Education of the following generation postulating still more dangerous nonsense, such as: “Science in the service of racial heritage goes before intellectual education” (Dr. Hartnacke, Nazi Minister of Education, in an address before the German Society of Psychologists).

What is true for psychologists is also true for textbook writers and teachers in general. They have remained backward, undemocratic, or brazenly antidemocratic from the time of the Empire throughout the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and until today.

Heimatland (“Native Land”), a textbook published in 1925, seven years after the founding of the Republic, was practically an exact reprint of the first edition of 1872. In order to comply with the democratic spirit of the Republic, a few stories about aristocrats had been replaced by stories about the war of 1914 1918. They bemoaned the Fatherland’s defeat and peddled the Nazi stab-inthe-back legend: the enemy conquered the Kaiser’s army because the people betrayed their country.

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MILITABISM and extreme nationalism are only more dramatic and more conspicuous poisons which the traditional education has injected into the German youth for generations and regardless of the regime in power. Less obvious but more fundamental has been the vicious circle in which an antiquated, antidemocratic educational system is linked with the antidemocratic political setup that has harmed both Germany and her neighbors.

This is the way education and politics have moved around in a circle. Admission to a German university or college depends on successful completion of eight years of high school. Only 10 per cent of the German youth take this road to academic education, because high school tuition is not free and a child must decide at the age of ten whether he wants (that is, usually, whether he can afford) to go to high school for eight more years. His alternative is a four-class vocational school; this is where the school education ends for about 90 per cent of the German youth.

The high school curriculum for the 10 per cent comprising the intellectual elite is traditionally restricted to academic and cultural subjects; more than half the program is devoted to the study of languages, while social studies are virtually nonexistent. To make matters worse, it is impossible to get beyond a certain lower level of the civil service without a university degree, and especially without law school. This draws another vicious circle around civil service, making it the exclusive, hunting grounds of a small, very limited clique. The members of this civil service elite, the Beamten, are appointed for life and have enormous prestige, power, and privileges which they want to retain for their small caste.

So far they have been successful in surviving the Empire, the Republic, Hitlerism, and Military Government. They have occupied a major number of seats in all diets and parliaments, and because of their legal training have been particularly numerous in committees, where they have blocked all moves to curb their powers before a bill could reach the plenum. A peculiar twist in German lawpermits them to remain in their executive positions even while they are sitting in the legislature. Finally, the Beamten are the main pool from which cabinet ministers have been drawn in the post; and if the minister is not a Beamfe, the keymen on whom he depends in office undoubtedly are.

A study made by French educators shows that the son of a German worker sometimes invades the area of the “ten-percenters,”goes to high school and afterwards studies philosophy, theology, or medicine. They have found practically no case of the son of a worker going to law school and moving up into the higher brackets of civil service.

Thus, there can be no democratic education and no democratic Germany without a democratic civil service law. So far such a new law has been prevented by the desperate resistance of the Beamten. Its chances in the future are equally slim without a sweeping change in the educational system so that the nation’s youth would no longer be divided into intellectuals and misera plebs at the age of ten. The vicious circle goes on and on.

There would have been a way of breaking it: namely, by Military Government decree. The United States has failed to take this step; but the French have done it in their zone.

Madame Irene Giron, Deputy Director of Education in the French zone, transformed the old army barracks at Germersheim into a modern academy with university rank. There is nothing like it elsewhere in Germany. The name “DolmetscherSchule” would suggest that the .350 students of the institution are being trained for jobs as translators. Some of them will perhaps enter this field. But after graduation all of them will be qualified for positions as interpreters or as “public relations specialists” — in other words, propagandists — or as diplomats of the medium rank. They must be given priority for German civil service vacancies.

Their curriculum includes constitutional law, history, philosophy, and above all, languages. The German rector has a faculty of ten German instructors, nine French, five British, two Swedish, one Italian, and one Spanish. Once a week, for example, the students are ordered to set up a law court and try a case, say in French or English. Next time the assignment would be to comment on a certain event ; one student is supposed to represent the views of the London Times, the other of the Communist Daily Worker. Naturally, in order to do that they have to be acquainted thoroughly with foreign life, press, customs, and opinions. Their baseball games are always carried on in English.

The Staatliche Verwaltungsakademie in Speyer (Palatinate) is another French experiment. There students are being prepared for higher civil service careers. Each graduate is guaranteed a position when he leaves the academy. Even while in school he receives a small salary so that he can pay his way. Six months at Speyer are followed by one year of practical experience under supervision of an older civil servant, before the student returns to Speyer for six more months. There he can bring up in class all the problems that puzzled him in his job.

Graduation from high school is required for admission to Germersheim or Speyer. Applicants for the first academy must be twenty-one years old; candidates for the other must be between twentylive and thirty-five. The French are now working on the program for a third institute, a three-year college course, for workers and people who could not go through eight years of high school. They will be trained for lower civil service jobs at first, with the right to continue education for a higher civil service position at Speyer later on.

The French planned German re-education carefully before the occupation began. They surveyed their own limited resources and decided on a minimum program. Let us write off the older people, they said, at least in the beginning, and concentrate on the younger generation. There were few qualified, politically clean teachers. So the French set up twenty-two teacher-training colleges with free tuition, and today the enrollment has reached 3200. Applicants are selected at the age of fourteen and are sent to a preparatory school for five years, and later to a pedagogical academy for another five years. These institutions are boarding schools located close to regular elementary schools where the students can get their practical training. Thus, the French hope to have sufficient trustworthy elementary school teachers for their zone by 1955.

Much less has been done for secondary schools. Paris wanted to impose a school reform law, and as one prominent Frenchman remarked: “If we had ordered it in 1945, the Germans would defend it against us now.” But Washington barred an “imposed” reform and insisted on the “observe, assist, and advise” formula. So school reform is still undecided. Pessimists say it is dead.

All textbooks were banned in the French zone immediately in 1945 (as they were in the American and British zones), because there was no book without Nazi propaganda. In Latin, Carthage was compared to Britain, and Rome’s victory over the Teutonic hero Arminius was held up as a warning example. In mathematics, youngsters were asked to figure out how many bombs would be needed to level an enemy’s city, and how many planes would have to carry the missiles. The French requested altogether new books and — with a little pressure had them long before any other power.

Today the average German child in the French zone has four or five times as many textbooks as a youngster in the U.S. zone. German scholars offered 450 manuscripts for all kind of textbooks, but not a single one on history, because the French Military Government had stipulated two conditions: first, German history must be treated as a part of European history; and second, the narrative must not consist of a series of battle descriptions. On the other hand Paris ruled that no Frenchman could write a textbook for German schools. So the educational authorities had to turn to other European scholars. Social science books were handled by Scandinavians, a Luxemburger has just finished the story of World War I, and other gaps were filled by Swiss educators.

The shortage of books was equally painful at the university level. The lack of reliable teachers was even worse because college enrollment hit an all-time record. The French hired Swiss, Belgian, Dutch, and English lecturers, appointed high school teachers to university professorships, and added practical lawyers to the law school faculties, which was something quite unusual in Germany.

It is generally admitted today by Germans who otherwise dislike the French that their educational experiment has been a striking success. Mere is how one French official describes it: “We have made a special effort to demonstrate to the Germans that the democracy we want to introduce is not a foreign product which has to be eyed with suspicion: on the contrary, we show them what contributions their own thinkers and poets have made.”

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COMPARED with the achievements in the French zone, progress in the British and in the American area of occupation fias been very slow.

Perhaps the task was more difficult, too. While France has to deal with the problems of about six million Germans, Britain and the United States are responsible for re-education of more than twenty-two and about nineteen million people, respectively. The task of repairing the physical damage alone has been colossal. For example, of all the institutes with university rank in the province of North Rhine—Westphalia (British zone), which is about twice as populous as the entire French zone, only Cologne University and the Dusseldorf Medical Academy escaped serious damage during the war. There are roughly 6000 elementary schools left; 12,000 were destroyed or badly hit.

Classes are being held where rain and wind cannot come in: in air-raid bunkers, Nissen huts, and army barracks. Nevertheless, teachers have to operate in three shills in order to give all the children a minimum amount of instruction. One group would go to school from eight to eleven in the morning, the next from eleven to three, and the third from three to six. Needless to say, little can be accomplished in three hours a day and with teachers who work almost on an assembly-line setup. Fifty pupils in a class is considered quite normal; there are also groups with seventy and eighty in a room. A six-year construction program is expected to bring some relief. But its fulfillment will depend on economic conditions and on how much money the state can spare for education.

The situation in the U.S. zone is not much brighter. There are about 42,000 classrooms in use; another 29,000 are needed. In cities such as Ulm or Heilbronn, practically every school building is in ruins; 60 per cent destruction is frequent. Classes are being held in restaurants, factories, old army barracks. Little if any money is available for school buildings, and it would take very favorable circumstances to meet the most urgent needs in the next ten years.

By and large there are enough teachers. In many places there are too many because thousands of teachers from Communist countries, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland, have settled in Western Germany. In the British zone, for example, every sixth teacher is a refugee. This abundance is of little help because most teachers are politically unreliable, to put it mildly. An “informed” guess puts the number of convinced, active democrats at about one in five. Between 60 and 70 per cent are former Nazis, and many among them are still brazenly peddling the Goebbels ideology .

The failure of denazification in general has had its most adverse effect on civil service and education in particular, the two main pillars on which the new states must rest. Fven teachers who do not consider themselves Nazis, wittingly or unwillingly defeat the re-education program. They are the products of the pre-Hitler era which led to Nazism, or of the Hitler regime itself. They can give their pupils only what they have themselves; and that is often scholarship but rarely understanding of democracy. Again, they teach children how to become “subjects,”not how to become citizens.

Sometimes they do more harm than good, even though they may be anxious to prove their excellent intentions. For example, in 1946 Military Government suggested that Berlin schools provide information on the progress of the trial of Göring, Hess, and others, and interpretation of the trial reports as a part of the regular curriculum. The German officials clicked their heels and ordered one hour a day classroom discussion of the trial. Only intervention from American headquarters reduced this to one hour a week. Or take another example. Dr. Hundhammer, the Bavarian Minister of Education an ultrareactionary old-time politician — approved physical punishment in schools. Many teachers were against it and Military Government backed them up. Dr. Hundhammer called a referendum among parents; they approved of spanking and so it was dragged in again through a back door, by a “democratic” procedure.

If democratic education cannot expect more support from the German administration, parents, and teachers, then dependable textbooks would seem to be our last hope.

Unfortunately, this is another instance where the United States has lagged behind France and Britain. Today, in the fifth year of occupation, hundreds of thousands of students still depend on their notes because books are not available. For example, in one of the spiles of the U.S. zone there is no reader from the seventh to the ninth grade. About two thirds of the titles for high school are completed; the other third are still in preparation and teachers must spend their time dictating what the pupils should be able to read alone after class hours. There are no history text books, only outlines in table form; there are no high school chemistry books, biology books only for a few grades, and the physics book is “not scientific enough,” the responsible German official in the Ministry of Education declared. Modern language primers are good; the new editions of Latin textbooks have excellent intreductions as well as footnotes.

The situation at the universities is probably worse. Political and ideological problems play an even more important part on this higher level. University libraries have lost millions of volumes through bombing and shelling. Losses range from 200,000 at the University of Bonn to 600,000 at the University of Hamburg.

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THIS textbook calamity reflects the Cinderella position of education in the Military Government setup. In 1945 three titles were printed in 38,000 copies for the entire U.S. zone. In 1946 the number of volumes was less than a million. By the end of 1947 five million books had been added. In April, 1948, Dr. Grace arrived in Germany and took over control of education. That same year fourteen million textbooks were finished and the printing presses have been running at a similar speed this year. This looks like victory. But it is of little use if books are ready at the publishers’ and not in the hands of students — which is exactly the situation now. Millions of copies are stacked in warehouses because parents cannot afford to buy them and the German authorities refuse to supply them free.

Military Government, has not heeded the repeated pleas of its own officials for school reform which would make education a duty of the state, not a privilege of those who can afford to pay the price. “Teaching the Germans democracy” and “re-educating” them have been the most abused slogans since Dr. Goebbels died in the Berlin airraid bunker. But little has been done about it. The main object of occupation clearly is re-education, the only solid foundation of reconstruction and recovery. The men in charge of it have been soldiers, technicians, successful businessmen, and economists, who had little experience in education.

They were primarily interested in short-range security and financial problems. Education was at the bottom of the table of organization either as a branch or as a section of Military Government. It rose to the rank of a division only after the arrival of Dr. Grace a year and a half ago.

Education still has neither the budget nor the influence it needs and deserves. But a great deal of excellent spadework has been done. Since last March educators of the three Western zones have tried to coördinate their plans at fortnightly meetings. A very good program has been drafted; given time, money, and administrative power, the ultimate objective—re-education of the German people — could still be achieved.

Why then bring up the mistakes of the past and cry over spilled milk? Because there are still many influential people in Washington who have a passion for spilling milk, a luxury which is no longer permissible. Re-education of a nation is no rush job. It will take at least live years to lay the foundation and another fifteen to build the permanent structure. This long-range program is being endangered by the haste with which the United States has made its two partners turn executive and legislative power back to the German masses, and to officials and teachers who are unreformed themselves and therefore hostile to reforms.

“Many current difficulties never would have presented themselves,” states the survey of the American Council of Education, “if an adequate and impressive occupation force had remained in Germany. It seems to be one of the qualities of the United States to go all out to complete a job without realizing that successful completion, in the case of war, means more than the termination of fighting. It is important, that German educational reconstruction and cultural regeneration not be abandoned now that material reconstruction is on the way and economic recovery assured. It would be typically American for us to say that the time has arrived to withdraw our meager educational forces from Germany and leave the country to itself.”

No good can come from indefinitely prolonging occupation and tutelage of the German people. It is just as desirable to make the Germans selfgoverning as it is to make them self-supporting. The sooner the country can be put back on its feet, and off our back, the better. But if put on her feet while her brain still works like an authoritarian robot, Germany would inevitably use her feet again for goose-stepping behind the next corporal who offers himself as a Führer. To buy back freedom and the rights of man in a third world war would be much more expensive than to keep the educators there for another generation.

Several who started with great hopes and the best of intentions have given up in despair; the latest is Dr. Grace, who resigned a few weeks ago. The desperate struggle between a few idealistic educators and a stubborn administrative machine concerns not only a small group of teachers and scholars but every mature person here and abroad.

It has become a commonplace to say that the German people must prove themselves in the experiment which began after V-E Day. This may sound well and give us the comfortable feeling that we have done our duty. But is it correct? Perhaps the arrogant question of the unreconstructed, nationalistic German editor can serve as a last-minute warning: “Who learns from whom?” Five years of occupation should have taught us that if anything is on trial in Germany, the “defendant” is not the German nation, but democracy.

(Mr. Zausmer’s second article, on the rebuilding of German industry and its dangerous consequences, will appear in the January Atlantic.)