Half of GERMAN schoolchildren do not know Third Reich was a dictatorship

[Locutus]

Teach your children well.

• Most pupils unaware of past were from North Rhine Westphalia - the region worst affected by bombing outside Berlin
• Forty per cent are unsure whether current government is democratic

Half of German schoolchildren do not know that the Third Reich was a dictatorship, a survey has found.

More than 50 per cent of the teenagers polled were also unaware that the East German state was also a tyrannical regime run by communists.
Despite being obliged to visit a concentration camp at least once in their schooldays and learning about Hitler's seizure of power, German students showed a lack of knowledge about their roots.

The widespread ignorance is detailed in a study called, 'Late Victory of the Dictatorships?' after a recent survey conducted by researchers at the Free University in Berlin.
'This is shocking,' said study author Klaus Schroeder.

More than 7,500 school pupils aged around 15 were asked how they viewed the various governments that have ruled Germany.
Only around half were definite that the Nazi government was a dictatorship - despite the country at the time being ruled ruthlessly by one party from 1933 to 1945.


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Half of GERMAN schoolchildren do not know Third Reich was a dictatorship - or that East Germany was Communist | Mail Online

 

[relic]

Not surprising,I'd say a lot of nations have revised their historys to cover up bad stuff ,take a look at thr sparkely clean US of A for example.

 

[The Old Medic]

Gee relic, I was taught about slavery, about the Indian wars, etc., etc when I was in Schools in the USA. Since I attended schools in 5 different states, and ALL of them had these things in their curriculum, I really doubt if you snide comment actually applies.

It is amazing how the ignorant are so certain that they know the "facts".

 

[lone wolf]

Do you feel a tinge of remorse when you eat a Chiquita-brand banana?


...jus' sayin'

 

[Spade]

A country might call itself a democracy if every one of its adult citizens has the right to vote. I am sure in Canada more than 50% of school children have not been taught that in addition to women, "Hindus", Chinese, Japanese, Mennonites, Doukhobors, Hutterites, Indians on reserves, Inuit - to name a few- did not possess the right to vote. And, many of these restrictions were within the memory (failing for some) of bloggers on this site. Was Canada a democracy? Perhaps a German schoolchild could help me out here?

 

[taxslave]

As I recall from school Hitler was ELECTED.
I wasn't aware you could elect your dictator.

 

[Just the Facts]

Do they have Fox News in Germany? Maybe they could blame Fox News?

 

[Spade]

"From 1933 to 1945" you say. Holy schiß! That's twelve years - just thirty short of the Tories in Alberta, and twice as long as the Tories in Ottawa!

 

[damngrumpy]

Are you really surprised? The world is full of historical revisionists. In addition
many people believe the Nazis were left wing dictators. Wrong National Socialism
was in fact an extreme right wing state socialism. The difference being the left
so called, socialism believes in state ownership and building a socialist workers
paradise. The Nazis hijacked the German Workers Party, and instituted a form
of State Socialism that allowed the Elite to maintain and keep their Capitalist
holdings. Siemens, Krupp and so on were not state owned they were privately
owned.
This clearly demonstrates that in the end they ended up pretty much the same
dictatorships run by ideologues and in the end both were destined to collapse.
I am not surprised the German kids don't know about the dictatorship issues the
same as in the west we are all but silent about the head Tax imposed on Asians
and the slogans of the past like "Beware of the Yellow Peril" an actual election
slogan a hundred years ago. We don't share with the kids in our schools the
real story on how the Natives were treated, and we don't talk too loud about the
way the Japanese were ripped off either during WWII the government behaved
in a pretty nasty fashion and didn't find a single spy.
If we are going to condemn Germany we best come clean about a lot of things
we did ourselves as a society.

Oh and taxslave, Hitler was elected then he burned down the Reich-stag
and outlawed all opposition. After that came the night of the long knives
where they killed the brown shirt thugs that did the dirty work to make it
happen. After that it was Adolf only

 

[WLDB]

Strange. I was always under the impression that the Germans were very good at educating their youth on this subject. There was a German foreign exchange student at my high school who was fully aware of all of it. It could be possible that kids are just zoning out in history class. That tends to happen a lot here as well.

I imagine Germany is still doing a lot better than Japan when it comes to educating their people on that period.

 

[Machjo]

Not surprising,I'd say a lot of nations have revised their historys to cover up bad stuff ,take a look at thr sparkely clean US of A for example.

Canada's done a relatively good job of wiping First Nations history clean off the charts. Though granted it's improving, but still has a long way to go.

 

[Bar Sinister]

What it gets down to is how long are nations required to remember and teach the more vicious parts of their history? I am sure that any student of history in Germany is well aware of the brutality of the Third Reich, just as most students of British history are aware of the atrocities committed by the English in the Hundred Years' War. There are actual memorials to the Holocaust in Germany along with a Holocaust museum. But as Jay Leno's man-in-the-street history quizzes show, just because something is taught does not mean that everyone will remember it.

 

[gopher]

A few years ago we discussed on this forum how the government of Japan refused to teach school children about the atrocities their imperialist forces committed in China during the 1930s and 40s. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the German government wants to keep things under wraps. And while it is true that in USA schools we were taught about slavery, racism, and imperialism, the genocidal aspects of these things were kept to a minimum. Schools should take a more truthful approach to teaching about these errors. As an example, kids are taught about the Vietnam war. But they are not taught about the Pentagon Papers and how the war was a complete fraud imposed by the government upon the citizenry. This needs to be changed so that future conflicts can be avoided.