THE RE-EDUCATION OF GERMANY
Sitt,—In your May 22nd issue, the reviewer of Mr. Wiener's book, German With Tears, showed an understandable reluctance to accept Mr. Wiener's statement that education in Germany, even before Hitler's times, had had a strongly nationalist and aggressive bias. In support he quotes The House That Hitler Built. Unfortunately, I can state from personal experience that Mr. Wiener is absolutely right in his assertion. While it is, of course, correct to say that many of the young teachers in Germany held progressive views, young teachers were the exception at any rate in the secondary and higher schools. From 1926 to 1935 I was a pupil at a Berlin secondary girls' school, and from my experience as well as of that of my friends who went to other Berlin schools, I must say that everything was done to stir up hatred against the " enemies of tht World War." While we had to learn by heart all the clauses of the Versailles Treaty, we never so much as heard of the provisions of the Weimar Constitution. I, being blessed with progressive parents, was immune against the teaching at school ; but as to my co-pupils, whose parents were mostly indifferent with regard to politics, I was not in the least surprised to see them blossoming out into good little Nazis, for this is what they were trained to.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
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