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Guest Columnist ID Senator Glenneda Zuiderveld: How Curriculum, Not Chaos, Prepared a Nation to Obey

December 24, 2025

December 21, 2025

How Curriculum, Not Chaos, Prepared a Nation to Obey
Are We Repeating History?

By: Idaho Dist. 24 State Senator Glenneda Zuiderveld

ID Senator Glenneda Zuiderveld (Photo Credit: Glenneda Zuiderveld)

You’ve heard the sayings, “there is nothing new under the sun,” and “if we don’t learn true history, we are doomed to repeat it.”

I have done a deep dive into the German education system during the time Adolf Hitler was Führer. I’m going to share what I’ve learned and leave it to each of you to do your own research and draw your own conclusions about whether you see America repeating patterns from history.

No dramatics. No scare tactics. Just history told clearly—so we have the sense not to repeat the same mistakes.

1. The Core Goal: Total Loyalty to the State

Hitler was blunt about his objective: “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.” Education in Nazi Germany was never about curiosity, wisdom, or the pursuit of truth. It was about obedience, conformity, and emotional loyalty to the Führer. The regime deliberately worked to sever children from their traditional anchors-parents, the church, local culture, and independent thought, and replace them with allegiance to the State, the Nazi Party, racial ideology, and a collective identity above the individual. This was not education in any classical sense. It was conditioning, carefully designed to shape belief before reason and loyalty before conscience.

For further research:

“These boys and girls enter our organizations [at] ten years of age, and often for the first time get a little fresh air; after four years of the Young Folk they go on to the Hitler Youth, where we have them for another four years . . . And even if they are still not complete National Socialists, they go to Labor Service and are smoothed out there for another six, seven months . . . And whatever class consciousness or social status might still be left . . . the Wehrmacht [German armed forces] will take care of that.”
—Adolf Hitler (1938) ~ (Indoctrinating Youth)
“At its core, Nazism demanded absolute loyalty to the state above family, church, or conscience.”
— Britannica ~ (Navism)

“The Nazi government attempted to control the minds of the young and thus, among other means, intruded Nazi beliefs into the school curriculum.” ~ (Education-Germany)

2. Centralized Control: Teachers Were Purged First

One of Hitler’s earliest and most strategic moves, beginning in 1933, was to seize control of the teaching profession. Through the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (1933), Jewish teachers were summarily dismissed, politically “unreliable” educators were removed, and those who remained were required to swear personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler. Membership in Nazi organizations quickly shifted from optional to expected. By 1937, more than 97 percent of teachers belonged to the National Socialist Teachers League, effectively turning classrooms into instruments of state ideology. Teachers who resisted were dismissed, blacklisted, investigated, and in some cases imprisoned. The message was unmistakable: teachers were no longer there to educate minds, but to shape obedient servants, future soldiers of the regime.

For further research:

“Public school teachers were obliged to join the Nazi Teachers Union and, like other civil servants, take an oath of loyalty to Hitler as Führer.” ~ (Role of academics and teachers)
“In 1934 the Students’ League assumed control over the previously independent Student Union (Studentenschaft), the official nationwide body of student governance. The two groups were united under a single leader.” ~ (National Socialist German Students’ League)
“The law had an immediate impact: by 1938, between 2,000 and 3,000 scholars had been purged from universities in Germany and Austria.” ~ Dismissal Letter for Professor Eugen Mittwoch

3. Curriculum: Ideology Over Intelligence

In Nazi Germany, every subject was rewritten to serve ideology rather than truth. Education became a tool of loyalty, not learning.

History
- Germany portrayed as a betrayed victim of the Treaty of Versailles
  Example: Textbooks framed Germany as unfairly humiliated by foreign powers.
- Hitler framed as a savior figure
  Example: Lessons credited Hitler alone with restoring German pride and order.
Biology
- Eugenics normalized
  Example: Textbooks promoted sterilization of those deemed “unfit.”
- Disability framed as a burden on society
  Example: Lessons calculated how much “genetically weak” people cost the state.
Mathematics
- Word problems involving the cost of caring for the disabled
  Example: “How many new homes could be built with the money spent on the insane?”
- Military logistics integrated into lessons
  Example: Calculating troop movements, ammunition needs, or fuel usage.
Literature
- Jewish or “degenerate” authors removed
  Example: Works by Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, and Sigmund Freud were banned.
- Germanic myths and heroic sacrifice emphasized
  Example: Readings glorified Norse legends and Aryan warriors.
- Individual conscience minimized
  Example: Stories praised obedience and death for the Fatherland over moral choice.

For further research:

“There were to be two basic educational ideas in his ideal state. First, there must be burnt into the heart and brains of youth the sense of race. Second, German youth must be made ready for war, educated for victory or death. The ultimate purpose of education was to fashion citizens conscious of the glory of country and filled with fanatical devotion to the national cause.” ~ (Life in Germany)
“Nazi ‘total education’ removed youth from the usual frames of social reference, such as the family, trying to encompass the entire experience of youth. It immersed young people in a completely organized network. It made huge incursions into leisure time and took up the majority of their waking hours. Furthermore, Hitler was keen to place the function of socialization firmly within youth groups and schools, removing it from the family as much as possible.” ~(Education in Nazi Germany)

4. Physical Conditioning and Youth Organizations: Training Bodies and Loyalty

In Nazi Germany, education prioritized the body and obedience over the mind. Physical education was expanded to prepare boys for combat and condition girls for endurance and childbirth in service of the state. Weakness was shamed, injury dismissed, and compassion treated as a flaw. Hitler was explicit: “Knowledge without physical hardness is useless.” This was not about health, it was militarization. School was only part of the system. Youth organizations became the real classroom. By 1936, membership in the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls was mandatory. Boys received military drills and weapons training; girls were indoctrinated in domestic duty, endurance, and racial purity. Children were encouraged to spy on parents, and loyalty to the state was placed above family. By adolescence, many spent more time with the Party than at home, by design.

For further research:

“It was mostly about developing physical strength and the indoctrination of Nazi ideology. Hitler Youth meetings were established as a “learning” environment. Boys and girls ages 10-18 were to attend these activities during the evening and summertime.” ~ (The Education Theory)
“Therefore, they needed to indoctrinate German youth, securing the future existence of National Socialism but also ensuring the German youth carry out their orders and defend Germany,” ~ (The Duality of the Hitler youth)

5. Emotional Engineering: Replacing Thinking with Belonging

Nazi education perfected emotional manipulation by replacing independent thought with a powerful sense of belonging. Children were immersed in mass rallies, synchronized songs and chants, uniforms, and constant reinforcement of group identity, while public shaming was used to silence dissent. The system trained children to feel pride before they could reason, obey before they could question, and belong before they could believe. Independent thinking was no longer seen as a virtue, it was recast as selfish, dangerous, and disloyal to the collective. By appealing to emotion first and reason last, the regime ensured loyalty was felt deeply long before ideas were ever examined.

For further research:

“Nonetheless, Nazi propagandists worked tirelessly to create new forms of propaganda to evoke that emotional response from the viewer and realign the German masses with the ideals of the Nazis.” ~ (Emotion and Propaganda)
“One of the most potent tools in the Nazi propaganda arsenal was the manipulation of emotions. The Nazis understood that people are more likely to be swayed by their feelings than by logical reasoning.” ~ (Psychology and Emotional Propaganda )

6. Church and Faith: Marginalized, Then Pressured—Through Education

Under Nazi rule, the Church was not immediately abolished, but it was systematically sidelined, especially through the education system. Christian teaching was removed or minimized in public schools, religious instruction hours were reduced, and biblical authority was undermined by replacing moral law with Nazi ideology. Textbooks and lessons increasingly emphasized loyalty to Hitler as a matter of destiny and national purpose, subtly shifting allegiance from God to the state. Youth were taught that faith was acceptable only if it did not conflict with racial ideology or obedience to the regime. Teachers were instructed to avoid or reinterpret Christian doctrine, while youth organizations reinforced the message that true devotion was owed to Germany and the Führer. Faith was tolerated only when it submitted, pressured in classrooms, diluted in curriculum, and reshaped to serve political power.

For further research:

“By 1935, the virulently anti-Christian leader of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Shirach issued a regulation that prohibited any child from belonging simultaneously to a church youth group and the Hitler Youth, and gradually membership in the Hitler Youth became almost obligatory – parents were told that their children would not get jobs in the civil service unless they belonged to the Hitler Youth and employers were told not to hire children who did not belong to the Hitler Youth.” ~ (Christianity in Public Schools)

7. The Result—and the Warning

By the late 1930s, Nazi Germany had produced a generation that was conditioned, not educated. Critical thinking collapsed, moral responsibility was outsourced to authority, and atrocities were reframed as “duty.” Children informed on parents. Ordinary people committed extraordinary evil, not because they were monsters, but because they had been trained to obey rather than to think. This is the uncomfortable, timeless warning: totalitarianism does not begin with camps; it begins with curriculum. It begins when the state decides what is “true,” separates children from parental authority, rewrites history to justify power, labels dissent as dangerous, and replaces conscience with loyalty. Education can either form free citizens, or manufacture obedient subjects. History is painfully clear which path Nazi Germany chose.

“The German government failed to solve the problems caused by the Great Depression. Germany was politically divided. This made passing new laws almost impossible because of disagreements in the German parliament. Many Germans lost faith in their leaders’ ability to govern.” ~ (This didn’t happen over night)

Closing Reflection: History Demands That We Pay Attention

As we examine the calculated indoctrination of Nazi Germany’s education system, one question echoes louder than the rest:

Are we repeating history?

Are we seeing parallels in our own schools?
Are parental rights being diminished?
Are children being shaped more by ideology than by truth?
Are educators free to teach or required to conform?
Are our youth taught how to think or what to think?

These are not abstract questions for some distant land or forgotten century. These are questions for Idaho. These are questions for America.

And we must ask them, boldly, publicly, unapologetically.

We cannot afford to dismiss the warning signs, or excuse our silence with comfort or fear. History doesn’t only repeat when bad people rise up. It repeats when good people sit down.

We should never be afraid to question those in positions of power, whether elected officials or government employees. In fact, it’s our duty. Silence is not safety. Complacency is not peace. Ignorance is not innocence.

Let this not be the generation that looked away.
Let it be the generation that looked truth in the eye and chose courage.

I urge you:
Keep asking questions.
Keep showing up.
Keep researching beyond this Substack.

Because our children and our grandchildren, can’t afford our generation’s complacency.

The time to wake up is now.
Not when it’s too late.

This is Part One of a three-part series, “Are We Repeating History?” In this series, we will look back at Germany in the 1930s, examining three key areas: education, health and welfare, and agriculture—and considering the lessons history offers us today.