The policy called for the elimination of all schoolbooks that had indoctrinated youths with the malign tenets of Nazism and militarism. Few changes had been made to textbooks in the early years of Hitler’s regime, except for the inclusion of new prefaces and introductions touting National Socialism, which could be excised or pasted over. By 1937, however, Nazi ideology permeated students’ daily lessons: physics books applied “scientific principles to war uses, biology and nursing texts had long chapters on racialist theories, while algebra texts were filled with examples and problems based upon the use of artillery, the throwing of hand grenades, the movement of military convoys, and so on,” the ERA reported. History and geography had been rewritten to highlight the losses caused by the Versailles Treaty; Latin readers glorified strong leaders and individual sacrifice to the state. Allied education planners wanted such textbooks impounded and replaced. They decided initially to reproduce Weimar-era texts as a stopgap measure and planned to publish new works authored by non-Nazi German educators.[...]
On its face, the military government’s perspective was simple: Nazi books were akin to a virus or infestation that required quarantine and elimination. If this seemed self-evident to many, underlying this view was an array of social science research. To a remarkable degree, the American military developed its media policy by seeking the counsel of psychologists, public-opinion researchers, sociologists, and German émigré intellectuals. For decades, communications experts had warned of the power of media to influence a mass audience. Some had specifically investigated state control and media indoctrination in totalitarian countries, while others considered how Americans could fend off such influences and build morale through effective propaganda. Émigré social theorists, such as Franz Neumann and Herbert Marcuse, also shaped perceptions of Germans’ psychological state under Nazism and reinforced the need for thorough cultural change. The OSS even interviewed Thomas Mann and other prominent German writers, who thought that “Nazi education and literature must be stamped out,” yet “placed little confidence in teaching democracy from books.” Although contradictory, their suggestions leaned toward using the methods of totalitarian propaganda and indoctrination in the service of democratic values. “We had much advice from those who professed to know the so-called German mind,” commented General Lucius Clay sardonically. “If it did exist, we never found it.” Nevertheless, transforming the “Nazi mind,” as it was often called—and thus the German reader—became a problem of postwar reconstruction. [...]
Removing Nazi literature from German homes proved to be a red line. Although a committee drafted a directive to this effect, it aroused strong opposition in the U.S. Control Council. To accomplish this goal, one general objected, they would need not only a vast index expurgatorius of “tens of thousands of titles” but also armies of inspectors to search every home and bookshelf. “The ease with which printed matter can be concealed is obvious,” he said. Even more than these practical matters, however, the Control Council balked at an action reminiscent of Nazi book burning: American public opinion would be outraged, and Germans would perceive this as a hypocritical and punitive measure. Even the Nazis had not gone on house-to-house searches for banned books. A counterproposal recommended a publicity campaign to encourage Germans to voluntarily give up their Nazi books as “an act of personal cleansing or expiation” that would convert tainted works into paper pulp and new reading matter. This idea was repeatedly raised, especially by the British, as an alternative to coercive measures.
No comments:
Post a Comment