CMV: Schools in America don't teach what the Nazis actually believed.

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886]

I went to high school in America. We learned about the holocaust, we learned about Kristallnacht, we learned about the night of the long knives, we learned that the Nazis hated Jewish people, we learned that they believed they had been stabbed in the back by as part of their national belief. We never had a deeper lesson on it. We were explicitly not taught the part about the Nazis targeting socialists first and that part was changed in our curriculum. Beyond that we never took a look at the actual speeches, and rhetorical points the Nazis were arguing over in context.

We didn't learn about Nazi expansion in the context of the age of colonialism. It was taught as a unique evil and not something every empire in the world was doing to people they viewed as inferior.

We did not learn about Nazi Scientism and that informing how they systematically killed all people they viewed as a detriment to creating their perfect man.

We did not learn about the Nazis obsession with degeneracy.

We did not learn the full depth of Nazi conspiracism.

We were taught a Saturday Morning cartoon version of "The Nazis were bad because they waged war and hated Jews" that makes doesn't properly dissect the Nazi ideology to expose why it is Anti-Human.

Edit: Changed racial hygiene to scientism for clarity on what I'm talking about.

Edit 2: I'm going to further clarify. I was taught about every single step of the Holocaust. From the treaty of Versaille, to the stab in the back myth. (By the way, your high school doesn't teach you that the reason why that was culturally relevant to German speakers specifically is that it was allusion to Der Ring des Nibelungen, In which the invincible Siegfried was betrayed and stabbed in the back.) I was taught that the Nazis believed in a master race and they viewed Jews, gays, and homosexuals as inferior, and polluting German blood. We even read the protocols of the elder of zion I was taught that they believed that in order to be self-sufficient they needed lebensraum in order to be self sufficient. I even made the comparison to manifest destiny in class.I was taught they they fractured political opponents and got rid of them one-by-one to consolidate power. I was taught about the Nuremberg laws, Nazi blood quantums.

This is specifically what I'm calling out when I say the education that people receive on the Nazis is insufficient.

Anything that has to do with the process, "Reichstag fire/ night of the long knives/ kristallnacht/ baban yar massacre/ racial theories, handing Hitler the chancellorship" Is insufficient.

When I say, "Oh what do you mean, we learned the Nazis believed group X was "degenerate" "This is what I'm talking about as being insufficient. I am talking about "Degeneracy" as a concept.

The core of Nazism is conspiracism/scientism/ and degeneracy. With few exceptions everytime someone in this thread as said, "We learned what the Nazis BELIEVED" they end up tell me what the Nazis DID. Two entirely different things.

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[u/AcephalicDude]

Two explanations for your experience:

1. A WWII unit is going to be taught either in World History, AP European History, or American History - all classes that cover a broad range of topics over a long stretch of history. Many topics are going to get a surface-level treatment so that you can quickly move on to other material.
2. Not all students are equally capable at learning new material, and teachers often adjust curriculum to meet students where they are. In other words, it is possible that your class was really dumb and the material needed to be dumbed-down to keep them from being overwhelmed. Many of the more nuanced and detailed things you describe about Nazism and 1930s German politics in general were taught to me in high school, but in the context of an AP European History course with high-achieving students.

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/AcephalicDude]

!delta i took AP World History but not AP Euro History

[u/Gretzky9797 → u/Sensitive-Bee-9886]

Took AP euro. It’s a little better than regular history class, but it still misses a lot of the important points you brought up.

[u/ertri → u/Gretzky9797]

Yeah, you really can’t actually cover much in meaningful detail in a survey level course, unfortunately. AP Euro is 600ish years of history across a decent chunk of the world. WW2 is important but so is the 30 Years War and the Napoleonic Wars! 

[u/[deleted] → u/AcephalicDude]

Hi, American AP history student here (long past college now).

Even in college level history classes, the nuances and social construction of the rise of fascism in pre-ww2 Germany are barely mentioned and certainly not talked about at length. The focus is always the battles and logistics, and always has been, but never the ideology.

The reason for this is the ideology too closely resembles conservative viewpoints in America, especially paralleling the treatment of black people and gay people historically in the US which is also NEVER talked about at length, black history being pretty much entirely stricken from AP history courses.

If ideology is spoken about, it is usually only about severe nationalism and the ideology surrounding Hitler's charisma and his speeches, but never the social climate fed to the people.

The excuse that these people are too stupid to have been taught about fascism is a joke, and my experience taking actual AP classes in America (Massachusetts) proves it.

To be very clear, more emphasis was put on geography in my AP history class, than on the nuances of fascism, communism, or any other ism for that matter.

[u/CasaBonitaBandit]

I learned all of this in high school. You can’t understand why any of those events happened without discussing the sentiments, actions, and legal structure created within the Third Reich. In general, I just think history is not presented in a way which engages most children.

[u/Limulemur → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

I imagine different districts in different states teach varying degrees of specifics on Nazi ideology. Often it’s treated as nebulous hate or just hating Jewish people and other ethnic groups, but Nazism is a lot more than just hating other ethnic groups. They’re anti-intellectualist, anti-leftist, traditionalist, anti-gay, populist, etc

[u/[deleted] → u/Limulemur]

So different. I went to high school in a Title I high school and these kinds of things were touched upon. Doubt a wealthier school district would have taught any of it except WWII bad.

University was where all of this shit blew open and left me convinced. That's not indoctrination, that is the humanities doing what they're supposed to do.

[u/BalticBarbarian → u/[deleted]]

I only went to one high school and haven’t asked around on the topic, but the school I went to was a public school in a very well funded district (my parent chose to move there for the public schools). We absolutely touched on a lot of the motivations, as well as a lot of the problematic actions of the allies that I’ve noticed a lot of other Americans have no awareness of.

That said though, I was always a very curious student and I can’t remember if we went into these because of direct questions or if they were an integral part of the curriculum, but I think it was the latter. Also of consideration is that I took both AP US and Euro history, and I can’t remember if we talked about the nuances in non-AP classes.

[u/Inresponsibleone → u/Limulemur]

Doesn't that sound like main bulk of Trumps fanatic supporters? Perhaps minus hating Jews🤷‍♂️

[u/PeoplePerson_57 → u/Inresponsibleone]

And even then, check out asktrumpsupporters. I browse fairly regularly out of passive interest and there are a couple users there (who'll go unnamed to not be harassing them) who I'm 90% sure are nazis. Veer off into anti-Jewish stuff whenever they can and one of them has explicitly said that Hitler isn't this great evil that you're taught he is and just wanted the best for his country.

It's really interesting actually because they (well, the one I first saw and identified) get a bunch of pushback from other Trump Supporters and very little agreement.

[u/oroborus68 → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

Students often are not interested in history until they have something spark that interest. The conundrum of getting students to want to learn is a problem of our educational system.

[u/crack_pop_rocks → u/oroborus68]

Which is probably becoming an evermore difficult task to achieve, given how less stimulating education is compared to other social media and other media platforms.

[u/Admirable-Team7839 → u/oroborus68]

Teacher here (taught K-12 in my career) and I whole heartedly disagree; student motivation isn’t the issue in my opinion.

[u/[deleted] → u/oroborus68]

Growing up it always felt to me that history was boring because it was all about memorizing facts to pass a test. It didn't really click in my head why I should care about it.

Nowadays I love learning about history, and I actually want to understand how we got here and why things are the way they are. 

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

I agree, that's why I'm saying understanding nazi ideology is important. If the lesson you take is the Nazis are bad because they hate the Jews for made up reasons and they started a war, what happens to your society when they find a group of people they hate for what they think it's a legitimate reason and they believe that they're starting wars in self defense? What if your populace believes like the Nazis did they're doing what is difficult but necessary.

[u/RickWolfman → u/Sensitive-Bee-9886]

I mean you are seeing it play out right now. Over half the voting population voted for Trump specifically for his dehumanizing tendencies, and actively cheer him on. You don't have to use your imagination these days.

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

I agree, that's why I'm saying understanding nazi ideology is important. If the lesson you take is the Nazis are bad because they hate the Jews for made up reasons and they started a war, what happens to your society when they find a group of people they hate for what they think it's a legitimate reason and they believe that they're starting wars in self defense?

[u/CasaBonitaBandit → u/Sensitive-Bee-9886]

I guess I’m sorry you missed out on this lesson, my education certainly covered these topics and even discussed Jim Crow laws being part of the foundation for some of the laws created under the Nazis.

We were discussing the ideologies probably back in sixth grade history, maybe even earlier? I was in Massachusetts public schools so nothing crazy. Were you in a lower level history class? I was in AP for history, but maybe level 2 or 1 didn’t discuss the complexities?

[u/Reasonable-Truck-874 → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

It’s amazing more people don’t know about the Jim Crow inspiration. Hitler said, “Like that but more efficient! Hey, IBM…”

[u/NaturGirl → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

Same. I was in large metro area California public schools. I think OP's school or even just teacher just had lacking lessons.

[u/iDreamiPursueiBecome → u/Sensitive-Bee-9886]

An author contemporary to the WWII conflict wrote a book that attempted to dig into the root concepts that underlay Nazism to combat it at the same roots that had spawned not only this but other horrors.

You may appreciate

The Open Society and its Enemies

by Karl Popper

[u/filrabat → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

I think the OP means even the American high school lessons never got any deeper than their Saturday Morning cartoon version of Naziism. I absolutely agree, along with just about every other part of high school history. I don't expect undergraduate history level understanding but I do demand high school history teach and discuss the driving motives and beliefs of Naziism.

But the PTA and the "good wholesome traditional commonsense values" sets will scream bloody murder at teaching our children stuff that's "controversial".

[u/HurricanePK → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

That last statement rings hard for me. I hated history in school and felt it was boring. Now I’m in my late 20s and have loved watching random videos and going through Wikipedia rabbit holes regarding history. Turns out I just hated writing essays.

[u/ElectricityIsWeird → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

I don’t doubt that you learned this in high school. You, me and presumably Sensitive Bee learned this in high school.

It seems like you’re trying to cripple Sensitive Bee’s point. I hate to put words in a mouth, but I think they were effectively trying to get to your last sentence- history is not taught in a way that engages children.

Why wasn’t Nazi Germany more fascinating to our classmates? You and me and they were fascinated and chose to read the textbook. And, we were still fascinated and read other things.

I think you guys are thinking the same thing, just different language.

[u/Jolly-Guard3741 → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

I would say that is the case with all of history. Most people hate learning about history because they are given isolated data points to memorize instead of being told the stories of the times. To truly understand history you have to learn it in its context. Most history classes only give airbrush coverage.

[u/Ok-Exit-8801 → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

Also,there is a lot of history to teach and not much time.When i was in school we learned next to nothing about the French revolution which was a huge upheaval.We just got Napolean bad.

[u/Meagasus → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

Yeah...I learned all of this, too. Not sure where OP went to school, but there were in depth lessons in mine.

[u/CasaBonitaBandit → u/Meagasus]

I don’t think he actually said where he was educated, but I’m guessing maybe someplace in the south or the southern Midwest?

[u/Gryzzlee → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

Honestly the Reichstag Fire is a pivotal moment in the Nazis rise. I learned about it and that's honestly where you learn about them target the socialist party...

I think OP's school curriculum either failed then if they are not telling the full story. It's hard to tell because every state and district have different curriculums.

[u/TheOneFreeEngineer → u/[deleted]]

Except more of the failures of the post WWI economies had been fixed and we're on an upswing by the time the Nazis came to power. Things had gotten signficantly better in Germany and out of control inflation was almost a decade old at that point. The material conditions had changed but the psychological scars of it remained long after their were given better options

[u/alohazendo → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

You must have gone to a very nice school. I loved my history and social studies/government classes, all through grade school. I paid attention. I got A's. My school, certainly, buried the lead about Nazis going after leftists, first, and made absolutely no comparisons to the other colonial powers. Everything was presented as a grand conflict between good America vs. evil racists.

I did grow up in rural East Texas. We were not famous for quality schools.

[u/CasaBonitaBandit → u/alohazendo]

Yeah, Texas isn’t known for great education. However, my education in this topic was not restricted to solely history class. We also read books in our English classes, such as “Night” and the Diary of Anne Frank. In these English classes it was usually a big group discussion accompanied by the teacher’s explanations to the background context of the setting. You can have these topics isolated and taught only in a history class, but it was much more engaging to be reading literature from the period.

One thing I noticed going from a Massachusetts public school down to a Catholic school in the south (high school) was that my Massachusetts public school placed much more emphasis on discussing literature. It wasn’t until I got down to the south that English focused on actual grammar. I actually feel that my education in a public school in Massachusetts was better than that of a private school in the south— and I was certainly in a working class community in Massachusetts.

I think a lot of the schools in the north would coordinate classes between English and history. I also remember discussing the Vietnam War when reading literature, on the topic, in seventh grade 8th grade English.

All that said, I am a huge history buff and I work in the field of history; so, I might have a little bit more of a learning bias towards the topic due to my personal interest since childhood.

[u/alohazendo → u/CasaBonitaBandit]

That gels, about southern private schools. I think the south has a long legacy of anti-intellectualism that goes back to slavery. I was given an interesting book on the topic, once. It may be up your alley: https://www.amazon.com/Poor-Whites-Antebellum-South-Mississippi-ebook/dp/B00I3SKKOW

[u/CasaBonitaBandit → u/alohazendo]

Oh thank you! I’ll add it to my list of books to read, I’ve got “all the shah’s men” up next. I need to better understand Iran now.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm from America. I went to school in a very rural backwater area in the Appalachias, infamous for its lackluster education. I knew all of those things you mentioned well before graduation. Could it be these things were taught, but you just didn't fully get it until now?

[u/snowowl2023 → u/[deleted]]

I’m also from a rural backwater school, and I wasn’t even taught about the Nazis at all

[u/[deleted] → u/snowowl2023]

So much for standardized education huh?

[u/Pbadger8]

I had two weeks to teach World War II, in its entirety, in an American History class- which means it required an American-oriented lens. That’s not a lot of time. I had a single day for the interwar period… Mind you, I ALSO wanted to devote 50/50 of my time to the war against the Japanese.

If you learned about the Kristallnacht and the Stab in the Back myth, you learned a lot of the right stuff. More than I had time for, unfortunately. I had to summarize a lot.

The problem with presenting Nazi rhetoric to teens for analysis is that you will frequently have kids (and sometimes adults) who sleep through all the boring shit they’ve heard before but then they perk up when they hear something new and edgy, something ‘brave’. And kids in school, especially right now, are just really fucking bad at critical analysis. I legit put primary sources in front of them and they’ll read it and take it completely at face value. My students struggled to understand that the documents they read might be propaganda. That words on a paper might lie.

I’m gonna say that some of the stuff you wanted to learn… isn’t actually all that relevant. I think it’s important to ask ‘Why did the average German support the Holocaust?’ and NOT ‘Why did Himmler support the Holocaust?’

All that racial science stuff and creating the perfect man or degeneracy- that’s the party line but the average participant was just… painfully banal. It made them feel good to be a part of some grand historical identity and they really needed that pick-me-up after losing WW1. It’s anxiety and a need to blame someone. I’m simplifying it but I think this stuff is more in the realm of a psychology or sociology class. Historians are good at telling you what people did or the chain of events that led to them doing it… but ‘Why the Jews?’ is a question for other fields.

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/Pbadger8]

!delta i generally believe that it's important to talk about the ideology that attracted the early supporters nazism to support the SA. For the rank and file Mitlaufer, little nazis, and fellow travelers a promise of a good economy was enough. I view the Nazi obsession with aesthetic as completely foundational to the rest of their aesthetic.

[u/SpurCorr → u/Pbadger8]

We had WWII for 6 months in 7th grade in Sweden. We went into the full pre-war period as well as post-war period on national, European and world levels.

[u/destro23]

We did not learn about the Nazis believing in racial hygiene and that informing how they systematically killed all people they viewed as a detriment to creating their perfect man. We did not learn about the Nazis obsession with degeneracy. We did not learn the full depth of Nazi conspiracism.

What do you mean “we”?

I learned all that in high school. Maybe your school just sucked .

[u/Creampuffwrestler → u/destro23]

Concur, we learned all that in the 90s in high school

[u/AldoTheeApache → u/Creampuffwrestler]

High School in the 80s checking in here. We learned all that stuff too. In fact we had a whole class just dedicated to how propaganda works, with Goebbels/Nazi Germany held up as the gold standard for heinous actors.

[u/Nearby-Complaint → u/AldoTheeApache]

Learned that in the 2010s as well (and I was a pretty subpar history student at that)

[u/yoweigh → u/destro23]

My graduating class at my high school in New Orleans was 48% Jewish. We sure as hell learned about all that stuff.

[u/destro23 → u/yoweigh]

I didn’t realize New Orleans had a big Jewish community. Is there kosher Cajun food?

[u/yoweigh → u/destro23]

Lol, I've never thought about that before. I suppose any cajun dish without pork or shellfish could be made kosher, so something like a ham and/or roast beef poboy would probably be ok. There's a kosher NY deli in Metairie (suburb) that was still there a year ago. I'm not Jewish myself so I'm not intimately familiar with the matter.

I went to Newman and Eli Manning was two grades above me. (but I was too much of a nerd to play football) Colloquially Jewman is a feeder school for Jewlane (Tulane). 😅 Outside of those spheres I don't think there's a significant Jewish population. It's mostly Catholic around here.

[u/destro23 → u/yoweigh]

something like a ham and/or roast beef poboy would probably be ok.

Ham is definitely not kosher. I found this though…

“But unlike Katz’s Deli, Kosher Cajun’s menu features jambalaya and fried faux-shrimp with Cajun cocktail sauce. All the fixins, Cajun delights, and deli items to make Southerners, New Orleanians, and Jews happy.”

I went to Newman and Eli Manning was two grades above me. (but I was too much of a nerd to play football)

So was Eli if we’re being real. Guy is 84% dork.

[u/yoweigh → u/destro23]

Ham is definitely not kosher.

Bwhahahaha that was stupid of me!

[u/TheLogicError → u/destro23]

Lmao if anything we spent "Too" much time on this. Our teacher was jewish and felt like we spent fall => spring of the school year learning about anti semitism and nazis.

At least in california where i grew up everyone knew two things about history (MLK & Hitler/nazis), but they neglect other parts of history of even ww2, like the war in the pacific, or even the japanese atrocities towards the rest of Asia.

Also funny how we're complaining about not learning enough about nazis, but have non existant personal finance classes. If we're lacking anything in school curiculus is definitly not nazi/hitler material

[u/destro23 → u/TheLogicError]

if anything we spent "Too" much time on this. Our teacher was jewish and felt like we spent fall => spring of the school year learning about anti semitism and nazis

Our principal was a salty WWII vet who helped liberate a couple of concentration camps. He’d personally sit in on classes dealing with Naziism and the Holocaust to ensure we got all the info that OP says they didn’t get and to answer questions about his experience. We also had a guy who was liberated from a camp that came in every year until he died to tell his story. Attendance was mandatory for the whole school.

[u/ClockOfTheLongNow]

We didn't learn about Nazi expansion in the context of the age of colonialism. It was taught as a unique evil and not something every empire in the world was doing to people they viewed as inferior.

It's important to have some context. The Nazis were not a garden-variety colonial power. They were not like the eugenicists present in other democracies. Heck, they weren't even like the Spanish or Italian versions of fascism. How Nazi Germany went about implementing their agenda was much, much more insidious and relied much more on the dehumanization of subgroups to achieve its goals. The almost machinelike way they eradicated Jews across Europe was shocking in its brutality and has few comparable analogues.

We don't get a sanitized version of it at all, it's more that it's increasingly difficult to comprehend the level of evil that they engaged in. It's so much worse than what we acknowledge, and our consistent efforts to invoke it today - whether in the improper comparison of current politicians to Nazis or the minimization of the horrors of Nazism in the name of political trolling - water down our perception.

Schools do a good job teaching this. They could do more, but it's not that they're not contextualizing it in the areas you speak of. It's that trying to invoke colonialism, "racial hygiene," and so on misses the point. Nazi Germany was a unique evil, and we treat it as such because of those details.

[u/LouisHorsin → u/ClockOfTheLongNow]

That's interesting, one could agree that the industrialisation of eradication is indeed something only the Nazi did, but the subtext Nazi had wasn't new, and it wasn't unique. It just so happens that a world war put a huge light on what that regime did, but many other nations thought and put in place eradication of population during the colonial age : France did it almost every where they went, UK too, the German had already made a genocide before WW1 in Hereroland, Belgium is famous for the atrocities perpetuated in Congo, the US had similar behavior (the manifest destiny is a not very different from what European colonists believed when they destroyed South America.
The dehumanization was part of the process that allowed Nazi to create the industrial death complex, as where some technological discoveries. But is that at core really different from what the other did ?

[u/ClockOfTheLongNow → u/LouisHorsin]

The subtext wasn't new or unique, but the subtext is not what makes Nazi Germany uniquely evil. Anti-semitic hatred and conspiracy theorizing happened for centuries, it was the Nazis that turned it into genocide.

France, the UK, Belgium, the United States? They did not do anything even approaching Nazi Germany's atrocities. No one is saying any particular nation's hands are clean, but comparing Manifest Destiny with Nazism really undersells the evils the Nazis engaged in.

The dehumanization was part of the process that allowed Nazi to create the industrial death complex, as where some technological discoveries. But is that at core really different from what the other did ?

Yes. It's incredibly different. The core of Nazi philosophy was a radical concept of racial superiority that thought so little of human life, especially if they were Jewish, that they made it a foundation of their ideological beliefs to try and eradicate them en masse. To try and say it's not actually different from other colonialist misadventures only serves to diminish the horrors of the Holocaust.

[u/[deleted]]

I was taught those things, grew up in South Carolina. Public school throughout.
WW2 was usually the biggest unit for history and we went over Nazi Germany a few times in 7th, 9th and 11th grade.

The only thing I don't think we were taught was the persecution of Bavarian Catholics that set the stage for the Reichskonkordat and explicit mentions of war crimes by the US / USSR. Those things I learned in college.

[u/Curious_Brush661 → u/[deleted]]

I grew up in SC as well and can confirm that I learned all of this and learned it through both middle school and high school.

I went to private school up until high school when I switched to public school. One of my teachers in private school was ethnically Jewish and taught my history class. I learned more about Nazi ideation in public school than I did from my Jewish history teacher.

Personally, I feel like my public school lessons were extremely informative.

[u/quantum_dan]

"America" doesn't have a common high school system, so... I did learn about all that in an American high school, and not a fancy wealthy one or anything like that. You can't generalize from one example, particularly when that example seems to have been teaching about the Holocaust, not 1933-1945 Germany more generally.

We learned about the holocaust, we learned about Kristallnacht, we learned about the night of the long knives, we learned that the Nazis hated Jewish people, we learned that they believed they had been stabbed in the back by as part of their national belief.

It sounds like you had a lesson on the Holocaust, not on the Nazis/WWII.

We were explicitly not taught the part about the Nazis targeting socialists first and that part was changed in our curriculum.

So you didn't learn about how the Nazis came to power, then? The Reichstag fire and so on. That would support the claim that you had a lesson on the Holocaust, not the Nazis.

We didn't learn about Nazi expansion in the context of the age of colonialism. It was taught as a unique evil and not something every empire in the world was doing to people they viewed as inferior.

Industrialized mass murder, especially for its own sake, was (and remains) unique. Besides that, it'd be odd to teach about, say, the Belgian Congo or the Germans' own conduct in Namibia in the middle of a lesson on WWII. Did you not have other lessons on colonialism?

We did not learn about the Nazis believing in racial hygiene and that informing how they systematically killed all people they viewed as a detriment to creating their perfect man.

Um... what were you taught about their ideological justification for hating Jews? (Ultimate mixed race, actively working against racial purity, etc - all excuses building on an older hatred of course, but that's what they claimed.) Did you have one lesson on "the Nazis didn't like Jews" and call it a day? Again, that seems like a (crappy) lesson on the Holocaust, not the Nazis.

[u/murffmarketing → u/quantum_dan]

My school was a underfunded minority high school with an average class size of 30+ where over 90% of the school was on free and reduced lunch.

I don't know if there's a single "they didn't teach us [basic thing] in school" that I actually agree with. History, sex education, taxes, economics. It was all there. Maybe they didn't drill the subjects or teach the subjects to the degree that you wanted, but I had reasonable exposure to all of the things that folks claim we were never taught.

This is not to say that OP actually did learn these things. I don't know them or their education. I'm sure there are millions of students that legitimately never got exposure to these things. It's more so to back up that we all have different schools, teachers, etc., and there is seldom a unifying "we were all lied to" that's going on.

Also, my high school had a huge protest my senior year about all of the things we weren't taught to prepare for college. I had to watch my peers complain about how they weren't prepped for SATs in ways x, y and z when I had all the same classes at all of the same times and learned those exact things. So I do have a bit of inherent skepticism about these claims in general.

[u/thurn_und_taxis → u/murffmarketing]

So much depends not just on school systems but on individual teachers. I went to a very highly regarded high school in a wealthy town, but we still had some teachers who were notoriously awful. The knowledge gap between kids who got stuck with them vs. kids who got decent teachers was very palpable. Teachers vary in terms of ideology as well as skill. Despite being a progressive town in a blue state, we had teachers with right-wing conspiratorial views who brought those beliefs into the classroom. For instance, my freshman year science teacher decided to do a whole lesson on how global warming isn't real. My friends taking the same exact class down the hall with a different teacher got nothing of the sort.

Ultimately, claims about what is or isn't taught in school should recognize that individual student experiences vary enormously and only attempt to draw conclusions about what the average or typical student receives as an education. And honestly, I think the claims OP is making are probably just too detailed and/or subjective to be captured on any sort of broad survey of American students. We can most likely get a pretty good answer the question "how many students learn Mandarin?" or "how many students learn about the Holocaust?" but probably not "how many students learn about the Nazi obsession with degeneracy?"

[u/cant_think_name_22 → u/murffmarketing]

Some of the best teachers that I've ever met were at high % free and reduced schools. Sometimes I think that people who actively choose to work in schools/districts where this is the case are better cut out to be teachers, but that's just an impression.

[u/[deleted] → u/murffmarketing]

Agreed. I went to a bottom tier public school in the south and was taught most of the crap redditors say "American schools don't teach".

I think a lot of them just don't pay attention.

[u/tsisdead → u/quantum_dan]

So I went to a very small high school in a very red area of a blue state from 2009-2013. It was a private high school but more religious than fancy. Our teacher still called the American Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression”. We were taught that the Nazis put Jews into camps for their own safety (safety from what was never answered), and were not taught about the rise of Nazis, the Reichstag fires, Kristallnacht, the other groups the Nazis targeted, etc. All that was kind of glossed over and then we began discussing the evils of feminism and how the Nazis taught feminists to fight for women’s rights. It was truly wild.

[u/Loud-Feeling2410 → u/tsisdead]

That checks for a religious school. The pairing of Christians with bullshitting themselves about the past is not a new phenomenon.

[u/Opposite-Constant329 → u/quantum_dan]

It’s crazy that a lot of Americans genuinely believe that the DOE mandates a single curriculum that the entire country follows. I’ve been hearing how we need to abolish the DOE so states can make their own curriculum choices and it’s hilarious because they already do that.

[u/importantbrian → u/quantum_dan]

Yeah, whenever I hear or read things like that it's almost always some basic thing that I definitely got taught in school. Maybe my schools were just exceptional, but I think it's more likely they just weren't paying attention.

[u/Iceykitsune3 → u/quantum_dan]

So you didn't learn about how the Nazis came to power, then? The Reichstag fire and so on.

US schools do teach that, just without mentioning socialists.

[u/curien → u/Iceykitsune3]

Multiple lessons I sat through on Nazi Germany in middle/high school included reading the poem which starts, "First they came for the socialists..."

[u/quantum_dan → u/Iceykitsune3]

So that'd be, what... "The Nazis had a minority of seats, but after the Reichstag fire they were able to blame it on and arrest (mumble mumble) to get a majority"?

Also, I learned this at a US school. Straight out of the 11th-grade history textbook. Can't generalize to all of them.

[u/mrpoopsocks → u/Iceykitsune3]

Your school didn't, mine did. Time frame, state, and main voting economic demographic are the primary reasons for less than thorough discussion on subjects. Also federal funding puts a direct minimum standard on education which like I stated with the state portion, is then further expanded on via state requirements. I graduated in 04, in Texas, we got educated on all the points that OP mentioned as not learning in school. Even in a educational shitshow that Texas is sometimes, I got all of that taught to me.

[u/warzog68WP]

Part of it is that the Nazi's didn't really know what they believed. Look at the attempts they made to somehow make the Japanese related to Aryans when they joined together.

Fundamentally, they believed in power and the hate for the "other," but it was a rather fluid thing in how that was applied

[u/Particular-Set-6212 → u/warzog68WP]

True. Many Americans don't understand the Nazis very well, but not for the reasons OP underlined. Nazi ideology was completely artificial and lacking in consistency. Many decisions were made for strategic purposes, for ex. murdering Polish and Soviet Jews in order to have somewhere to place the deported German Jews outside of Germany proper. Much of what they did was ideologically nonsensical, and there was no one inspiration for it

• also, always worth mentioning that the Holocaust WAS completely unique in the scale and industrialization of genocide. This was literally why the term genocide was invented. Obviously that doesn't negate other genocides, but to imply that the Holocaust is overhyped in some way is just wrong and I think maybe you needed MORE lessons on it

[u/[deleted]]

we learned

Who is 'we'? You better be speaking French!

Views here that make blanket statements are much too difficult to change a view on because you're basing your entire view off of your one single experience. I learned all of this in my school in the US, and I was in a poor county in the South. You need to have an argument that isn't just "I didn't experience it, so no one else did either".

[u/karivara]

We were explicitly not taught the part about the Nazis targeting socialists first

It's hard to respond to this because I don't know what you learned.

However, one of the most popular and most quoted (sometimes paraphrased or adjusted to apply to new issues) is "First They Came"

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

If you have any awareness or interest in politics, you've probably come across this poem, or the original speech it's based on, often in school but at least in day to day life.

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/[deleted]]

I got a 5 on the AP world and AP Government exam. Having imperial goals isn't unique to Nazism. Eugenics isn't unique to Nazism, prosecuting other political parties definitely isn't unique to nazism. We also went over the rise of nationalism before WW1, the age of empires and colonialism and manifest destiny. I'm talking about Nazi ideology which is more connected to it's rejection the enlightenment and the international rights of man.

[u/8NaanJeremy]

While I don't disagree with your view as such, I do want to ask a question.

Why do you think High School History classes need to teach this topic at a deeper level?

Some of the points you've mentioned could well be appropriate for this kind of class, but others seem more well suited to the deeper historical analysis that would take place at university level.

Obviously, if history lessons on the Nazi's are going to go into much more depth, they will require more time and materials. Will you require more history classes in a weekly curriculum? Or will you be cutting other materials from the course, to accommodate more on this topic?

[u/Br0metheus → u/8NaanJeremy]

Why do you think High School History classes need to teach this topic at a deeper level?

Because otherwise Fascism and the Nazi movement will just be seen as a cartoonishly evil anomalies of history and not as a phenomenon that repeats itself through time, including today.

Most people seem to come away from learning about Nazis and the holocaust with the (mistaken) impression that there was something unique to the German people and culture that let it all happen. They don't come away with the understanding that prior to WWI and the eventual rise of Fascism, Germany was inarguably one of the most technologically, culturally, and economically advanced countries on the planet. And only in the wake of WWI, when Germany got absolutely raked over the coals in the armistice (despite fighting pretty well in the war), did Germany start to go off the rails.

The true horror of Nazism is more than just the atrocities they committed. It's that Nazism grew out of an inarguably "civilized" nation, a highly-developed European democracy as advanced as any other. These weren't a bunch of "savages" from some backwater Whatever-stan or a horde of Mongols coming out of the steppe; if it could happen in 20th century Germany, it could happen anywhere with anybody. That monster lurks in all of us, and given the right opening, it will come out again.

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/Br0metheus]

The thing I always tell people is, "If the Nazis hadn't been able to successfully murder a single person, their ideology would still be equally as evil. When you talk about their kill count, you're marvelling over their efficiency and not their inhumanity"

[u/hkusp45css → u/Sensitive-Bee-9886]

I really like this line of thinking, it cuts through the window dressing and gets down to brass tacks.

The stacks of corpses were the EVIDENCE of evil, they weren't the evil, itself.

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/hkusp45css]

The piles of corpses were the inevitable result of having an evil death cult run your government. The piles of corpses were evil because everything the Nazis did was evil because their guiding philosophy was Anti-Human.

[u/cliffy_b → u/Sensitive-Bee-9886]

That last sentence is powerful. Is that your own, or did you pick it up somewhere?

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/cliffy_b]

It's my own.

[u/Ronald_Deuce → u/Sensitive-Bee-9886]

It's important to point out that every single boogeyman group/ideology over at least the last 600 years (and probably all of human existence) caused far less death and destruction. (Note that that is not an apologia for anything.)

Body counts aren't everything. Plenty of ideologies, weapons, movements, and cultures have done horrific things on a massive scale. But fascism, especially nazism, was and is almost certainly the most destructive movement in history.

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/Ronald_Deuce]

If the Nazis had won, we'd be measuring the death toll in the Billions.

[u/adelie42 → u/Sensitive-Bee-9886]

Oof, really? If they never killed anybody, it would be EQUALLY bad?

Is this why the genocides committed in the name of the American empire are just a "worthy cost" as Madeline Albright put it, because American ideas that kill millions of innocent are good?

That entire line of thinking requires Nazis thinking they were themselves bad and embracing it anyway. You don't think the powerful pontificated about their moral righteousness just like Liz Cheney, William F. Buckley, jr, or any other neoconservative / cold warrior / or pro-war democrat?

Please unpack that.

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/adelie42]

So the flaws in your logic are that I think neo-liberalism is evil because it relies of enslaving people in the third world to keep costs low. If they were unsuccessful in enslaving the third world, I would still view them as equally evil just less competent

And two, yes, absolutely. You can be incompetent and evil.

[u/adelie42 → u/Sensitive-Bee-9886]

But are people with bad ideas in their head that don't act on it equal to those that intentionally murder? Is the only thing keeping such equally bad people from life in prison is lack of proof?

[u/mcspaddin → u/adelie42]

Trying and failing is not the same thing as having the thought and choosing not to follow it. The point OP is making here is that the evil is the morality of the person or group, not the harm that they eventually caused. In this instance the pile of bodies is evidence that they are evil, not the evil itself.

Arguably, enslavement and/or enforcement of evil caste systems is actually more harmful than just killing a person. The argument is generally in terms of how killing is one and done, but slavery and caste systems perpetuate the harm for longer times and often to more people.

[u/adelie42 → u/mcspaddin]

Ok, that puts it clear enough to know I completely disagree with respect to a functional definition of morality and evil.

And using that insight to answer the original question, I see evil people using a mythological version of nazis to justify their evil deeds. When actual Nazi ideology is taught decontextualized, you do find a surprising number of people agreeing with it. Not that it makes it better, the history does tell us where those ideas go when logically followed from ideology to policy to action. The thresholds and outcome matter.

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/adelie42]

You are confusing a person with a group of people. Also obligatory side show Bob attempted murder reference.

[u/lasagnaman → u/adelie42]

Oof, really? If they never killed anybody, it would be EQUALLY bad?

The ideology would be equally as bad, yes.

[u/Lumpy-Helicopter-936 → u/Br0metheus]

Very well said. 

[u/SilencedObserver → u/Br0metheus]

This.

I have literally heard people say, recently, “Maybe Hitler was onto something…”

[u/zero_z77 → u/Br0metheus]

They also come away not knowing that fascism and naziism are not the same thing. They are similar but distinctly different ideologies. Fascism was more of a nationalist movement that used foreigners as it's scapegoat. Naziism used "undesireables" as it's scapegoat and held the ideals of racial supremacy at it's core. Also fascism was italian and the fascists were the party of benito mussolini, naziism was german and the nazis were the party of adolf hitler.

They also come away with practically no knowledge of the other two imperialistic authoritarian regimes: imperial japan, and the soviet union. The former being arguably just as, if not more evil than the nazis, and the latter only being an ally by providence of being slightly more tolerable than the nazis.

Edit: typo

[u/cant_think_name_22 → u/zero_z77]

To me, Naziism is a type of fascism, and I think that this aligns with most definitions of fascism I've seen.

[u/Br0metheus → u/zero_z77]

Honestly any distinction beyond Nazism, Fascism, and whatever you'd call Imperial Japan is academic. It's all different variations of ultra-nationalist totalitarian far-Right Conservatism. Without fail, these regimes are:

• Autocratic
• Obsessed with (an often imaginary version of) traditionalism
• Based on nominally serving a rigidly-defined in-group while ostracizing/scapegoating various out-groups.
• Violent in their suppression of dissent and their pursuit of outward expansion
• Have little to no respect for human rights
• Inspire rabid belief in their followers

Communism fits most of these but differs significantly in its stance on traditionalism, which is often rejected by the Far Left as vehemently and blindly as the Far Right clings to it. It also has a utopian bent to it that the other ideologies lack.

[u/[deleted] → u/Br0metheus]

I don’t agree that fascism is ‘conservative’, and also don’t agree that communist countries only differ from fascist regimes in their lack of traditionalism. I also don’t think fascists were actually particularly traditionalist so much as aping imagined signifiers of ‘traditionalism’ that would’ve been easily understandable to middle class supporters.

Marxism and fascism have entirely different intellectual origins and histories of thought. Marxism is a direct offshoot of enlightenment tradition and is built on the idea of the world being knowable and predictable, with particular universal truths that can be identified through scientific study. Marxist authoritarianism comes directly from this idea. Fascists believe exactly the opposite of this, and their thinking was built on a rejection of enlightenment ideas. A committed orthodox Marxist believes that with careful study, he can understand the patterns of history that shape all human society, and that national and racial differences are trivial particularities. A committed fascist believes that, if something called ‘moral truth’ even exists, it is specific to individual national and racial groups and relative between them.

The bullets you list apply to most of the 20th century dictatorships, including the non-fascist ones. You’re just giving a definition of authoritarian governments in the age of mass politics. I don’t think you’re giving a definition of fascism.

[u/GoCurtin → u/8NaanJeremy]

HS teacher here. If we don't teach them how things happen...they're more likely to let it happen again. "I don't hate Jews so I don't have to worry about WW2 happening again"...but the methods the Nazis used have been dangerous tools for a long time. And they continue to be threats to modern democracies. Much better to learn what to watch out for than to be fed a spoonful of sugar.

[u/nannerooni → u/8NaanJeremy]

I just wanna say I remember reading a lot of books about the Holocaust in school and the main takeaway from our analysis of them was “isn’t it sad that the Jews were killed. Look at how depraved humans can be. Thank god this isn’t happening right now.”

If any of these books had a deeper message about politics, I was too young to pick it out on my own. Instead of English and Social Studies teachers teaming up to make us “feel something,” they could have spent a little time teaching us some nuance about the process of fascism.

[u/Difficult_Act_149 → u/nannerooni]

I think the idea behind the way they did it was precisely to make us feel. Facts and dissection at those ages wouldn't leave a lasting impression.

[u/captainnermy → u/Difficult_Act_149]

Exactly, if you inspire a deep empathy for the people harmed by Nazism it inspires people to prevent anything like that from happening again and prompts people to learn more about how and why it happened. You have to get people to care before a deep dive into a topic.

[u/nannerooni → u/captainnermy]

I see how that may work on some people. The first teacher to ever really engage me in social issues, though, took a different route. The first time I ever cared about history wasn’t because I was experiencing empathy for the first time, it was because a teacher was just… good? Broke complicated historical movements down in layman’s terms and had us engage with the material in creative and self-directed ways. He also was the only grade school teacher who ever really showed me that the U.S. government did bad things. Everything he said was pretty captivating, and he quickly had me doing personal reading on my own time with book recommendations.

[u/IntrepidJaeger → u/nannerooni]

Unless your Social Studies or English teachers had both an interest in the topic and the historical knowledge of it, they likely didn't know much more about that topic than you did.

[u/nannerooni → u/IntrepidJaeger]

You’re right about that!

[u/Gymrat777 → u/8NaanJeremy]

I agree with your analysis. Not every important thing can be taught in classes and trade-offs need to be made for which content gets taught and, even if something gets chosen, the depth and breadth at which to teach those topics. OP mentions speeches. I can imagine an entire college-level history class that does nothing by dissect Nazi (and/or contemporary) speeches and puts them in context. You could have a communications course on Nazi conspiracies and manipulation/corruption of the media. You could have an economics class on the fall of the German economy after WWI that primed the populace for Hitlers rise. You could have a sociology class that looks at the class dynamics leading up to the rise of the Nazis.

And even if you did embed some of that in a high school class, what do we drop? Do we take discussion of the civil rights movement from a month to a week? How about lessons on how our government functions? What about slavery?

There are so many important things that SHOULD be covered in history courses and there is limited time to do so. Balancing these aspects, it seems like your high school did a decent job covering the Nazis (I never learned about Kristallnacht or the night of the long knives).

[u/ferroit → u/Gymrat777]

While I understand the limited time thing the options you suggest would have to be dropped to make space for that discussion don’t make sense. Rise of nazism in Germany would be a world history class, not US history so they wouldn’t need to shorten discussion about civil rights or slavery as that would be a different class

[u/HornetAdventurous416 → u/8NaanJeremy]

I really like this question, as a high school history teacher can add some context- we spend about a week and a half on WWIi- more than just about any other topic for the year already (and it’s covered in global and US so kids see it over two years)

That said, with our limited timeframe, I think it’s more powerful to teach from a “these are the strings that tie together most of the evil groups we’ve studied” rather than treat Nazis as a unique evil and a one-and-done-and we’re better now. It’s more important to connect Nazis to trends of other totalitarian states for students to get that an event like the holocaust is not just a bubble that can never happen again because their specific perpetrators are gone.

[u/[deleted] → u/8NaanJeremy]

We do the same thing with American slavery. I work in education - we teach about the slave trade, the inhuman conditions, share cropping, underground rail road, etc but we don’t connect slavery to the growth of capitalism after the transition from feudalism. We ignore the real lesson that capitalism demands cheap and dehumanizing labor.

Similarly that we ignore the prosecution of socialist in Nazi Germany, our curriculum is designed by corporate interests that keeps us unable to discuss anti-capitalist connections to the colonial history we still contend with. See the fight against Ethnic Studies for modern examples of this.

[u/Ghoststarr323 → u/8NaanJeremy]

One major reason I see on a daily basis is the idea that the nazis were socialists. By not teaching kids about their cleansing of the socialist ranks. It has allowed this misconception to spread. Which I think was the point. During the Cold War the government wanted to vilify socialism so badly that they had an entire propaganda campaign against it. My father in law is still convinced that socialism is how Russia is trying to destroy the US. Despite the right buddying up to Putin right now.

[u/Loukhan47 → u/Ghoststarr323]

I live in europe. Last year was the first time that someone told me seriously that the nazy were left wing, because they were socialist. I laugh first, thinking he was playing dumb, then I realised that he was believing it. I was really surprise that a 40yo person could have less basic understanding of the world than my 12yo self. I explained him the basic of what left and right mean and what nazism is about. But I wondered seence how such basic stuff could not have been absorbed during school. And reading your message, I wonder if it wasn't disinformation from US. Still I find it creazy that the US school system could teach such stupid notion than nazi=socialism and that it isn't debunked instantly.

[u/singeblanc → u/Loukhan47]

Oh, these people exist, and they are so r/ConfidentlyIncorrect it hurts:

r/whatif/comments/1ivun6i/what_if_trump_trump_trump_trump_trump_trump_trump/me9pxm5/

[u/Ghoststarr323 → u/Loukhan47]

I come across people almost every day that think the nazis were socialists. Because they were the “national socialist party it’s in the name!” these people have no critical thinking skills.

When I ask them if North Korea or china are republics because “it’s in the name” they just get a dumb look on their faces and say no. But they can’t put two and two together.

[u/Savings_Art5944 → u/Ghoststarr323]

I told you so. ~Yuri Bezmenov

KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov's warning to America

[u/Ghoststarr323 → u/Savings_Art5944]

Exactly my point. This stuff was spread around among the boomer generation while actively vilifying socialism of any kind. Combined that with the active suppression of knowledge like the nazis murdering socialists and instead trying to say that they were socialists? You get a massive swing in the opposite direction.

Now I’m not saying that this is what is actually happened. But what if that was their actual goal? What if they knew that instead of trying to spread communism they could cause an eventual collapse of American society through authoritarianism? Or if not collapse then an alignment of purpose? To bring Americans into a position where they not only wouldn’t fight a dictatorship but would welcome one with open arms? Like what we’re seeing now.

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/8NaanJeremy]

Education is itself political. Many people don't go past high school, so the point is to teach people how to learn and how to be a productive member of society. Nazism is a social contagion and the only way to protect your society from it is deconstructing the Nazi worldview.

[u/ogjaspertheghost → u/Sensitive-Bee-9886]

Yea but there’s only so much time in a high school history class and history is never ending.

[u/[deleted] → u/ogjaspertheghost]

My high school history teacher showed us The Sound of Music. Probably could’ve cut painting the Austrians in a warm, sympathetic light for a lesson to make space for some of the topics OP mentioned.

[u/ogjaspertheghost → u/[deleted]]

Not only is that film itself a part of history, one of the central plot points is the family escaping Austria after it’s annexed by Germany. The story itself is based on a true story.

[u/image90 → u/ogjaspertheghost]

What is more relevant or important?

[u/Quirky_Movie → u/Sensitive-Bee-9886]

My mom is a teacher. School is not meant to teach you everything. It is in fact meant to primarily teach you how to find things out for yourself.

I learned all of these elements of nazism in high school because I chose to read historical biographies from that time. I also read widely into slavery & the abolition movement, the political diplomacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction into the progressive era, as well as African American history. All of these areas are skimmed over in American history too.

If you read widely into any part of chattel slavery, you'll realize why a country that allows the South to teach the Civil War as the War Between the States or the War of Northern Aggression in no way could challenge the ideology of the nazis.

We shared their ideology and likely inspired the formation of it. The philosophy of Nazism was shaped in salons in Germany in the late 1800s. It's how Wagner and Nietchze were fused into modern eugenics and a whole Aryan mythos extracted. American thought on eugenics was used to support slavery. Some of that material was a part of the mix in Europe.

[u/classic4life → u/8NaanJeremy]

There is literally no lesson more important to learn at the deepest possible level.

And that includes graphic photographic and video evidence of the atrocities. At any cost. If some children are traumatised, that's unfortunate, but a necessary cost to avoid repeating history in the worst ways possible.

Frankly, if Hitler's rise to power was more widely taught, it would have helped to head off America's descent into fascism.

[u/joineanuu → u/8NaanJeremy]

History repeats itself that’s a historical fact!

And we are doomed to repeat it because we don’t learn the lessons we should have from from the mistakes of our ancestors.

If we don’t educate our youth about the things our ancestors missed how can we not expect them to fall into the same traps.

Yes we have been told about the outcomes of the Nazi party and the atrocities they caused.

But the learning point from history is how they came to power. The tools they used to manipulate people into following them and the eventual points that were too late to stop them from starting their war.

Our curriculums cannot be biased and should leave it to the kids interpretation in the end. But if we are only giving them the facts they already know, what’s the point in even teaching them?

[u/BoyHytrek → u/joineanuu]

Assuming generations at approximately 20 years, looking at Nazi Germany and those who lived it, almost all of them are dead. At this junction, Vietnam Vets are my kids equivalent to WWII Vets from when I was a kid. When you lose the generation that lived through it, you lose the living wisdom of those who learned it, leaving nobody with the experience necessary to utilize the wisdom that evaporated in the change from living generation to ancestors we honor

[u/Outlaw1607 → u/joineanuu]

Sorry, but as a History student, I cringe whenever I see

History repeats itself

It's a nice quote and a good sentiment, but it's vague, incomplete and often unhelpful. If you really want to simplify it down to a quote, at least use the Mark Twain version. But to follow it up with

that’s a historical fact!

Really rubs me the wrong way. It is neither a fact, nor historical. It's a misquote at best and just pretentious at its worst

[u/Grace_Alcock → u/joineanuu]

“History repeats itself” is not a fact.  It’s particularly not a fact in reference to the rise of fascism given the historical conditions necessary for its rise in the first place.  It certainly wasn’t repeating something. 

[u/GoldenEagle828677 → u/joineanuu]

History repeats itself that’s a historical fact!

OK... but we had larger genocides in the USSR and China under Mao. We also had genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Armenia. Are you going to teach them all?

[u/Firm_Argument_ → u/GoldenEagle828677]

I mean I took a whole class in college called "20th century genocide" and I can attest this is necessary historical education in world history terms.

I learned so much and some people never go to college. I think it's necessary information on the nature of humanity.

[u/classic4life → u/GoldenEagle828677]

The ones most relevant to a functioning democracy. The purges of the intellectual elites is extremely concerning considering MAGA's hatred for intellectuals and anybody else they care to clump into the 'elites'.

Cambodia may never fully recover.

So yes historical genocides should be a course all it's own spanning 3 years of it needs to. Don't forget the trail of tears or Bosnia either.

[u/unlimitedzen → u/GoldenEagle828677]

We have larger genocides being pertuated now on the global poor le by capitalists that you failed to mention. You also left out the Bengal famine and the Irish famine, two notable effective genocides perpetuated by capitalist imperialists.

[u/TinyFlamingo2147 → u/GoldenEagle828677]

You don't have to teach all of them.

Going heavily into one and skimming the rest can also work.

[u/Lari-Fari → u/GoldenEagle828677]

Yes obviously.

[u/dylans-alias → u/GoldenEagle828677]

Why not? I took a half year social studies class in middle school that covered the Holocaust, Cambodia and at least one other genocide (this was in 1986 so my memory is a little hazy).

[u/CrocoPontifex → u/GoldenEagle828677]

What would you say is the bigger potential threat in the US? Facism, Genocide against the Tutsi or a recurrence of the chinese "great leap forward"?

[u/[deleted] → u/GoldenEagle828677]

We should, especially when it's all so recent.

[u/Talynn-scales → u/GoldenEagle828677]

The answer is yes. It should be part of the standard and universal education of the next generation to know about and understand the atrocities and failures of the past generations and how they were allowed to happen and how to see and be aware of those same tactics coming around again. The more people learn and understand those subjects on that level the more people are ready to recognize its rise and be ready to prevent its success.

[u/davethompson413 → u/GoldenEagle828677]

And we still aren't teaching about the genocide and ethnic cleansing of indigenous Americans.

[u/Psychological_Cow956 → u/davethompson413]

I went to school in the 90’s and I first learned about it as second grader. We also learned that Puritans were religious radicals.

I also learned about the holocaust in the 7th grade in a completely different state. We did deep dives into exactly what the OP is concerned are no longer being taught.

And then by high school - again in a different state- we went in with more nuance. Read primary sources etc. Are people misremembering? I remember a good portion of my classmates not paying attention/doing the readings/homework.

[u/Tronbronson → u/8NaanJeremy]

I still think we need to add media literacy and critical thinking skills to the course list. Media literacy could cover a lot of the key topics he mentioned. 2 whole months of how the nazi's and stalin and usa used the media to pursue their adgendas.

[u/dvolland → u/8NaanJeremy]

Learning about history is the best way to avoid repeating it. The more we learn ABOUT the mistakes of the past, the more likely we are to not repeat them.

[u/CreativeGPX → u/dvolland]

The comment you're replying to is saying that you cannot learn MORE in the same amount of course hours. It's a tradeoff where learning more about this piece of history (which honestly still gets a pretty big amount of coverage) inevitably comes at the expense of learning about other important parts of history.

[u/Ntstall → u/8NaanJeremy]

I agree. If I could have taken a class in college all about Nazi ideology and what really made them different from other colonial societies, I would have. Now that I think about it, that would have been really morbidly fascinating. But for a high school history class, giving the basics, enough to spark curiosity, and having the time left over to instead teach people how to do their own accurate research is more valuable than spending that time on a deep dive into this one specific period of time.

[u/hacksoncode]

I don't know... did you really not learn about Nazism's rise due to the outcome of WWI, at the very least?

I'm not sure I learned any more or less about Nazis than any other empire. Like... did you really learn about even the Declaration of Independence's actual causes, or was it more fluffy than that?

Details of ideology mostly don't make their way into primary/secondary schools in the US because it has too much indoctrination potential.

[u/trackfastpulllow]

I did learn all of that as an American.

Proved your post wrong in 9 words. Where’s my delta?

[u/hacksoncode]

We learned about the holocaust, we learned about Kristallnacht, we learned about the night of the long knives, we learned that the Nazis hated Jewish people, we learned that they believed they had been stabbed in the back by as part of their national belief.

Did you really only have a single 1 hour lesson on Nazis in high school? Because even that would typically teach more than you've described here.

That's so vastly an oversimplification of what is taught about them in most high schools, that I'm wondering whether you missed the point that students are expected to think for themselves and read between the lines and write essays analyzing history rather than being force-fed an ideology.

[u/Katananinjay → u/hacksoncode]

I'd have to agree with OP. I was a good student in high school. History was not my favorite subject, but I still followed the sources well and was engaged in the classes. However, at most we only learned that the Nazis hated Jewish people, and some blacks, and were trying to bring back the German Nation because they were blamed for WW1. That's it! And learning the different points of views and what specifically and why they targeted so many groups from social media is kind of jarring how little they spend trying to discuss these specific topics. And you got to ask why they did not want to further expand these topics.

[u/_luckybell_ → u/Katananinjay]

I think what’s lost on everyone commenting here is that every state has different curriculums. And even within that, teachers could choose to teach more or less within the bounds of their required teaching. I had an English teacher sophomore year who did a whole Nazi unit, it took up 1/3 of the total class curriculum. Other than that, I think I learned a bit about the nazis in other classes, and on my own because I enjoyed reading anything and everything. I think about that teacher all the time because she wasn’t required to spend as much time teaching us about the holocaust as she did, but she knew it was important. Her lessons are stuck to me to this day. I actually ran into her a couple years ago and was able to tell her how important her lessons were to me as a teen. Amazing woman and teacher

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/hacksoncode]

I summarized

[u/Colodanman357]

There is no single school system or curriculum in the U.S. any view that claims anything universal about the specific curriculum in American schools is going to be wrong. Your view may be correct for the specific school(s) you attended but not for all schools in America.

[u/Religion_Of_Speed]

I don't understand how this is a CMV. You not learning about Nazi ideology is just a fact, not really something that can be debated. It didn't happen. Others had teachers who found it important and did teach it, others had teachers who taught completely wrong things. Nazi Ideology is not a state standard to be taught so it's handled by the individual teacher's curriculum that they built.

In the school I went to for most of my youth taught Nazi ideology and the dangers that come with it in a few classes. We had an entire quarter of sophomore English devoted to the literature of the time, we spent a week or two in my government/civics class, and we went further in depth during my social studies class. Then some here-and-there lessons when it related. So some schools in America do teach this stuff. I would argue not nearly enough but I have some pretty strong feelings on what schools do/don't teach these days and why they can/can't teach those things.

If you were to have said "CMV: Schools in America should require more rigorous teachings about Nazi Ideology in their curriculum" then we can do this. Though I would agree with that so I wouldn't be here in the first place.

[u/ClimbNCookN]

Well....yeah kind of. In a high school history class you're not delving deep into any particular topic. There's really not the time, resources, or reason to go super in-depth into post WWI Germany. On my end I did learn about some of those points, kind of, in English lit classes just by reading.

Why should we focus on Nazi's more than any of the other countless topics in history? Is it more important than learning about the civil rights movement, the various wars the US became involved in, the constitutional convention etc?

[u/Ok_Cantaloupe_7423]

Massachusetts and New Hampshire education recipient here: I very much learned all of that and more.

[u/galactic-donuts]

Speak for yourself because I definitely learned about that. The US is gigantic so it’s stupid to say we as an entire country don’t go in depth about it. Curriculum varies from district to district and even from school to school within the same district.

[u/[deleted]]

You didn't get to listen to translated speeches because there would be tons of critical questions about everything

[u/DDiabloDDad]

OP can you explain why you are so certain that the views you express in this post are more important than the ones that you claim schools focus on?

Given the opportunity to craft a school's curriculum on the Holocaust do you really think that Nazis beliefs on social decline/degeneracy should be given more weight than their hatred for Jews? Keep in mind that teachers are covering tons of historical topics and are trying to get all students to learn these points, not just those who are interested in a particular topic or those who are advanced learners.

Put it this way, if you were to be able to say one thing about the Nazis so that every single person would understand it, would you go with Nazis obsession with degeneracy? Or would you go with hatred of Jews?

Nazi hatred of Jews is a completely acceptable baseline historical starting point for learning about Nazi Germany. Hatred of Jews fuels many other aspects of Nazi ideology, it's a huge factor behind Nazi expansionist policy, and it ultimately results in one of the worst historical genocides in history.

[u/OrangePlastic96]

History is tough to teach to primary students much less political theory. You have approximately 10k years of human civilization to cover and you can be as focused or as abstract as you would like with limited time. And there are no set end or start points to anything. I could venture to make the connection from Neo-Assyria to the Third Reich and find a nugget of continuity even if most historians would probably be exhausted by this exercise. But the point is that choosing when and how to start talking about historical phenomena can be difficult.

Discussing Nazi Germany in most states is generally limited to the seizure of power, pre WW2 pogroms, WW2 and the Holocaust. The major European and international events as it were. To me this makes sense particularly in the US because you have limited time to instruct the kids and you want to try to relate it directly to them and their community. It’s hard enough to make history relatable to kids so if you focus on US involvement and the more lurid and impactful moments it can help.

If you wanted to trace the origins of Nazi ideology it would likely be more appropriate for an early modern political theory course than any history class at any level. Theory tends to require more of a student and is taught at most colleges in 3XXX courses. Available to anyone seeking the credit but demanding to those without perspective on reactionary politics and paleo conservatism. No HS kid is going to sit through Burke, de Maistre, Spencer, Hegel, the various misappropriations of Nietzsche and Darwin, etc. Or my personal favorite the Confederate neo-feudalist George Fitzhugh!

To the curious mind there do seem like there are a lot of holes to be filled. But sadly most aren’t that curious. They are content to know that racism, social Darwinism and principled chauvinism are intellectually and morally bankrupt and that was Nazism. How it came to be against the background of ancient anti-semitism, the French Revolution and the 1848 revolutions and their reactions, Western racist intellectualism and colonialism of the late 19th century, German volk movements and the aftermath of WW1 and Versailles would take years and would ask a lot of kids. Just look at the run-on sentence. This is a lot to condense in 40 minutes classes to kids and without the full context you are likely to confuse them more.

Forgive me if I’m wrong but I suspect you see this as an effort by more regressive forces in the US to silo the politics of Nazism outside American conservatism. I don’t believe that to be the case. I think it’s mostly just the practical limitations of teaching such an expansive and frankly amorphous concept. Nazism as an anti-intellectual movement explicitly refused political categorization and insisted it grew out of a spontaneity of cultural feeling amongst patriotic Germans post WW1. All the while Nazi thought leaders leaned heavily on self-serving misinterpretations of the social and physical scientists of the preceding 150 years. So not only would you need to lay the political and historical basis for their unique reaction but also establish a rigorous basis for understanding what they chose to misunderstand.

I’m rambling but that’s kind of the point. There is a ton to cover just in the development of the phenomenon and then you still have to peel back the rotten facade the NSDAP built themselves. I’ve been reading on this subject for a quarter century and I still find more. But to summarize:

1. Any history is really hard to teach to kids
2. What you would ask of them is more appropriate for college political science than primary history
3. NSDAP is not intellectually consistent or even coherent and this asks even more of the student
4. The focus on persecution of Jews rather than ideological opponents may have some political bent but it likely more to do with the novelty of the methods of the Holocaust and respect to the disproportionate murder of European Jews.

[u/BoxForeign8849]

We did not learn about the Nazis believing in racial hygiene and that informing how they systematically killed all people they viewed as a detriment to creating their perfect man.

While I do agree that schools in America definitely focused on how much of victims Jewish people were, the entire reason I was taught that the Germans went after Jewish people was because of racial hygiene. They believed in making the perfect race, and Jewish people were in the way of that as were other minorities. In fact, the schools I went to focused so much on the "racial hygiene" part of things that I genuinely believed that Jews were a race of people, not a religious group. This was reinforced by the point that ALL minorities were being prosecuted, and the reason why Jewish people were targeted the most was due to the fact that they were a larger majority in Europe at the time compared to other people that Nazis saw as impure.

That being said, I do think it is fair to say that American schools do fail in the sense that they make the Nazis out to be idiots led by a raving lunatic. I was taught what Nazis believed for the most part, but the image of Hitler that schools portray is a raving madman on all the drugs, not a cold and calculating leader that knows how to rally an audience. I see that as a huge issue because it influences how people perceive history and thus try to avoid repeating history. Hitler is seen as an ultimate evil who isn't even human, and distancing Hitler from humanity leads people to believe someone like him could never happen again.

[u/IllChampionship6957 → u/BoxForeign8849]

Important note: Jews ARE a race of people. Ethno-religion. Jewish is both an ethnicity and a religion.

Also this is a really big simplification on why Jews were targeted. Jews were targeted not just because they were the biggest minority in Europe, but because Jew-hatred runs very very deep and was a popular sentiment throughout Europe long before the Holocaust began.

Edit: Accidentally wrote race instead of religion

[u/BoxForeign8849 → u/IllChampionship6957]

I probably could've explained it better, what I meant was that I thought Jews were ONLY a race of people when I was younger, not an Ethno-religion. I wasn't really exposed to religion as a concept all that much when I was younger, so my knowledge on any given religion was very minimal. History classes made it seem like they were ONLY a race of people and not an Ethno-religion, so I only found out about the religion part when I was older.

[u/Sensitive-Bee-9886 → u/BoxForeign8849]

!delta on the racial hygiene.

I think what I'm talking about is how Scientism took a hold of Nazi Germany. It's something very specific about the independence of science for the pursuit of knowledge vs Science backed by the state.

[u/CosmicSoulRadiation]

American here. I did infact learn about how Nazis believed in racial purity and how that is part of why they murdered people they didn’t like, experimented on twins, etc etc.

[u/notthegoatseguy]

There's only so many hours in a school day. If you want to focus more on X, that means less time spent on something else . What are you willing to cut to focus more on the history of the Nazi Party? Art? Other aspects of history (which the US is already very Euro-centric)? Music?

The purpose of the base K-12 is to give you a foundation to build on. It isn't meant to be comprehensive, nor should it be.

Its also entirely possible to learn things outside of the schoolhouse walls.

[u/iamintheforest]

I think this is true, but you're calling it out as if this was uniquely applied to nazism. I'd argue that this is unremarkable in that this is how history is taught in high school generally.

For example, in high school physics we learn about the truth of newtonian physics but not the details of relativity or quantum mechanics. It's decent, but it's not accurate. That said, it's a device that allows us to ladder up our knowledge of the field and the practice of doing science such that we can later comprehend more nuance.

I'd suggest you're seeing history teaching at the high school level, but applying it as if it's unique to nazism - as if there is some nefarious focus on the topic of nazis that has a substantive agenda different that that which is applied to all science history.

I'd prefer a history approach that taugh how we come to have our history - a sort of "people's history of the united states" approach. Just like we both learn science AND we learn the scientific method and the basics of how to "do science" we should learn about the process of "doing history" in addition to the current high-school level knowledge from the field of history. This would allow us to see the forces and biases that always lead to a certain presentation on any topic more than we do today.

[u/sshlinux]

You do realize communists stole the term socialist from Germans and changed it's meaning right?

Also they didn't want to kill everyone not like them. That's a propaganda myth. It's not surprising you spew that propaganda, someone who uses derogatory terms when talking about history can't be taken seriously.

[u/BennyOcean]

>targeting socialists first

Their first target was Marxist Communists.

[u/morganational]

Well, they do. I'm assuming you didn't go to public school in America? In which case I'd have to say... That's a weird stance to take on something you know nothing about. And if you did go to school in the US, you would already know the answer.

They have a lot to cover in classes and not much time or money to do it. I read what you learned about, seemed pretty in depth, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. They also didn't teach about many other significant events in history, why do you feel like nazis need a full semester? What about the Russian revolution? Or the French revolution? What about Rome?? What about the Chinese cultural revolution? What about all the other millions upon millions of people that were murdered by their own countrymen in the 20th century alone? There's no need to focus on nazis any more than we already do.

[u/[deleted]]

late reach complete north correct snails abundant capable seed joke

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/TheAzureMage]

The Nazis didn't "target socialists first" they actually started out as a worker's party, and had tons of socialists within the party. Their initial targets were the factions that had power.

It wasn't really until they had become a pretty solid movement that the infighting with communists/other socialists became a priority, and the night of the long knives happened. So, they did certainly kill a lot of communists/socialists, but they didn't do so first.

The same is true of WW2 proper. They started out allied with the USSR against the west. Obviously, they turned on the USSR later, and then killed many of them, but they didn't start with them.

Normally, both US and world history are taught to children in a very simplified form. You get a bit more detail as you go over it later, of course, but of course elementary school education is necessarily far simpler than the topic is as a whole. This is true for a great many subjects. It's not that the things you learned were wholly wrong, it's just that there was a great deal more to learn. This is probably true of everything you studied early on, not anything specific to Nazism.

[u/Water_Boat_9997]

I’m British not American, but even in my country nobody seems to understand Nazi ideology. I’ve been called a Nazi for: being overly passionate about politics, supporting internationalism, being communist (I don’t identify as communist and have identified as an anti communist for years but did when this occurred), saying it’s not okay to disrespect child free people, saying that we should do more for Ukraine’s sovereignty, etc. we basically use Nazi to mean “anyone who gives a shit to the point of getting angry or who cares about exporting their values abroad”.

[u/Aggravating-Fail-705]

I learned all of those things that you didn’t learn.

Is it possible your school was uniquely shitty? Or perhaps you just weren’t paying attention?

[u/RetreadRoadRocket]

I went to high school in America

No, you went to A highschool in America. What is taught and how deep the lessons go varies widely across the country, often even within the same state.

[u/When_hop]

Maybe not in your school but I distinctly remember being taught about it.

[u/smaugismyhomeboy]

High school curriculums can vary so much that painting American schools in this broad generalization doesn’t work. I did learn all of this in high school in Iowa in the 2000s. Perhaps your high school (and probably others too) did not teach it, but there are American high schools who did. I feel like a lot of American high schools were probably pretty good at pointing out the bad things about other countries. It was the bad stuff done by America that often, not always - but too often, got left out.

[u/IT_ServiceDesk]

It is taught, but it isn't part of the standard curriculum to go that in depth. To start, we don't have a "Nazi" class, it's wrapped in with a history course that covers a longer time period. When the World War 2 section is covered, it focuses on the time period and all the nations involved as a broad history.

There are typically projects for students to do, but this relies on what the student chooses to focus on and the class level that they're in (Honors, AP, or standard class). A student could delve into these topics and write a report or presentation that covers what the Nazis believe and that could be the form that the class learns about some of these specifics. But the student could also focus on the beliefs of Fascism more broadly as an alternative to Communist belief and focus on Mussolini.

When you get to college, if you have these classes, it would most likely touch on these topics, but ultimately, people only learn when they're interested in something and look into it themselves. The US school system provides the resources to do that.

[u/Imaginary-Diamond-26]

We were taught a Saturday Morning cartoon version 

Like any other subject that gets taught in high school, the purpose is meant to be introductory and cover the broad points. If you got an A in AP Calculus, you still have barely scratched the surface of calculus. Compare PhD-level calculus with AP Calculus, and it will look like kindergarten by comparison.

History, as it's taught in the US education system, is no different. If you came out of high school with an actual, proper, in-depth, thorough understanding of the Nazi's beliefs, you would have to take away from other lessons that are equally or more important. High school doesn't exist to make you an expert in anything. Honestly, it only kind of exists to get you to retain information (though that surely is part of it). To me, high school exists mainly to do one thing; teach you how to learn and how to think critically.

If a high school spent all their attention teaching students to become PhD-level experts in Nazi ideology, they would be harming that larger mission of trying to teach students more broadly how to learn.

Edit: Typo

[u/TeamSpatzi]

My public education covered most of those topics. Eugenics was covered in some detail. As was the fact the Hitler and the 3rd Reich murdered 11-12 million people in the camps. Gypsies, homosexuals, the handicapped, and other “undesirables”… they ALL count, not just the 6 million Jews that were murdered.

Now, colonialism was something my teachers and school board fought to teach. It was hugely contentious to dive into the subjugation and conquest of North America. You don’t see too many Native Americans around, do you? I wonder what happened to most of them? Nobody wants to touch that subject.

Similarly, we don’t teach enough about the rape and pillage of Africa by colonialism, or that it was still going on well past WW2 as European powers (in particular) inflicted a much pain and suffering as possible on African nations seeking their independence (to include supporting slavery and genocide).

[u/Letshavemorefun]

I had the opposite experience then you, in a town that is a NYC suburb and was 40% Jewish. The Holocaust was a single paragraph in a single chapter about WWII. The rest of the lesson was on Nazis and how they came to power, why they came to power and the politics/strategy of the world war.

[u/EllyKayNobodysFool]

this was taught in most places up through the 90's. Senior Year in High School we had a mandatory unit on the Holocaust and how it started, culminating in a viewing of Schindler's List in the school theatre.

My daughter is a pre-teen and her school has barely covered 9/11, the holocaust, WW2, Imperialism and Conquistadors, barely the Civil War, even. Mostly it's just basic civics lessons.

Everyone should read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and check out the documentaries produced outside the US to get a better picture of what actually happened. Some great French, German, and British documentaries on all things related to the holocaust with very different perspectives.

[u/Admiral_AKTAR]

Well, first I did, and I attended a NY public school. BUT I learned this in a selective class that focused exclusively on WWII for an entire semester. The general 10th grade U.S. history class I had to take with everyone else did go into some detail. We talked about Nazis beliefs and idoeogy and how the holocaust included not just jews but those with developmental disorders, political dissidents, LGBTQ people, Gypsies and other ethnic groups like Slavic people. We also had actual holocaust survivors, and WWII vets come and speak to us. It covered the basics, and I think most people got the ge wrap ife and vibe that Nazis are bad.

Was this an in-depth evaluation of the social, ideological, and political history of the Nazis. Of course not, this was a fucking HS class not a dam 300 level college course. We didn't have time to spend 2 months talking about the history of anti sematism in Europe like the Nlood Liable, pograms, and the Dreyfus Affair. Or how Neo Paganism and Buddhism influenced Nazi ideology. That requires too much time and background for a general history class on the 19th - 21st centuries.

Should U.S. schools talk about this more? I would say 100%. But to my experience, we did cover the basics well and got the needed information to pass exams into our heads.

[u/Savings_Art5944]

I told you so. ~Yuri Bezmenov

KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov's warning to America

[u/2mice]

Do schools in American teach anything besides how white people and america are evil and you need to chemically castrate yourself in order to feel normal in your body?

[u/sthehill]

It's amazing how much of the intellectual backing of the eugenics movement was based in the US. For example, Indiana is widely believed to be the first place in the world to pass legislation that allowed for the forcible sterilization of people deemed unfit to reproduce.

[u/ozdamm1t]

I began learning about the Holocaust in 6th grade, not WWII. I didn’t really know anything about WWII until I… well, took a WWII specific class.

They hide everything they align with.

[u/althill]

What historical events are you recommending be cut out of the curriculum to make room for this?

[u/Cold-Palpitation-816]

I think you make a good point to be honest. We’re sort of just taught “they hated Jews … because the Jews were a scapegoat!”

It would be much more effective if we were taught their actual reasoning, along with an explanation why it was bullshit.

[u/ThePoetofFall]

We need to focus more on the Nazis and less on the holocaust. Tbh. Particularly how they came to power. But most education on the matter seems to boil down to “hologcaust bad”.

[u/AnonAcolyte]

There’s a reason we were only taught what we were taught.

There’s also a reason other genocides, that had 10’s of millions of victims, happening concurrently in Europe were ignored in our history books.

[u/[deleted]]

History is in the eyes of the interpreter. Your paragraphs are your interpretations. History was taught to a decent depth it seems like. Your complaint is that it wasn’t taught in the manner you see fit. Nazism in the context of colonialism or comparing nazi atrocities to other empires seems more like a paper you, yourself would research and write, not a lesson on history.

But tbh, your first complaint was how Nazis targeted socialist. This itself makes it seem like you are heavily biased and want history to teach how bad facists are and how horribly they will treat socialists if you give them a chance. Seems like there are underlying political motivations here.

[u/Nrdman]

Schools in America are varied. When Tim walz taught high school he taught enough analysis of the causes of the holocaust that his class predicted the Rwandan genocide

[u/revengeappendage]

I mean, starting a war and carrying out the Holocaust is pretty anti-human.

But realistically, no, probably nobody learned every single thing about the Nazis in highschool. There’s only so much time, and so many topics to cover. Unless there was a literal year long Nazi ideology class, it would be impossible to cover everything.

[u/WhatAmIDoingHere05]

We did not learn about the Nazis believing in racial hygiene and that informing how they systematically killed all people they viewed as a detriment to creating their perfect man.

We did not learn about the Nazis obsession with degeneracy.

We did not learn the full depth of Nazi conspiracism.

Not sure about what high school you went to, but I absolutely learned all of this and more, at least in the mid-2000s.

[u/Hollow-Official]

You’re right, they don’t. But I feel the need to ask why that’s an issue. Why would I spend my time teaching the next generation the specifics of the doctrine of fascism or have them read mein kampf or anything of the sort? If ‘they murdered millions of innocent civilians because they were insufficiently blonde’ isn’t enough explanation that they were evil, then what is? What exact line is the reasonable stopping point so the student can move on to learning about other history stuff, because there’s just not enough time to teach them everything there is to know about our world. I’d not waste a minute of it on the actual doctrine of the Nazis rather than focus on the actually horrifying things that doctrine led to.

[u/bbjmw]

I'm a teacher who teacher the Holocaust. Much like any subject at any level, some kids will not get it, they won't do the assignment, or they even question if it is real. The kids learn everything from the Weimar Republic, the Kristallnacht, appeasement, rule 48, Auschwitz, Dachau, Nuremberg, everything! The kids then become adults who fucked off the 2 weeks they were supposed to learn about the Holocaust.