[Twin sisters in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940. Public Domain]Essential Questions: Why did Nazi Germany produce the Holocaust? Can "the people" possess too much democracy? What does civic preparation for a democracy look like? What is the difference between education and indoctrination?
Nazi Germany produced the Holocaust because they saw the Jewish state as a race and not a country. There is a correllation between the thought that the Christian church adopted as dogma that the Jewish religion had no reason to exist because the Jews broke their covenant with God by killing Jesus and the thought that man's modern God eventually became nation or country.
ReplyDeleteThe eugenics movement is another background cause of the Holocaust. The Nazis got most of their information about the eugenics movement from the U.S., but the connection between eugenics and the Holocaust comes from excerpts from Darwin's Descent of Man.
ReplyDeleteI do not think that Germany possessed a unique national character. They borrowed their ideas from many other cultures creating their own unique twist on things. For example, the Nazi symbol, the idea of ghettos, and Darwinism to name a few. They used these ideas to create their own belief and justify their beliefs.
ReplyDeleteIndoctrination is to instruct or imbue the subject with a principle or ideology with a point of view. Education on the other hand is informing or developing ones knowledge about subjects. The synonym for education is indoctrination, however, indoctrination is more specific in nature. A child can be indoctrined against the beliefs of their parents. The people of Germany and others that had antisematic beliefs were easy to indoctrine about Jews being less worthy as humans. They also were trained to see these people as disease carriers. These examples were used as Nazi propoganda in order to indoctrine the belief that the Jews brought the poor treatment on themselves, that they deserved it. These ideas are important to understand why it was easy for people in Germany and Poland to "ignore" what was happening to the Jewish people.
ReplyDeleteSome differences between education and indoctrination: education encourages an open mind and questioning, probing, and understanding whereas indoctrination works with memorization, blind obedience, unquestioning, passivity, fear, and absolute trust in authority. Rote memory and fear and blind obedience all were present in Germany and were part of the historical climate when Hitler came into power.
ReplyDeleteWe need to learn from history so that we don't make the same mistakes as we did in the past. Education needs to develop students that are critical thinkers. These are students that question or analyze beliefs or theories. Those that want to pursue knowledge and not just learn by rote memorization. Indoctrination doesn't encourage individuals to question or to inquire.
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