hitler's policies were wildly popular. and that's the problem. people are dumb and like doing things that are actually bad for them. it's like the chimpanzee that likes eating salty food, even though it kills him.

I mean, I can imagine kids feeling a sense of purpose and belonging. That education is very palpable - girls that age fawn over babies and family life, and boys would rather work the fields as long as they get recognition for it. The open choice of what to do with your life is daunting, so the promise of actual skills instead of algebra is appealing. It's basically the return to "learn a trade" we're going through now.

All in all, a suboptimal hangup for a negative Nazi image. Hitlerjugend etc. were popular programs. Like boy scouts but with (realistically probably "more") indoctrination.

Wake up at 5am and do your bed and Iron your clothes before some dickhead screams you up a hill and then teaches you a class of shit you still don't care about? Then you get to shovel some pig shit?

Wow. Sign me up.

/S

This was the premise of the TV movie The Wave that came out in the early 80s.

> fascism appeals to the stupidest, most brutish, hierarchy-oriented people in society
> Give young teens a taste

The problem is that it didn't carry on further. The beginnings of most ideologies sound fine but it's the reality and the shunning of "the other" where you start to see the horrors.

It's easier to think of Nazis as just evil and incompetent. The uncomfortable truth is that a significant part of their platform was popular, especially in the beginning of their rule. They were also extremely competent early on, it wasn't until Hitler was in full on drug psychosis that things started going down hill. Expecting something the Nazis did, especially early on to be unpopular and a massive red flag is just foolish on the teacher.

It would be better if we focused more on the uncomfortable parts of Nazi Germany. Their militarization efforts pulled them out of global recession faster than everyone else. Jewish segregation was inspired by the US treatment of African Americans. Jesse Owens was treated better in Nazi Germany than in the US despite being a national hero. The eugenics movement was also massively popular in the US and elsewhere. There was a lot of luck involved in the war in Europe going as well as it did, Germany winning wasn't ever really realistic unless the US aided them, but things could have been much worse.

Then they all stood up, looked to the flag and pledged allegiance under god.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_(2008_film)

I think the experiment worked pretty well.

It showed that nazi ideals are juvenile.

The history teacher should have read up on blue eyes/brown eyes experiment and copied that one instead: https://appliedhuman.com/social-experiments,/sociology,/1968/2023/11/07/jane-elliott-blue-brown-eyes.html

The true horror is asking the same questions again to the same people 8 years later... and getting the same answers again.

fake: anon goes to school

gay: separated from girls

I doubt kids at the peak horny stage of their lives would be happy to be separated like that.