The Indoctrination of the Wehrmacht

In early June 1939, the German army offered a one-week ‘Summer Course for Officers’ in the Bavarian town of Bad Tölz. Some 120 officers attended and listened to lectures on topics ranging from ‘The World-View of National Socialism’ and ‘Racial and Population Policy’, to ‘Eastern Space’ and ‘The Prevention of the Hereditarily Diseased Offspring’, delivered by various members of the SS and other Nazi institutions, as well as ideologically attuned academics. Included in the course was a visit to Eglfing, site of an Aktion T4 asylum in which mentally disabled Germans were murdered by the state. While several attendees objected to attacks on the Church in their post-conference evaluations, their overall impression was indeed positive and welcoming. As Bryce Sait concludes in his new monograph, such evidence ‘indicated the widespread acceptance of an ideology that viewed humanity in terms of stark biological differences, and which called for the elimination of those deemed racially unfit’ (p. 69). And as Sait makes clear, this 1939 course was not merely a one-off event, but rather fit snugly into what he views as a concerted effort by the German military that began in the 1930s to indoctrinate both its officer corps and rank and file, one that culminated in the predominance of an ‘attitude that saw violence against non-military targets, particularly in the East, who were deemed racially and ideologically alien, as necessary’ (p. 9).

Archaeology · Aryan race · Criminology · German · Ideology · Indoctrination · Nazism · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · World War II · Demography · European history and politics · German History and Society · History · Law · Medical History and Research

• National Socialist Officers and their Auxiliaries

  Geoffrey Koenig•International Journal of Military…•2025

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