# How are German school children taught about the World Wars? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 26, 2011, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-german-school-children-taught-about-the-world-wars/583256 "2011-05-26T04:45:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-german-school-children-taught-about-the-world-wars/583256/61 "2011-05-26T21:38:56Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > As for books, I read for example “Der Junge der seinen Geburtstag vergass” (The boy who forgot his birthday) about WWI; “Tante Linas Kriegskochbuch” (Aunt Linas war cook book) with not only recipes, but stories of the people in one house in the city of Gelsenkirchen; Gersdorff memories (an officer on the Eastern Front who tried to blow up Hitler in 1943). > > And of course I have heard the stories of war and postwar from my relatives. That war cook book sounds fascinating - if I can’t find it in english, I will have to sit down with Christian and have him help me through it. Hits both areas of interest, history and cooking. We have a number of american cookbooks that tough on war cooking so it would be an interesting comparison. My Dad was in Germany twice, slogging through the war, and then sent back in 1961-65. He had a sort of existential war experience, having grown up with a German nanny/maid and speaking a fair amount of German. It did make him more sympathetic to both the soldiers and the civilians - he was the best food scrounger because he was _polite_ and offered good trades, and generally came back with the fresh vegetables, sausages, eggs and cheeses [and a fair number of surrenderees] ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-german-school-children-taught-about-the-world-wars/583256/62 "2011-05-26T21:45:56Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > It’s just my personal experience, but our history class in the Oberstufe (11th-13th grade) covered the whole period of the German Reich from 1871-1945, with a special focus on WWI and the Weimar Republic, as my history teacher considered it important to expound the development and historical causal chain that led to the Third Reich. Today, I’m thankful for that, because to avoid something like that to ever happen again, it’s important to know which flaws the first German republic had, and why. The authors of our constitution (Grundgesetz) knew this flaws very well, and did a decent job to avoid them for the new republic. Well, arguably there are flaws in the U.S. Constitution as well. (That’s why we have so many amendments. 🙂 ) I am reading a book on the rise of Hitler, and he notes that the folks in political power (which includes some in the military) were kinda willing to toss aside democracy and parliamentarianism, moving more and more towards and authoritarian state as early as 1931 or so, IIRC. Their mistake was underestimating Hitler. ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-german-school-children-taught-about-the-world-wars/583256/63 "2011-05-26T23:31:53Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > Isn’t there a rock for you to crawl back under? there is, and i will if you’ll escort me to the entrance. ---
**Author:** ![isaiahrobinson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@isaiahrobinson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/isaiahrobinson)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-german-school-children-taught-about-the-world-wars/583256/64 "2011-05-26T23:45:01Z")
I have nothing to add about how German children are taught, but something relevant: visiting the old battlefields in Normandy from the World Wars I remember there was a fairly stark difference in how the graves were presented. Allied graves like [these ones](http://www.igougo.com/photos/journal_photos/DDay37.jpg) are huge wide fields with rows of upright, white crosses, often with one large monument in the center, with the grass kept short and relatively few trees. The Germany graves, by contrast, tended to look more [like this](http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/79089/79089,1163629829,7/stock-photo-german-cemetery-normandy-france-2178640.jpg): black plates, low to the ground, often in shaded and secluded areas like in a small clearing amongst the trees. Granted that’s maybe because they’re German graves in France, but I seem to remember being told that those forms of memorial were the Germans’ decision, and I thought it was an interesting contrast: the Allies simply set up their big, ‘glorious’ memorials, but the Germans had to try and balance the honoring of the soldiers themselves against the fact that they don’t consider their cause glorious any more. ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-german-school-children-taught-about-the-world-wars/583256/65 "2011-05-26T23:56:22Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > Are you trying to say that Robespierre’s regime, and Hitler’s were Christian??? If so, that is mucho, mucho wrong. > > Best wishes, > hh i see my error. i didn’t mean it was an institution so-named following principles of christianity. but the individuals certainly borrowed and perverted some principles in doing all those things. robespierre most especially. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-german-school-children-taught-about-the-world-wars/583256/66 "2011-05-27T01:34:56Z")
> [@mac\_bolan00](#): > > i see my error. i didn’t mean it was an institution so-named following principles of christianity. but the individuals certainly borrowed and perverted some principles in doing all those things. robespierre most especially. Are you kidding ? Robespierre was an arch-secular humanist. He wanted nothing more than the abolition of Christianity, or at least its complete removal from public life, to the point of creating his own “Cult of the Supreme Being” based on natural philosophy and civic virtues. It wasn’t really a religion, because it had no temples or ceremonies, just a bunch of festivals sprinkled throughout the year to celebrate the Revolution and what it brought. While unlike most of his co-Revolutionaries he wasn’t an atheist (he did believe in \*a \*God, though it wasn’t one who intervened in the lives of people and certainly was not Yahweh ; and he did believe in the immortality of the soul), he was the furthest thing from a Christian one could imagine. Unless you mean to say that reason, logic, equality, freedom, happiness, justice, the death of tyrants and the pursuit of absolute virtue are “principles of christianity” ? ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-german-school-children-taught-about-the-world-wars/583256/67 "2011-05-27T02:01:02Z")
Many thanks to our German dopers for their thoughtful, engaged and insightful posts here, and for helping to build the Federal Republic into the constructive, healthy, democratic society it is today. ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-german-school-children-taught-about-the-world-wars/583256/68 "2011-05-27T02:03:59Z")
^^ i think you’re right. he did not call himself a christian. he was highly influences by humanist philosophers (rousseau i suppose.) he certainly carried on like an academic, which is the worst politician in my book. but consider his quotes and words, most of it during the reign of terror: “To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is barbarity.” “If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country … The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.” the most telling influence of his deist/christian beliefs: “Is it not He whose immortal hand, engraving on the heart of man the code of justice and equality, has written there the death sentence of tyrants? Is it not He who, from the beginning of time, decreed for all the ages and for all peoples liberty, good faith, and justice? He did not create kings to devour the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery and falsehood. He created the universe to proclaim His power. He created men to help each other, to love each other mutually, and to attain to happiness by the way of virtue.” ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2011, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-german-school-children-taught-about-the-world-wars/583256/69 "2011-05-28T03:54:26Z")
Yes, he was a deist. I said so. He was _not_ a Christian of any shape or stripe, the god he believed in was nothing like the god of the Bible, and the ideals he pursued (and tried to make people pursue) did not spring forth from that god, nor from the bible. Virtue is not the exclusive prerogative of religion in general, certainly not christianity in particular. Most of the natural philosophy of the 18th century harkens back to themes already discussed in Ancient Greece centuries before Christ, and the ideals of freedom, equality, justice etc… predate even that by thousands of years. ---
**Author:** ![Pitchmeister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pitchmeister/32/3459_2.png) [@Pitchmeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pitchmeister)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2011, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-german-school-children-taught-about-the-world-wars/583256/70 "2011-05-28T09:55:34Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Many thanks to our German dopers for their thoughtful, engaged and insightful posts here, and for helping to build the Federal Republic into the constructive, healthy, democratic society it is today. 😊 Thank you, **Elendil’s Heir** , even though I’m a bit young to have built any sort of society, I do appreciate the forgiveness the world has let the German people experience after that first half of the 20th century. As we see in the case of the GDR, without generous outside help things could have turned a lot differently. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-german-school-children-taught-about-the-world-wars/583256.md?page=3)