#fascists #universities #history"In the 1975 book, *The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of German Universities*, historian Frederic Lilge chronicles how German universities, which entered the 20th century in a golden age of global intellectual influence, did not resist the Nazi regime but adapted instead to it.
Even before seizing national power in 1933, the Nazi Party was closely monitoring German universities through nationalist student groups and sympathetic faculty, flagging professors politically unreliable and particularly Jews, Marxists, liberals and pacifists.
After Hitler took office in 1933, his regime moved to purge academic institutions of Jews and political opponents. The 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service commanded by the firing of Jewish and other non-Aryan professors and members of the faculty politically suspect.
Soon after, professors were required to swear loyalty to Hitler, curricula were revised to emphasize . . . . . racial science and . . a pseudoscientific framework used to justify antisemitism and Aryan supremacy . all departments and were restructured to serve to Nazi ideology.
Some institutions, like the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart, even rushed to honor Hitler with an honorary doctorate within weeks of his rise to power. He has declined the offer, though the gesture signaled the university's eagerness to align with the regime. Professional associations, such as the Association of German Universities, remained silent, ignored key opportunities to resist before universities lost their autonomy and became subservient to the Nazi state.
As linguist Max Weinreich wrote in his 1999 book, *Hitler*, professors, many academics didn't just comply, they enabled the regime by reshaping their research. This legitimized state doctrine, helping to build the intellectual framework of the regime.
A few academics resisted and were dismissed, exiled or executed. It wasn't.
The transformation of German academia was not a slow drift but a swift and systemic overhaul. But what made Hitler's orders stick was the eagerness of many academic leaders to comply, justify and normalize the new order. Each decision - each erased name, each revised syllabus, each closed program and department . was framed as necessary, even patriotic. Within a few years, German universities no longer served knowledge . served they power."
https://elobrero.es/component/k2/164050-universities-in-nazi-germany-and-the-soviet-union-thought-giving-in-to-government-demands-would-save-their-independence.html
