A landmark 1938 investigation into Nazi education returns to readers, raising enduring questions about propaganda, discrimination and the role of schools in shaping the next generation.
GOLDEN PAGE NEWS | History & Society
A book written in exile as Adolf Hitler consolidated power in Germany is finding renewed attention in France, bringing back a warning about how education can be transformed from a means of developing independent minds into an instrument of political control.
Ten Million Nazi Children, by German writer and anti-Nazi campaigner Erika Mann, examines how schools, family life and youth organisations were used to bring children into line with Nazi ideology. Originally published in English in the United States in 1938 under the title School for Barbarians: Education Under the Nazis, the work drew on school textbooks, political speeches, official documents, newspaper reports and testimony to document the regime’s influence over young people. A new French edition, published by Nouveau Monde Éditions in August 2026, has brought the work back into the public conversation. Source: Nouveau Monde Éditions.
Angle One: How Nazi Germany Turned Education Into an Instrument of Control
Mann’s investigation challenged the assumption that schools under a national education system necessarily serve children’s intellectual and moral development. She argued that Nazi Germany was reshaping education to cultivate obedience to Hitler, promote racial ideology, encourage hostility towards designated enemies and prepare young people to accept the regime’s political and military objectives.
The book describes a system that reached beyond the classroom. School materials, political messaging, family expectations and youth organisations reinforced the same worldview, leaving children exposed to propaganda in multiple areas of their lives. Jewish children were excluded and persecuted, while those classified by the regime as “Aryan” were encouraged to identify with its racial hierarchy and submit to its demands.
Mann’s work was particularly significant because it was published before the full scale of Nazi Germany’s later crimes and the Second World War had become clear. Her account offered international readers evidence of how authoritarian rule was influencing everyday life, including the education and upbringing of children. According to the Leo Baeck Institute, the book drew on interviews with refugees, original documents and textbooks, and sold approximately 40,000 copies in the United States. Source: Leo Baeck Institute.
The book’s central concern was not simply that children were being taught political ideas. It was that education was being reorganised to discourage independent judgement, normalise discrimination and subordinate personal conscience to the demands of the state.
Angle Two: Why the Book Still Matters in Debates About Education and Propaganda
The renewed publication of Mann’s work invites a broader question: what happens when schools and youth institutions are expected to produce political loyalty rather than encourage independent thought?
The historical circumstances of Nazi Germany cannot be equated automatically with contemporary political disputes. However, the mechanisms Mann documented—repeated propaganda, the exclusion of targeted groups, the manipulation of educational materials and pressure to conform—remain important subjects for historians, educators and societies concerned with democratic resilience.
Education is never entirely separate from the values of the society in which it operates. Decisions about what children learn, whose histories are represented and how minorities are discussed can shape their understanding of citizenship and belonging. The critical distinction is whether education equips young people to examine evidence, question authority and understand different perspectives, or demands that they accept an official ideology without scrutiny.
Mann’s account also highlights the vulnerability of children to political systems they did not choose. Young people depend on adults and institutions for information, protection and guidance. When those institutions systematically distort facts or portray entire groups as enemies, children can become participants in prejudice before they have the tools to challenge it.
For that reason, the book is relevant not only to the history of fascism but also to current discussions about media literacy, the independence of teachers, historical revisionism and the responsibility of governments to protect education from political abuse.
Who Was Erika Mann?
Born in 1905, Erika Mann was the eldest daughter of Nobel Prize-winning German novelist Thomas Mann and a writer, actress, cabaret performer and outspoken opponent of Nazism. Her family included several prominent literary figures, but her own public work became closely associated with resistance to Hitler’s regime.
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Mann went into exile and continued campaigning against the regime through writing, public speaking and political performance. She later worked as a war correspondent and reported on the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War. Her career reflected a commitment to documenting political developments and challenging authoritarianism. Source: Arts in Exile.
Although her book was published in 1938, its German-language edition appeared through an exile publisher in Amsterdam that same year. It was not published in Germany until 1986, according to the publisher’s account. The delay underscores the barriers faced by anti-Nazi writing under the dictatorship and the importance of exile publishing in preserving and circulating dissenting voices.
A Historical Document With a Contemporary Message
The French edition of Ten Million Nazi Children contains 288 pages and is published by Nouveau Monde Éditions, with a foreword by Alfred Grosser, an introduction by Thomas Mann and an afterword by Irmela von der Lühe. The paperback edition is listed at €22.90, with an electronic edition also available.
More than a historical account of a dictatorship, Erika Mann’s book is a study of how political power can enter the everyday lives of families and children. It demonstrates why the content of education, the treatment of minorities and the freedom to question authority are not merely academic concerns: they can shape the future of an entire society.
Its renewed publication offers readers an opportunity to revisit a warning written when the direction of Nazi Germany was already alarming, but the full catastrophe that lay ahead had yet to unfold.
