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Goebbels Experiment

This document discusses Germany's Academic Exchange Service and its role in Nazi propaganda efforts during the 1930s and 1940s. The Exchange Service sent German students abroad as propagandists while also heavily indoctrinating the thousands of foreign students studying in Germany each year. It organized the students into groups and exposed them to Nazi ideology through various social and cultural programs, with the goal of influencing youth around the world and spreading pro-Nazi views.

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52 views

Goebbels Experiment

This document discusses Germany's Academic Exchange Service and its role in Nazi propaganda efforts during the 1930s and 1940s. The Exchange Service sent German students abroad as propagandists while also heavily indoctrinating the thousands of foreign students studying in Germany each year. It organized the students into groups and exposed them to Nazi ideology through various social and cultural programs, with the goal of influencing youth around the world and spreading pro-Nazi views.

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THE GO EBBELS

EXPERIMENT 1

A Study of the Nazi Propaganda


Machine
ßy
DERRICK SINGTON
AND

ARTHUR WEIDENFELD

LONDON
*
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
Fwst l:!..äition • • 1942

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THE ACADEMIC EXCHANGE SERVICE
disguised agencies for carrying on this work is the German
Academic Exchange Service.
This organization is nominally under the control of Rosen-
berg, and the constitution of his Party Office for Foreign
Politics, as set out in the Handbook of Party Organization,
lays down that the President of the Academic Exchange
Service shall also hold a stated rank in the Party Office.
Put briefly, the activities of the Academic Exchange Service
have meant that since 1933 hundreds of seemingly disin-
terested German students abroad have been propagandists
and every foreign student in Germany has been the object
of concentrated propaganda.
An article by an American girl student of Missouri Univer-
sity, written in October 1938, illustrates in an illuminating
way the activities of German "exchange students" in the
U.S.A. The writer of the article bad met in 1937 a German
student, Elisabeth Noelle, studying at the School ofJournalism
in Missouri University. Nothing particularly remarkable
was noticed about the German girl's behaviour except a
tendency to write frequent articles defending and eulogizing
National Socialism for the College magazine. Then at
Christmas Miss Noelle went to spend her holidays on a
fruit farm in Florida owned by a certain Herr Hachmeister.
Also spending Christmas on the fann were 54 other Gennan
exchange students.
A group ofliberal students in Missouri University, interested
in the implications of this " organized Christmas," made
some investigations and turned up a despatch from the New
Tork Times correspondent in Germany, dated August 27th,
1937. lt revealed that at Neustrelitz on the previous day a
mobilization had taken place of all German "exchange
students " who were about to leave for universities abroad.
Dr. Burmeister, the Director of the Academic Exchange
Service, addressing the students, had told them that they
were an important element of Gennany's foreign propaganda.
This mobilization had come as a climax to a year's special
ideological training.
In a later despatch from Germany in the same year, the
93
THE ENTERTAINMENT OF STUDENTS
New Tork Times correspondent gave the other side of the
picture and described the treatment of American students
in Germany. He reported that there had been a marked
increase during 1937 in the number of American preparatory
schools "exchanging" with the official National Socialist
boarding schools. '' The American boys in Germany undergo
a year's thorough training in National Socialisrn and wear
the customary brown shirt uniform," he said.
The Foreign Division has always played an active part in
the entertainment of all foreign schoolboys and students in
Germany. They are treated to tea . .parties, theatre tickets at
reduced prices and conducted tours round Party buildings.
Special societies which profess to exist for cultural purposes
play their part in entertaining and influencing foreign youth.
One of these is the German-Iberian Society, whose President
is General Faupel, the first German Ambassador to Franco.
Spanish, Portuguese and South American students are o:ffered
recreation and social facilities by this organization. In pre-
war days, Bertling, the director of the German-American
Institute, used to give fortnightly " beer evenings " for Ameri-
can students in Germany in his villa, with German students
forming an amateur Tyrolean band and singing Alpine songs
translated into American slang. Songs deriding Churchill
and the Jews were also sung, but, as one young man who
attended said, "only very late in the evening."
Since the United States and most of the South American
Republics broke with Germany the Academic Exchange
Service has .had to concentrate on European students. At
the end of January 1942, Dr. Baatz, the head of the German
Academic Teachers' Union, said in a broadcast that 1,100
foreign research students were working in Germany.
Certain picked German students are from time to time
earmarked by the Propaganda Ministry for permanent
employment. In the past such selected students were often
sent abroad under "exchange arrangements," to gain experi-
ence and to serve a kind of apprenticeship in Nazi propa-
ganda. Here is an actual case : A young Austrian studied
at the Philosophical Faculty of Vienna U niversity and after-
94

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