The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

by William L. Shirer

Hitler’s scholastic failure rankled in him in later life, when he heaped ridicule on the academic “gentry,” their degrees and diplomas and their pedagogical airs.

No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda.

In most cases it did no harm to a city boy and girl to spend six months in the compulsory Labor Service, where they lived outdoors and learned the value of manual labor and of getting along with those of different backgrounds. No one who traveled up and down Germany in those days and talked with the young in their camps and watched them work and play and sing could fail to see that, however sinister the teaching, here was an incredibly dynamic youth movement.