Content area
Abstract
This study analyzes the content of Nazi education policy towards university students in four hitherto neglected areas. It argues that the concept of selection as interpreted by the Nazis played a central role in Nazi attitude towards students in the Third Reich. The first chapter shows that the Nazi state failed to improve students' living standards through a generous provision of student aid and Nazi interference was limited to the introduction of racial and political criteria into the selection of students for social assistance. The second chapter examines Nazi policy towards foreign students. It argues that the selection of foreign students did not change dramatically after the Nazi takeover. After 1939, however, racial and political criteria became much more important as the basis for the admission of foreign, especially eastern European, students. The third chapter is concerned with the policy of student health services after 1933. It argues that compulsory medical examinations of students contributed little to the fulfillment of grandiose Nazi plans to create a biologically superior student population. The failure of medical examinations undermined the system of biological selection of students. The last chapter discusses the policy of racial selection as applied to Jewish and part-Jewish university students in the Third Reich. Finally, the conclusion highlights the paradoxes in Nazi policy towards university students.
