862.00 P.R./134
The Chargé in Germany (Gordon) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 6.]
Sir:
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3. Measures to Further the National Revolution. In celebration of Hitler’s birthday (see despatch No. 2313 of April 21, 1933,93 transmitted in this pouch) the Nazi Commissioner for the Prussian Ministry of Education has issued several regulations designed to further the national revolution.
Three educational institutions in Ploen, Koeslin and Potsdam, which were cadet schools before the war, are to be reorganized, in accordance with their tradition, as “national political educational institutions” in keeping with the spirit of the national revolution. The teaching staffs are to be reconstructed and the curriculum changed. The students are to wear the Hitler uniform.
In North Germany a “high school for the training of teachers” is to be established at once, which, in the composition of its faculty and the framing of its scheme of instruction, is to take due regard to the heretofore neglected requirements of the national educational aim. School pupils who failed to pass to a higher grade because they took an active part in the national uprising are to be passed, provided the deficiency is not due to other reasons also. Disciplinary measures against students as a result of actions committed from national motives are to be revoked. Students who as members of Nazi storm detachments or similar organizations fought for the national uprising are to be given preference in connection with special benefits (such as reduced fees, scholarships, etc.). To Jewish and Marxist students, on the other hand, such benefits are hereafter to be denied.
The Ministers of Education from all the German States met in Brunswick last week to consider a proposed uniform history book for the whole of Germany.
Students’ duels, prohibited by the republican governments (though they used to take place secretly), have now been openly resumed. The new regime encourages duelling as a means of rendering German university students wehrhaft, that is, capable of bearing arms.
The Prussian Minister of Justice has ordered that offenses committed [Page 314] out of patriotic motives in the struggle for the national uprising and which came under the last Presidential amnesty be deleted from the official records.
The criminal court at Offenburg has ruled that Schulz and Tillessen, members of a reactionary political organization who murdered Reich Minister of Finance Erzberger (Center Party) in the summer of 1921 and for whose capture the Reich Government promised a reward of 100,000 marks, come under the recent political amnesty. After successfully evading the police for twelve years, these men can now return to Germany to help further the national revolution.
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Respectfully yours,
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