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A new study from American and Swiss researchers shows that the anti-semitic propaganda used by the Nazis had a lifelong effect on German children who grew up under Hitler, AP has reported.
The study is based on surveys taken in 1996 and 2006 of 5, 300 people from 264 towns and cities across Germany. It found that children are the most susceptible to propaganda of any kind and so the ones who were educated in Nazi germany preserved the anti-semitism which was drilled into them.
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So children are more easily swayed and will believe what they are told. So what else is new? Lets see, the Tooth Fairy, the Stork, the Boogie Man and the Jews. The last two are examples of scary things that people have used over the centuries to get their children to behave.
But by adulthood people learn the truth. But this does not apply to more serious indoctrinations. Think of all the Nazi and racist adults in the world today who believe what they do because they were taught it from birth.
“It’s not just that Nazi schooling worked, that if you subject people to a totalitarian regime during their formative years it will influence the way their mind works, ” Hans-Joachim Voth of the University of Zurich, one of the study’s authors, told AP. “The striking thing is that it doesn’t go away afterward.”
“The extent to which Nazi schooling worked depended crucially on whether the overall environment where children grew up was already a bit anti-Semitic, ” said Voth. “It tells you that indoctrination can work, it can last to a surprising extent, but the way it works has to be compatible to something people already believe.”
