German Children’s Literature During WWII Era

For my first blog post I will be writing about the literature that children were exposed to during the WWII era in Germany. I was a little unsure what to write about for this blog post, but I saw another classmate write about North Korean Children’s Literature and that got me thinking. My family has always been big historical fans and my father and I often go across various states visiting battlefields and researching the history. This is when it dawned upon me that I would like to research the various types of children’s literature that was available during the Hitler era. I know Germany was very similar to North Korea in the sense that it was a dictatorship, but I was unaware of how they were reaching out to children.

I came across a Smithsonian article titled How the Nazis “Normalized” Anti-Semitism by Appealing to Children by Menachem Wecker where he details his experience in a World War II Museum in Massachusetts.  Wecker talks about how the anti-semitism movement from 1919-1939 and the European hatred towards Jews and how this was the norm across the country. He then says, “This “normalization”, however, is perhaps most apparent in the hate-filled toys and books designed for children. The exhibit features a 1938 book, whose first page state: “Just as it is often hard to tell a toadstool from an edible mushroom, so too is it often very hard to recognize the Jew as a swindler and criminal”” (Wecker).  Before reading this article I was very curious as to what literature was available at this time and how they portrayed Hitler, and these statements alone answered my question. Another line that assured that Hitler was present in children’s literature is when Wecker says, “The strongest manifestation of anti-semitism in the exhibition is in the children’s books. Anti-semitism really has to be introduced at the earliest possible moment in the education of German children” (Wecker). I found these statements to be almost in parallel with what is going on right now in North Korea and how they approach their country’s dominance. I really enjoyed reading this article and hope to do more research in the future in how other areas of this era are being portrayed to the children, such as the media outlets and schooling.

Works Cited:

Wecker, Menachem. “How the Nazis ‘Normalized’ Anti-Semitism by Appealing to Children.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 27 June 2016, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-nazi-normalized-anti-semitism-appealing-children-180959539/.