The Hitler Youth proved a thoroughly disruptive influence on formal education. ‘School’, one Social Democratic report already noted in 1934, ‘is cons… - Richard J. Evans

The overall effect of Hitler Youth membership, some Social Democratic observers complained, was a ‘coarsening’ of the young. The suppression of any discussion or debate, the military discipline, the emphasis on physical prowess and competition, led boys to become violent and aggressive, especially towards young people who for whatever reason had not joined the Hitler Youth. Hitler Youth groups travelling by train amused themselves by insulting and threatening guards who failed to say ‘Hail, Hitler!’ every time they asked a passenger for his ticket.

The widespread intimidation of the population provided the essential precondition for a process that was in train all over Germany in the period from February to July 1933… The Nazi takeover of the federated states provided a key component in this process… At the same time as the state governments were being overthrown, local Nazis, backed by squads of armed stormtroopers and SS men, were occupying town halls, terrorizing mayors and councils into resigning, and replacing them with their own nominees.

Like the Hitler Youth in the schools, the Nazi Students’ League and its members did not fight sly of naming and shaming the teachers they thought were not toeing the Nazi line. In 1937 a Hamburg professor complained that no student meeting had been held in the previous few years ‘in which the professoriate has not been dismissed in contemptuous terms as an ‘ossified’ society that is not fit to educate or lead you people in the universities.’