From Racial Selection to Postwar Deception: The Napolas and Denazification

Abstract

This investigation examines the origins and function of the Napolas, boarding schools for the Third Reich’s future elite, before 1945 and demonstrates how those connected to the schools rehabilitated their experiences as students and teachers in the early postwar period and in the years since reunification. Between 1933 and 1945, the Napolas recruited racially valuable children and prepared them for leadership roles in Nazi Germany’s Thousand-Year Reich. The schools’ emphasis upon racial purity and premilitary training caught the attention of Heinrich Himmler and the SS. The appointment of August Heißmeyer, a high-ranking SS official, to the position of Napola inspector in 1936 opened the door for closer relations between the two organizations. Although the Napolas remained formally under the auspices of the Reich Education Ministry for the entirety of the Nazi dictatorship, the schools were gradually absorbed into the SS’ sphere of influence after 1936. The Napolas ceased to exist with the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. Due to the Napolas’ past ties to the SS, one of seven organizations deemed criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, former administrators, teachers, and pupils of the schools were caught in the crosshairs of the Allied denazification program. Legal changes in the U.S. Occupation Zone in March 1946 gave Napola apologists an opportunity to challenge Allied accusations regarding the Napolas’ past as Nazi sites of indoctrination. As a result, a collective defense of the Napolas began to emerge, growing in repute and complexity as the denazification process continued. By 1949, the Napolas’ “postwar legend,” an exonerative tale of the schools’ history during the Third Reich, had not only stalled prosecution indefinitely, but also successfully reintegrated alumni into West German society. The postwar myth that exonerated the schools survived challenges during the Bonn Republic more or less unscathed. The willingness of former Napola pupils to recast their experiences as Nazi elite students in a positive light indicates that the Napolas’ postwar legend has lost none of its persuasiveness in unified Germany.