Elwira Bauer's Nazi Propagandist Children's Book Trust No Fox on Green Meadow and no Jew upon his Oath

Elwira Bauer's Nazi Propagandist Children's Book Trust No Fox on Green Meadow and no Jew upon his Oath

In response to the factional society of the Weimar Republic, Nazism endeavored to create a new, more-unified society; an ideal national community, populated by an ethnically and culturally homogenous citizenry dogmatically obedient to the theories, laws, and policies of the central governing apparatus (the Nazi Hierarchy and ultimately Hitler). To attain its aims, Nazism employed a variety of tactics: laws were enacted to ethnically purify the population (e.g., the 1935 Nuremberg Laws), sentiments were propagated with the intention of uniting the population behind its leadership (i.e., the Führer Principle), and policies were instituted to ensure total cultural, political, and economic unity (e.g., the 1933 implementation of “Gleichschaltung”). In addition, Nazism utilized enormous amounts of written and oral propaganda to reinforce its principles and accompany its measures, rendering them more palatable to the public and consequently increasing their success, “Local cooperation and leadership were essential to the success of Coordination. So was a bombardment of propaganda from party newspapers and publicists…[e.g., Dr. Goebbels, der Angriff, etc.]” (Bergen 65).

The excerpt entitled “The Führer’s Youth” from Elwira Bauer’s 1936 Nazi propagandist children’s book Trust no Fox on Green Meadow and no Jew upon his Oath, exemplified the new ideal society envisioned by Nazism and reinforced Nazi theories and processes. The title of the book itself, “Trust … no Jew upon his Oath,” reinforced Nazism’s principle that “non-Aryans” were inferior to “Aryans” and, consequently, supported Nazism’s position that an ethnically homogen...

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...bably appeared in children’s stories written prior to the twentieth century and still in circulation today is not surprising in light of the fact that Hitler’s, and consequently Nazism’s, beliefs were unoriginal, “Adolf Hitler was not a brilliant, original thinker. There was nothing new about his views nor even in the way he combined them….What was different was the intensity with which he held his views…his ability to captivate large audiences [and] the tremendous power he achieved after he became chancellor of Germany…” (Bergen 40).

Works Cited

Bauer, Elwira. “The Führer’s Youth.” Nuremberg: Stürmer Verlag, 1936.

Bergen, Doris. War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. New York, NY:

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2003.

Gay, Peter. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider. New York, NY: W. W. Norton &

Company, 2001.