The Disappearing Middle Ages: Medieval History in National Socialist Volksschulen Textbooks 1933 - 1945

My research points out, on the one hand: the “disappering” of the Middle Ages from the Volksschulen textbooks of the National Socialist Germany; on the other hand, the failure of the Nazi Regime policies to reform the German school and education system. Firstly, in the Volksschulen textbooks the German pre-history and not the Medieval history was described as the “golden Age” of the Aryan-Germanic populations. Thereby, the Middle Ages disappeared from many Volksschulen textbooks. Secondly, the Nazi Regime, according to the nazi ideology, tried both to reform the German school-system which was based on a regional structure and, as well, to reform and re-edit the German Volksschulen textbooks. But, neither the school-system reform nor the textbooks one took actually place in Nazi Germany because of the private, regional and local “resistences” against the Regime's orders and directives. The Nazi Regime, despite its totalitarian intentions, was not allmighty.