Tape Recording of Hitler’s Speeches to Be Introduced in German Schools

Tape recordings of speeches by Hitler and Goebbels are being produced in Bavaria for use in German high school history classes, the German press reports. The Frankfurter Rundschau says two versions were being made, one with and one without commentary. The version with commentary was at the suggestion of West German educators who feared that use of straight speeches might be “too dangerous.”

The idea of using such recordings was to enable pupils to form their own picture of the Nazi regime, the report said, since teachers’ accounts of the Nazi period have frequently been met with disbelief by the pupils. The Frankfurt newspaper quoted one high school pupil as saying his teacher usually answered evasively when asked what he had done during the Third Reich and that at most only a few teachers have the courage to admit they had fallen “under the spell of Nazi ideologies.”