6. EDUCATION AND PROPAGANDA

(a) All schools and universities will be closed until the Allied Education Commission has developed a usable reform program. It is assumed that it will besome time before any center of higher education will again be opened. Until this has occurred, German students are not prohibited from continuing their studies at foreign universities. Elementary schools shall be opened as soon as suitable teaching staff and textbooks are available.

(b) All German radio stations, newspapers, magazines, weekly papers, etc. shall cease operation or publication until such time as suitable monitoringmeasures have been created and an appropriate program has been worked out.

Are the German people mentally ill?

American literature regarding the reeducation of the Germans was probably as extensive as that dealing with „economicdisarmament“ and repatriation. Some, such as Richard M. Brickner, Professor of Psychiatry at New York’s Columbia University, were of the opinion that, over the past 150-200 years, the German people had become victims of a mass mental illness, were obsessed by racist megalomania, and were the subjects of a paranoid disturbance. Currently, the paranoids were in the majority, and the question was, how could the non-paranoids be identified and be utilized in assisting in curing and reeducating the paranoids. The German question might primarily be a psychiatric and psychopathological matter. Brickner attempted to develop a guideline for healing the German soul. Edmund Jacobson, Professor for Clinical Psychology, was more pessimistic in his verdict when he stated that, just as with animals, humans exhibited varying degrees of destructive drive and wildness. Regardless of their milieu, it was their „psycho-chemical character“, which drove the Germans to their criminal attacks against world peace.

While Jacobson seemed to doubt that the German question could be solved by medical means, David Abrahamson, Professor of Psychiatry, felt that it might be possible to eliminate the aggressive German mental attitude with the aid of psychiatric tools, and recommended the employment of psychoanalytical techniques; above all, the dominant position of the father in the German family must be broken, and future education left primarily in the hands of women. In contrast to Brickner et al., others felt that the Germans were mentally healthy, but had, for generations, been mis-educated by nationalistic and pan-Germaniceducators, and that the problem called for reeducation and a redesign of the German educational system.

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Tod über Deutschland
Professor Emeritus Dr. Kurt Keppler, Wiberfort University, Ohio USA