Page 453 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

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‘teachers’ were SS leaders of the GL and specialists from the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt-
SS (RuSHA) (SS Race and Settlement Office) and the Amt Ahnenerbe (Office of Ancestral
Heritage) . Riedweg himself concluded the courses with a speech on the ‘Germanic SS’.
42
In 1943, he transformed the former monastery Saint Michaelis in Hildesheim into a house
called Germanien, in which so-called ‘political courses for leaders’ (politische Führerle-
hrgänge) were held. The ideological education was complemented by paramilitary exercises.
The participants wore the black uniforms of the ‘Germanic SS’. At the end of the courses
in Babelsberg and Hildesheim, they had to pass a written and an oral exam. The most able
entered the Waffen-SS’ Junkerschule at Tölz or joined the GL .
43
The education of the ‘Germanic SS’ was further developed with the establishment of
similar schools on occupied territory such as Konsvinger (Norway), Avegoor (Netherlands),
Hoveltegaard (Denmark) and Schoten (Flanders) . Moreover, in the years 1942 and 1943
44
Riedweg organised ‘Germanic congresses’ at Magdeburg, Tölz and Hannover. The GL in-
vited speakers – joined by Riedweg – from Germany and various bordering countries who
45
argued in favour of the ‘Germanic way of thinking’ . However, to enforce the SS way of
46
thinking in the ‘Germanic countries’, the education of the youth could not be neglected.

b. Youth
In order to educate the youth in the ‘Germanic countries’ the GL established National-
politische Erziehungsanstalten (Napolas) (National Political Institutes of Education) in the
47
latter countries . As soon as these schools were established outside the Reich’s borders, they
48
were under the GL’s control. This appears clearly through an organisational chart of the GL
branch in Flanders, in which the Napolas figure in the first place under Section V . there
49
was, however, another non-SS Nazi organisation which particularly interested the GL and
was supposed to spread outside the Reich and affect the non-German ‘Germanic’ youth.
according to Riedweg, it was Himmler or Baldur von Schirach, the Reichsjugendführer
(Leader of the Reich’s Youth) , who wanted to educate men of the ‘Germanic Waffen-SS’
50
Luzern, 20.12.1947, p. 49.
42 AF, E 4320 (B), 1973/87, Bd. 10, Verhör des Dr. Heinrich Büeler durch den eidgenössischen Untersuchungs-
richter O. Gloor als Beschuldigter, 9.11.1946, p. 22.
43 AF, E 4320 (B), 1984/29, Urteil des Bundesstrafgerichts in Sachen Franz Riedweg und 18 Mitangeklagte,
Luzern, 20.12.1947, pp. 49-50.
44 BA Berlin, NS 31/375, SS-Hauptamt-Amt VI, Monatsbericht / Oktober 1942, 20.11.1942, pp. 4, 8, 9, 11.
45 Almost exclusively professors and other scientists from Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Flanders and
Germany (AF, E 4320 (B), 1973/87, Bd. 10, Verhör des Dr. Heinrich Büeler durch den eidgenössischen
Untersuchungsrichter O. Gloor als Beschuldigter, 9.11.1946, p. 24).
46 AF, E 4320 (B), 1984/29, Urteil des Bundesstrafgerichts in Sachen Franz Riedweg und 18 Mitangeklagte,
Luzern, 20.12.1947, pp. 50-51.
47 Napolas were National Socialist boarding schools which led to the baccalaureate (Kammer; Bartsch, op. cit.,
pp. 160-162).
48 loock, op. cit., p. 61.
49 BA Berlin, NS 21/930, Germanische Leitstelle, Aussenstelle Flandern, Dienststelle SS-Brigadeführer Jung-
claus.
50 Weiss, Hermann (hg.), Biographisches Lexikon zum Dritten Reich, Frankfurt a. Main: Fischer Taschenbuch
Verlag, 2002, pp. 404-406.