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Deutscher Studentenbund/German Students' Bund</a> (NSDStB)
NAZI Organization: Agencies-- Deutscher Studentenbund/German Students' Bund (NSDStB)
Figure 1.--Even before Hitler seized poweer, university students were among the most ardent NAZIs. This NAZI poster read, "Students / Be the Führer's propagandists". At the bottom it read, "Hoch-und Fachschulen bekennen sich am 29 März zur Deutschen Freiheitsbewegung." This trans lates as 'Universities and technical schools are committed to the German freedom movement on March 29th." This is probably a reference to the single-question 1936 referendum, asking voters whether they approved of the military occupation of the Rhineland and a single NAZI party list for the new Reichstag.
German universities befire the NAZis seized power were among the most respected in the world. The Deutscher Studentenbund (German Students' Bund -- NSDStB) was founded as a division of the NAZI Party (1926). The purpose was to build University-level education and academic life arond the NAZI Party world view. The Bund organized ideological training at universities and implemented paramilitary training thinly disguised as exercise and work details. It complied with the Führerprinzip (leader principle) demanded by Hitler. The NAZIs found great support for their ultra-patriotic vission om campus. The SA which as so important to the NAZIs were largely uneducated thugs. But German universities were a different matter. They cam firm cultured amd welleduacted upper amd ,middle-class families. Even so NAZI support quickly dominted Germn universities. The NSDStB housed its members in so-called Kameradschaftshäusern (Fellowship Houses). These were no new. There was a long tradition of German all-male student fraternity groups (Burschenschaften). These fraternities even before the NAZId were the most nationalistic and antisemitic elements of German society. NSDStB members begn wearing the brown shirts of the SA with the Bund' own distinctive Swastika emblem. Even before the NAZIs seized power, there was scattered violence and intimdation on campus. Shirtly after Hitler seized power, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (April 7, 1933) brought the Bund to the firefrint on campus. Suddenly it went from a fringe student politicsl organization to a major force. The Restoration Law irdered the dismissal of all tenured German civil servants who were 'not of Aryan descent' as well as NAZI 'political opponents'. This meant the removal of Jewish and 'politically undesirable' faculty members. Exceptions were maded for those who had served at n the front in World War I or were appointed before the beginning of the Weimar Republic. If university administrators were slow to act the Bund launched 'cleansing' actions. Some 1,100 faculty members were dissmissed by 1935. Yhe Bund used acriin and intimidation ni=ot only against faculty members, but also Jewish students. The Bund also played a major part in the NAZI book burnings. Fermany prestigious universities were among the first to have their libraries cleased of books by Jewish authoirs and with ideas which questioned NAZI ideology.
