This text sets out to challenge the reader by posing the question: can we learn from history? More particularly, can we learn from social history and the effects on people living today after National Socialism - the German form of fascism?; Of crucial significance, the authors show how social education in all areas of national socialist society operated and how it functioned in terms of an interest in political formation and social discipline. What is clear is an attempt at complete social control, an unceasing incorporation of the whole lives of all people. At the centre of all these practices stood a process that was meant to lead to a particular formation of identity and ideology. The success of National Socialism in achieving its objectives must today cause us to investigate the relationship between identity and formation, political culture and pedagogic activity.

Chapter 1 Political Culture and Education in Germany, Heinz Sünker; Chapter 2 Volk Community: Identity Formation and Social Practice, Heinz Sünker, Hans-Uwe Otto; Chapter 3 National-Socialist Youth Policy and the Labour Service: The Work Camp as an Instrument of Social Discipline, Peter Dudek; Chapter 4 Totalizing of Experience: Educational Camps, Jürgen Schiedeck, Martin Stahlmann; Chapter 5 Youth Welfare, Social Crisis and Political Reaction: Correctional Education in the Final Phase of the Weimar Republic, Elizabeth Harvey; Chapter 6 Emancipation or Social Incorporation: Girls in the Bund Deutscher Mädel, Dagmar Reese; Chapter 7 Why Did Social Workers Accept the New Order?, Stefan Schnurr; Chapter 8 Social Work as Social Education, Heinz Sünker, Hans-Uwe Otto; Chapter 9 After Auschwitz: The Quest for Democratic Education, Heinz Sünker;