School for Supermen

On dark days in Germany's Rhineland the fog boils off the cold, black lake waters of the Urftstausee, rolls upward to shroud in Wagnerian vagueness and grandeur a vast modern castle of reinforced concrete and brownstone that clings to the mountainside above. The castle is Ordensburg-Vogelsang, one of several such "Fortresses of the New Order" built in the 1930s. There, in well-equipped classrooms, comfortable dormitories, a "Tower of Wisdom" in which Hitler once planned to enshrine a sequel to Mein Kampf, the Nazi elite trained the future rulers of Germany and, they hoped, of the world.

Last week no supermen strutted in Burg Vogelsang. The castle's 4-ft. walls echoed only the snores of weary G.I.s and the clatter of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division's mess kits. Burg Vogelsang had fallen almost without a fight.

The Will to Rule. Burg Vogelsang, like the other Ordensburgen, was designed for the advanced training of the carefully winnowed graduates of 32 primary schools.

These primary schools trained likely little leaders from the ages of 12 to 18. After seven more years of "practical study" in labor, the army, or some profession, one fourth of their graduates, some 12,000 in all and now aged 25, were picked for the Ordensburgen.

"The folkish State," said Hitler in Mein Kampf, "has to direct its entire education primarily not at pumping in mere knowledge, but at the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies." At Ordensburgen tests of courage, such as diving from a 30-ft. board, were frequent. A stableful of fine horses were used to inculcate mastery by teaching the students "how to ride a horse, to rule the living animal with their iron will." And because "whoever rules others must first learn to rule himself," there were "strict tests in will power, for example: no smoking or drinking for a week." Ley's teachers taught the Nazi versions of history, philosophy, economics, "race." To acquaint them with the country, each year of the student's four-year course was at a different Ordensburgen. Each apprentice fuehrer received a salary and uniforms, and his family was supported by the state.

At the successful completion of his course he was sent for final training to one of two special Fuehrer Schule. For failure, he was dismissed-- but not into private life.

No Road Back. Wrote Dr. Ley: "These men to whom the National Socialist Party now gives everything that a real man can hope for from life, must realize and keep in the bottom of their hearts that they are now dedicated to the order for life and death, and that they must obey it without question. . . . These men must know and realize that from now on there is no road back for them. He who fails or would betray the part of the Leader will be destroyed by this order. . . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.