The Rise of the National Socialist Students’ Association and the Failure of Political Education in the Third Reich

The Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (NSDStB) is often considered to have been one of the most successful branches of the Nazi Party. Many former students assert that it was impossible to escape its control (though this sometimes represents a veiled apology for collaboration). Even present-day scholars, failing to see through the image that the NSDStB itself tried to promote, claim that, despite initial teething troubles, it reached monolithic omnipotence by 1937 at the latest.1 The purpose of this paper is to examine the rather limited ways in which the NSDStB did fulfil its aims and to suggest the causes of its failure.