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Chandler Mitchell
Wertz-Orbaugh
UWRT 1103
13 January 2016
Current Education on the Holocaust
During high school education the curriculum included mainly information on the
termination camps, military structure, and history of the Third Reich in the Holocaust and
general public relations. Most of this information was derived from U.S. sources with a few
exceptions form the other world powers take on Holocaust history. But, apart from that, the
instruction also included information on military and medical advancement during the time
period of the Holocaust in which this particular event contributed to. Although not everything to
know about the Holocaust was instructed, a fair amount of knowledge was received.
The main knowledge learned about the Holocaust included Hitlers rise to power, the
politics involved, the actions taken by the Third Reich, and how the Reich operated. Hitlers rise
to power was supported mostly by the fact that he was a highly influential speaker full of
charisma and charm, and that he used the Jews as a scapegoat, gaining popularity for his
accusations against the Jewish people and their religious, cultural, and personal activities and
standing. After Hitler gained power, he made sure that he eradicated every opportunity for an
uprising. This included the introduction of the program known as Hitlers Youth, in which
children were taken from home and trained to be a loyal soldier to the Third Reich. This included
children ratting their parents out to the authorities for any talk considered treasonous to the Third
Reich. Along with a program designed to make youth loyal to the Reich, Hitler also controlled

what information was taught in public schools and he also determined what information was
placed inside the books, ridding the schools of anything not approved by the Reich, including
teachers who refused to teach or not teach what was required by the Reich.
Apart from societal control, the Reich also implemented internment camps, also known
as termination camps, and sent every Jewish person and anyone deemed traitorous or a burden to
these camps. The camps operated in the way of forced labor and starvation. For those who
survived the long hours and months of malnutrition, their efforts granted them a spot in the gas
chambers where mass amounts of prisoners were gathered into a room for a group shower and
exposed to toxic gas. After this the bodies were burned and any valuables melted down. As with
everything in the camps this task was completed by the prisoners within. Outside of the camps
some people were just lined up and executed out in the streets. This was most likely done to help
maintain control through fear. Outside of the internal affairs, the Reichs military set out on a
campaign to conquer the entire continent. The Reich set out to do this by allying with
Mussolinis forces and pushing into bordering territories, taking over cities and destroying any
who opposed them. Without the intervention of the U.S., the entire continent may very well have
been under control of the Reich.
Although I know little on the military and medical advancements made by the Reich, the
high school curriculum did scratch the surface of this topic. The staggering rate of medical
advancement made by the Reich was achieved by both unethical and medical malpractice.
Doctors in the Reich would use prisoners as subjects for medical experiments and studies. Such
studies included testing how many bullets a person could take, at what range, and how likely
they were to survive both with and without medical aid. Other experiments included low altitude
conditions that the Reichs aviation squad would encounter. These experiments put camp

prisoners in low-pressure chambers to determine the maximum altitude form which individuals
of damaged aircraft could safely parachute from. Military advancements included submarines,
and advanced tanks and aircraft. The biggest advancement had to be the creation of the German
U-boat, a submarine. This resource proved highly effective throughout the Reichs war campaign
because it let the vehicle remain nearly invisible to enemy sight and radar whilst still being able
to remain close enough to launch a sneak attack with underwater missiles. Although the Reichs
military was defeated, it was a formidable force, and had situations been slightly different in one
or two key battles, the entire scope of history could be vastly different.