Sparta's German Children

The use by the Nazi regime of idealised images of ancient Sparta is increasingly recognised as an important element of the Third Reich. This work explores the historical roots and the personal effects of these ideals.

From the eighteenth century until 1945, German children were taught to model themselves on the young of an Ancient Greek city-state: Sparta. Helen Roche is the first to examine this still sensitive topic systematically and in depth. She collects and analyses official and published German evocations of Sparta but also, and remarkably, reconstructs the experiences of German children taught to be `little Spartans' in the Prussian Cadet Corps and National Socialist elite schools, the Napolas.