Ask Lemmy

Most of my history / social studies classes, including AP history my senior year, focused on the United States. I think there was and is an AP World History, but my school didn't offer it. So we learned about Pearl Harbor, and D-Day, and Nagasaki, but not much of the Euro-centric lead-up to war.

One of my social studies classes, maybe 9th grade or so, spent a period watching The Wave, which might be the closest part of my formal education to addressing OP's question.

One thing to keep in mind with a lot of responses is often when someone says "we didn't learn about x in high school", what they should be saying is "I didn't learn about x in high school". I've certainly heard former classmates claiming not to have learned something even though they were sitting next to me when I learned it.

When i was a preteen, we learned about WW2, mainly from a US perspective, and had a fairly large focus on the holocaust, including a visit to a holocaust museum.

As a teen, I had a class on specifically European history. In there, we learned about lot more about the rise of the nazis (though not much on Italian fascists).

Here's the tl;dr on what I remember learning about then:

WWI ended with the treaty of Versailles which was not a realistic, sustainable peace. We learned about the economic trouble like hyperinflation. We learned about the beer hall putsch, and that it was effectively unpunished. We learned that Hitler then sought power through legal means by allying with a broad range of groups unhappy with the current government. As he rose to power, various elements were purged from the government. Concurrently, political violence from the stormtroopers suppressed minorities and other enemies from organizing against them. This culminated in Hitler being elected chancellor, and then the enabling act gave him ultimate power. In the night of the long knives, all the allied elements in the party were purged. After that was kristallnacht, the remilitarization of the rhineland, annexation of Austria and the sudetenland, and then finally the invasion of Poland.

Those guys are older than me but the extent of my education on the matter was basically that Germany was experiencing a lot of poverty and inflation and stuff until Hitler came along and stole everyone’s hearts with his charisma

WWII, and actually the entire 20th century except for some civil rights stuff, was actually hardly covered in history class at all. But boy oh boy did we cover our Revolutionary War about 8 times over, and our Civil War like 5 times over. Most of my knowledge about WWII comes from family members and the History Channel (back when it was about history)

In the mid-70s, in middle school (8th grade), we were taught all about the holocaust-which I remember because of the pictures and movies. I don't remember what we were taught about the war itself, I'm sure it was covered. I didn't realize it then, but many of my teachers grew up during, or were adults during WWII, simply based on how old they were. My English teacher that year was 70+, and he told combat stories in class.

We learned about Anne Frank and read Night in middle school. In high school we had separate classes for US, world, and European history. We covered the beer hall putsch, kristalnacht, Reichstag fire, that Hitler was given emergency powers, etc. WWI reparations and hyperinflation. Propaganda and Josef Goebbels "if you repeat a lie long enough, people will start to believe it". Watched some of Triumph of the Will. We also had separate classes covering western philosophy which included Nitzche and how Nazis appropriated the will to power. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of the details. However I suspect this is more education than the average American receives.

I'm in the demographic you're looking for. It went something like this:

• End of WWI with the Treaty of Versailles
• Massive war repayment debts placed on Weimar Republic
• Beer Hall Putsch
• The Weimar Republic falling because of disenfranchised German citizens
• Nazi party rising in power in the Reichstag
• Brown shirts (SA)
• Burning of the Reichstag
• Hitler seizing power
• Night of the Long Knives
• The west ignoring military limits on German military expansion (aircraft, Panzer 1)
• Annexation of Austria
• Talk of leibenstrom

etc

Thats from memory. Apologies for butchering any spelling or some of those events out of order.

So, yes, lots and LOTS of things in the USA government right now are ringing alarm bells like crazy. Executive orders just this week of military support for local police "to root out immigrants" sound close to creation of the Brownshirts (SA). The villainization of immigrants sound disgustingly close to the targeting of various minority groups that Hitler targeted (Roma, Jews, gays, Poles).

Practically none. The only formal education I had that covered the 1930s focused on the Great Depression, and blaming it primarily on the Dust Bowl The same school system completely skipped WWI, and the only WWII lesson was a week on the Diary of Anne Frank.

Everything I know about the rise of Hitler, I learned on my own.

Obligatory butt-in from a European: I just wanted to provide a baseline for comparison.

Here in scandinavialand we watched The Wave (1981) in school to educate us on how easily a population can be convinced to support fascism.