The Batman Tv Tome

The brightly colored comic book looks inviting. But Batman it isn't. Flipping to a page at random reveals a jubilant crowd shouting slogans: "Hail the Fuhrer"; "We will follow your orders"; and "Germany for the Germans." Above the throng is a large symbolic hand in Nazi salute. A drop of blood drips from one fingertip.

Entitled Hitler, this pictorial tome uses actual quotations in comic-style "balloons" throughout its 200 pages, along with drawings based on original photos. It is a bold attempt by German historian Friedemann Bedurftig (co-editor of The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich) and artist Dieter Kalenbach to enlighten their country's teenagers about the rise and fall of Nazi Germany.

They mince neither words nor images in conveying, for example, the "final solution." While the emaciated bodies of death-camp inmates are dragged into furnaces by fellow prisoners, a passage from the commentary reads: "Soldiers going home from the front, on vacation, whose trains would pass close by the huge chimneys of the crematoria in Auschwitz, were puzzled by the gigantic `chemical factory.' What really happened there? Some guessed it; a few knew. But nobody said anything."

While Hitler serves as the starting point, the book's contents give a richly detailed account of the German society that allowed Nazi ideology to flourish.

"The comic book is much more interesting and useful than any of the ordinary history books they give us," said a 16-year-old girl from Berlin who took part in a nationwide, government-funded pilot study on the use of the comic book in schools. "What I remember most was the way it showed how ordinary people were willing to follow Hitler without question. This is something I hadn't realized before."

The chief aim of the book is to help stem the growth of right-wing tendencies and the resurfacing of anti-Semitism among German youth. Viktor Niemann, managing director of Carlsen Verlag, which publishes Hitler, says he took on the project because "Things are happening in Germany today that can only be fought with education."

The need for more effective methods of teaching their young people about what some Germans refer to as "our darkest period" has been well demonstrated by studies and polls. A survey carried out in the southwestern city of Worms showed that among the 15- and 16-year-olds questioned, more than a quarter believed subsequent generations would judge Adolf Hitler in a "more positive, fairer" light. "The problem is that many German youngsters know no more about Hitler and the Nazis than they do about the Middle Ages," says Bodo Franzmann of the private Reader Foundation, which coordinated the pilot study.

German history teachers have to spend a minimum of 16 hours of instruction on the Nazi era in each school year, usually beginning in the fourth year. But in practice, the educators and young people interviewed say, the trend has been to teach the topic in a dry, dull, statistical manner.

Some teachers are reluctant to tackle the subject. But one difficulty has been the lack of interesting books-until now. There has been nothing but praise from the 35 teachers who have tested the comic book in their classrooms.

Erdmann Bedurftig, a Berlin highschool teacher (and brother of historian Friedemann), also took part in the pilot study and plans to continue using the book. "My aim is to try to reach the `blind follower,'" he says. "Unfortunately, you will never get through to the real right-wingers. So you've got to concentrate on that great middle band of young people who will grow up to be the silent majority. But the trouble with young people today is that they tend to look just at TV and videos. They won't read; a serious book just frightens them off."

Despite the positive reports, getting the comic book into the schools is an uphill struggle. Initially, the government backed the book and funded the purchase of thousands of copies to be distributed by the Reader Foundation to German high schools, free on request. But then the government changed its mind last summer.

The immediate stumbling block was the federal elections in October. The government was said to fear that distributing such a study aid could invite all sorts of sensational allegations--that, for example, the government was making light of the topic, that it was turning Hitler into a comic-book hero, and so on. "We Germans always think a serious subject should be handled in the same way," explains Franzmann. "And a comic book is something that is seen as not earnest enough."

Bedurftig believes that, at a deeper level, the politicians' attitudes toward the book show the fundamental need for the comic book: It addresses the crucial point of how dithering--or, worse, silence--only contributes to the further growth of problems such as racism and xenophobic nationalism.

Now the government seems to be changing its position again. It is believed to have given its tacit approval to the distribution of 20,000 copies of the book to schools. As one government official who has been working covertly to get the book into schools says: "It really hurts that such a good project is getting bashed around like this. But if it eventually reaches the hands of the practitioners, everything will be OK." --Linda Joffe, "The Guardian (liberal), London, Jan. 31,1995.

COPYRIGHT 1995 Stanley Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

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