“Occidental mathematics,” writes one Dr. Erwin Geek, in The National Socialist Essence of Education, “as it has developed in the past three hundred years, is Aryan spiritual property; it is an expression of the Nordic fighting spirit, of Nordic struggle for the supremacy of the world beyond its boundaries.”
It sounds like a vast joke against learning — “an expression of the Nordic fighting spirit!” But we have been warned. At least, now, the problems in arithmetic cannot surprise us.
They all have to do with airplanes, bombs, cannon, and guns.
The booklets called Völkisches Rechnen — a new term meaning “people’s arithmetic” or “national-political problems of arithmetic” — account for this puzzling adjustment: sums in terms of bullet trajectories! Unfortunately, there is not much that can be done about national political problems with ordinary addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division as they are usually taught in the public schools. In the secondary schools, more can be done. National Political Practice in Arithmetic Lessons sets the following problems:
I. Germany had, according to the Versailles Treaty, to surrender all her colonies. (An enumeration of colonies and mandates, with estimates of population and area is given) A. What was Germany’s total loss in population and territory? B. How much did each mandatory power receive in territory and population? C. How many times greater is the surrendered territory than the area of Germany? D. Compare the population of Germany with the population of the lost territories.
II. A bombing plane can be loaded with one explosive bomb of 35 kilograms, three bombs of 100 kilograms, four gas bombs of 150 kilograms, and 200 incendiary bombs of one kilogram. A. What is the load capacity? B. What is the percentage of each type of bomb? C. How many incendiary bombs of 0.5 kilograms could be added if the load capacity were increased 50%?
III. An airplane flies at the rate of 240 kilometers per hour to a place at a distance of 210 kilometers in order to drop bombs. When may it be expected to return if the dropping of bombs takes 7.5 minutes?
Another textbook, National Political Application of Algebra, by Otto Zoll, achieves the same ends as the Practice. “How many people can seek protection in a bomb-proof cellar, length 5 meters, width 4 meters, and height 2.25 meters? Each person needs 1 cubic meter per hour, and they remain there for three hours.”
In his little book, Aerial Defense in Numbers, Fritz Tegeder asks the same kind of question: “If the speed of an airplane is 175 kilometers per hour, how many hours does it take for a plane to reach Moscow, 1,925 kilometers from Berlin; Copenhagen, 481 kilometers from Berlin; and Warsaw, 817 kilometers from Berlin?” In this problem the 7.5 minutes which, as everyone knows, a “passenger plane” needs to drop its bombs, are not mentioned.
Another book, Germany’s Fall and Rise — Illustrations Taken from Arithmetic Instruction in Higher Grades of Elementary School, which in 1936 had reached a circulation of 715,000 copies, asks: “The Jews are aliens in Germany — In 1933 there were 66,060,000 inhabitants in the German Reich, of whom 499,682 were Jews. What is the percentage of aliens?”
And this is only the surface. What is to be said of such pamphlets as Mathematical Problems of Physical Training, and Knowledge of Military Science? Or Mathematical Problems for Grammar School and the Collection of Artillery Problems for Use in the Upper Classes of Advanced Schools?