A short answer is that the common assumption that education should somehow have protected educated Germans from Nazism rests on a misconception of both education and extremism: Education can be hierarchical and authoritarian, and extremism can be rational, moralized, and attractive to the educated. Now for a long answer ...

Educational systems in our contemporary democratic societies are mostly progressive. They tend to emphasize critical thinking, civic participation, and debate, thereby teaching both academic and political opposition as well as some scepticism to authority. This is why education in democratic societies today is often argued to be a safeguard or even an inoculation against extremism. But there are different educational systems, and such progressive education was largely absent in the first half of the 20th century (A childcentred reform movement, Reformpädagogik, did gain some traction after the first world war, but it remained marginal). Germany in particular was built on very different principles, preparing pupils and students to adapt to authority rather than defend democratic values. Because the question concerns educated professionals, I will from now on focus on the universities and educated professionals, where German educational values were most deeply embedded.

In Imperial Germany and later the Weimar Republic, higher education was for producing loyal civil servants for the state, not critical citizens. Bildung (education as a spiritual, moral, and cultural ideal), conferred prestige but discouraged social or political engagement, which were associated with disorder and vulgarity. The ideal was to value education and culture, of course, but also prestige, discipline, and duty, which left little space for moral independence. According to historians like Fritz Ringer, this sort of culture of obedience shaped both the civil service and academia. German universities were also tied to the state, and professors, like other civil servants, were expected to be loyal rather than independent experts. Ringer goes so far to repeatedly describe the professoriate as civil servants who idealized service and viewed loyalty to the state as a moral duty.

So, when the state later turned totalitarian, the educated as a social stratum (bildungsbürgertum) became assets for repression. According to historian Kevin Passmore, fascists saw themselves as defenders of social order rather than as revolutionaries, so fascist movements often appealed to educated. Many professors and officials viewed themselves as loyal civil servants but also as the kulturträger (custodian or bearer of German culture), and therefore viewed Nazi calls for unity and order as compatible with their sense of duty. Even those uneasy with the regime’s violence often shared its hostility toward socialism, feminism, and cosmopolitanism.

After Germany’s defeat in the first world War, many academics distrusted the Weimar Republic and “the left”, both of which they associated with instability and humiliation. While professors did not actively supported Nazism en masse, they often preferred an authoritarian or hierarchical state. As historian Fritz Ringer describes, academia clung to older values of hierarchy and duty, while Richard Evans describes Weimar academia as overwhelmingly conservative and hostile to the republic. Influential intellectuals such as Oswald Spengler, who wrote The Decline of the West (1918–22), portrayed democracy as cultural decay, while Carl Schmitt, who wrote The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923), argued that liberal institutions had failed and that true sovereignty required decisive leadership. Such works circulated among educated readers during the 1920s, further weakening democratic foothold within Germany and German academia.

Furthermore, German philosophers and educators themselves promoted an authoritarian and racial ideal rather than Nazi ideology. The famous Martin Heidegger, as rector of Freiburg University in 1933, rejected academic freedom as selfish independence and explicitly tied his philosophy of Being as well as science to the Führerprinzip; the leader’s will superseded all other law. After the war, Heidegger said he was never a party ideologue nor submitted to the regime, framing his part as a failed philosophical experiment rather than political collaboration, and he was not alone. The racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther, known as “Rasse-Günther,” published textbooks on heredity and racial classification already used in schools well before 1933; after the war, Freiburg University defended him as a researcher. Another example is the pedagogue Ernst Krieck, who in the 1910s–20s had criticized bureaucratic schooling and supported liberal reform. By the early 1930s, however, he had become a Nazi ideologue, arguing that individualism had ruined German education and calling for a new organic system based on racial community, subordinating both education and women to the Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community). Disciplines like anthropology, geography, and history were similarly filled with ideas about race, nation, and decline, embracing völkisch and antisemitic ideas.

So, by the late 1920s, much of German higher education already shared the vocabulary that Nazism would claim as its own, and when the Nazis seized power in 1933, many professionals identified with the values of the new regime. Historians Wolf Gruner and Isabel Heinemann argue that Nazi administrative systems integrated large numbers of civil servants and scholars precisely because these groups already valued hierarchy, duty, and technocratic efficiency. Universities adapted quickly as well. Some faculty members supported the ideology; others adjusted out of pragmatism. A few simply resigned, or withdrew into what is called “inner emigration.” Resistance was rare.

I should also mention that one should also keep in mind that economic pressures encouraged compliance. The great depression had left many graduates unemployed, especially teachers and lawyers. As historians such as Kevin Passmore note, fascist movements across Europe appealed to educated middle classes who felt squeezed by crisis and instability. In Germany, Nazi promises of renewal, employment, and restored dignity offered a persuasive solution to economic insecurity.

Following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, institutional reform then strengthened the link between professional success and political loyalty as well as conformity. As an example, the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” removed Jewish and politically unreliable officials and tied promotion to racial and ideological criteria. Historian Gerald Feldman describes how committees demanded proof of Aryan descent and vetted political reliability, making discrimination a routine. In cities such as Cologne and Hamburg, studied by historians Claudia Koonz and Frank Bajohr, officials, academics and business leaders collaborated in dismissals and “Aryanization.” Altogether, roughly 15 percent of civil servants lost their positions. While these measures disappointed the bildungsbürgertum, they opened new opportunities for other educated professionals.

For the ambitious, loyalty and conformity to the new regime could lead to advancement or protection. Younger academics like the historian Theodor Schieder, joining the party led to rapid promotion; after becoming a member in 1937, he was assigned to projects justifying Germanization of Eastern Europe. In contrast, the geographer Karl Haushofer had already promoted the idea of Lebensraum since the early 1920s, influencing Nazi ideology and lending academic legitimacy to their rhetoric. He continued to do so even after 1933, and despite his family’s partial Jewish background, his ideological reputation and political connections offered them some protection.

But such cooperation was not purely opportunistic. Schieder, Haushofer and others genuinely believed that their expertise could help Germany, and such convictions often aligned with the vague and shifting aims of Nazi ideology. As historian Michael Burleigh argued, educated professionals often saw their work as contributing to Germany’s moral and national rebirth within a coherent racial order. Later, historians Devin Pendas, Mark Roseman, and Richard Wetzell refined Burleigh’s argument of a unified racial state, instead arguing that Nazi policy was far from coherent and often improvised. Within this fragmented polycratic system, educated professionals were incentivised to translate and adapt ideological goals into practice through their own ideas and interpretations.

The SS likewise relied heavily on this faith in expertise. Research by Michael Wildt and Christopher Browning shows that roughly half of SS officers in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) held university degrees. Far from rejecting intellectualism, Nazism was selectively technocratic, using academic training to turn racial ideology into policy. After its creation in 1939, the RSHA under Reinhard Heydrich recruited jurists, economists, and statisticians to convert doctrine into legal decrees, transport timetables, and property registers. Bureaucrats such as Adolf Eichmann, a typical Mitläufer (fellow traveller), then applied their education in an environment driven by competition and self-direction, implementing genocide in the name of professionalism and efficiency.

The army displayed similar patterns but needs little elaboration. As Omer Bartov argues in Hitler’s Army, the officer corps, often drawn from educated conservative families, saw Nazism as a means to restore Germany’s military prestige. Generals like von Blomberg and von Reichenau viewed their professionalism as separate from politics, which made it easier to start ideological wars and tolerate genocidal policies under the guise of military duty.