Phys Ed, nazi style

The History Learning Site offers a brief overiew of what the Nazis had in mind when it came to educating the young. One important aspect for the fascists was physical education:

Hitler had stated that he wanted boys who could suffer pain.........."a young German must be as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp's steel." PE took up 15% of a school's weekly timetable. Boxing became compulsory for boys. Those who failed fitness tests could be expelled from their schools - and face humiliation from those who had passed such tests.

And only the super elite were fit enough to be sent to "Adolf Hitler Schools". Here future leaders would be trained for ubermensch duty for the fatherland.

Six years of tough physical training took place and when the pupils from these schools left aged 18, they went to the army or to university. The very best pupils went to Order Castles. These were schools which took pupils to the limits of physical endurance. War games used live ammunition and pupils were killed at these schools. Those who graduated from the Order Castles could expect to attain a high position in the army or the SS.

Physical prowess was used as a signifier of Nazi racial superiority. And this kind of thinking didn't start or end with the third reich. Think of the Spartans in ancient Greece or the Soviets and their client states using sterioid stuffed olympic athletes as props in the cold war theater of action. Most any nation or class of people using physical ability or appearance as a marker of social identity is vulnerable to the charge of exceptionalism: the "we're better than you" syndrome. In America, this can take nationalistic form (the flag-waving, chest-beating, gun-toting "these colors don't run" variety) as well as more class-based forms ("look how fit I am, I look perfect, therefore I belong to the elite register in the social pecking order). Fitness and beauty obsession also feeds the American worship of competitive individuality: "look at me, I can swing a 50 pound iron ball around my head for half an hour." These feats of personal achievement or endurance have immense importance to those seeking validation. But there's something desperate in all these attempts to look good and feel right. The desire to push one's body to the limit of endurance comes from the same source that feeds the desire to starve one's self in to the right dress size or to medicate and diet oneself into the right body type.