'Diary of a Schoolboy in Nazi Germany'

in Miniatures: A Reader in the History of Everyday Life, ed. Kate Ferris, Huw Halstead, Exeter (University of Exeter Press), 2025, pp. 54-65.

In spring 1936, teenage schoolboy – and later war hero – Dick Hargreaves was given the chance to go on an all-expenses-paid exchange trip to Germany. But this was no ordinary school exchange – Hargreaves’ destination was Oranienstein, one of a system of new elite boarding schools known as National Political Educational Institutes (“Napolas” for short). The schools educated boys from the age of ten upwards, training them as future leaders of the Third Reich. By taking part in the exchange, Hargreaves and his ten companions from Dauntsey’s School in Wiltshire would soon be exposed to the Napolas’ “total” programme of education, indoctrination and National Socialist propaganda.

Hargreaves’ diary presents a fascinating source for the history of everyday life for a number of reasons. Firstly, it presents a youthful view, which, while somewhat naïve, is nevertheless wholly untainted by hindsight. As such, its value in illuminating contemporary responses to Nazism in Britain at the time is unparalleled. It sheds light on networks of transnational exchange and international relations during this turbulent period of interwar history, as well as presenting new microhistorical perspectives on the history of the Third Reich.

An accompanying interpretative essay demonstrates the ways in which such an intimate and everyday ego-document can augment our understanding of the nature of dictatorship and the power of popular opinion, as well as illuminating broader tendencies in Anglo-German relations during the interwar years.

The volume in which this chapter appears is open access and can be downloaded here.