The story about the Albany High School teacher suspended for insensitivity cries out for more context, more background information, more details, etc. So far, the teacher comes off as clueless, and the resulting criticism seems so utterly predictable.
I would hope some yet-to-be-revealed legitimate method exists to the teacher's apparent madness.
The group-think surrounding the rise of Naziism needs to be understood in the context of the times. Researching only the official propaganda strikes me as insufficient for a "Think like a Nazi" persuasive writing assignment.
Anti-Semitism was defended at virtually all levels and sectors of European gentile society at the time, but demonstrably so in Germany and Italy.
I'm reading "The Pope's Last Crusade: How an American Jesuit Helped Pope Pius XI's Campaign to Stop Hitler," by Peter Eisner. Eisner shows how unpopular pro-Jewish opinion was during the rise of Hitler, so much so that Pope Pius XI's planned encyclical that would have strongly condemned Hitler was surreptitiously quashed by his secretary of state and future successor, Pius XII, and by Wlodemir Ledochowski, the superior of the Jesuit ghost writer recruited for the task by Pius XI. The "common sense" thinking among the Catholic hierarchy at the time was that Naziism was acting much less anti-Catholic than was Communism, so better to suck up to Hitler. This meant the pro-Jewish encyclical the pope commissioned was not issued.
Maybe a better assignment would have been to argue the position of the above conspirators. At least that would have involved some historical research, and thus been more defensible.
Al Cannistraro
Clifton Park
