Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy

Content Literacy Lattanzi

July 2, 2012 Presented by: Peter & Kristian Background: This is a chapter from a 5th grade biology textbook for girls, published in the midst of the war. The first part of the book discusses genetics, spring, summer, fall, and winter in the forest, and the human body. The book then goes on to apply these principles to human beings. Given what we know was going on in 1942, when this book was printed, it is clear that textbooks, too, were a part of propaganda. The source: Marie Harm and Hermann Wiehle, Lebenskunde für Mittelschulen. Fünfter Teil. Klasse 5 für Mädchen (Halle: Hermann Schroedel Verlag, 1942), pp. 168-173.

Biology for the Middle School For 5th Grade Girls

The drive for maintaining the species is stronger than the instinct for self preservation. Plants sacrifice themselves for their seeds. Most insects die when they have reproduced. The female rabbit defends her young against hawks, often at the cost of her own life. A fox risks its life to secure food for its young. The life of the individual can be sacrificed to assure the continuation of the species. (The law of the species is stronger than that of the individual!)

Among all living creatures, we can see a further natural law: the production of numerous offspring. Nowhere on earth do we find a form of life that produces only one or two offspring (corresponding to the number of the parents). That would inevitably lead to extinction. The elephant has the longest period of procreation, from its 30th to 90th year. It brings about six offspring into the world. A scientist has calculated that even with this slow rate of reproduction, in the absence of the struggle for survival elephants would take over the entire world in a few hundred years. A single pair would produce 19 million descendants in 750 years. The struggle for survival leads most to perish. The blue titmouse has two broods of 10-13 a year, but their number is not increasing. The more threatened a creature is in the struggle for survival, the more offspring it must produce. The greater number of offspring is a necessary means of responding to the hard struggle for survival. Each habitat can disappear from one day to the next (arrival of a new predator, disappearance of a food source).

A large number of offspring are an important means in the struggle for survival of the species. The house mouse can resist the field mouse simply through its larger number of young. In such instances, one can speak of a battle of births.

The second law to which all life is subordinate is: “Each life form strives to ensure the survival of its species. The number of offspring must be greater than the number of the parents if the species is to survive (law of the larger number of offspring). Each species strives to conquer new territory. The species goes before the individual.

History provides us with enough examples to prove that mankind, too, is under this law. In the midst of their prosperity, the Romans lost the desire to have children. They sinned against the law of maintaining the species. Their state was undermined and overcome by foreign peoples in a short time. The ethnic traits of the Romans thus vanished. Our nation, too, once hung in the balance. National Socialism restored to the German people the will to have children, and preserved our people from certain decline, which would have been inevitable under the law of species and the law of the greater number of offspring.

Here, too, we can recall the Führer’s words:

Marriage, too, cannot be an end in itself, but rather it must have the larger goal of increasing and maintaining the species and the race. That only is its meaning and its task. (Mein Kampf, p. 275)

The goal of female education must be to prepare them for motherhood. ( Mein Kampf,p. 460)

VSS Chart Vocabulary Reason for selection Definition

The bookmark below has been taken from the article, (Bumping into spicy tasty words that catch your tongue), and can be used as a means of VSS collection.