"Geoffrey Giles presents an enormous amount of new evidence and revises widely held notions about the effectiveness of Nazi indoctrination of youth and penetration of the universities." - Konrad Jarausch, University of North Carolina

This study explains the rise and evaluates the strength of the National Socialist Students' Association (NSDStB) during the whole period of its existence from 1926 to 1945. Although university students fell under Nazi control before anyone else, their support for the NSDStB was mixed after 1933. The Nazis' efforts to indoctrinate the entire student population were hampered by their own ineffective leadership and bureaucratic infighting, and by student apathy. Refuting the view that German universities offered especially loyal support for National Socialism, Geoffrey Giles offers fresh insights into the history and structure of the Third Reich through his analysis of the Nazi higher education policy.