... political institutions and began to become more conservative. By the time that the First World War broke out in 1914, students were so steadfastly conservative and nationalistic that many of them went to war voluntarily. When the war ended in humiliation for Germany in 1919, students, like many in Germany, placed the blame for Germany's defeat and subsequent economic collapses on the newly-formed Weimar Republic, its founders and the Treaty of Versailles. Resulting from this, and because German students were so used to being governed by a single figurehead, it was not hard for the German National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) headed by Adolf Hitler to convince most students to join its student organization (the NSDStB - National Socialist German Students' League) and to abandon democracy. When Hitler gained full control of Germany in 1933, the universities were generally pliant towards Nazi policies. This explains in large part why so ...

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