My teacher, Fritz Pohle, born in 1904, too young to have served in the First World War, was an ardent German nationalist but no anti-Semite. He glorified the heroism of the German soldiers in the First World War, spoke about the injustice that had been done to Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, and reminded the students that someday they too might have to defend the Fatherland. One wall poster in the classroom spelled out the territories Germany had lost as a result of the First World War. Another wall poster showed how Germany, restricted by the Treaty of Versailles to an army of a hundred thousand men, was encircled and threatened by its neighbors, France, Belgium, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, which were all heavily armed. Another read “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.” I do not know whether Herr Pohle belonged to the Nazi Party—at this early stage he probably did not, although ulti-mately he most certainly had to join the Nazi teachers’ Organization. The fact that he shielded the Jewish students in his class spoke against it. Herr Pohle was deeply inspired by the youth movement. [*]
Herr Pohle communicated a good deal of the idealism of the German youth movement, which made a deep impression on me that easily transferred to my attachment to the Jewish youth movement. I naturally participated in the excursions and hikes on which our class went with Herr Pohle, several of them to the home of Prince Otto von Bismarck at Friedrichsruh near Hamburg.
In retrospect, I am surprised by Herr Pohles political openness, considering the circumstances in Nazi Germany. I followed the Italian-Ethiopian War in the fall and winter of 1935-36 with intense interest. My sympathies were totally on the side of the Ethiopians whom I saw as the victims of aggression. Astonishingly Herr Pohle permitted me to talk about the war and to show maps about its course, notwithstanding that after all the Ethiopians were black. At that time Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were not yet allies and in fact, relations between them were strained about Austria.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Two Lives in Uncertain Times, New York: Berghahn Books, 2006, p. 26f