The politics of disability during the Protectorate: Toward institutionalizing special education

The task of highlighting the impact of the national socialist policy concerning persons with disabilities, generally, and the Nazi reform of special education, particularly, on Czech politics concerning disability requires redefining the role of special education in the German public policy between 1933 and 1945. The utilitarian approach to human capacities and selectiveness as the main principles of the state's approach to persons with disabilities went to the extreme when special education was institutionalized during national socialism. Historians refer to three stages of institutionalizing German special education between 1933 and 1945:

– 1935-1938: primary institutionalization and the obligation of special schools to segregate persons with disabilities into useful and useless;

– 1938-1942: professionalization of selection and vocational training, the two main tasks of special education;

– 1942-1945/1960s: centralization and unification of special education as part of surveillance of unfit groups.

The misery of special schools finally turned for the better after two years the national socialists came to power in 1933 in the form of increased number of such institutions and allocation of further resources. According to Sengstock, Magerhans-Hurley and Sprotte, between 1935 and 1939 the number of students placed in these institutions increased as well. Obviously, this veering of the official attitude toward special education reflected two mutually interrelated trends – to exploit the education system by incorporating it into the mission of population surveillance and centralizing the process of data collection about unfit groups within the population.