Many Nazis demeaned “ivory tower” intellectuals. They considered them ineffectual. They called them all talk and no action. They also suspected that intellectuals would critique the Nazi ideology, that they might harbor ideas on the left, and that they might be influenced by Jews and infected by “Jewishness.” However, as we have seen, the Nazi regime actually found enthusiastic support in German universities during the transition of 1933, from students and faculty alike, and Nazis were effective in weeding out Jews and left-wing critics, thoroughly and without mercy. For the rest of the Nazi period, the atmosphere at German universities seems to have been one of enthusiastic support for the new regime and its policies, rather than resistance or criticism. That is almost certainly the image that students or others at the time would have observed and the message they would have absorbed.

The German university system had strengths that might have been expected to protect it against politicization. These included a deeply embedded concept of academic freedom. We saw this before 1933, for example, when colleagues at the University of Halle supported Günther Dehn in the face of Nazi student opposition. The universities also had a strong tradition of faculty governance. Each of the important administrative positions rotated regularly, filled by a professor elected by his fellows. This included each dean of a faculty as well as the Rektor of the university. There was a faculty senate in place, made up of professors with the right to guide academic policy. Despite these institutional strengths, German universities throughout the Nazi period continued to give their support to the Nazi regime. Examples of resistance or opposition within universities proved rare and ineffective, even less so than within the churches, entirely failing to curb the tide of enthusiasm and cooperation.