Having made determined and successful efforts to uncover and analyse the facts about the catastrophe of the Third Reich, contemporary historians in Western Germany are increasingly turning their attention to a more hopeful but no less contentious topic, the establishment of the Federal Republic in Bonn. Clearly this subject cannot simply begin with the appearance of Konrad Adenauer as the first Federal Chancellor in I949, but has to include the period of total defeat and occupation the Stunde Null as the Germans sometimes referred to it. The years 1945-9 were, after all, the opportunity for Germany's conquerors to create a new form of German society denazified, democratic peaceloving, and at the very least no threat to its neighbours. At the same time the effects of aerial bombing, ground combat and large-scale internal migration presented the Allied occupiers and in particular the British with urgent problems if the administration of Germany was to function at all. The long-term political aims of the Allies in Germany were not always compatible with measures which had to be taken if the German economy was to be rehabilitated in time to ward off large scale starvation and social chaos. Nor were the aims of the Allies themselves marked by great consistency or unity of purpose. From the point at which Allied planning for post-war Germany began, it was evident that the nature of Germany's educational system would be of crucial importance. The Allies were aware that the Weimar Republic had not enjoyed the whole-hearted support of the teaching profession. Anti-democratic tendencies had been especially marked in secondary schools and Universities. Education had traditionally been state-controlled, and under the Nazis this authority had been transferred from the Land governments, such as those of Prussia or Bavaria, to a new Reich Education ministry, presided over by Bernard Rust. Care had been taken by the Nazis to ensure that teaching and textbooks reflected Nazi ideology, even if a major share in the task of juvenile indoctrination fell to the Hitler Youth movement. The Nazis had the advantage that, even during the Weimar period, a good deal of the teaching at all levels had reflected a powerful commitment to nationalism. The peculiar mish-mash of geography, local history and ethnography referred to as Heimatkunde was particularly well suited to xenophobic purposes, and was an important feature of school curricula. Even in subjects apparently remote from contemporary politics, such as philology or ancient history, racialist or nationalist presuppositions could make themselves apparent. In the process of'denazification', therefore, the Allied treatment of education was going to play a vital role. The content of what was taught and the selection of the personnel to teach it would have to be kept under constant surveillance.