I’m just curious what people like Marco Rubio and Mark Zuckerberg, who are passively supportive of the installation of authoritarianism, would have learned at school about that period in Germany.
I’m asking this as that question and not as a leading question into a discussion on today’s politics.
What is the level of awareness the average American person in their 40s and 50s on how the Third Reich started?
Plenty here are answering your question more directly so I’m going to answer it in a different way. I’m a 40 year old American by the way.
While we all would have learned about Nazi Germany and the rise of the Third Reich in school the depth will vary by state and type of schooling (public vs. private).
The most important thing, however, is to remember that it would have been taught from an American-centric perspective. For example, there wouldn’t have been much detail covered in all likelihood prior to WWII with the depth increasing greatly to its highest point where the US became involved in the war.
Basically, all history in US primary education is is essentially US history. It’ll cover global events in general terms but really only goes into detail when it involves the US.