This term “academic” was politically incorrect to the humble Nazis. It was applied to any profession that required university study. The Nazis were very sensitive to such Bolshevik labels that implied that any German was superior to another.
“All Germans were created equal.”
So, the word was not used, and the Nazis worked quite hard to increase the number of professors from a working-class background.
The Big Purge
A favorite story of mine is how one of Hitler’s first acts as Chancellor was to fire all akademiker from every university in Germany. We could do with a purge like that in America (where 90% of all basic research in the whole world is conducted). Consider…
Astrophysics is an example of one of many academic fields that has become ingrown with incestuous intermarriage of ideas.
The crowning achievement of astrophysics in the last 50 years is “String Theory.” The basic principles of which can be summarized thus:
- There is no proof for String Theory; i.e., that it is valid or accurately explains any phenomena
- There can, by definition, never been any such proof
- This is an integral part of the theory itself: i.e., that it cannot be proven, in any way, shape or form
Imagine that. Tens of thousands of papers, thousands of tenures for the professors writing them, billions of government money finding their research – and it’s all mental masturbation by their own acknowledgment.
Every other academic field has similar festering sores. Everything they do, like String Theory, is pure statistics, mostly conjecture, and entirely impractical.
The End of Science
Arguably, if Hitler had not fired all those akademiker in 1933, there would never have been the technological explosion that was the mighty German fighting machine in 1940 – and the worldwide space program in 1960.
Oh, but no akademiker would ever write a formal research paper about that.
Heresy!