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Daniel Reichert

Germany Arts and Culture

Professor Lauren Bartshe

28 April 2020

Number the Stars and the Western View of History

Much of history is told from the perspective of the winner. The winners are often

considered to be “the good guys” and the losers are “the bad guys”, no matter what their ethical

stances are. As the world’s leaders change, so do the different ideals and perspectives of history.

Due to the fact that United States have never lost a war, America usually looks at history from its

own side. Additionally the United States’ Western perspective on government systems,

economy, and military have seemed to prevail in most, if not all circumstances. This, and the

United States’ geographic isolation from well documented history has allowed for the Western

ideals to become ‘modern’ and the others to be considered ‘traditional’. The result has become

that winning side has the ability to define what is the good side and what is the bad side. And this

is doubtlessly represented by the prejudice and views of the American public on Germany after

World War II.

Throughout both World Wars the American perspective of Germans was affected.

Overtime, as the conflict between Germany and the US rose and fell throughout the 20th century,

Americans increasingly had a negative premonition towards Germans: primarily being that

Germans are inherently evil. And when the news of the Holocaust spread globally after World

War II, the idea that all Germans were evil came from the belief that all Nazis’ are evil and that

all Germans are Nazis. This stimulation towards Germans and their inherent evil sparked during
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the events of World War II when president Roosevelt issued the Alien Enemies Act: allowing the

United States to detain, restrain, intern, or remove aliens of ‘hostile nations’; and the

Presidential Proclamation 2526: deeming Germany a ‘hostile nation’.(Related Laws) This led to

over 10,000 Germans, living in America already, to be placed in internment camps throughout

the remainder of World War II. This premonition by the government, that alien Germans were

automatically against us during World War II, started the negative view on Germans. Both the

discovery of the Holocaust, post-World War II, and the occupation of East Germany by

Communist Russia, during America’s War on Communism, furthered the harsh feelings. Only

since the fall of the Berlin Wall have the feelings towards Germans become more positive in

America but the only real healing factor was time.

Despite the prejudice that all Germans were Nazis, and that all Nazis were inherently bad,

that really wasn’t the case. Throughout Germany, thousands of German citizens, aside from just

Jewish individuals, were brought to concentration camps for resisting the Third Reich’s regime.

Thousands of German households aided resistance groups in getting Jewish people out of

Germany, and groups like the White Rose were formed in order to distribute anti-Nazi

propaganda in Germany.(USHMM) Non-Nazi Germans were fighting the Nazi’s on the German

home front in any way they could. Many Germans were forced to join the Nazi party out of fear

or by force. And though they may not have supported the Nazis they had to do what they said.

This just goes to show that not all Germans were Nazis, and some of those that were, they were

not by choice. Since Germans were persecuted for resistance in their home country, it makes it

even worse that America, where all are welcome, treated the Germans poorly upon their arrival

in the United States from fleeing that regime.

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Despite relations with German individuals improving, the generation of prejudice against

Germans has been immortalized by the immense documentation of all forms of culture in the last

fifty years. From music, to movies, to literature, and art, the World Wars and their effects on

society will be a point of education for generations to come. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry is

no different. The publication of Number the Stars and similar books have unintentionally

extended the prejudice against the Germans, instead of just recording history in a narrative form

as intended. Throughout the book, readers follow the story of a young girl named Annemarie

throughout her childhood during the occupancy of Denmark during World War II. The book

depicts the entire German society as Nazis and the Nazis to be the sole source of evil in the

normally perfect world that is Denmark in the early 20th century. The parents in the book explain

to the young kids, that the Germans were the reason their usual happiness was unapparent. It did

this using a metaphor of cupcakes as happiness. When the children ask “ “When will there be

cupcakes again?” ”(Lowry 2) the parents reply “When the soldiers leave.” ”.(Lowry 2)) This

sparks a discussion about the scarcity food products throughout the Nazi take-over and is the

basis of understanding of how the Germans have stripped their community of happiness even in

cupcakes for the children, both in the story and reading. This depiction that the Nazi’s have

eradicated all that was good in their world continues throughout the book. When discussing the

good in their world, the children come to conclude that the war has changed everything. “Only

the fairytales had remained the same.”(Lowry 1) This represents that the stories and the

imagination of a child is the only thing they can hold against the ever-present war. The book

shows how the Nazi’s eradicate happiness and instruct order, with their presence on every street

and everywhere in the book. Though simple, this allows young readers to easily understand that
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they are not supposed to like the Nazi’s. Though this was likely the intention, the possibilities of

unintentional outcomes with this are endless.

With Number the Stars being one of the best-selling children’s book in the United States,

since its release in 1989, the audience of the book has become huge. It has sold over 2.5 million

copies, won both a Newberry Medal, and the National Jewish Book Award, has been taught in

elementary and middle schools across the United States, has premade lesson plans for teachers

by many publishing companies such as Scholastic, Prestwick House, and Storyboard, and is an

example teaching guide for USF’s College of Education. (Turvey) The students that have come

into contact with this book through their early education are as numerous as the stars. And its

one-sided view of World War II establishes an us against them mindset in Americans against the

Germans from an early age. By failing to recognize that there was any resistance in Germany at

all, or that there were some ethical codes that the Germans stood for, Number the Stars teaches

young kids that the Germans were the enemies in World War II and that they are inherently evil,

among the other lessons that the book teaches. While it is important for kids to have an

understanding of history, it is difficult to assess when to expose them to global events like this.

This is because the early exposure does not allow them to make decisions based on reason or

judgement. They learn that the Germans are bad, and to them that is now just a fact of life. So, at

the same point that educating history is important, it can do just as much harm as good.

With a generation of youth being unintentionally taught from a young age that Germans

are inherently bad, the prejudice against the German people is extended. If world events are

what caused the Americans to be prejudiced against the Germans, then naturally the generations

that experienced it would be those with the prejudice. But this book was written two years before

the Berlin Wall fell, after which the relationship of the US with all of Germany began to
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improve. This book was written in a time where Americans looked at Germans with distrust.

Instead of the new generation living after the wall’s destruction being brought up in the new

peace that came out of Germany, the generations are first exposed to and taught of the Holocaust

and World War II using Number the Stars, which places people against people again, rather than

promoting peace. This education based on Number the Stars unintentionally enables prejudice

and division in a young mind before they can actively choose not to judge people. By teaching

Number the Stars without a parallel perspective, America is teaching its young people to judge

others based on the mistakes of their past rather than to treat others with hope and respect for

better things to come.

Number the Stars is an amazing literary work of art, with themes of empowerment and

love, and a heavy plot told from an innocent child’s perspective. But the potential for Number

the Stars to foster the empowerment of prejudice brings to question the purpose of using this

specific book in the literary and historical education of Western Youth. This perspective that

literature of a certain paradigm could be negatively molding youth towards hate instead of peace

brings to question the books that are placed in a child’s hand. It begs many questions about

ethics, and timing, and how old someone should be before needing to understand the scope of the

pain in the world. It questions the Western ideas of self, identity, and the understanding of who

we are as a nation and our core values. Often the American ideal is to be accepting of all people,

but how can we say that when we don’t practice what we preach by aiding in the bombardment

of prejudice in the world by dramatizing all Germans to be inherently bad based on the World

Wars that happened almost a century ago. But, realistically the only thing that can be done is not

to dwell on America’s now mistakes of the past in education but to look forwards towards a

global citizen based educational system of history that allows for historical events to be
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registered in all perspectives. It is often stated that we study history to learn from the mistakes of

our past. But if we look beyond to understand the mistakes and triumphs of others’ pasts too, we

begin to get a better view of the world, and of the people that live in it.

The education received from reading Number the Stars or other historical texts provides

so much information as to the paradigm that the reader will continue to live their lives with. One

can only go on with the information they’ve learned. And reading is one of the best ways to learn

things. While Number the Stars does a great job of providing a first glimpse into the time of the

Holocaust, its mono-idealized perspective restricts the readers full potential to learn about the

time period. It is in the best interest of current and future generations that as a society we move

forward studying the past from all sides of history, not just that of the winning side. That way we

can learn from all of our mistakes as a human society and provide the best outcome for us all in

the years to come.

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Works Cited

Florida Center for Instructional Technology. “Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry. New York: Dell
1990.” Holocaust Lesson Plan: Number the Stars,
fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/activity/35plan/number1.htm.

“Number The Stars Discussion Guide.” Scholastic,

www.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plans/teaching-content/number-stars-discussion-
guide/.

“Related Laws.” German American Internee Coalition :: History - Related Laws, 2015,
web.archive.org/web/20151215083112/www.gaic.info/ShowPage.php?
section=History&page=Related_Laws.

Turvey, Debbie. “All-Time Bestselling Children's Books.” PublishersWeekly.com, 2001,

www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/28595-
all-time-bestselling-children-s-books.html.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “German Resistance to Hitler.” United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-resistance-to-hitler.

“Who Is the Man That Rides Past?” Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry and Niels Roland, ER,
2019, p. 17.

“Why Are You Running?” Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry and Niels Roland, ER, 2019, pp. 9.