Deeply anti-Semitic though the problem might be, there is more to it than undiluted racial hatred. National Socialist ideology took a very traditional view of family life- whereas women were limited to the ‘three K’s’ of Kinder , Küche and Kirche (Children, Cooking and Church), men were encouraged to work and, later on, fight for the advancement of the Third Reich. This problem gives an insight into that world: whereas the teachers of boys would comment in admiring tones that it gave a snapshot of the life of a Luftwaffe bomber pilot, those responsible for the education of girls would note that it illustrated what their students’ future husbands and sons might get up to whilst serving. Either way, the gender divide within German society was imprinted on its youngest members. Not only were Nazi maths textbooks hate-filled, they were often misleading. Take this example, from the year of Hitler’s accession to power: The Jews are aliens in Germany. In 1933 there were 66,060,000 inhabitants of the German Reich of whom 499,862 were Jews. What is the percentage of aliens within Germany? According to the June census of the same year, there were 505,000 Jews living in Germany. The editors of the textbook may have augmented the statistic so as to highlight the status of Jews as an ethnic minority in Aryan Germany. By 1939, the Nazis had abandoned any pretence of maths textbooks offering a balanced, unprejudiced view of the world: one newspaper commented that the subject of mathematics ‘must concentrate on military subjects, the glorification of military service… and the strength of a rebuilt Germany.’ More specifically, ‘Mathematics will help the young to understand artillery, calculations [and] ballistics.’ Though the maths problems of today’s Britain might seem frustratingly boring and sanitised, we should certainly be grateful that they do not contain the hateful, divisive propaganda of Confederate North Carolina or Nazi Germany.
Maths Puzzle 4 Twelve people are seated around a circular table. In how many ways can six pairs of people engage in handshakes so that no arms cross?
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