This thesis will examine how the process of re-education of young people not only contributed to Hitler and Stalin's rise to power, but also maintained it. Re-educate according to various sources means to educate again for a purpose, for Stalin and Hitler that purpose was to exterminate all opposition and preserve their seats of power. The main concern now is whether or not President Trump intends to follow in their footsteps by nominating Betsy DeVos as the new education secretary. Accusing President Trump of planning a second Holocaust or a second Great Purge might seem drastic, but after isolating the early actions of implementing a new education system by both Hitler and Stalin, it doesn't seem so inconceivable after all. Re-education is a powerful method of maintaining power because it takes years to implement and it would take just as long to change the ideology if it had been corrupted. Re-education is not necessarily a bad thing, in some cases it can be very useful in breaking down barriers and changing obsolete theories. It is when re-education is tainted by power-hungry political leaders intent on using it as a safeguard that it becomes dangerous. There is substantial evidence in the form of Hitler's Nazi Youth and Stalin's re-education through labor camps that supports this claim. The horrific crimes against humanity that these two men committed through re-education have made the world weary, and now we must ask: What are President Trump and Betsy DeVos planning? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay “In God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me” (Psalm 56:11, Tree of Life Version)? There are two concepts in this statement, the first is trust in a God, even if that trust meant giving up on life. The second concept is the trust that others will treat as they would like to be treated. What can man do to me? how cruel man can be towards his fellow men. The most notoriously evil men in history, such as Hitler and Stalin, gained and maintained power through the act of re-education. Furthermore, as a result of this re-education, they could implement and achieve their personal agendas without any resistance from the people: This can be applied to what is happening with President Trump's nomination of Betsy DeVos as education secretary. It is important to recognize that re-education is not a bad thing, in some cases such as breaking down stereotypes, and developing better ways of doing things can be very helpful. It is when re-education is corrupted by power-hungry leaders as a way to gain and maintain power that it becomes dangerous. Re-educating according to different sources means educating again for new purposes. Hitler and Stalin's aim was to exterminate the opposition and safeguard their seats of power, the question is whether President Trump intends to follow in their footsteps with the nomination of Betsy DeVos as the new education secretary. The common isolated factor between Hitler and Stalin's early regimes is their use of re-education as a way to strengthen themselves as leaders: the evidence is in the form of Hitler's Nazi Youth and Stalin's re-education through labor camps. It is still too early to judge the intentions of President Trump and Betsy DeVos, but there is one fact that must be recognized and that is that there has been more opposition to Betsy DeVos' nomination than any other Secretary of Education ever. TheVice President Mike Pence had to cast the deciding vote, but President Trump still went ahead with this decision. The question is: why? Education is fundamental to the nation's progress, but it can also have disastrous outcomes if it is abused. A perfect example of the abuse and corruption of education for personal gain is the Nazi regime. With the collapse of the Weimar Republic, Germany was left in political and economic chaos, giving Hitler his long-awaited opportunity to seize power. Adolf Hitler provided the people with a purpose and a scapegoat for the country's ruin by first separating themselves from the minorities (any non-Aryan) and then exterminating all the minorities together. This put the people in debt to Hitler and ultimately allowed him to do whatever he wanted. From the 1920s onward, the Nazi Party targeted German youth as recipients of their re-education programs because they knew that these children would eventually grow up to support or oppose their cause. Eccles (1999), indicates that it is during development that children between the ages of six and fourteen undergo serious biological, psychological and social changes. Hitler's indoctrination of young people led to the formation of what is known as the Hitler Youth, and it was at the extremely vulnerable and impressionable age of ten that the Nazi Party began to re-educate them. The first step towards re-educating children began by subjecting young people to four years of what was called Young Folk. After four years of the Young Folk organization, depending on gender, the child would then join the Hitler Youth or the League of German Girls. During these first eight years of education the children were taught: racial consciousness, obedience, self-sacrifice, willingness to die for the Fuhrer and the Fatherland and, above all, devotion to Adolf Hitler (Hitler Memorial Museum United States Holocaust, par. 4). In addition to teaching these values, German educators also introduced new textbooks that reinforced love of Hitler, obedience to state authority, militarism, racism, and anti-Semitism. And as if all that wasn't enough, Adolf Hitler's portrait was a fixture in classrooms to serve as constant motivation to become proud National Socialists. If at the end of this education the young adult was not a complete National Socialist, then he would enter labor service for 6-7 months. The original purpose of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls was to create the illusion of a unified German community. However, after 1933 youth leaders sought to integrate the boys into the national Nazi community with the sole purpose of preparing them for service as soldiers. By shaping the minds of the young, Hitler could shape the future; by ensuring that the next generation shared the same mentality as the current one, this also ensured that the person in power would remain in power. Likewise, Stalin also recognized how powerful education could be and how harmful the lack of it was. Stalin wanted the bourgeoisie to remain bourgeoisie and for this to continue he needed the proletariat to remain the proletariat. This “collective farm” of peasants provided the labor for the collectivization of agriculture. The re-education that was to occur through this work was supposed to free the peasants from their “individualistic and petty-bourgeois instincts” (Snyder and Brandon, 2014, p. 28). Stalin feared the peasants, his method of re-education was not so much to benefit himself but to safeguard his position. By keeping the peasants ignorant he guaranteed the bourgeoisie a workforce, because it is only through education that theypeople can move up the social class ladder. While peasants constituted the majority of people subjected to re-education through labor, a significant number of political and military leaders were also condemned to this brutal and decidedly uneducational exploitation of labor due to Stalin's excessive paranoia of disloyalty to the bureaucracy . This was achieved through the Moscow Trials, a fantastic conglomerate of “show trials,” so called because defendants were forced to confess to crimes they had not committed to ensure that they and their families would not be harmed. This composition of peasants and leaders in exile was a resource to be redistributed in the interests of industrial development and Soviet soldiers. It was this forced collectivization and industrialization methodology that led to great deprivation among the Soviet people, thus resulting in the deaths of millions of people. The bureaucracy had usurped political power from the working class by “re-educating” them through a markedly non-educational system (Rogovin, 1998). Once again, we see re-education used as a means to the end of a higher social class. Stalin achieved a position of power that allowed him to directly influence the intellectual life of the country he governed. His corruption of the "education" system still has the Soviet Union in ruins today. To understand the significance of President Trump's nomination of Betsy DeVos as the new secretary of education, you need to know what the secretary of education has control over. Some of the major functions of the Secretary of Education include, but are not limited to: administering federal assistance to schools and enforcing federal education laws, providing funding to schools with large numbers of low-income students, administering federal student aid and through its Office of Civil Rights, the Education Department also addresses issues related to discrimination in schools and colleges based on race, gender, sexual orientation and other characteristics. In addition to the fact that DeVos has no substantial experience in higher education and is now responsible for administering financial aid to students seeking higher education, it is also known that DeVos does not support the public school system that now controls most of financing for. DeVos stated, when asked about her position on public and private institutions, “I will push for greater access to charter, home and religious schools” Merica (2017). While parents would still be able to choose which school their children attend, DeVos can strongly encourage them to send their children to private institutions. This is after running out of funding for public schools. If parents cannot afford to send their children to these private institutions, then they would have no choice but to send them to public schools whose resources are almost exhausted. All this with the support of President Trump who said that “under his leadership we will reform the US education system and break down the bureaucracy that holds our children back so we can provide a world-class education and school choice to all families ” (Diamante and Acosta, 2016). But then, President Trump has no reason to oppose her, he appointed her, and it is between the two of them that the nation's education policies will have to be implemented and enacted by Congress. President Trump promised to “make America great again,” but it is important to note that Hitler also promised the same thing to Germany, and it is also noteworthy that both.