LETTER FROM BERLIN:GERMAN SCHOOLS are nothing to write home about. Low academic standards, under-motivated teachers and out-of-control students are just some of the reasons why Germany rates a below-average performance in the OECD "Pisa" study of learning skills.
And an unsettling new German film suggests that things have the potential to get much worse.
The Wave, which opened last night in German cinemas, asks a hypothetical question: could another dictatorship take root in Germany?
The answer is yes, says director Dennis Gansel. And it would start in German schools.
"It's wrong to say, 'no way, a Nazi dictatorship could never happen here'," he says.
Challenging postwar Germany's mantra of "Never again" is a novel way of marketing a film. But Gansel has guaranteed box-office success by setting his tale of modern fascism in an average German high school.
The Wave tells the story of a Ramones-loving school teacher who, during a civics module on autocracy, convinces his class of apathetic, unruly teenagers of the merits of obedience and order.
What begins as a classroom experiment soon spreads beyond the school walls. Familiar-sounding mottos surface - "strength through discipline" and "strength through community".
A uniform of jeans and white shirt follows, as does a hand greeting and a name: the Wave. A logo, a website and private parties for members seal the movement's legitimacy.
Only a few students see the looming danger, by which stage the rest of the class has turned into dead-eyed fascists who demand obedience and punish dissenters.
"None of us is completely immune to totalitarian systems," says Heiko Ernst, editor-in-chief of German magazine Psychology Today. "But when this need becomes institutionalised, it can have fatal consequences because such an 'in-crowd' can only exist at the expense of the 'out-crowd'."
The film draws on a real-life experiment in a California high school in 1967 that explored just how much individuality people are prepared to give up to satisfy that human need to belong to something larger.
History teacher Ron Jones hit on the idea of the experiment after his students claimed that fascism could never take hold in the US.
To prove otherwise, if only on a small scale, he began giving students a set of rules the following day, regulating how they were to sit and speak in class and how they were to address him.
When they continued to follow the rules unbidden, on day two he expanded them and began lecturing on the power of community.
For good measure, he invented a salute and a name: the Third Wave. By day three, the class had expanded from 30 to 43 students, with membership cards and logos.
The students' attention, academic skills and motivation had improved considerably but they began informing on each other.
By day five, sensing the experiment was getting out of control, Jones showed them a film of Adolf Hitler and told his students that they had been guinea pigs in an experiment in fascism.
A 1981 book based on the "Third Wave" experiment is required reading for all German students, including director Gansel. "I read the book when I was 12," he said. "I remember asking myself whether it is really so easy for someone to come and manipulate people. I wondered what role I would have played."
There are examples everywhere, he says, of group dynamics going out of control, from soccer riots to anti-globalisation protests.
"Group dynamics can be a good thing but they can also be menacing. It's frightening how fast it can change," he says.
"Just look at what happened in the United States after 9/11."
The film has received mostly positive reviews and awakened memories for many Germans who read the book as teenagers.
"It was an exciting idea that totalitarianism could take hold again," says Berliner Jan Rützel. "Most interesting for me was the idea that everyone in the class, from the popular school athlete to the withdrawn loner, all belong equally to the movement and are happy about that."
The Wave has already been sold to 20 countries after a positive reception at the Sundance Film Festival. Already two Israeli directors have registered their interest in adapting the film. "They believe that Israelis think their country is immune to this kind of thinking," says Gansel.
An American remake is also in the works, arriving too late for this year's presidential election campaign.
"The campaign so far is proof that people have a weakness for people who inspire and enthuse us," said Ernst of Psychology Today.
"Barack Obama doesn't need to talk too much about his political programme: through the strength of his personality and vision he can go a long way.
"But, like all charismatic leaders, that spell can't last forever."
