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The article deals with the problem of institutional mechanics and willingness for acquisition of the Nazi worldview in the Kriegsmarine. In the centre of the reflections remains a crucial question: how the indoctrination process in the German navy took place during the time after 1935. Furthermore, the organisational interactions between the NSDAP and the Kriegsmarine are analysed, as well as motives and limits of the Party’s endeavours to ideologically impact the attitudes and views of the sailors. How this development of indoctrination efforts was carried out and what results it brought is described on the basis of the Nazi pseudo–pedagogic concept of “military spiritual leadership” (wehrgeistige Führung). As part of the measures to preserve its “state within the state” status, the navy, especially during World War II, began to systematically Nazify itself in a paradoxical aim to show Adolf Hitler that it was not necessary to put an end to its traditional independence. In order to prevent the “coordination” (Gleichschaltung) from above, the Kriegsmarine engaged itself more and more in a process of self–indoctrination. The text is an outline of the subject matter.

The aim of this paper is to show critical thinking as an important element of cur- riculum that is worth developing during various courses in the process education and to which the form and content of philosophy course is worth adjusting. The article points out various difficulties of putting the idea into practice, particularly those connected to assumptions and practices of the Polish education system (po- liticization, idelogization, lack of pluralism in the Polish school, and little prepara- tion of teachers to develop critical thinking in their pupils). The paper also gives examples of solutions that aid skeptical thinking teaching. I do not argue that the school should resign from passing cultural competences and knowledge regarding history of culture and philosophy, but I do suggest that they do not have to the most crucial position in curriculum. Nevertheless, education should not be confined to only critical thinking as it would both restrain creative thinking and upset the balance between processes of individualization and socialization, the latter being essential on early stages of education.

The article suggests the need for education, which is free of indoctrination and imposition of authority. Changes that occurred in the Polish educational system during last twenty five years created a subtle form of indoctrination. In such situation an ethical education becomes especially necessary to develop in pupils critical thinking and shape the humanistic attitude.