Half of those who voted Adolf Hitler into power in 1933 were women - and it wasn’t for the sake of his good looks and charm.

In addition to that, the Nazis had rather old-fashioned ideas about women, considering that the female’s role was to make a home for her warrior husband, obey him without question and bear children for the Reich. So what on earth induced German women to turn out for Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and the rest of the gang?

Despite the lurid stories circulated by his political enemies - and one’s natural inclination to believe him capable of any perversion - Hitler appears to have had an uneventful erotic life and a low sex drive. The most interesting aspect of last week’s programme was its glimpse of the petty-bourgeois life in his mountain retreat. Part two looks at Nazi policies on the family and explores Nazism’s cult of youth, health and discipline; Part three is a biography of Magda Goebbels, who became the epitome of Nazi womanhood.

With a wealth of archive film and personal testimony, the series provides material on an important facet of German history and the starting-point for a reflection on the aphrodisiac nature of power.

* School spotlight, World Debt, C4, Wednesdays, February 28 and March 7, 11.40-12am.

This two-part unit for courses in ciizenship and geography is an original mixture of documentary and drama-documentary on Third World debt and its links with international trade. New net notes for the series are available on www.4learning.co.ukplus * The English Programme: Dark Tales, C4, Thursdays, March 1-15, 10-10.25am; night time rpt Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 5.15-5.40am.

Last September’s unit for GCSE English is repeated this month. It studies 19th and 20th-century texts on three themes: outsiders, cities at night and masks. In the second part, for example, there are comparisons between Dickens’s use of London after dark and film noir; in part three, Jekyll and Hyde meets Batman and Angela Carter. Net notes: www.4learning.co.ukplus * Best of the rest, Langan Behind the Lines, BBC2, February 26-March 2, 11.20pm-12 midnight.

Every day this week, admitting that he knows little about Islam, Sean Langan plays the naive traveller as he takes his hidden camera on a journey from Afghanistan to the Gaza Strip. In Tuesday’s film, he discovers an underground network of girls’ schools in Kabul, where the Taliban enforce a regime for women that might have seemed a bit extreme to the Nazis.

ROBIN BUSS

Full education programme schedules can be found online at www.bbc.co.ukeducationlzonesched.shtmlwww.bbc.co.ukwhatsonwww.4learning.c .ukprogrammesspring2001.cfm