The Third Wave was an experimental movement created by the high school history teacher Ron Jones in 1967 to explain how the German population could have accepted the actions of the Nazi regime during the rise of the Third Reich and the Second World War.
He convinced the students to attend a rally where he claimed that the classroom project was part of a nationwide movement and that the announcement of a Third Wave presidential candidate would be televised.
Jones told his students of the true nature of the movement as an experiment in fascism, and he presented to them a short film discussing the actions of Nazi Germany.
The experiment took place at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, during the first week of April 1967.
[a] Jones, finding himself unable to explain to his students how the German people could have claimed ignorance of The Holocaust, decided to demonstrate it to them instead.
Students were expected to sit at attention before the second bell, had to stand up to ask or answer questions and had to do so in three words or fewer, and were required to preface each remark with "Mr. Jones".
[9] Jones decided to continue the experiment after observing his students' strict adherence to the previous day's rules.
Jones based the name of his movement on the supposed fact that the third in a series of waves is the strongest.
After a few minutes of waiting, Jones announced that they had been a part of an experiment in fascism and that they all had willingly created a sense of superiority, much as German citizens had done in the period of Nazi Germany.
[9] Lesson Plan, which retold the story of the Third Wave through interviews with the original students and teacher, debuted at the Mill Valley Film Festival in 2010.
A German documentary entitled The Invisible Line (Die Geschichte der Welle) debuted on television on December 19, 2019.