- Headline
-
Today
- Sub-Headline
- Great Britain Shocked.
- Publication Date
- Friday, April 14, 1933
- Historical Event
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German Students, Nazis Stage Nationwide Book Burnings
This database includes 930 articles about this event - Article Type
- Newspaper
- Location
- Page Section and Number
- 1
- Author/Byline
- Arthur Brisbane, King Features Syndicate
- Article Text
- ALL BRITAIN is shocked by the confession of William H. MacDonald, employe[sic] of Britain's Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company, who pleads guilty of sabotage and military and other spying. He confesses that he and other employes[sic] of the British company, after building gigantic turbines, proceeded to destroy that which they had created.
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For a British concern to sell and take pay from Russia for its installation of machinery and then for its employes[sic] to destroy what they had created, undoubtedly without the knowledge of the British company, is not only shocking treachery, if the man's confession be true, but bad for British business abroad.
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This confession is followed by the conviction of an English officer, member of the aristocratic "Seaforth Highlanders," sentenced to prison for five years on conviction of selling England's military information to Germany. That makes the situation more distressing. If England tells Russia that it is impossible that an Englishman should have been guilty of the conduct confessed, the Russians will ask:
"What about your Seaforth Highlander convicted by your own court?" The British will investigate for themselves. If convinced that MacDonald's confession was extracted by cruelty and is false, they will end all dealings with Russia. If the confession is found to be true, they will say so, apologize, and make good at their own cost the results of the confessed sabotage.
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Mr. Hitler's government on May 10 will collect "seditious, un-German, Jewish, Marxists" books and burn them in sixty-five great bonfires at sixty-five German institutions of learning.
Hundreds of thousands of books will go up in smoke, Germans being ordered to give up their "seditious" books, as Americans were ordered recently to give up their gold.
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To be told what they may read and what they must think will be new to German minds, especially the scientific, thinking mind.
This takes you back to the old Mohammedan ruler who ordered a great library burned "because if what the library teaches is in the Koran the library is not necessary. And if what it teaches is not in the Koran, then the library should be destroyed."
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The Students' Association of Germany, representing Hitler ideas as to education and in charge of the book bonfire, lays down twelve rules. This is one: "We demand that the censor compel all Jewish works to appear only in Hebrew."
It will be hard on German boys and girls, compelled to learn Hebrew or go through life without reading Heine, his "Book of Songs," and, above all, his Reisebilder "Travel Pictures."
Only another Heine could do justice in prose or verse to these book bonfires and the order to print books of genius in Hebrew only.
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The suggestion that Sunday, April 30, be made "President's day" evidently appeals to the country. Mayor O'Brien of New York, by official proclamation, calls on the six or eight millions people in his town to "gather in their churches and offer up sincere thanks to our Lord for the advent of our leader, President Roosevelt."
Millions of small home owners in trouble will indorse[sic] the President's day idea, when they learn that Franklin D. Roosevelt yesterday asked Congress to provide what may be needed to safeguard and protect homes mortgaged up to $10,000.
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Governor Olson of Minnesota, a Farmer-Labor man, has the Minnesota Assembly with him. But Minnesota's Senate, conservative, refuses to do what Governor Olson advises in the way of unemployment relief.
With the true Scandinavian fighting spirit, refusing to be thwarted, Governor Olson says he will "declare martial law and confiscate private wealth" unless his relief measures are passed. And he adds, for good measure, that in case the national and state governments fail to take appropriate action: "I hope the present system of government goes right down to hell."
That is plain talk.
(Copyright,1933,KingFeaturesSyndicate,lnc.) - History Unfolded Contributor
- Jill W.
- Location of Research
- Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)
Learn More about this Historical Event: German Students, Nazis Stage Nationwide Book Burnings
- Book Burning (Encyclopedia Article)
- Immediate American Responses to Nazi Book Burnings (Encyclopedia Article)
- Culture in the Third Reich: Overview (Encyclopedia Article)
- Book Burning (Timeline)
Bibliography
Birchall, Frederick T. “Burning of the Books, May 10, 1933.” In National Socialist Germany: Twelve Years that Shook the World, edited by Louis L. Snyder, 101–104. Malabor, FL: Krieger, 1984.
Stern, Guy. “The Burning of the Books in Nazi Germany, 1933: The American Response.” (external link) Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual 2, (1985): 95–114.
Stern, Guy. Nazi Book Burning and the American Response: Distinguished Lecture. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 1991.
United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Nazi Book Burnings and the American Response. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 1988.
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