- Headline
-
Today and Tomorrow
- Sub-Headline
- States of Mind. The Burning of the Books
- Publication Date
- Tuesday, March 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
- Page Section and Number
- 8
- Author/Byline
- Walter Lippmann
- Article Text
- The bonfires lighted in Germany by the Nazis have not, of course, destroyed all the books that displease the minister of propaganda and public enlightenment. They have merely destroyed a few samples of those books. The invention of the printing press has made it forever impossible that any government no matter how thoroughgoing or that any new barbarian invasion, however destructive, should again extirpate any part of the intellectual heritage of mankind. There is no longer any danger that the body of learning will be mutilated as so much of the learning of the ancient world has been through fires and earthquakes and carelessness and fanatic zeal. Of each work too many copies exist and they are too widely distributed.
The bonfires are, as the Nazis have carefully informed the world, meant to be symbolic. No one will doubt it. They are indeed highly symbolic. They symbolize the moral and intellectual character of the Nazi regime. For these bonfires are not the work of schoolboys or mobs but of the present German government acting through its minister of propaganda and public enlightenment.
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And what is it that they symbolize? Nothing less than the conviction of the present rulers of Germany that violence is the means by which human problems must be solved. Why for example, do they burn with conspicuous zeal a book like Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front”? That book has nothing to do with Communism or the treaty of Versailles of the Weimar Republic or the Jews. It is a novel which deals with the pitable sacrifice of mankind in war. It is thrown to the flames in the presence of the minister of propaganda and public engagement as symbolic of the “awakening” in Germany. Awakening to what? Is it peace, and to conciliation, and the making of a more just and orderly Europe, or is it to the conviction that the Nazi purposes must be achieved by the fire and sword.
The ominous symbolism of these bonfires is that there is a government in Germany which means to teach its people that their salvation lies in violence. What else can the civilized world make of these bonfires? Had the Nazi burned only the books of the German Republic of Communist books, the world might say it has witnessed an episode in civil war. Had they burned only books by Jews, the world might say that Nazis were persecuting the German Jews. But when they make a special play with elaborate ritual and under official sanction of burning books that point the road to European peace, the conclusion is unescapable [sic], however dreadful it may be to contemplate it, that the Nazis deliberately and systematically mean to turn the minds of the German people to preparation for war.
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That Hitler does not desire and will not provoke a European war in the near future we may very well believe. A war would destroy him. His army is no match for the armies of the French, the Poles and the Czechs. His Nazi battalions are fit only to overpower the unarmed and defenseless opposition within Germany. To fight a war Hitler would have to put arms into the hands of the millions of German workinmen and that is something which, unless he can win their loyalty, would be an act of suicidal lunacy. Hitler’s Germany is utteraly isolated. It would get no help from Italy. It has so deeply outraged the sentiment of the British people that it has thoroughly estranged them.
Though the situation is one in which by every sane calculation the Nazis are powerless except within their own frontiers, it is not possible to feel entirely certain that the peace will be preserved. The danger that hangs over Europe lies in the fact that the most energetic of the Nazi leaders are in a mood of mystic exaltation and feel that they are invincible and infallible. When men are in such a mood they often do not know that two and two makes four. They are unable to see the realties. There is the danger, to put it plainly, that under the influence of mob feeling and the fumes of their own rhetoric, they will go mad and attack someone who has power to strike back.
How great this danger is no one can be certain, for no one can be quite certain as to just how far the hysteria will run. The hope that it will not run to the point of an explosion on the frontiers would seem to rest on two things: The strength of the French army and the persecution of the Jews. The French army will for the time being restrain ail those in Germany who have not taken complete leave of their senses. The persecution of the Jews by satisfying the lust of the Nazis who feel they must conquer somebody, and the cupidity of those Nazis who want jobs, is a kind of lightning rod which protects Europe. It may serve as a temporary substitute for the glorious victories over all of Germany's foes that Hitler has promised his followers.
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That the situation is highly charged with danger is clear. For even if one believes, as I am hopeful enough to believe, that international war is not imminent, the fact has to be faced that Hitler’s Germany is preparing for war in the future. How that was is to be prevented is the problem that confronts the world. The French and the Poles know that the Nazis intend to retrieve the lost territories, that they mean to re-arm, that they are putting the youth of Germany under military discipline, and that they are seeking to extirpate all traces of the will to peace. Thus, though war may be averted for a time, there can be no peace in Europe, there can be no sense of security, there can be no progress in disarmament. Inevitably, whatever may be said at Geneva or elsewhere, the nations of Europe will be strengthening their armaments and tightening up their alliances.
And so, only a change of heart and mind within Germany can restore a sense of peace to the world. The logic of the present course can lead only to war. On what may one base the hope of such a change of heart? I do not know, unless it be that an economic recovery in the world will lift Germany out of the morass of its distress and restore to the German people their faith in the works of peace. We are entitled to believe that this might happen. For the German nation has shared long and deeply in the labor and invention and spiritual life of western civilization. Those who have known the German people, have traveled among them, have worked with them, have marveled at their skill and the perfection of their workmanship, have understood their deep respect for learning, their kindliness and their humor, do not have to believe that these Nazi bonfires symbolize the German spirit. In the long history of a people they are the mood of a moment, a mood of wild despair brought to its peak by the intense agitation of the revolution through which Germany is passing. For an analogy one must look, I think, to the darkest days of the French revolution, to Robespierre, for example, who set out to “awaken” France with a new state religion under which it was said that “all were atheists who did not think like Robespierre.”
These moods pass. These bonfires will be quenched somehow, at worst in the blood and the tears of men, but perhaps by cool waters from the springs of human decency. - History Unfolded Contributor
- Joyce R.
- 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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