"Where One Burns Books"

The Nazification of German Culture and the Book Burnings of March 10, 1933

Sources generally acknowledge that the Nazi book burnings of March 10, 1933—as discussed in the texts “Book Burning,” by Louis P. Locher, and “The Auto-Da-Fé of the Mind,” by Joseph Roth—were “a strong, great, and symbolic act”.[1] However, exactly what the burnings symbolized for German society remains a heated topic of discussion.

Roth’s lament that the book burnings marked the capitulation of the European mind[2] asserts the events as symbolic of the anti-intellectualism of Nazism. In following with their ideology of racial characterization, Nazism stressed the value of the “unsophisticated mass mind” over the Jewish intellectual mind. Traits such as faithfulness, tenacity, and stability would strengthen the German nation more, it was said, than the uncertainty and wavering that came with Jewish intellect.[3] With this mindset, Nazism sought to purge anything detrimental to the pure German spirit from culture and society. Jewish contributions in the German language were labelled a form of treason, as German culture could only be expressed by “true” Germans of Aryan descent—thus validating the burnings of “un-German” literature on March 10, 1933 and the events that followed. According to Gilmer W. Blackburn, “Hitler’s hostility to intellectualism and his hostility to Jewry were almost indistinguishable.”[4]

In an essay analyzing the Nazi antagonism toward un-German literature, Leonidas E. Hill comments that the world’s reaction to the March 10 book burnings remained ambiguous for some time.[5] While the world seemed to agree that the burnings were a shockingly radical event, international reaction made the then-vulnerable Nazi regime quiet down to an extent, leaving the significance of the events unclear to onlookers. Some critics argued that since the burnings were planned and executed primarily by university student groups and not officially by the government of the Third Reich, they did not truly reflect Nazi racial policies, and could be written off as “student highjinks.”

While the book burnings could potentially be perceived as mere raucous student larks, further investigation into the events of March 10 fail to support that theory. The students organizing the burning belonged to a Nazi student group (Deutsche Studentenschaft) attempting to upstage another such student group (Deutsche Studentenbund) and to gain favour with the Nazi government.[6] Nazism sought to rally the younger generation, as they were fresh and were less likely to harbour the liberal or socialist attitudes that might still be carried by their parents.[7]

 The burnings were not, as some discourse could lead one to believe, single-handedly executed by students for students; Nazis raided people’s homes, confiscating un-German literature and throwing it into the street; non-university civilians attended the rallies, showing support; military troops paraded through the streets to the scene of the fires; policemen and firemen were controlling the crowds.[8] The rallies were less a display of rebellious adolescent spirits than they were a public example of the effect of the Nazi indoctrination fed to the students by their instructors. The lack of resistance to the burnings as well as the wide support they generated are testaments to the degree to which the Nazi ideology was pervading the state. “[Regimentation] was accomplished less through terror,” says Hill, “than voluntary capitulation by stores, libraries, schools, universities, and public consensus.”[9]

While each take different approaches to describing March 10, 1933, both Hill and Blackburn have quoted Heinrich Heine, “There where one burns books, one in the end burns men.”[10] The book burnings were most certainly not isolated events of student life, but were “only the beginning of the end”[11] as heard in Joseph Roth’s cry. While the Nazis burnt the literary embodiments of “un-German” culture, they prophesied the extermination of the living un-German threat that was to come.[12]

It is true that the Nazi political party did not devise or directly effectuate the burnings, but the student-organized events illustrate the growth in public adoption of Nazi ideals and the shared impact of the German community as a whole on the Nazification of their society. While potential exists for the degree of Nazi involvement on March 10 to be debated, the student rally as a reflection of Nazi ideology cannot be denied: the book burnings and the Holocaust shared a common objective in the destruction of the Jewish un-German spirit.

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[1] Joseph Goebbels, quoted in Louis P. Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries 1942-43, cited in “Book Burning,” in Sources of European History Since 1900 (Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2000), 165.

[2] Joseph Roth, “The Auto-Da-Fé of the Mind”, cited in Sources of European History Since 1900 (Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2000), 166.

[3] Gilmer W. Blackburn, Education in the Third Reich: Race and History in Nazi Textbook (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), 141.

[4] Ibid, 143.

[5] Leonidas E. Hill, “The Nazi Attack on Un-German Literature, 1933-1945”, The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 9.

[6] Ibid, 13.

[7] George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich, (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1966), 263.

[8] Hill, 16.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Almansor: Eine Tragödie, quoted in Leo Löwenthal, “Calibans Erbe,“ in “Das war ein Vorspiel nur...,“ Berliner Colloquium zur Literaturpolitik im “Dritten Reich," ed. Horst Denkler and Erberhard Lämmert (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1985, 14.

[11] Roth, 167.

[12] Hill, 33.