Nazis stage massive public book burnings in Germany - May 10th, 1933

On this day in 1933, more than 25,000 books were destroyed during a series of book burnings held in college towns throughout Germany. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that believes the lessons of the past can
guide those in the present toward a better future. I'm
Gay Bluesier and today we're talking about a dark day

(00:22):
in German history when dozens of towns across the country
were lit by the light of burning books. The day
was May ten, thirty three. More than twenty five thousand

(00:44):
books were destroyed during a series of book burnings held
in college towns throughout Germany. Students from sixty two institutions
of higher learning participated in the bonfires. The events were
staged as part of an ongoing effort to force German
arts and culture into agreement with the Nazi Party. All

(01:05):
of the books put to flame that evening had been
targeted for their supposedly un German spirit. This included works
of Jewish authors such as Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein,
as well as American authors like Jack London Upton Sinclair,
Ernest Hemingway, and Helen Keller. The students who burned these

(01:27):
books believed they were helping to purge their country of
a corrupting foreign influence. In reality, they were showing the
world what the Nazi regime truly stood for, an action
that would later prove to be self defeating. It might
come as a surprise to some to hear that massive
public book burnings were instigated by university students rather than

(01:51):
by officials of the Nazi Party, but of course the
party's rhetoric had been designed to incite this kind of
cultural violence. In the early nineteen thirties, as the Nazi
Party continued to grow its military strength, it also worked
to make Nazi ideas more appealing to the masses. Key
to this task was Yosef Goebbels, the head of the

(02:14):
Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. Under his supervision, the
Ministry established broad cultural control over the German people, dictating
what the national press said, in which books and films
were allowed to circulate. The ministry also established the Hitler Youth,
an indoctrination program that all Aryan children in Germany over

(02:38):
the age of six were required to join. All of
these efforts aided the Nazi regime by creating a culture
of fear and exclusion, one that many people had been
groomed to accept at a young age and then willingly
embraced by the time they went to college. The book
burnings of May tenth took place in thirty four different

(03:01):
university towns, but the evening's largest and best documented bonfire
was on Opera Square in Berlin, the site directly between
the city's opera House and university. At this intersection of
art and education, students prepared to burn a collection of
blacklisted books, most of which they had looted from bookstores

(03:22):
and libraries. At the center of the square, they erected
a five foot high wooden pire around a granite slab
and then soaked the logs with gasoline. By the time
of the ceremony that evening, a crowd of about forty
thousand people had gathered in the rain to watch. They
were joined by five thousand torch bearing students, who marched

(03:46):
into the square singing Nazi anthems as a live band
played along. Once the fire was lit, students made their
way to a podium. One by one. Each recited a
short fire oath into the microphone, explaining which offending author
they had chosen to consign to the flames and why.

(04:06):
Then they hurled their chosen book into the fire. Below
and yielded the stage to the next student. The hours
long event had been organized primarily by local students, both
men and women alike, but several professors also helped with
the planning, as did Nazi Party officials. When the students
contacted Goebel's to be guest speaker at the burning, he

(04:30):
was thrilled to see the seeds of his efforts bear
such barbaric fruit. Stepping up to the swastika draped podium
in Berlin's Opera Square, the Minister of Propaganda declared that quote,
the era of morbid Jewish intellectualism is now at an end.
The future German Man will not just be a man

(04:51):
of books, but a man of character. It is to
this end that we want to educate you, and thus
you do well in this midnight hour to commit to
the flames the evil spirit of the past. The fiery
speech wasn't directed only at those in attendance. In helping
coordinate the event, the Nazi Party ensured it would receive

(05:14):
full scale media coverage, not only in Germany but across
the entire world. Word of the planned book burnings had
reached the US by late April, and as a result,
American newsreel cruise were on the scene in Berlin right
alongside the Germans. In addition, radio stations broadcast all the speeches, songs,

(05:35):
and fire oaths from that evening, sparking praise from like
minded listeners and fear and outrage from virtually everyone else.
Many American authors spoke out against the book burnings, both
before and after they took place. One especially notable reaction
came from author and disability activist Helen Keller. Her writing

(05:59):
had been judged un German on multiple counts. Not only
did Keller champion the rights of disabled persons, industrial workers,
and women, her very existence was a reproach to Nazi ideology.
Keller had lost her hearing and sight after contracting a
high fever as a child, but despite these challenges, she

(06:20):
went on to live a rich and rewarding life and
helped countless others by example. She was living proof that
eugenics was both unscientific and unethical. So, of course, Nazi
officials were quick to suppress her writings. When Keller learned
her books were scheduled for destruction, she responded by penning
an open letter to German students. She warned that their

(06:43):
efforts would inevitably fail. Writing quote. History has taught you
nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have
tried to do that often before, and the ideas have
risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can
burn my books and the books of the best minds
in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through

(07:06):
a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds.
I deplore the injustice and unwisdom of passing on to
unborn generations the stigma of your deeds. That may sound
like idealistic sentiment, but Keller was proven right in short order.

(07:26):
After the bonfires, on May tenth, more than a hundred
thousand people marched in New York City to protest Nazi policies,
and similar demonstrations were held in numerous other towns and cities.
The book burnings took place a world away and had
no direct impact on American life, but the image of
the flames and what they represented provoked a powerful response

(07:50):
from millions of observers. The memory of that disgust took
root as well. By the time World War Two began
a few years later, The imagery of the book burnings
had become a catch all symbol for all the tyrannies
of Nazism. That symbolism lived on well after the defeat
of the Nazi Party in Germany, thus fulfilling Keller's prediction

(08:13):
that the stigma of the Burnings would long outlive those
who struck the match. In that sense, all of the
pomp and stagecraft in Berlin backfired big time. It may
have won the Nazis some new supporters, and it certainly
sent a strong message to opponents of the regime, but
by serving as a not so subtle policy statement, the

(08:36):
book Burnings also tipped the hand of the Nazi Party.
Columnists Walter Lippmann explained this best when reporting the bonfires
for the New York Tribune. He warned that, quote, 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. Many others picked up on

(09:00):
that message and began pushing their leaders to take the
growing threat of Nazism more seriously. To varying degrees of success,
these early warners knew that anti intellectual violence was just
the beginning. As German poet Heinrich Hein once wrote quote,
where one burns books, one will soon burn people. That's

(09:24):
the notion that may have given some German readers pause
following the events, but a last the works of Heinrich
Hein were part of the bonfire. I'm Gay Blusier and
hopefully you now know a little more about history today
than you did yesterday. If you want to keep up

(09:45):
with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at t d i HC Show and if
you have any comments or suggestions, you can always send
them my way at this day at ihart media dot com.
Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thank
you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow

(10:06):
for another day in History class