The Times Online has a story by Richard Morrison about the Nazi book burns. In 1933, the Nazis tried to extinguish an era of Jewish intellectualism by burning the works of more than a hundred authors. But did this act of terror actually succeed?
From the story...
By midnight on that startling evening the flames from the bonfires were leaping ten yards into the air. Thousands had gathered to watch the spectacle. Joseph Goebbels had already spoken, proclaiming the end of “the age of exaggerated Jewish intellectualism”. But still the books burnt, thousands of them. And not just here on the Opernplatz in Berlin, but in cities across Germany. By the end of the night a nation had voluntarily consigned to the flames the best works of its finest living writers.
The date - May 10, 1933 - is now as infamous in the annals of Nazi tyranny as the Night of the Long Knives the following year, or Kristallnacht in 1938. All are seen as symbolic and horrific milestones on the road to genocide. But who chose the authors whose books were to be so publicly burnt and whose reputations were instantaneously trashed? Why were some pro-Nazi writers included? And what became of the authors in the aftermath?
Until now, the answers have been sketchy at best. But a gripping new book, just out in Germany, tackles these matters with tenacity and brilliance.
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