When Books Went to War Read online

  American editorialists also voiced their disapproval. It seemed incongruous that universities, which had long been a chief glory of Germany, had become one of her shames, one newspaper said. The New York Times dubbed Germany’s actions a “literary holocaust,” commenting that “such an exhibition of the new national spirit, silly and shameful as it seems, bespeaks a mass-movement plainly touched with insanity.” Time magazine referred to the incident as a “bibliocaust” and reported the ghastly details, including how a band played Chopin’s “Funeral March” as books were cast into a bonfire in the Romerberg, Frankfurt’s medieval marketplace. Many Americans gathered in public protests—eighty thousand in New York, fifty thousand in Chicago, and twenty thousand in Philadelphia.

  How could Germany, an educated nation renowned for its philosophers and thinkers, tolerate the purging of its libraries and the destruction of its books? These acts were not isolated events, but rather one piece of a carefully orchestrated plan devised by Adolf Hitler to manipulate German culture in accordance with his policies and dogmas. Once he gained power, Hitler passed laws to ensure obedience to the new order he was establishing. For example, in 1935 Mein Kampf became state-sanctioned reading; a copy was gifted to every couple who married, and it was used as a textbook in every German school.

  The führer’s involvement in transforming Germany’s cultural institutions to bolster his policies extended far beyond books. Hitler worked to create the impression that only pureblooded Germans had made culturally and artistically significant contributions worthy of display in museums. He founded a new holiday, the Day of German Art. As the presider over the day’s festivities, he selected which artworks would be exhibited, and awarded top honors to pieces he deemed ideologically appropriate. Thereafter, he dictated where each work would be displayed within galleries, and set the value of each creation. The pieces that reinforced his vision of Germany were displayed prominently, and their price tags were correspondingly high. Museums were similarly “purified” by Hitler and Goebbels, as they forbade the display of pieces created by Jews or others considered to be inferior to full-blooded Germans. By exhibiting only those works that would herald the accomplishments of the Aryan race, Hitler aimed to give the impression that only they were capable of bringing glory to Germany.

  Education was reorganized to reflect Hitler’s ideology. On the same day as the Berlin book burning, Dr. Wilhelm Frick, Germany’s minister of the interior, lectured German school administrators on changes to the educational system. He mandated that students be instructed on “everything concerning the fatherland and German history—with special emphasis on the last twenty years” and on “race science, heredity and genealogy.” As to the latter, Frick explained that schools must “consistently emphasize that the infiltration of the German people with alien blood, especially Jewish and Negro, must be absolutely prevented,” and that lessons on “race biology must also bring out mental and spiritual differences between the different races and must bring home to pupils the dangers of race deterioration.” Under Frick’s guidelines, children were instructed that pureblooded Germans were a superior race. Concomitantly, Jewish and left-leaning lecturers were dismissed from their employment; at some schools, vacancies ran as high as 33 percent.

  Hitler also exploited radio and film to disperse his ideas to even the remotest places. Radio broadcasting was considered an efficient means of publicizing, and ensuring obedience to, the führer’s dictates. Goebbels endeavored to make inexpensive radios available to the masses so that families across Germany could listen to Hitler’s messages. German movie studios were pressured to produce entertaining films containing propaganda, and Hitler and Goebbels personally worked with producers to see that their vision for Germany was adequately reflected on the big screen. Goebbels wielded enormous power; he approved scripts, prevented “un-German” films from being made, and determined whether completed films were worthy of being shown. When the public criticized the dull, propaganda-laden films offered in German cinemas, Goebbels blamed movie critics for planting such ideas in their reviews. In 1936, film criticism was outlawed.

  By 1938, the Nazis had banned eighteen categories of books, 4,175 titles, and the complete works of 565 authors, many of whom were Jewish. Yet some Jewish authors remained on bookshelves, to the utter frustration of the Nazis. German newspapers published furious missives censuring institutions that allowed the continued influence of Jewish writers. German librarians were forced to carefully comb through their collections and ensure that every book inimical to Hitler’s policies was eliminated.

  In that year, Nazi policies moved from books to people. On October 18, 1938, Hitler deported over twelve thousand Polish Jews from Germany. Yet only four thousand were allowed to enter Poland, leaving thousands stranded on the German-Polish border. When Herschel Grynszpan, a young Jew living in France, learned that his family was among those languishing on the border without food or shelter, he stormed into the German embassy in Paris and, in a fit of rage, fatally shot German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on November 7, 1938.

  The incident spawned an anti-Semitic wave of terrorism across Germany. By November 9, news of the assassination had spread, and violent anti-Jewish demonstrations erupted in Berlin. Squads of young men roamed the city, breaking store windows with metal batons and weapons. Shops were emptied, merchandise was thrown into the streets, and looters descended like vultures. The New York Times reported that gangs of young Germans, who appeared to be officials or members of the Nazi Party, vandalized Jewish-owned businesses as onlookers joked and laughed. By the following day at least ninety-one Jews had been killed. Almost all Jewish businesses in Berlin were gutted. Eleven synagogues were burned, countless temple books and Torah scrolls were destroyed, and thousands of Jews were imprisoned, sent to concentration camps, or driven to suicide. November 9, 1938, became known as the Night of the Broken Glass—Kristallnacht.

  As the foreign press demanded answers and details, Goebbels stepped forward to set the record straight. The New York Times reported that he “openly sanctioned the wave of terrorism, destruction and incendiarism that swept over Germany,” and even promised that “there would be further anti-Jewish laws for a comprehensive solution of the Jewish problem in a manner that will equalize the status of the Jews in Germany in conformity with popular anti-Semitic sentiment.” “The reaction of the German people to the cowardly murder in Paris” signified “the nation follow[ing] its healthy instincts,” Goebbels said. He confessed that he sympathized with the rioters and vowed to silence all foreign criticism by threatening that Germany’s Jews would pay the price for any lies and exaggerations published overseas. As for the victims of the attacks, Goebbels said: “If I were a Jew . . . I would remain silent. There is only one thing the Jew can do—shut up and say nothing further about Germany.”

  Kristallnacht provoked little outrage within Germany. Hitler’s policies beginning in the late 1920s had paved the way for acquiescence of such blatant persecution. After years of devaluing Jewish contributions to German society and culture, the Nazis had created a climate where violence against Jews was generally condoned.

  Some Americans, however, found Germany’s barefaced anti-Semitism shocking. Newspapers were flooded by letters voicing concern and incredulity. For example, from Saint Paul, Minnesota, a man wrote: “The extent and severity of this outbreak of terrorism [are] unbelievable,” and the “assassination of a minor official cannot justify wholesale retaliation in this manner. Reprisal against a whole people for the crime of an overwrought youth is a throwback to barbarity.” A San Franciscan wrote a letter to that city’s Chronicle, marveling that “one madman could infect a whole nation of intelligent, sensible, essentially kindly people with his own fanatic madness.” In Boston, a writer to the Herald Tribune remarked that “the noblest feature of modern civilization, respect for human life, has been abandoned for the time being in Germany.” This Bostonian noted that while the “internal affairs of Germany are her own business . . . there are some p
ractices which are so revolting to mankind, such a setback for civilization, such a debasement of the human spirit that absence anywhere of protest against them is almost equivalent to approval of them.”

  Germany declared war on Poland on September 1, 1939. Britain and France were compelled by treaty to declare war against Germany. Yet as the German military pushed into Poland, France and Britain were invaded initially not by tanks and bombs, but by words. Hitler’s psychological warfare paved the way for a quick succession of German victories.

  France and Britain each knew they would be attacked after Poland, but France was more vulnerable, with its long land border with Germany. Hitler prepared for battle by infiltrating France’s airwaves. Germany hired native-French broadcasters to lure unsuspecting listeners to tune in to amusing radio shows and popular music. Many listeners were oblivious to the propaganda that was subtly included. These radio commentators expressed worry over the German army’s dominance and military strength, and predicted that France could not withstand an attack. The doubt Hitler’s radio programs planted in French minds quickly spread. Edmond Taylor, a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune who lived in France during this period, witnessed Hitler’s intricately choreographed propaganda campaign and how it crumbled France’s resolve. Describing it as a “strategy of terror,” Taylor reported that Germany spent enormous amounts on propaganda and even bribed French newspapers to publish stories that confirmed the rumors of Germany’s superiority. According to Taylor, Germany’s war of ideas planted a sense of dread “in the soul of France that spread like a monstrous cancer, devouring all other emotional faculties [with] an irrational fear [that was] . . . uncontrollable.” So weakened was the confidence of the French that something as innocuous as a test of France’s air-raid-siren system generated ripples of panic; the mere innuendo of invasion somehow reinforced the idea that France would undoubtedly be defeated. Although the French government made a late attempt at launching an ideological counteroffensive by publicizing the need to defend freedom, it was as effective as telling citizens to protect themselves from a hurricane by opening an umbrella. When the invasion finally did come, France capitulated in six weeks. By similarly destroying the resolve of his enemies before invading them, Hitler defeated Poland, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg in addition to France, all in under a year. Over 230 million Europeans, once free, fell under Nazi rule.

  As France succumbed to its fate and surrendered to Germany, Hitler prepared to send a powerful message to the world, showing how seriously he took his role in avenging Germany’s military humiliation in World War I. France’s defeat was an opportunity to display the might of the German army and intimidate other nations that would be invaded in the future.

  On June 17, 1940, Hitler met with what remained of the French government to sign a formal armistice. Employing every dramatic device to mark the event, Hitler insisted on re-creating the scene of Germany’s defeat in World War I, aboard Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s private railway car in France’s forest of Compiègne. The rail carriage had long been stored in a French museum; on Hitler’s orders it was moved to the exact location where it had stood on November 9, 1918. Clearly, it was France’s turn to be humiliated. The führer personally delivered the terms of capitulation to the French officials. After the armistice was signed, Hitler decreed that Foch’s railway car and a monument dedicated to France’s World War I triumph be transferred to Berlin, where they would be displayed in a museum to mark Germany’s victory over its longtime enemy across the Rhine.

  Once a nation fell to Germany, great care was taken to refashion that country’s concepts of culture, history, literature, art, media, and entertainment in an effort to solidify and reinforce Hitler’s power. Often, the first cultural pillar to be toppled was the library. Hitler created the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) to confiscate desirable books and other artifacts in occupied territories. They were intended for a Nazi university to be built after the war. Undesirable books, by contrast, were destroyed. In Eastern Europe, the ERR burned a staggering 375 archives, 402 museums, 531 institutes, and 957 libraries. It is estimated that the Nazis destroyed half of all books in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and fifty-five million tomes in Russia. Libraries in occupied nations that remained open were reorganized to serve the Nazi agenda. Poland’s libraries were restructured along National Socialist lines through a process of Germanizing records, supplementing collections with Nazi-approved literature, and removing all undesirable materials. After Holland was defeated, recent German books were displayed in order to impress the public with German achievements. When France fell, one of Germany’s first actions was to issue the “Liste Bernhard,” which identified 140 forbidden books. In September 1940, a more comprehensive list was published, naming nearly 1,400 titles. Many libraries in Paris were simply closed. H. G. Wells’s Library of Burned Books, ironically, was carefully preserved by the Nazi occupiers. According to Dr. Alfred Kantorowicz, the library’s general secretary, the Germans kept it “under lock and key,” and although it was “practically impossible for foreigners to use the books,” Germans consulted them for reference. Hitler’s attention to libraries became so well known that, throughout Western Europe, librarians and curators took preemptive measures, moving their most valuable holdings to caves and castles, hoping to hide and preserve treasured collections.

  As American newspapers reported Hitler’s cultural attacks, the war began to be defined as having two fronts or dimensions. One journalist explained: “There are two series of conflicts going on at the same time: the vertical conflicts in which nations fight one another, and the horizontal conflicts which are ideological, political, social and economic.” Other descriptions referred to the war as involving physical and mental components, and as being fought on the battlefield and in the library. Regardless of the terms used, a unanimous understanding emerged that the war was not waged on battlefields alone: the ideas a nation espoused were also under attack. Hitler sought to destroy not only armies, but also democracy and free thought. This new brand of combat was pegged “total war.”

  Although Americans took solace in their physical distance from Germany’s army, it soon became apparent that Hitler’s ideas had long reach. Just as it invaded France with radio broadcasts before sending in its military, Germany relied on the radio to engage American minds long before there was any suggestion of American involvement in the war. Radio sets of the 1930s and 1940s typically included shortwave bands for international listening. For eighteen hours each day, Germany (with Japan’s help) broadcast programs that would reach North America; the war of ideas against the United States had begun. If America could be weakened as efficiently as France, Germany would be able to trounce the nation with very little struggle.

  In order to make its propaganda more palatable to Americans, German officials searched for American expatriates to hire as announcers, as their accents would conceal their loyalties. In exchange for such benefits as ration coupons, which were only distributed to German citizens, and protection in an increasingly volatile Germany, several Americans joined Reichsradio. Iowa-born Frederick William Kaltenbach and Illinois-born Edward Leo Delaney were among the first American radio hosts. Later, Reichsradio would turn to the infamous Mildred Gillars, better known as Axis Sally, to deliver some of its greatest propaganda punches.

  The campaign had little effect, however. The American media readily exposed Germany’s radio shows for what they were. The New York Times reported that Germany’s broadcasts were smartly arranged, copying the format of typical American radio shows: they read the news, played music, and presented skits. Yet while domestic radio stations included sales pitches for soap and breakfast cereal, the Times warned that Germany was out to sell a point of view.

  Beyond calling out the propaganda campaign, some Americans discussed counterattacking. France’s quick defeat demonstrated how effective Germany’s radio campaign could be. One of the loudest voices to address this issue belonged to the Amer
ican Library Association (ALA). Librarians felt duty-bound to try to stop Hitler from succeeding in his war of ideas against the United States. They had no intention of purging their shelves or watching their books burn, and they were not going to wait until war was declared to take action. As an ALA publication observed in January 1941, Hitler’s aim was “the destruction of ideas . . . even in those countries not engaged in military combat.”

  Throughout late 1940 and early 1941, librarians debated how to protect American minds against Germany’s amorphous attacks on ideas. The “bibliocaust” in Europe had struck a nerve. America’s librarians concluded that the best weapon and armor was the book itself. By encouraging Americans to read, Germany’s radio propaganda would be diluted and its book burnings would stand in marked contrast. As Hitler attempted to strengthen fascism by destroying the written word, librarians would urge Americans to read more. In the words of one librarian: if Hitler’s Mein Kampf was capable of “stir[ring] millions to fight for intolerance and oppression and hate, cannot other books be found to stir other millions to fight against them?”