Nazi Book Burning Research Paper

Matt Muscari
ENG 270
Dr. Shevlin
10 December 2015
The Nazi Book Burning Book burnings are just what they sound like. Piles of books being incinerated while crowds of on lookers watch. The definition of a book burning from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is:
“ritual destruction by fire of books or other written materials. Usually carried out in a public context, the burning of books represents an element of censorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials in question.” (2015). The meaning of this event could represent many different views. For some they were just Catholic rituals: for some it was more symbolic than that (Zaenker, 2007, p.209). The books to some were a symbol
The book burnings that happened throughout the war was more or less a small side note and used as a form of control. The most infamous of the book burnings was May 10, 1933, but the book burnings have been done before and still happen to this day (Zaenker, 2007, p.209). The most recent of the book burning was actually done in the United States at the Landover Baptist Church on October 31, 2001 (Zaenker, 2007, p.209). The 150,000 book burners referred to this date as “Satan’s Birthday” and burned over three million books (Zaenker, 2007, p.209). Among the most popular of the burning was the Harry Potter series (Zaenker, 2007,
But what we should examine is what led to the most infamous book burning on May 10, 1933.
The University of Arizona has a propaganda article from a German newspaper from 1933 with 12 “book burning slogans” from the German Students’ Association (“When Books Burn: Lists of Banned Books, 1933-1939”, 2002). The source is originally in German but was translated to English (“When Books Burn: Lists of Banned Books, 1933-1939”, 2002). The article is dated April 14, 1933, less than a month before the book burning (“When Books Burn: Lists of Banned Books, 1933-1939”, 2002). The article gives a real in-depth look at what Germany was looking for when it comes to the sense of “Un-German”. The article states:
“The Jewish mind, as it reveals itself in its unrestrained worldwide malicious agitation, and as it has already penetrated into German literature, must be eradicated together with all liberalism. However, the German Students' Association wants to do more than just voicing empty protests; they want a conscious return to values inherent in the German Volk.” (Strothman, 1968, p.