When Books Burn

"In Berlin, on May 10, 1933, the newly-elected Nazi party carefully orchestrated an event that would announce to Germans and the world some of the aims and the reach of the Nazi party."

"Beginning at nightfall, trucks laden with thousands of books taken from Berlin-area public, state and university libraries converged on the Opernplatz. Members of Nazi student groups and the Sturm Abteilung (Nazi Party private police) tossed the books onto waiting wooden biers and set them afire in a huge "funeral pyre of the intellect." Other members paraded with torches chanting the Feuersprüche, the declarations of the cultural and intellectual war they intended to wage. Against this backdrop, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels gave a short speech announcing the end of Jewish intellectual influence and proclaiming that a new Germany would rise from the ashes: a Germany remade in the Nazi's image."