On May 10, 1933, in a chilling display of censorship and ideological control, the Nazis organized massive public book burnings across Germany. These events were orchestrated primarily by the German Student Union, a group that had become increasingly aligned with the Nazi Party. Encouraged and supported by high-ranking officials like Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, the book burnings were framed as a necessary purification of German culture. Goebbels himself delivered a fervent speech at Berlin’s Opernplatz, celebrating the symbolic destruction of what he called “un-German” thought.

The burnings targeted a wide array of authors and intellectuals whose works were seen as threats to Nazi ideology. Books by Jewish, Marxist, pacifist, and liberal thinkers were thrown into the flames. Among those condemned were the writings of Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, and Erich Maria Remarque. Even novels by American writers like Jack London and Helen Keller were not spared. Ironically, Heinrich Heine’s works were also burned—he had once written, “Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people,” a line that proved ominously prophetic.

While open resistance within Germany was rare due to the repressive political climate, not everyone remained silent. Some librarians and professors quietly tried to preserve banned works, and later, student-led resistance movements like the White Rose would speak out against the intellectual repression. Outside Germany, the world took notice. In cities like New York and London, public readings of banned books and protests against Nazi censorship offered a glimpse of solidarity. But within Germany, the fires marked a dark moment of cultural erasure, one that signaled the regime’s broader intent to control not only politics and society, but also the very ideas people were allowed to read and believe.