Book Burning

Louis P. Lochner

Book Burning

Thesis: Louis P. Lochner describes the situation of the book burning as a barbarian ritual and the morns the loss of German intellectualism as the people are spurred into the Nazi ideology.

· Louis P. Louchner (1887-1975), head of the Associated Press Bureau in Berlin with eye witness account in German capital in The Goebbels Diaries 19442-43.

· The whole civilized world was shocked when on May 30, 1933, the books of authors displeasing to the Nazis where burned.

· Nazi raiding parties went into public and private libraries throwing into the streets books that Nazi Propaganda Minister Dr. Joseph had decided unfit for Nazi Germany

· Louis describes the scene as an almost cultic and heathen festival as he is obviously abhorred by the entire situation and shocked by the Nazi anti-intellectualism

· This anti-intellectualism is further displayed in the words of the Propaganda minister, “The age of extreme Jewish intellectualism has now ended”

o The anti-Semitism is also displayed in these words

· Louis further quotes the propaganda minister as he turns the situation into Nationalism and further incites the situation into revolutionary spirit and hopes of a greater future

· Louis and some foreign correspondents can only wonder what had happened to the “Land of Thinkers and Poets?”