Book Burning

Thesis: The Nazi book burning rallies were undertaken in an effort to preserve the cultural purity of Germany.

x- Witness to massive burning in the University of Berlin

x-Joseph Goebbels dictates allowed the Nazis to go into public and private libraries in order to censor literature

x- Propoganda minister himself witnesses the burnings

x- The burning is claimed to be a rebirthing of German values- a shedding of the Jewish intellectual age from German culture and an effort to purify German culture

Alice Hamilton: “The Youth Who Are Hitler's Strength”

Rob Edwards

Alice Hamilton: “The Youth Who Are Hitler's Strength”

• Influenced by widespread Nazi propaganda and led astray by their youthful idealism, the youth of Germany were some of the most ardent supporters of Nazism

• The streets of every German city swarmed with brown-shirts (Nazi uniform), were filled with marches and parades

• The swastika flag flapped on every building

• These youth that are now nazis were children during the war – children of both the poor and the middle class

• Fathers were away at war and mothers were busy working, so they came into manhood in a country that had no use for them

• The Nazi party provided a sense of belonging and importance that had long been lusted after by these kids

• Hitler was more successful than the communists because his propaganda was more effective since it glorified Germany instead of trying to explain the internationalism of communism

• Hitler made each insignificant, poverty stricken, jobless youth feel himself one of the greatest of the earth

• Hitler himself provides an object for hero worship

• They really believe that Hitler will bring about a genuine socialism without class warfare

• All around Germany, youth nazi movements and uprising can be seen in schools, churches, etc

  • The students of Kiel university successfully brought about the discharge of 28 jewish professors

• This revolt of youth against modern education has always been a part of Hitler's program, because he dreams of a new pedagogy that focuses on physical prowess, and leaves intellectual stuff to specialists

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?”

Era of totalitarianism army intelligence report

Thesis: The army intellegence report is a blatant statement of the universal disgust with WWI in the eyes of the Russian soldiers. The Northern Front, 12th army, Western Front and Southwestern front all find fault in the continuation of the war and it shows in the rebellious attitudes of the soldiers. The final conclusion made is the necessity of providing properly for the soldiers as they begin to face the winter. I. Northern Front

• Lack of confidence in purpose


• soldiers believe they cannot be punished for what they do.


• general weariness in army


• The influence of Bolshevik ideas spread very rapidly in military

II. 12th Army

• Aside from Bolshevik not a single political movement has any popularity


• Favor of an immediate cessation of military operations on all fronts


• Battallions and regements refuse orders

III. Western Front

• general weariness


• bad nourishment


• mistrust of officers


• intense defeatist agitation accompanied by refusals to carry out orders


• threats to the commanding personnel


• attempts to fraternize with the Germans in hopes of achieving peace and getting out of the horrible war


• Calls for peace to avoid winter in the trenches


• Issue at Gomel, where eight thousand soldiers refused to be shipped off and instead stormed the armory, taking fifteen hundred suits of winter equpiment and assaulting the Assistant Commissar and a member of the front committee.

IV. Southwestern Front

• Defeatist agitation increases


• Bolshevik "wave" grows


• Discussions amongst soldiers almost entirely about peace at any cost


• No confidence in the majority of officers


• Plundering surrounding country estates

V. Conclusion

• The approaching winter campaign has accelerated disintegration of the army and increased the longing for peace.


• complete demoralization will result IF everything to prepare the soldiers for winter is not done.

Miron Dolot, "Execution By Hunger"

• Setting: 1932 famine-ridden Ukraine in which the Communist government has resorted to getting as many agricultural products from the countryside as possible, leaving the farmers on the verge of starvation trying to stay alive.


• Men, women, and children alike all do backbreaking work and scourge the potato fields looking for something to eat, whether the food is rotten or frozen.


• Farmers used to be able to move to the city to find work but now it has been made illegal to hire farmers in order to stop the flor of labor from the collective farms and to prevent farmers from receiving food rations from other cities.


• Deaths from starvation slowly start to become daily occurences.


• Soon the "Hundred Thousanders" or "Thousanders," 1120,000 of the Party's most active and reliable members, started showing up in villages like tryrants, imposing their demands in order to organize a speedy harvest.


• The Thousanders demand that the grain quota be just as much as last year's - something that is impossible to do.


• In order to save themselves and their families, people started to eat anything and everything (dogs, cats, small forest animals, small birds, crustacean shells, bark, weeds, leaves, diseased animal meat, etc.) - even food that had already rotted.


• When Dolot and his mother try to leave the village they are confronter with thousands of frozen bodies lining the roads - there was absolutely nowhere to go.


• The village eventually ceasmed to exist as a coherent community - instead it was replaced with a sort of tribal survival of the fittest atmosphere.


• Mothers abandoned children; people stayed locked in their houses


• Eventually, rumors of cannibalism were found to be true, particularly with one case when "a woman was found dead, her nock contorted in a crudely made noose. The neighbors who discovered the tragedy also found the reason for it. The flesh of the woman's three year old daughted was found in the oven."

Miron Dolot - Execution by Hunger

Miron Dolot witnessed the horrors of famine within his own country of Ukraine and later left for the West. He wrote The Hidden Holocaust years later to recall his past observations. Here are some points from the excerpts.

· 1932 - the battle for bread

· BASIC OVERVIEW: The Communist government began taking food from the starving farmers for the “greater good”, and it forced a mass famine from lack of crops

· In this year (1932) famine broke out and brought endless amounts of beggars

· People were roaming the forest for food and the riverbanks were crowded with hungry citizens in search of some nutrition

· Every farmer would go into the city looking for work, but since the city itself was already in economic ruin, the government made it illegal to hire farmers for any work in order not to make the job market too stagnant

· Deaths from starvation became a daily occurrence. The bodies starved were just deposited in a large common grave

· At the end of May, The Party (Communist Gov’t) had mobilized 112,000 members to secure a swift and smooth harvest, but it soon became clear that the nine who had come to Dolot’s village would hold tyrannical power

· The quota the government asked for in grain was just unrealistic for the farmers

· In January 1933, Dolot and his mother set out from the city to the town – everywhere on the side of the roads were frozen corpses

· Farmers were found dead having collapsed in their endless search for more potatoes

· A friend of Dolot’s mother, named Solomia was expelled from her collective farm because she had a child, her husband had already died and she could not keep up her quota. From there she went seeking a job but could never get one, and eventually she committed suicide in her Ukrainian national uniform.

· In March of 1933, the famine hit its worst point, as people locked themselves inside and neighbors became enemies

· The first rumors of actual cannibalism were related to the mysterious and sudden disappearances of people in the village

· One woman had killed herself after eating her three year old daughter, another arrested for killing her two children