There are two ways to keep people under your control from reading books that you don’t approve of. The Nazis were enthusiastic about fire. On May 10, 1933, across Germany, students incited by the growing Nazi party conducted public book burnings. The largest such bonfire, in Berlin, attracted 40,000 people. They burned books by a vast variety of writers, Jewish and non-Jewish — Sigmund Freud, Erich Maria Remarque, Albert Einstein, Jack London, etc. One hundred years earlier, in 1822, the German poet Heinrich Heine called it: “Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.” Which the Nazis did.
However, as Ray Bradbury noted: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture, just get people to stop reading them.” It is called “censorship.” The Nazis were very adept at censorship, control through fear. And today, across our democracy, the increasingly strong push for censorship is blocking young people and adults from reading books that might start them thinking outside the box. Librarians and teachers can be fired and may even face criminal charges in some cities for assigning books or discussing topics not sanctioned by the state.
Beware the Nazi template.
