Free When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning

College, the University of Denver, the University of Kansas, the University of Scranton, and Bowdoin College. Several universities used the VBC’s suggestions as a blueprint for their own book ceremonies, right down to reading the passage by Milton.
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    The VBC was not the only organization to think back to the 1933 book burnings that May. With the passage of nine years and a formal declaration of war, the book burnings were cast in a new light: a warning of the destruction that would follow. In nine years’ time, cities were destroyed, millions of lives were lost, and devastation had spread across Europe like a plague. As one newspaper remarked, “Hunger, forced labor, imprisonment, concentration camps, unarmed crowds of fleeing citizens slaughtered from the skies, nations murdered without cause”—these “are the spectacles that have succeeded those bonfires of books.”
    One of the most acclaimed book-burning memorials of 1942 was the radio program
They Burned the Books
, by Stephen Vincent Benét, a Pulitzer Prize winner. Renowned for his epic poem
John Brown’s Body
, and the short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” Benét was known for his ability to intertwine history with fable in striking prose.Aired by the Columbia Broadcasting System,
They Burned the Books
was such a sensation that copies of the script were immediately printed and sold in book form. Over the next four years, this program would be retransmitted over the airwaves countless times.
    They Burned the Books
begins with a stark warning: “Justify the enemy. Appease him. Excuse him. Pardon, condone or accept him. And, by any intelligent process of thought, you will arrive at the diabolical, tortured, debased world of Germany and her Axis partners.” A bell then tolls nine times, after which the Berlin book burnings are reenacted for listeners. The narrator introduces several of the authors whose works were destroyed, and recounts the reasons given by the Nazis for throwing their books into the flames. One was the Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, whose well-known poem “The Lorelei” had been famously set to music by Friedrich Silcher:
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I know not if there is a reason
Why I am so sad at heart.
A legend of bygone ages
Haunts me and will not depart.
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The air is cool under nightfall.
The calm Rhine courses its way.
The peak of the mountain is sparkling
With evening’s final ray.
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    The lyrics of “The Lorelei” had been memorized by millions of Germans; burning copies of the song would not eliminate it. Instead, the Nazis, “with totalitarian courtesy . . . kept the song—and blotted out [Heine’s] name.” “Author well-known—since 1842. Author unknown—since 1933,” the narrator scoffs. “That’s what they do to soldiers of humanity, that’s how they rob the soldier of his sword.”
    After discussing the works of Heine, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser, and many other authors whose books were burned, the narrator urges that they could live on in the minds of those who had read them, but only if Americans chose to fight for their preservation, and for intellectual freedom. “This battle is not just a battle of lands, a war of conquest, a balance-of-power war. It is a battle for the mind of man.” Although America did not realize in 1933 that the book burnings were the beginning of Hitler’s total war, “we know it now,” the narrator intones. The war being fought was for all the books that had been burned, for all the voices the Nazis tried to silence, and for all the innocent people whose blood had been spilled. History featured many instances of people trying to squelch freedom of thought, but the most egregious offender of them all was Adolf Hitler. “We are waiting, Adolf Hitler. The books are waiting, Adolf Hitler. The fire is waiting, Adolf