Book-Burning: Fanning The Flames Of Hatred

In the book Heinrich Heine on Burning Books, it mostly talks about how the Germans tried to burn or get rid of all the books that may have came across as a threat or just because they didn’t agree with the message of the book. “The Nazis didn’t burn just any books, they burned the books of Jews, communists, socialists and other ‘degenerates.’ (Cline pg 1) In the process of burning all of the books, they realized that there were a lot more than what they thought. They then proceeded to to to the main source; the authors of the books. They thought that getting rid of the authors would be able to get rid of the messages altogether. In the book Book-Burning: Fanning the Flames of Hatred is also about how the Germans tried to burn all ‘anti-German’ books. In this story, it talks about more than just the Germans though. The main topic in the story is how people tried to burn books that were against what they thought were right. “The Spanish Inquisition burned 5,000 Arabic manuscripts in Granada in 1499.” This isn’t talking about the Germans burning books but this is showing how the Spanish were burning things that went against what they thought was right. These 2 stories are similar because they both talk about how the Germans were burning books to try to get rid of messages that were being released to the public that they didn’t …show more content…
Also, I think these stories were written because the authors were trying to tell a story about how the Germans were trying to control everything and how some people/groups were trying to control things back in that time. “Anyone who had tried to burn Mein Kampf in 1933, Evans says, ‘would have been arrested and shot’.” (Henley pg 4) This quote shows how the Germans were allowed to do almost anything they wanted but if someone would try to do something to a book or anything they agreed with, they would get