BOOK BURNINGS
Murrow, Edward R.
Book Burnings By Edward R. Murrow AMERICAN officials in Berlin recently released a small bit of information. A few months ago, certainly a few years ago, most of us would have regarded it as...
...He said, in substance, that the great strength of the totalitarian state was that it could force those who feared it to imitate it...
...Historically, it is possible for a people to lose their freedom while preparing to defend it...
...This somber parallel recalls to my mind a little known and seldom quoted statement by Adolf Hitler before he came to power in Germany...
...We don't know whether these books will be burned...
...All "cosmopolitan" or "opportunistic" books have been ordered removed...
...A few months ago, certainly a few years ago, most of us would have regarded it as another indication of totalitarian suppression, an effort at thought control...
...superior amusement...
...The Russians are doing, in their occupation zone, what we have done in our information libraries in both occupied and allied countries...
...and the reason we cannot do it is because we have ourselves engaged in similar practices in the same country...
...Among the books already purged are Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Ftont and Dos Passos' Three Soldiers...
...The information was this: libraries in the Soviet zone of Germany have been purged of all books containing what is called "pacifist tendencies which could lower readiness for defense...
...It is true on both sides of the Iron Curtain that he who limits your right to read limits also your right to be informed, to conclude, and to be free...
...The sense of superiority in freedom which we had when the Nazis were burning books can scarcely sustain us now, for we, too, have caused casualties on the shelves of libraries that we operate...
...It is suggested here that we have lost a small but yet important piece of ground when we can no longer view the banning of books by the Communists in Germany with either contempt or detached and...
Vol. 17 • July 1953 • No. 7
