The Second World War and the Public Libraries of Nazi Germany

In the six years between 1933 and 1939, the nazi regime attempted to transform German public libraries from quiet, out-of-the-way places into active participants in the stirring new era. To that end they first instituted a rigorous censorship and replaced personnel of questionable views with politically reliable individuals, then began a building programme to bring a public library to every village of five hundred or more, filled library shelves with propaganda, and encouraged programmes to increase library use. They created an elaborate administrative structure to implement policy. They replaced old ideas and values with new. Most important, of course, was the principle that the library was now a nazi public library. Although this meant that libraries were serving the ends of a totalitarian state, it was an identification that had at least some positive features. Pre-1933 public libraries had been limited in their ambitions, full of outdated books and covered with a metaphorical layer of dust; emphasis on action was all to the good. Increased attention affirmed that the public library was an important institution. Most of all, public libraries benefited from the assertion by the regime that public libraries were public institutions and should be publicly supported, i.e., these libraries, previously living a hand-to-mouth existence, dependent upon a mixture of gifts, fees and grants from local governments, were to be tax-supported. The outbreak of the second world war interrupted and eventually brought to a halt public library service in general, as well as the regime's most cherished programmes. In some ways, the problems of the German public libraries were similar to the problems experienced by public libraries in all enemy countries, whether Allied or Axis: drafting of personnel, air raids in which books and libraries were destroyed, the need for new programmes to supply soldiers and those

Assertion · Censorship · German · Institution · Nazism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · World War II · European history and politics · German History and Society · History · Law · Library Science and Administration · Public Administration