After the Nazis came to power, they actively controlled speech and thought, and in addition to banning and destroying books, the Nazis also stole books by any means, stole a large number of books and kidnapped researchers...
In 1939, the Nazi government's expanding security apparatus underwent a comprehensive reorganization, culminating in the creation of the Reich Central Security Service (RSHA), a super-organization in which police and intelligence units, such as the Gestapo, the Reich Security Service, and the Criminal Police, were all lined up to fight against the enemies of the state.
The library, which the Imperial Security Service had begun to build, now fell into the hands of the Second Division of the Imperial Central Security Service, a new division dedicated to investigating political opponents; the head of the SS detachment, Franz Berger, was in charge of the imperial security service. Franz six was promoted to director of the division. As Director of the Second Division, Sicks stated the purpose of the library, "In order to understand the spiritual weapons of our intellectual enemies, it is necessary to delve into the writings they have written."
But the research library was soon adapted to another very different seventh division of the Imperial Security Service, where Sicks remained in charge. The seventh division is a more specific and specialized research department, specializing in "thought research and evaluation".
▲ Nazi book destruction commemoration, Exhibited in Berlin / Photo / wikipedia, the same below
When the Great War broke out, the Imperial Central Security Service seized the opportunity to steal books. At the end of 1939, the first trophies arrived, Jewish literature from Poland, as many as six trains. The books were all stolen from the same library and owned by the "Great Synagogue of Warsaw". In Poland alone, thousands of libraries were eventually counted as having books stolen.
The seventh place became so large that the spoils of war had to be stored on Berlin's Escherstraße and Amstraße, two large masonic houses that were also occupied. The library of the seventh division ended up with a number of departments, each specializing in various enemies, the largest of which was the Department of Jewish Literature. It also included syndicalism, anarchism, communism, Bolshevist literature, anti-war and Christian literature, and various sporadic parties and minorities.
In general, the theme of the Seventh Library corresponds to Hitler's own interests, covering not only the "enemies of the state" but also a broader object, reflecting hitler's and the SS worldview.
The most curious category of books in the Imperial Central Security Service library is mysticism. Documentary novels and books in popular literature that appeal to sensationalism often crudely explore the relationship between the Guards and mysticism. However, the mystical books in the library of the Imperial Central Security Service were indeed the most serious subjects of the SS.
Before the establishment of the Imperial Central Security Service, the Imperial Security Service was already preparing a "mystic library", and later based on this, the "Central Library of Mystic World Literature" was created. This specialized library includes a so-called "special order-h" program specializing in witchcraft and spells. In addition to the many books in the collection, there is a set of mystical science books, called "scientific secrets", as well as theosophists, sects and astrology. Many of these works of literature can be traced back to the stolen Germanic Masonic Order.
Another classification, "Special Order-c", has a mostly semi-religious theme, but also contains a large set of erotic works and literature on sexology. However, the books plundered by the Guards were not limited to the seventh point—paradoxically, it also stole humans. Jewish scholars and intellectuals were abducted to the Imperial Central Security Service library in Berlin, where they were asked to work and sometimes to explain articles written in Hebrew and Yiddish to the Guards.
This library, or, to put it correctly, under the seventh division of the Central Reich Security Service, was a testament to the totalitarian ambitions of the SS and Hitler in many ways. The research carried out by the Central Imperial Security Service was not only aimed at improving their understanding of the enemy in order to annihilate them more effectively in one fell swoop—moreover, it was also aimed at instilling knowledge into the thinking and intellectual development of the SS.
The SS is waging war against what it considers Jewish intellectualism, modernism, humanism, democracy, enlightenment, Christian values, and cosmopolitanism. But the war was fought by more than arrests, executions and concentration camps. Himmler saw his organization as a national socialist denomination, the equivalent of the Jesuit order that became the vanguard of the Catholic Counter-Reformation after Protestantism flourished in the sixteenth century.
According to Himmler's worldview, the SS would in the same way become a bastion against nazi ideological enemies. The danger of taking a one-sided view of the Nazi relationship with knowledge is that it masks something even more dangerous: the desire of totalitarian ideas not only to rule the populace, but also to dominate their minds.
The Nazis were often seen as insane intellectual saboteurs. Indeed, during the Nazi regime, many libraries and archives were destroyed either as planned or as a result of war. Nevertheless, in the shadow of Himmler's library, we are compelled to ask the following question: Is the totalitarian regime's destruction of knowledge terrible, or its thirst for knowledge terrible?
follow us: @ettodaynet on twitter | ettoday on facebook