When the Regime

commanded the unlawful books to be burned,

teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.

Then a banished writer, one of the best,

scanning the list of excommunicated texts,

became enraged: he'd been excluded!

He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath,

to write fierce letters to the morons in power —

Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen —

Haven't I always reported the truth?

Now here you are, treating me like a liar!

Burn me!

This is a beautiful poem by the German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht. It talks about a writer enraged at the Regime (Nazi Germany) for not burning his books. As a writer, he has always spoken and represented the truth. Why then have they not burned his words? In sparing his thoughts, are they not labeling him a liar?

After Hitler came to power, Nazi Germany regularly engaged in book burnings of writers having liberal and anti-fascist views. They curbed dissent by suppressing independent thought and opposing viewpoints. To justify their actions, the nationalistic sentiment was drummed up. They claimed that these writers were conspiring against the Third Reich.  These book burnings events drew large audiences who cheered along as ideas were banished to the flame.

Book burnings embody the latent power that books possess. They facilitate the free flow of ideas - a powerful tool that can dismantle totalitarian regimes. This is why these regimes go all the way to physically annihilate them.

This idea is very well explored in the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. The novel is set in a dystopian world where books are illegal. Bradbury's society is at a stage where these ideas have seeped so far into people's minds that they have become mainstream. Citizens report their neighbors on suspicion of secretly hiding books. Firemen are called to start fires (to burn books) instead of putting them out. The novel follows the life of one such fireman who goes around burning them ruthlessly. Until one day, he decides to stop and pick them up.