On May 10, 1933, the National Socialists carried out the "Action against the Un-German Spirit" - the burning of thousands of anti-religious, pornographic, abstract, intellectually Jewish and other books that contradict the cultural and social foundations of National Socialism.

All the books were burned on a huge bonfire lit in the center of Berlin on the Opera Square between the Friedrich Wilhelm University building and the State Opera. That day, a huge crowd gathered on the square - about 70 thousand people, each bringing several books with them to personally contribute to the formation of a healthy society. The "Action against the Un-German Spirit" was organized by the National Socialist youth organization "German Student Union". Student committees were created in German universities to combat the un-German spirit. Their goal was to get rid of professors who go against the policy of National Socialism and support the decomposition of society. The society sought to ensure that universities would do away with Jewish influence and become an unshakable stronghold of German nationalism. In total, books by more than 300 authors were blacklisted:
Georg Bernhard, Theodor Wolff, Ernst Glöser, Karl Kautsky, Alfred Kerr, Erich Kästner, Emil Ludwig, Heinrich Mann, Karl Marx, Carl von Ossietzky, Erich Maria Remarque, Kurt Tucholsky, Friedrich Wilhelm Förster, Sigmund Freud and Werner Hegemann, Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Stefan Zweig, Lion Feuchtwanger, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Jaroslav Hasek, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel, Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Maxim Gorky, Ilya Ehrenburg.
The age of perverted Jewish intellectualism is over. A new revolution has opened the way to the triumph of the German spirit. The past is burning in flames, the future is born in our hearts! - Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
Joseph Goebbels

In Berlin alone, more than 20,000 copies of books were destroyed on this day. Books were also burned in 18 university cities in Germany.