this was a very interesting read as i have ancestors who fought in germany and such. def something i'd recommend to someone who loves learning the history of books in Nazi Germany

This was a very interesting book. I’m amazed that there are people still trying to return the stolen books to the families. Amazing!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.

I'm exhausted by WWII books, but this was an exception. Learning about the theft of books by the Nazis and the resulting effects was super interesting. Great for history lovers or those obsessed with books.

The Book Thieves tells the story of a moving account of the books taken from the Jewish community during the Nazis reign. As the Nazi party gained power, libraries took a hit. Such a sad time in history, and even literature was affected. In order to control a people, you must control the access of literature and arts. This was just the case with the book thieves.

So sad. One would think that knowledge benefits all of humanity so all people would want to preserve that knowledge. Monsters, horrible monsters to destroy so much knowledge. It boggles the mind to think of all that has been lost due to library and book destruction...Sad read.

I am a member of the American Library Association Notable Books Council. This title was suggested for the 2018 list. It was not nominated for the award.

This is a valuable addition to the collection of writing about Nazi looting and plundering throughout their sphere of influence as it addresses the taking of books and other written materials exclusively. It also ties this in to the creation of the Nazi's primary "myth": the Jew as the cause, not only of the war, but of a vast worldwide conspiracy in historical terms. In careful detail, the author, discusses the early philosophy behind National Socialism and the various men who had been proposing ideas that would eventually become part of The Third Reich and the planned One Thousand Years Reich. In addition to this, the author addresses the arduous, and often seemingly impossible, task of returning books to their owners, be they individuals, congregations or libraries. Of course a major problem is that so many of the owners and institutions are destroyed.

Naively, I thought that the Nazi war machine sought out books to destroy them. This was sometimes their purpose but often not. They had special squads established before they had invaded other countries (having practiced well internally) whose job it was to locate libraries large and small of specific groups, i.e. Jews, Freemasons, Russian Emigrants, emigrants from other conquered nations considered "lesser" peoples, etc. Books and other written materials were gathered up for study as part of the plan for the future 1000 year Reich. And also as a form of justification for the current war. These books and written documents were to be used to somehow prove that the Jews were in a centuries-old plot to control the world...aided by the Freemasons (who happened to control Britain and the United States).

As anyone who has taken basic philosophy or statistics knows, people can force words to prove what they want to see.

There are details provided country by country, taking the route that the German army followed through Western then Eastern Europe. So much detail but also some very specific information on individuals.

This was a truly fascinating read for me as it opened my eyes to a side of Nazi-ism that I had never considered, and I feel I should have. As this "ism" continues to rear its ugly head again today, I believe it is important to know as much about its history as possible in order to be ready for its present.

I highly recommend this book for any interested in the history of ideas.

4.5*

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

“The Book Thieves” eBook was published in 2017 and was written by Anders Rudell and Henning Koch (https://henningkoch.com). This is Mr. Rudell’s first book and Mr. Koch’s third.

I categorize this novel as ‘G’. This book spans the period from the rise of the Nazi party in per-war Germany until many years after it has ended.

The story tells of the confiscation and burning of many books as the Nazis rise to power. Many of the the books confiscated found their way into the collections of many within the Nazi party.

Once the war was over, these books began to surface and an effort was put into place to trace the owners and return volumes to their original owners or their descendants.

I read only a little of this book before I set it aside. I did not want to call a Rule of 50 on it as it contains a lot of very interesting information, just not interesting to me. The cover art is well chosen for the book. For general reading I would say this is a 2, but for those interested in this topic I would say it is at least a 4. I give this novel a 4 out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

Very enjoyable, at times depressing and other times uplifting.

so fascinating!

Loved this book. highly recommend

Unfortunately, as much as I was looking forward to this title, I am unable to read it because the PDF format does not fully function on a Nook. The font is so incredibly small as to make it unusable. Please consider providing Advanced Reader Copies as e-book format, not PDF, in the future.

This book was about so much more than the Nazis stealing books during WWII. Encapsulated in this book are the histories of several libraries and book collections, a discussion on the German education system and Hitler's impact on it, the reasons these books were being stolen, and the many roadblocks to getting them returned to their rightful owners. Mr. Rydell traveled Europe and Asia, visiting many of the libraries and even getting the opportunity to return a stolen book himself. His personal insight helped bring this part of history alive. Hearing how the curators played detective, trying to find clues to the original owners sounded like a bittersweet job. And while I went in to this book thinking the Nazis were stealing books because they were of value or didn't want the Jews to have access to them, I finished with the very sad knowledge that the intended use was to "prove" a conspiracy and the inferiority of the Party's enemies; not only the Jews, but also the Freemasons, Bolsheviks, gays, Catholics, etc. I can see why the people tasked with tracking down the original owners of the books are so overwhelmed. So many books! So few clues! What a bittersweet job.

This book turned out to be so much more than a look at the harm done to the world of books. This is a first rate depiction of the true damage done to cultures and the visceral damage done to the soul of collective humanity. In these pages you begin to see the true depravity of those who would erase the very memories and existence of millions of innocent people while building their new world on the very books so lovingly created by those who were trodden under. An eye opener.

Art objects stolen by the Nazis during World War II have featured prominently in movies and books in recent years. This book, however, examines yet another type of theft they committed that is not as well known. The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance by Swedish author Anders Rydell, Henning Koch (Translator) is a well researched account of the Nazis' systematic pillaging of Europe's libraries, and the librarians that are now working to return the books to their rightful owners or heirs. This is a well-written, fascinating look at crimes of the past and how some people are working--decades later--to rectify this crime one lost book at a time. Why would the Nazis pillage books? To quote from the book, "American slaves, long prevented from learning to read, referred to the Bible—used by the white slave owners as a means of justifying their captivity—as “The Talking Book.” An important part of their liberation came about when they appropriated the Bible and used it against their oppressors. The book was an instrument of both repression and liberation. Even today, the interpretation of holy writings lies at the very core of global conflicts. The book does not only transfer knowledge and emotions—it is a source of power. This is often something that has been obscured by the smoke of the infamous book burnings in Germany in 1933—when works of authors loathed by the regime were thrown into the flames. The image of Nazis as anti‑intellectual, cultural vandals has been persistent, possibly to some degree because it is easy to comprehend, and possibly because we would like to see literature and the written word as fundamentally good. But even the Nazis realized that if there was something that gave more power than merely destroying the word, it was owning and controlling it. There was a power in books. Words could act as weapons, resounding long after the rumbling of artillery had stopped. They are weapons not only as propaganda, but also in the form of memories. Whoever owns the word has the power to not only interpret it, but also write history." The author of this book travels to the sites of libraries that are finding pillaged books in their collections and the sites of once great libraries that were destroyed by the Nazis in places like: Berlin, Greece, Weimar, Munich, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, and Prague to name a few. The book begins and ends with the author reuniting a pillaged book with a granddaughter of a Jewish man who sent his children out of Germany to safety but who was unable to escape himself. Even though the book is in a language she cannot read, and not worth much in monetary terms, it is priceless to her. The scope of the books and libraries examined are broad ideologically as they encompass not just the Jews but other groups the Nazis did not agree with from the Communists and Freemasons to the Catholics. The book ends with an extensive bibliography.

A fascinating and heartbreaking account of the treatment of Jewish (and other non-Nazi) libraries and books during World War II. Rydell finds a healthy balance between discussing his present day exploration of Europe and events through history. Books have been second staged to art due to the lack of monetary value in most cases. Rydell explores stories that aren't covered in history class, and anyone who enjoys reading about World War II, European history, or Jewish history should read this book. I'd also recommend it to librarians or other book lovers. A great edition to any non-fiction collection.

THE BOOK THIEVES:
The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance
Anders Rydell


MY RATING ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
PUBLISHER PENGUIN GROUP Viking
PUBLISHED February 7, 2017


SUMMARY
THE BOOK THIEVES is much more than the story of the Nazi pillaging of Europe's libraries. Anders Rydell explores the evolution of the Nazi ideology and the men behind the destruction of the literary culture of the Third Reich's "internal enemies". Rydell explores how and why the German mandate shifted from destruction to the confiscation of valuable books for the purpose of ideological research and evaluation.

"What is more frightening, a totalitarian regimes destruction of knowledge or it's hankering for it?"

THE BOOK THIEVES gives us a glimpse into some of the treasures of the greatest library collections of Poland, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, and Greece. By The end of the war millions upon millions of books had been destroyed or confiscated. Trains overflowing with crates of books from all over Europe were transported to Germany. And only a short time later these books were appropriated by the Soviet Trophy Brigades. The looted library collections were repeatedly sorted, divided, and scattered, never to be reassembled again.

Rydell shares the many challenges of library reclamation and restitution. He tells us some of the unique deals and exchanges that have been brokered by various countries to get back even small segments of their collections. Rydell personally visits many of the places where books are being catalogued, and he introduces us to the people who attempt to find the descendants of these orphaned books. Rydell even plays a part in the return of a small green book which had been plundered from a family apartment in Berlin.


REVIEW
I loved THE BOOK THIEVES, but it broke my heart. It is the story of lost intellect and memories. You may think you know what happened, but Rydell makes it real. The book is about the treasures that were lost between 1933 and 1945. As you read you can almost feel the half-inch bullet hole in the top left corner of the small light-brown leather-bound book, or smell the millions of damp and rotting books found in a church attic in 1990.

THE BOOK THIEVES gives us an understanding of the number of books that were destroyed, stolen and lost and it will knock you off your feet. THE BOOK THIEVES gives us an understanding of the plans for the confiscated books and it will scare you. THE BOOK THIEVES gives us an understanding of the politics behind the reclamation and it will make you mad.

The breadth of background that this book covers is very impressive and enlightening. The book contains over 400 footnotes. It appears to be well documented by Rydell's interviews, his research and his personal visits.

Fans of the Monuments Men would love this book. This book should be read by anyone with a passion for books, or for books about books.

"But it was not solely a war of physical extermination, it was also a battle for memory and history."

Thanks to PENGUIN GROUP Viking and NetGalley for an advanced reading copy of The Book Thieves in exchange for an honest review.

My apologies, but I was unable to finish it. While very interested in the subject, it was quite dry, used an abundance of acronyms that became confusing, and was a bit repetitive. I would recommend it for a college course, but not for the general reader.

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley and Penguin Viking, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my history book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.

I requested this book because I have a keen interest in the events surrounding World War II. It is the first book by Anders Rydell that I have read.

This is a well written and researched book. It addresses the another of the lesser focused on travesties of the Third Reich - the destruction of any literature not deemed appropriate. The book The Monuments Men (which I have read) covered the more visible topic of the reappropriation of art during this time. I found The Book Thieves to be an equal and even more engaging and disturbing subject.

The subtitle of the book The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance amply describes the content of this book. It covers the history from the early days of the book burnings to the theft of many works, some important and some more sentimental in value, and the search for them since the war ended and the return to their rightful owners. The author does an excellent job of bringing this subject to life and giving it the exposure that it deserves.

I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in another of the atrocities that took place during World War II.