Quotes from Jean-Michel Palmier

Organizations Linked to the Parties of the Left In all countries it was these organizations that were generally the most active.

Georg Bernhard spoke of a kind of 'laziness of the heart' that had taken hold of the democracies. Europe wanted to sleep quietly and rejected anything that could rouse it from its lethargy.

It matters little whether we see or not the triumph of our work or even its recognition; that has no importance, as long as it is devoted to truth and justice. As long as this is so, we shall not die, we shall always have friends and even a homeland, as we carry it within us; our country is that of the spirit. Ödön von Horvath, letter to Theodor Csokor of 23 March 1938

From the start, therefore, American culture seemed to the majority of émigrés both simplistic and crude: it corresponded to the tastes of the petty bourgeoisie and not those of an intellectual elite, and, scarcely concerned with either political awareness or formal experimentation, it sought rather to seduce, distract, arouse laughter or tears.3

It was important therefore to avoid themes that were difficult or too intellectual, not to shock the spectator's morals by overly bold ideas, and to respect a complex code of conventions that every author, producer and director had to be familiar with, under threat of seeing himself lambasted by the countless leagues in defence of morality – or still worse, confronted by a public boycott.

If black actors played in a film, they had to appear in unimportant scenes which could be cut without problem when these films were shown in the Southern states.

The task therefore was not only to denounce this supposed kinship between classical German culture and National Socialism, and show what this supposed 'Germanity' had falsified, but also to emphasize the extent to which the classical German heritage was indissociable from those values now trampled on by the Nazis: a certain belief in freedom, justice and democracy.

The means of pressure on publishers were considerable,59 including the purging of public libraries and the publication of lists of undesirable authors,60 whose works had then to be withdrawn from circulation.61 Ever fuller lists of books prohibited from sale were published by the Börsenblatt.

The history of publishing under the Third Reich has rarely been studied: it is a painful and fascinating example of the destruction of an entire culture which could exist only by way of books.

Literature was the first sector of German culture to be completely subjected to the 'new National Socialist values', and its policy towards books became, as Thomas Mann declared, the very symbol of the regime: for all Europe, the Third Reich would remain the country where books were burned.

Their legacy to America was immense, and the social sciences and humanities as well as the fine arts, music and drama would be unimaginable today without the contribution of these émigrés.

Evoking the events of 10 May 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared: We all know that books burn. But we know still better that books can never be destroyed by fire. Men die, but books never die. No man and no violence can extinguish their memory. No man and no violence can lock ideas up for ever in a concentration camp. No man and no violence can chase from the world the works that express the eternal struggle of humanity against tyranny. We know that, in this War, books are weapons.

Immediately after their seizure of power, the Nazis expelled from the theatres all who were known for their progressive ideas.

There can be no neutrality. Not for anyone, still less for a writer. Those who use the weapon of words as an ornament or a toy leave the field open to the adversary.

The Western democracies had to fear their own public opinion, and above all the right-wing press, which constantly railed against the 'warmongers' who sought to drag Europe into conflict so as to regain their lost positions.10 Anti-Communism was widespread, and the ban on émigrés' practising any political activity, in the majority of host countries, was not a signal for tolerance.