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Nowhere was a real effort made to destroy all copies of all books on the Nazi Index. In Berlin, in fact, a special library committee was hastily organized to comb through the masses of literature brought in by enthusiastic Nazis for irreplaceable volumes, rare editions. No Bibles were burned. Pride of the book burners was the seizure and destruction of the files of famed Sexologist Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who has analyzed many an abnormal Nazi leader in his Institute for Sex Science. Heir to Krafft-Ebing's theories, Dr. Hirschfeld put over the door of his Institute the motto of Hitler's hero Frederick the Great, "I intend in my state that every man amuse himself in his own way."
The day of the book burning in Germany, 80,000 New York Jews paraded behind Major General John F. O'Ryan. Schoolchildren shouted "TWO, FOUR, SIX, EIGHT, WHO WOULD WE ASSASSINATE? HITLER! BOO! BOO! BOO!" At least 50,000 more Jews paraded in Chicago, 20,000 in Philadelphia. One- time Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby made a speech in New York's Battery Park:
"The Germany of today is captained by madmen. She is galloping to the brink of destruction. It is not far off. She has forfeited the respect of mankind and has invited the censures which are being heaped upon her by all people regardless of race, creed or nationality."
Meanwhile New York newshawks went down to the incoming Italian liner Rex to interview a Berlin correspondent of long experience, buxom Dorothy Thompson, wife of Nobel Prizeman Sinclair Lewis.
Dorothy Thompson had plenty to say:
"I was wrong about Hitler before this visit. I once laid a bet he wouldn't last a year. Today I wouldn't take odds on how long he will last. I still believe Hitler is a little man, but I see that he is a really great demagog. He believes all that nonsense. He is the apotheosis of the little man.
"What Germany is now experiencing is a mass movement of a new kind. This is not a return to Potsdam. It is the coming forth of the lower middle class who had no future under the imperialistic and the last German Governments. It is a revolution against culture, a culture which cost them too much.
"They are the victims of a War-defeat psychosis. That fact eats into their very hearts, because they were taught to believe that their military machine could not fail. When Hitler tells them that this machine did not fail but that it was betrayed, they believe him.
"After the War defeat came inflation, and then the crazy period of luxury living, all of which more and more excluded the lower middle classes. ... It had no place, and therefore in order to save itself, it made its goal identical with the Government itself.